Marriage: Real Talk

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

(00:00):

Better relationships in 30 days. And today I’m going to talk to you real talk about marriage. What they didn’t tell you before you said I do. And I don’t know if you are anything like me, but I remember falling in love with my hubs and thinking we would live happily ever after and all those horror stories you heard about other people, what never happened. I would never wake up and think what have I done? But of course, I did. Of course, marriage is hard. Here’s what they didn’t tell you. Marriage is hard work. It’s worth it, but it’s hard work. And nobody gets into marriage thinking it’s going to be hard. Nobody gets into marriage thinking. There’s going to be days that you wake up and you are lonely and you are disappointed and you feel disconnected from this person who you couldn’t wait to spend the rest of your life with, from this person who you thought was your soulmate, your best friend, you would never be lonely with this person.

(00:51):

And what happens is life gets in the way. Life and time and age and wisdom and kids and carpools and finances and work and stress, and slowly but surely you end up drifting apart slowly but surely you begin to realize that this person you fell in love with has flaws or as my husband would say things that you need to tolerate about each other. You can tell that discussion, didn’t go very well. As I looked at him and said, you tolerate me, but the truth is we do have to tolerate or deal with things about our spouse, that we don’t really like. You know, they leave their socks on the floor. I leave my shoes by the closet door and my husband to this day 34 years later does not understand why I can’t walk them the three extra feet into the closet. And honestly, it bugs him.

(01:34):

So we do have those moments where we wake up and we think, what have I done? Am I in this marriage forever? Yes. And I’m disappointed. I’m lonely. We’re living like roommates and I don’t feel connected that spark is gone. And so what I want to talk about today is I want to give you first permission, to be honest about the fact that marriage is hard and it’s okay. If it’s hard, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. If it’s hard, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong. If it’s hard. I mean, think about when you work out, it’s hard to work out. It’s hard to build muscles. It’s hard to stay fit. It’s hard to say no to mint chocolate chip ice cream for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it or that there’s something wrong with it. So, first of all, permission, to be honest to at least say to yourself, maybe to a friend, hopefully to your, your spouse, Hey this is hard.

(02:18):

And sometimes I’m not sure about how to move forward. You know, there was a day when, or many days when I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. I wasn’t sure that our marriage would make it long-term. I didn’t want to settle for just enduring and just kind of living like roommates. And I didn’t want to fight all the time. And so we had to work out some ways to figure out how to be married. Well, how to be friends, how to be lovers, how to be roommates, how to keep our romance in life, how to deal with the fact that there were things that bugged us about each other. So the first thing we did was we were honest about the fact that marriage is hard and that doesn’t mean you sit down with your spouse and go being married. It’s hard to you because, and then you lay out all the reasons that is not a wise way to go.

(02:57):

It is something for you to do first internally and be okay with the fact that happily ever after really should be mostly happily ever after. And so, you know, marriage is hard and I want to invest in, I want to work on my marriage. And so today that first permission is the first step in kind of making a change. The thing I like to tell my clients through the years is what is one thing you can do to make a difference? You know, often I talk about how, when you break a leg or you break an arm, you take care of that. You’re really careful. You pamper it. You rest, it becomes a big concern, but if you get a paper cut, or if you’re anything like me and you slice yourself when you’re cutting tomatoes and you have that little cut on your finger and you keep bumping it everywhere, you don’t really take care of it, but it bugs you.

(03:40):

You get lemon juice in it. It keeps in the winter here where it’s cold, it keeps cracking. It just bugs you and you don’t take time to take care of it. I think marriage is really similar. I think that it’s the little things that end a marriage. It’s the little things that create distance between us. It’s the little things that build up and make us say, I’m not sure I’m in love with you anymore. And so it is the little things that we need to focus on in the day-to-day. If you can take time, one thing to one thing today, if you can take time to get back to what I like to call the way we were, anytime you talk about marriage and how you fell in love or the way we were when we would go drive and go parking, or when we would watch a movie and you know, back in the day, I talk about how we had bucket seats and snuggle up close, you know, back in the way we were back, when everything your spouse said fascinated you and you love listening to him.

(04:31):

Talk about his comic book collection or his record collection, or why he loved, you know, Captain America or Batman or Robin or Superman, whatever it was that sort of laughing. because mona wrote yay parking. Yeah. I’m a big fan of kissing. Whatever it was that you used to be so fascinated by it, take time to go back to that memory and connect there. So I have this great resource called 50 ways to increase intimacy with your spouse. 50 simple fund on sexual ways. And one of them is to talk about memories. If you pop over to my website, you can get it at susiemiller.com/50waystointimacy. And in there you’ll get an email from me. And one of them includes these easy questions to connect back in the way you used to. Remember when you would come home, you go, mom. I just found out, I remember coming home saying

(05:22):

John loved cars. And he said, this is about cars and not about cars. And my mom was like, you were never interested in cars. Well, suddenly I was interested in cars cause my honey that I was falling in love with was interested in cars. So those are some things that you can do ask your honey, Hey, what was a favorite childhood game you played? Why, why did you love it? You know, what did your family do on Friday evenings? Was there a family ritual? Was there a school subject that you didn’t like? And you couldn’t wait to get out of that class. And how did you waste a lot of homework? Was there a school subject or teacher that you loved? And that’s really what, you know, you were the math nerd or you loved being in, you know, gym, whatever it was, listen to what your spouse has to say about their life.

(06:02): 

Those are easy ways to connect. Those are easy ways to talk about things that really make you remember, this is the guy, this is the gal that you couldn’t live without. And the way you were will slowly seep into your relationship now. So that one thing, if you do that every single day, one little thing, I’m not talking hours and hours of connection time or those four dreaded words. We have to talk. I’m talking about sitting across from each other at dinner, snuggle it up at the end of the day before you lay in bed, and just go, Hey, I just want to talk to you about this one thing. I just want to ask you this question and then listen and listen. Fascinated. Like you used to be back in those days. I promise you if you begin to do that, you will feel that spark again. You will begin to see that man or that woman for the person that you remember with, you know, sparks and fireworks and you know, romance everywhere. It will come back. I promise it will come back real talk about marriage every week, Monday at five, live at five. Join me. We’ll talk more first tips, hints, and lots of data. Lots of resources. Pop over to susiemiller.com/50waystointimacy. Take the time, work on your marriage today. And I promise it will be worth it. Talk to you next time.