Stop “Making It Work”— Build an Extraordinary Marriage

Forget the whole make it work target. You're that target's way too low. I am so passionate about ensuring that my children have great relationships and that starts with me. Everything's right in the world as long as things are right with you. We don't have it modeled for us in the world. We're not deliberately working on our marriage, then we are automatically working on our divorce. Hey there, this is Greg Denning. We want to reach as many people as possible and help as many families as possible with these conversations and we want to keep this podcast ad free forever. You can help us do that by subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcast or wherever you listen, your favorite platform and on YouTube and leave a quick review and share your favorite episodes with friends and family. It makes a big difference. Thank you for being a part of this very important movement. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life Podcast. We're your host, Gregory Rachel Denning. Today we're going to talk about marriage. And I I wholeheartedly can say that marriage is the most important relationship in life. It's the best well, it can be can be the best relationship in life and it is the factor for happiness and joy and meaning and fulfillment and purpose. Well, I think it can either bring the most happiness in life or it can add the most misery. Absolutely, right? Depending on what kind of marriage relationship you have. And so, the better your marriage relationship is, the more happiness you'll experience in life and the more happiness your children will experience in life because that's directly connected. The more you and I work on our marriage, the more likely our kids are to have a great marriage, right? Because we're modeling for them what's possible. It's a huge deal. And we know, we also know because many people have said it to us that the alternative for many people is just like, well, I'm just going to get a dog instead of, you know, having a wife cuz that's too much work. Wives wives are hard. Wives are difficult, right? Yeah. Being married is difficult. It's a challenge, right? Besides the fact that I've talked about this before, people think that they will be happier if they get divorced, but the statistics, the research actually shows that people who thought about getting divorced and stayed together, 5 years later they were happier. But people who thought about getting divorced and got divorced, 5 years later they were still miserable. Really, if you can make it work, you should try to make it work because that's that's where you're more likely to find happiness is working through the problems. where we we want to focus today is is on making it amazing. Yeah. What we want to focus on is the vision, the big picture, like looking past all of that cuz you may be facing that right now, you may not. Things may be going great, but how do you go from things are not great or things are great to things are incredible, things are extraordinary? The vast majority of married people are in this things are okay. And and if you were to ask them, they're like, "Let's let's survive this together. It's kind of survival mode. Let's let's just make it work." But we want to save forget the whole make it work target. You're that target is way too low. Let's make it absolutely amazing. I don't think people understand the psychology behind this. When you set higher goals, when you set bigger visions and dreams, you achieve more and have more happiness because you have the high targets. Yep. Not the other way around. And so if we don't have set high expectations, we actually miss out on some of the happiness and growth we could achieve because of those. When we are pursuing something bigger, greater than us, that's when we have the opportunity to actually achieve and experience more happiness in the pursuit as part of that process. Right? Yeah. It's true for all of us. Until we experience it ourselves, it's this vague like, oh, oh, it could be better, you know, I've heard about that, but until you experience it yourself, it's a limiter. Most of us grow up either with we saw an okay marriage modeled, maybe we saw a great one, or we saw a not great one modeled for us. And then we look around and we see average marriages. And so the expectation of what marriage can be is limited, really low. Yeah, you're right. For you listeners, how many couples do you know sincerely know? And you you know behind the scenes, not not the facade they put on legitimately behind the scenes. How many people do you know that have a phenomenal marriage? I think the point is it's a societal problem. It's not necessarily any couple's fault. It's the fact that we don't have it modeled for us in the world. We don't have anyone out there showing us this is how to do marriage. This is how to do it right. This is how to do it well. Simply because it's not out there. That's why so few people are achieving what is possible. And we don't they don't even know it's possible in part. So they're not investing enough into it, which is what I really want to emphasize today. We're not putting enough investment into it. It's every aspect of life. Very few human beings will grab hold of any aspect of their life and be like, "Yep, I am all in. I'm going after this. I'm going to master this and and I'm going to dominate this aspect of my life." Most of us just just by default born into a society that does it and this is everywhere. You're just kind of like we're just surviving. We're going to get by. We're going to maybe do it well. But we're saying the most important relationship in life is worth all the effort and all the investment that you can put into it to get it to a level that I would hope is beyond even your your highest expectations because that's totally possible. I love the idea of doing something the best that I can do it. And so everything that you and I undertake, including our marriage, we we're all in. We're we're doing it the very best that we can. And we're researching, studying, figuring out how can we make this absolutely extraordinary. So that's the the first step here. We're trying to hold up this ideal. It is possible, no matter where you're at, to make your marriage even better than it is now. to get to the point where things are as you dream they could be, right? That is possible. So, but but the challenge is nobody knows that and nobody knows how to do that. So, we're going to walk through how do we do that? How do we get to that place? How do we make our extraordinary marriage ideal a reality? Because we're we're doing the first step by saying by telling you it's possible. So, I want you to picture this you guys while you're sitting here listening. It's like you climb into bed and you're contendent like and joyful and in love and you're best friends and you just had an awesome day and then you wake up and you're like well I think it's another day maybe even a better way to describe it because it's the opposite perhaps of what most people's regular experience is. You're not distant and cold from one another. You're not avoiding each other or avoiding certain topics. You're not um coexisting like roommates. Yeah. Simply coexisting as roommates, handling the transactional things that need to happen, but we're sincerely living in a state of joy and enjoyment with each other because there's no walls, there's no barriers, there's no grudges. Exactly. None of that is existing. or and or if it comes up, it's resolved quickly. Now, I think that's something I definitely want to emphasize because that's one of the key ingredients to this whole process of creating a more extraordinary marriage. It's learning to understand what I love to call the anatomy of an argument and then how to resolve those conflicts quickly and sincerely. Not like some fake fix, right? But like we've we sincerely resolve the issue so that it's done. It's gone. It's in the past. We move on. We can move forward and onward and upward. Right? So we're not putting it in a folder and filing it away so we can bring it out. Cuz there might be some day where I get angry at you and I'm going to bring out this folder again and bring it. It's like no, we're we're burning it. Yeah. It's done. But it it's resolved also too, right? So when we learn to understand these specific elements and we gain the tools for using them in our everyday marriage life then we begin to live in a state of trust complete trust openness love respect in the blank what what's a word for cherished cherishment I want a I want a word like that cherishment so we can choose deliberately to be best friends and to be blissful and joyful and happy. Like you and I were coming up on 24 years of marital bliss and it doesn't have to fade, right? It it is it has been amazing and and we're still not even still, we're more in love now than we were when we first got married. Like that's true. But I also don't want people to envision this idea that first of all, in order for us to get there, we did have to confront and work through together some pretty big issues. Like, we had to work through what happens when I stop wanting sex because now I have all these kids and I'm exhausted and blah blah, you know, all of that. How do we work through that? How do we work through how we're going to parent our children? Like whether or not we allow video games. There have been issues we've had to work through together. All the the disagreements, all the times we disagree on approach or perspective or habits or parenting strategies, lifestyle choices. We had to work through all of those. And man, we disagreed a lot. Absolutely. There have been real issues we have had to face and work through. And I guess part of what I want to emphasize here too is that it's the very fact that we have been willing to engage in those conflicts. And I'm using the word conflict in on purpose because there's actually a difference between conflict and let's say contention or even fighting or fighting. Yeah. Because conflict is simply the natural state of having to deal with something that you disagree with or that you uh you know makes you uncomfortable. That re requires a bit of conflict. But that does not require you to fight or to be rude or mean to each other. Right? You can you can have conflict and still have respect and love and appreciation and you know negotiation skills. So it's a it's a higher form of fighting or or working through your problems, right? So there has been conflict and it's been our willingness to engage in the conflict rather than to avoid it or to ignore it or to whatever fill in the blank. That has actually helped our marriage get better. Especially because as we engaged in conflict resolution, we actually got better at it, which then made our marriage better. So, it was like this perpetuating positive feedback loop, right? Which is what I was going to say is it's it's the willingness and the skill set to figure out like what works, what doesn't work. Because most of us, honestly, make marriage way harder than it needs to be. I mean, it's hard. It's challenging. It's difficult. But there's little things we do or don't do that make it that much harder. That is self- sabotage, man. Yeah. Stop doing that. Mhm. So, while you're sitting here talking, in fact, the whole time we've been talking, I'm just literally geeking out inside. I'm all giddy. Our couples trips have been some of our all-time favorite memories and adventures. They are off the charts. Awesome. We Well, we lead couples trips first of all because you and I have made a commitment as again as we're talking through these strategies. One of our strategies is that every year, well, most every year that we can, we try to go on a quote unquote honeymoon trip, right? The two of us. And then we started turning those into couples trips because we like, "Wow, we can have other couples come and have an amazing time." Because you and I get to do coaching every week. I do it every day. I've I've seen what happens when an individual learns how to let go of things, process them, remove old habits that aren't serving them anymore and create a like become a new person and what that does to the marriage and to the kids and most importantly to the family legacy. I remember in some of our coaching, we've talked to people and one common pattern we see is especially if the spouses are trying to change and they're trying to help each other and let's give an example of, you know, the the wife wants the husband to take her on dates or something and so he comes home and he's like, "Babe, let's go out on a date, you know, and instead of her responding, which is what you should do naturally, right, if you're trying to work make your marriage better, that would be awesome. Let's do it. Let's go. And putting all plans on hold, right? Instead, we get upset and we're like, why didn't you plan ahead and why didn't you this and why didn't you that? Told me yesterday, right? And and so inadvertently, we're actually creating more of what we don't want. We're telling them by the way we respond to their little attempt to make our marriage better and give us more of what we want. We're responding in a way that ensures they don't do that again. They're going to be like, "Oh, I'm not asking her on a date anymore." Because when I do, she just complains, right? When anyone in your life makes the smallest effort to try to be better, especially your spouse, especially your spouse, we have to encourage and praise and and give positive energy to that so that we can receive more of that in our life. Yes. Yes. Yes. I was just thinking about the time um like I wanted I wanted and still want sex every day just because you're so hot just cuz you're a man you're amazing and and so this was years ago and and it was a source of conflict especially in my childbearing years. Um during that time some somewhere in that time you made a deliberate effort because you knew how important it was and you you wanted I began to understand how important it was because before that I didn't understand and I was more you know I was resentful or resistant because I just thought this is a you problem like just deal with it. Figure it's my mom now control I don't need to be a wife. I'm a mom. Exactly. Like let me live my life. And and I remember you came to me, you know, you you were think I could tell you've been thinking about it. You've been wrestling with it. And you're just like, "Okay." And and this is this was an awesome effort on your part to move towards what I wanted. And you're like, "Let's schedule it." And at the time, I was like, "Yeah, schedule passionate love making." love making this spontaneous in the moment because I you were doing the dishes and I thought I was sexy. You can't schedule this crap. And I that was my initial reaction like your schedule is bug put that on your calendar, right? And my reaction was and you were taking a step in the right direction, right? And that was the beginning of me understanding how a woman's mind works and how your mind works specifically, but I was resistant to it because it didn't operate with how my mind worked. That's a that's a classic example of like, wait a minute, she's trying to make an effort to do the things that I want. Like, yeah, let's go. Because clearly on the schedule, on the calendar for three nights a week is way better than fighting over it for once or twice a week, right? When you're exhausted, right, and not ready. I I had to make mental space to realize, no, this has to be a part of my life just like all the other things that are a part of my life. You know, I have I have to take care of the kids and do this and do this. And so that was my solution of like, okay, I'm simply going to make mental space for it so that when you approach me with it, I'm not cuz really that was what it was. You would approach me and I'd be like, but wait, I already have stuff. I have things on the calendar and if I don't get dinner done then I don't you know I don't then this doesn't happen and then the kids don't go to bed and then I exhausted and then you know and so it's spiraling out of control and catastrophizing simply because I didn't make mental space in my calendar for that to happen. So, I think that that is a great example there, a case study of some of the small ways that end up being big ways that we're self-sabotaging and not providing space for our marriage to be as amazing as it can be. Because once we're able to work through that specific conflict, well, now we have an incredible sex life, right? And you know it it's amazing on so many levels and it adds value to our life and our marriage because we make time for it and because we give it the attention that it deserves. Right? Most couples don't carve out the space and make the time and effort to walk through those processes. And if they try, they often don't know how. They don't have the skills. power. If something was off between us, if there was some sort of conflict, everything else went on hold and we figured it out. Whether that took hours or days or rarely weeks, you know, everything else went on hold and we worked through those conflicts so that we could get to the resolutions. And as a result, we've been able to gain a lot of skills and understanding and practices that help us be able to do that amazingly now and to be able to teach it to other people. Everything in life comes down to a compound effect and everything compounds positive or negative. So a bad habit will compound, a good habit will compound. Investments in our marriage compound. And and you and I teach this all the time, like if we're not deliberately working on our marriage, then by default, we are automatically working on our divorce. And so it's compounding either direction all the time. And and for me, but from my perspective, I'm like, "No, I'm going to I'm going to invest in the marriage." And and I could sit down, I do this. I sit down with couples and I sit down with people. I'm like, "You know, you're you tell me that your husband's the most important person, your wife's the most important person. You literally just chose to watch that game and spend spend time with her, or you literally just chose to go out with your girlfriends and instead of spend time with him. If you're wanting to get to that more extraordinary level, there are sacrifices, quote unquote, to be made. Now, I I say quote unquote, because really, when you end up having the relationship you want, you realize that it wasn't actually a sacrifice. You're like, "Wow, yeah, this is way better. This is exactly everything I've wanted." Somebody one time said, "It's not it's not a sacrifice if you get back more than you give." Exactly. And so, anything I'm sacrificing to make my marriage better pales in comparison to what we get, right? So for all of you listening, like it doesn't matter how you grew up. It doesn't matter whether the the family you grew up in did a great job or did a crappy job. You have a choice right now to be the stopping point in dysfunctional family generations. But it won't happen by default. Won't happen by accident. It won't happen just by letting time pass. Sometimes we think, "Oh, our marriage is just going to get better as it goes on." No. Nope. It's not a fine wine. Exactly. They just get piece of time and and get better by just sitting there. That doesn't happen. The opposite happens. If your marriage gets all filled with weeds and mold and barnacles and this is just just great. We're just roommates. We've been roommates for a long time. And and what we're saying is it doesn't have to be like that. You guys can get on the same page and we can help you do that. Give you the specific steps and strategies and systems to get on the same page to build that legacy. Well, and that's that is why I want to emphasize this aspect of it because I truly believe one of the reasons we have been so driven to making a great marriage besides the obvious benefits of doing that is that you and I have a very large vision of the family legacy that we are trying to build. Like we have a huge vision of what that looks like that is generational. it's impacting our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And that vision requires that we have an extraordinary relationship. Like we cannot build that without it. And of course, one of the most common complaints we hear is, "Well, how do we get on the same page for that?" Because he wants this and I want that and you know, XYZ, all of these obstacles in the way. And we get it. And that's, you know, that's why we've emphasized the conflicts you and I have had to work through. We get it. Like we've been there. We have had to work through these issues because you and I are very different people. We have very different personalities. We want very different things. And so we've had to use specific strategies to help us be able to move through the conflict, have the discussions, and get on the same page so that we can create a shared vision. That's a combination of what we both want. Or even better, it's it's something beyond what we either of us could have originally imagined, right? It doesn't happen by accident. We have to take deliberate action to make it happen because otherwise we just end up with default. And for me, that's not okay. It's unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. Agreed. So, in a very real way, I guess the invitation today is be willing to raise your your marriage standard because in life, we get what we tolerate. In marriage, we get what we tolerate. And so, if we've been tolerating mediocrity in any way, shape, or form inside the marriage, just say, you know what, that stops. We're going to raise the standard. It is absolutely unacceptable to be roommates, to just coexist, to merely be transactional, to check the little marriage boxes of like we're doing this the stuff and things that married people are supposed to do. Like, no way. That's that's done. And and then you're then you're forced because you raised the standard, then you're forced to find solutions. Like crap, we've been doing that for a long time now. Now, what do I do? And I I want you to see both sides. If you just keep going as you've been going, go down that road 10, 20 years. And and I asked the gentleman the other day, I said, "What does what does that look like?" And he's like, "Honestly, it looks miserable and lonely because he was heading down a path that was not making his marriage magical." And then I have clients I'm working with like, "Describe to me your your 20 year." And they're just like, "Right, it's all the kids and the grandkids and everything, this family legacy that's off the charts." And the the choices you make right now are determining whether you're going up towards that great legacy or down towards the other one that's an embarrassment. Exactly. And still a legacy, unfortunately. That's one of the big benefits of coaching is that it forces you to take a time once a week at least to focus on how do I change this? How do I make this better? That's that is the base level, the foundation there of why coaching is powerful because it's giving you that time and place to talk about something intentionally. So that's a part of it. And at the very least like start taking time every week to think about it, to talk about it. How can I do this? How can I change this? How can we talk about this? That's the beginning. And then of course as you, you know, if you do that, you're going to realize, okay, I need more tools. I need more resources. I need more help. You just have to decide where you are in your journey and like what is the next step for our relationship? What is the next step to help us get there? You have to be intentional to work on your marriage so that you're not ending up divorced. So, pick something. Get pretty. Get intentional. Get deliberate. Start writing things down. I love your suggestion. That's the that's the best place to start. Like, hey, wait. What What would What would make our marriage magical? What would make We have a whole um 30-day ch marriage challenge that actually helps with that. It's a whole writing process that they go through which is so powerful because you just start you start thinking about it. You think what what would make it better and usually wives are better at this than husbands. Husbands be like more sex, right? Wives are like I just came up with a list of 57 things. Well, the irony is it's actually the things keeping him from getting sex that are on her list of what would make that's a big their relationship better. We we got to negotiate that a little bit. Like, can I work on a few of those and get rewarded as we go? Rewards are great. That they work great. So, but work on it. I know there's a lot of you listening to this who it it feels very one-sided, like you're the only one working on your marriage. And we want to remind you that even if you're the only one working on it, what you bring to your marriage makes your marriage better. So if you add to the sum total whatever effort that is, it makes the marriage better. It can't not. And I know from conversations with a lot of you, it feels like you're the only one working on it. You've been working on it for years and you feel like you're the only one that cares. as challenging and as hard as it is, keep caring and keep pushing for those changes and improvements because the alternative is just a absolute crap sandwich of of misery. So just keep working on it, keep improving it, man. It's you guys, it is worth every investment, every effort. I don't know how to adequately articulate it because just the day in day out like the stuff that people call mundane is so awesome. Like our life is so good that even the boring stuff is not even boring. Even the transactional things of just running a house and a family is like this is awesome. Just this morning we were working out in our gym and you're like I'm living my dream. Yeah, I was. So down there our our son was working out with us and Rachel and I were in the gym working out and the dream. Living the dream and it's true and it's awesome and it's worth it. Oh my gosh, it's worth it. Uh, invest in it, you guys. Invest in the coaching and the risk because you're investing in yourself and you're investing in your relationship. Invest pay off. Like I asked people that I'm like I was working with this couple once and they're like, "Oh no, that's a lot of money for coaching." I'm like, "Okay, hold up a minute here. How much would it be worth to you to just stop fighting over the things that you guys are chronically fighting over? I've worked with several couples that in fact a few of them literally from the time they got married until the time I started working with them they just been fighting. It was like chronic fighting. It's pretty and they fight over the same dumb things and it's just they they get in the habit of fighting. It's like yeah we've been fighting our entire marriage like well how does that feel? How awesome is that? We hate it. Oh it's terrible. In fact, they came to me point like, "Okay, I'm done." You know, I I I endured the fighting for years. I'm done. I'm I'm out of here. I'm like, "Oh, no. I can help you stop." And I'm like, "What's that worth to you? Is it worth thousands of dollars to be done fighting and be in love?" Yeah, duh. To know they they said, "Yeah, they're like like and and the way I ask like, what's your biggest pain point in your marriage?" It's like, "Oh, that's terrible." Like, put a price tag on that. What's that worth to eliminate that pain and suffering from your marriage? You're like, man, I'll pay just about anything for that and not not just for this year. And and I framed it like that. I'm like, what if you could just go this entire year without that pain? Wow. Like, what if we like solve the problem for good and definitely the rest of your married life? Now you save your marriage. But not only do you save it, it's not just survival. It's awesome. And and you go on and like bliss and love. What's that worth? Put a price tag on that. And obviously you like you don't you're like well duh. It's priceless. It's priceless. So they're like, "Well, yeah, then buckle up. Pay for it." Well, but I don't have the money. Figure out how to get the money. When it matters that much, you'll find a way. I think the best news was that couple decided to sign up and they stopped fighting. Like it changed it changed everything. I can think of um two couples I worked with recently. Like they were fighters, man. They were fighters. And both of them we eliminated it and they are in love and they keep messaging me like this is the best we've ever been. Romance, friendship, sex, raising the kids, having more kids, like pursuing goals and dreams. There wasn't even any mental emotional bandwidth to set goals because it was just endless fighting and and just wondering, did I marry the wrong person? Yeah. It's like, no, you're being the wrong person. You're just self-sabotaging. You're doing it wrong. And so, like, here's here's the the the patterns that they were involved in but weren't aware of and understanding the anatomy of an argument and all of that. And it's not like it's not that insanely hard. All you have to do is just be open to change and like hey try this and you're like try like wow that actually works. Of course it works. So anyways make that happen because it's it's worth it. Marriage is worth it. I am so passionate about ensuring that my children have great relationships and that starts with me having a great relationship. I have to model the way and I have to ensure that their childhood is filled with love rather than angst and fighting and mistrust and all of these horrible things. That's why it matters so much to me. It's worth every sacrifice. It's worth everything you have to do in order to make that a reality. Yeah. As a man, I feel like when things are good with you, I feel like I can just take on the world. I can slay dragons all day. Like everything's right in the world as long as things are right with you and it's worth the effort to make it right. It's so powerful. Okay. Love you guys. Invest in your marriage. Love on each other. Great job, Earth.