⚡️MINI-SODE: The Hard Work of Marriage - ft. My Husband

ELLA: 00:00:00

Welcome to this on air with Ella mini showed a little bite sized boost to your day. Always quick, always thought provoking and always under ten minutes. Let's go. Honest to God, I think parenthood and marriage hood are the two hardest jobs that we have in life. I really, really do. And when you have a child, you can't help it. You're going to love that child till the end of time, no matter what they do. Marriage is the hardest job that I want to be good at. But marriage requires a choice. I think every single day. If anyone gets the impression that you can just find the person who is your person and then like, you're done, you're done. That was easy. Like, that is such a joke. I think that you make a choice every single day as to whether you're going to be good at it that day.

Jeremy: 00:00:46

Well, I think it's kind of like working out, right. You know, there are some people who look incredible. You mean you would fall in that category, you know? Well, you work very hard at it and people look at you and say, wow, I wish I looked like that.

Jeremy: 00:00:59

It must be so easy for you. But marriage is the same way, is you actually do have to get up and do have to go to the gym or run or do those things. It does actually require an effort, and it takes you have to build that muscle. And it's it's easy enough to say it. And everybody kind of goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. But it's hard. It is really hard because all you need to do is to not is to not practice that for a week or so. And guess what? You're right back to where you were again. And so it takes that constant process to be thinking, okay, how do I do this? And you both have to be involved. You can't just be one of you. That is.

ELLA: 00:01:31

So true. And I don't know if I knew that, like I knew that intellectually, but I don't think I had well, I know I didn't. I had never practiced that until we were able to, like, discover that truth together and be like, oh, wait, okay.

ELLA: 00:01:43

Jeremy: 00:02:19

Well, I think many times you are on the same side of it. You just don't realize you're on the same side of it.

Jeremy: 00:02:24

You're looking at it from a slightly different perspective. So if it's a money issue or if it's a child rearing issue that actually you both want the same thing, you're just trying to get your mind around it from your experiences, and then the things that make sense to you to try to explain it. And that may sound completely foreign to somebody, to the other person, even though you are exactly trying to get to the same point. And that becomes very, very difficult to see somebody else's opinion. I mean, we see this all the time, right? And that's I think marriage is the epitome of that is really agreeing on we both want the same thing, but we have to understand that everybody has a different way of getting there.

ELLA: 00:03:04

Yeah, well, I always have a different way of getting there. Like literally always.

Jeremy: 00:03:10

And you're going to explain that to me now, right?

ELLA: 00:03:12

Well, no, no, no, I came up with two analogies to make this to bring this home, to kind of resonate with people.

ELLA: 00:03:17

The first one is if, like, I just picture someone getting into a fender bender, right? Picture a woman, a wife, she gets into a fender bender and everybody pulls over. Nobody's hurt. And she's like, my husband's gonna kill me. And I'm just like, why is your husband gonna kill you? Like, you both have the same problem, right? You had a fender bender. It was an accident. Life happens, and you should both be on the same side of that problem and deal with the boring stuff that happens when something like that happens. So now magnify that. You said an issue with the kids. I think that's huge or an issue with all the big topics money, sex, whatever. Right. So financial issues, I think a lot of people feel a pressure or they feel whatever their feelings are and they pit themselves or family issues. Oh my goodness. Like family relationships. And they put themselves on two sides of a fence. And the fence is the problem.

ELLA: 00:04:05

And when I realized in my brain I was like, no matter what the issue is, we are on the same side of the fence. The problem becomes the thing that the two of us have to manage together. I don't know, just sort of almost visually. That really, really helped me. And also probably just because I have a trigger, one of my triggers is like, I'm an island, I'm a rock, I don't need anyone. I'll just handle this myself. And and then when I was like, nope, gotta put myself on the same side of the fence with the person I chose to partner with for the rest of my life. And it's the two of us against the thing.

Jeremy: 00:04:38

Well, I think that's a good point, because if you think about, I mean, everybody is listening right now. You've got a bunch of rock stars out there, right?

ELLA: 00:04:45

They are rock stars!

Jeremy: 00:04:46

They really are, because they can handle all this stuff and they can do it all on their own.

Jeremy: 00:04:50

And if they were put on an island and told go do that, they could, because they do it in many ways on their own. You know, when they have to go deal with the kids or go to work and deal with issues at work, or do whatever it is that that everybody out there is, is dealing with. They do that every day. But the point is, when you're in a partnership, when you're in a marriage, it's a shared responsibility and it's a shared goal. So therefore you feel a responsibility if things don't go well, to try to explain it, to try to to kind of get the other person to see why it didn't actually work the way that you had wanted it to originally. And that just creates conflict, I think. And that's when you have to be kind of like, hold on. Exactly to your point, we're on the same side of this. What are we trying to do? So you don't have to defend something? It's kind of like as you do very, very well, you say this is not actually an issue.

Jeremy: 00:05:34

It's actually let's just get to a solution.

ELLA: 00:05:36

That's why I always do that.

Jeremy: 00:05:37

Not always, but it's getting to the solution. It's getting to the solution at the end of the day. And that is the important piece.

ELLA: 00:05:43

Yeah. Because I realize that my ego is so much less important than wanting to actually be in harmony with you.

Jeremy: 00:05:51

I think one of the biggest issues we all have is wanting to be right, and that's certainly on on my side, what is wanting is, is, is because I am right. But other than that, no, there's doesn't.

ELLA: 00:06:03

Want to be right. Right. Who wants to be wrong? Yes.

Jeremy: 00:06:06

But at the end of the day, you were trying to do the right thing. And that sometimes gets muddled when something doesn't go well, well.

ELLA: 00:06:13

And you want someone to blame a lot of the time, and who better than the person that you're closest to? All the things that make us human make that hard. So okay, so that's my first one.

ELLA: 00:06:22

Get on the same side of the problem. Way easier to say, way easier to say than it is to do. Especially if you're angry.

Jeremy: 00:06:28

Well, and I would add a little bit to that actually. I certainly find it difficult in that situation when things are not going exactly swimmingly that you don't listen, you don't listen to what the actual other person is trying to say and actually see their perspective. And it's also easy to say it when everything's calm and everybody is talking reasonably about something.

ELLA: 00:06:49

But when you have ego earmuffs on.

Jeremy: 00:06:51

Yeah, there you go. That's a very good way of putting ego earmuffs. That's exactly.

ELLA: 00:06:54

I just made that up.

Jeremy: 00:06:55

Yeah. And that's awesome. So being able to kind of put your ego on hold and just to say, hey, I got to listen to this. Let me listen and let me truly understand what's being said.

ELLA: 00:07:04

You know, I literally just read today that one of the best things you can say to somebody you care about is, I heard what you just said, right? Yeah.

ELLA: 00:07:11

Because when you don't feel heard or you feel misunderstood, It's anybody's game. I mean, that's all that's so frustrating. That's not a trigger for me at all. No, I never have that issue. It must be difficult for the people that do that.

It is okay.

Jeremy: 00:07:24

Ironically smiling.

ELLA: 00:07:26

Okay, the second thing this one is look at them from afar. Like observe your partner from afar. Create situations where you can see your partner, your spouse, your significant other. You can see them doing their thing. You can see them being a human outside of you. So like if you were doing a speaking engagement, I would love to go sit in the audience and watch you do that, like watch you do your thing. But even just at a cocktail party or something, watching you like observing you chatting with somebody else across the room, it makes it fills me with pride. Like it makes me. It makes me really proud of you. And like, that's my man over there. And then if you're talking to another woman and she, like, touches your sleeve, then I come over.

Jeremy: 00:08:11

Oh, if that Scenario ever happens, I'm going to enjoy it.

ELLA: 00:08:14

No, Honestly, I think it's sexy when other people find you charming, but also just, I mean, honestly, just observing and respecting the fact that your significant other. I'm having trouble with the words, but they were a human before you. They were an independent, interesting person that attracted you in the first place. They're still an independent human, and they will be, even if you're not there anymore. And it's so easy to forget that.

Jeremy: 00:08:39

Well, I Think it's many times we get really caught up in the fact that he's leaving his socks around the bedroom. She is not doing the dishes.

ELLA: 00:08:49

Or he's leaving a wet towel on the bed.

Jeremy: 00:08:51

It never Happens. I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about, but but those types of things can very, very quickly become the focus of everything in your own brain. And I'm not saying this is what happens in your conversations, because many times it becomes like you become resentful because it's happened and you don't want to mention it anymore, and it just builds and builds.

Jeremy: 00:09:08

But what you have to see is people are multidimensional. Everybody is. And to start to look at some of those pieces that you may have forgotten about and are not recognizing and spend a little time focusing on those. I think that's a very, very good point. It's something that is super important, especially when you're getting into that period where both of you are busy and you start to just concentrate on what's not getting done. Looking at those types of things I think are critically important, that remind you of the good times and the things that that you're working back towards.

ELLA: 00:09:40

Yeah, it's super easy to see each other as roomies. Yes. Especially when life happens. Yeah. You know, you just get busy. We're busy. Everybody's busy. And when you find yourself in roommate territory, like, wow, you got to break that. You got it. You got to do something. And that leads me to our next principle, which is simply called flirt, date, touch, kiss. How do you feel about that?

Jeremy: 00:10:01

I think that is the absolute formula for a great marriage.

ELLA: 00:10:07

Thanks for joining me for this mini episode of On Air With Ella. Tune in for our full episodes once a week. See you next time!