Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 396: "How to Have an Easy Relationship." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness because of intentional growth, because we don't just talk into the life of our grain...we choose to create your host for intentional living. Alright, hello there, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. As always, just happy to have you here. Happy to have some content that I have prepared to share with you. First of all, next Talk with Tanya is February 10th. That will be at 12 o'clock Mountain, 2 o'clock Eastern. It's just a free webinar. You can show up. We chat about all kinds of things. The people that come get coached. They ask questions. Sometimes they just sit and listen to other people get coached. It's all good. Whatever you want from that, we get to make it that. So that's going on. 

Tanya Hale 00:56 

Classes started last week and I will be having some more Sense of Self classes coming up this spring. So start anticipating that. They will probably start in March and do not have that all nailed down yet. But that is my next set of classes because guess what? Sense of self is just the foundational work. And I will tell you that if you have already done a sense of self class with me, it may be worth considering doing it again. Before when I taught three sense of self classes all in the same block of time, every single class was completely different. Even though we covered the same content and everybody had listened to the same podcast, it's just amazing that when you show up prepared for these for these classes, the discussion goes in such different ways. And so you would have a very different experience with it, I think, if you wanted to take that class again. 

Tanya Hale 01:50 

Alright. And so let's go ahead and jump into today. I asked Sione to join me for this conversation because I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about having an easy relationship because he and I are just always like, "this is so easy. How is it so easy when people, when we always heard that relationships are supposed to be so hard?" And we've kind of talked about it and I've listened to some podcasts and some pieces have come together for me. And so we just wanted to talk about what we use, the tools that we use, and why we think as we look at our relationship, what are we doing this time around that makes it so different for both of us than it was the first time around. 

Tanya Hale 02:33 

Because both of us were in pretty tough relationships and places that never felt easy. We might have been very distanced and walking our own paths, and it may have been easy that way because there wasn't the kind of expectations and interactions that we would want from a marriage relationship. But the relationships also were not super fulfilling. And so how do we get to this place where we have this deep intimacy, this open honesty, and it's easy? And that's what he and I are going to talk about today. So I hope you enjoy this discussion with my sweet husband of almost four years, Sione. 

Tanya Hale 03:16 

Alright. So I'm here with Sione today. Hey, babe. 

Sione 03:19 

Hey. 

Tanya Hale 03:20 

How you doing? 

Sione 03:21 

I'm doing great. How are you? 

Tanya Hale 03:22 

Good. I have been thinking about this topic for the last several weeks about how to have an easy relationship. And as I was thinking about all the preparation I wanted to do for it and all this, I thought," oh my gosh, I should have this conversation with Sione because I think that we have a super easy relationship." 

Sione 03:44 

I would agree. I don't think it's hard to be married with you at all. 

Tanya Hale 03:48 

Yeah, it's not hard for me to be married with you either. And, you know, it's interesting because I was always told, I didn't see this in my parents' marriage. My parents' marriage always seemed easy to me. But then I was always told that marriage was hard, that it was a lot of work. And when I got married and it was like my previous marriage, my first year, I probably cried more that first year than I cried my entire life before. It was so difficult and so hard. And I was so unhappy and felt a lot of pity for myself and a lot of sadness. And I could not figure out what was going on. But I was just like, this is hard. It's work. So then when we got married and it was so easy, that's been part of my journey as well is in figuring out, well, what are we doing that makes this so easy? 

Sione 04:49 

Yeah, I would agree. It's a bit of a conundrum in my brain as well that how can this be possible? And I sometimes have to like pinch myself that like, are we really like doing it right? Like maybe we're just avoiding stuff or maybe we're just like placating each other and I just don't see any evidence of that. So I'm like, well, this must be, we're just doing it right, I guess. 

Tanya Hale 05:14 

Well, and it isn't that we don't have tough conversations and that we don't see things from different points of view. 

Sione 05:23 

Right. I would say we have tough conversations, not all the time, but I mean, at least once a week, we're sitting down and having a conversation about something that's come up. 

Tanya Hale 05:34 

Yeah. Yeah. So we have the tough conversations, but they're not difficult to have. 

Sione 05:39 

Right. They're easy, tough conversations. 

Tanya Hale 05:43 

Yeah. However that works, I don't know. But I think part of the work, especially as I look at my previous marriage, part of the difficulty was because I didn't have the tools to make it easy. And I think it's important that we figure out how to lay the groundwork in order for it to be easy, because I don't think it's, in fact, I know that it's not intuitive for most of us to just step into relationship, like a marriage relationship, where there's so much involved and have it be super easy right up front because we all see the world so differently. And we all have these these amazing things in our brain called an ego that makes us think that we're all that matters, that we're most important, that we have to be right. All things us, right? 

Sione 06:37 

Right and I think the other thing that made it hard for me in my marriage was that I thought I could fix all the things that I thought were wrong with her. But it turns out that I wasn't even looking at myself, number one, and number two, it's impossible to fix the other person. You can create a safe space for them to fix themselves but you can't do the fixing. But I thought I could. So I spent a lot of energy trying to control her behavior and fix her behaviors that I didn't like. That's just never gonna happen, that was never gonna that was never going to result in a equal, safe, loving, kind marriage. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah, go figure that when your spouse is constantly criticizing you and telling you you're doing it wrong that it's not easy, huh? That's a new thought. 

Sione 07:13 

And I look at it now and I'm like "well, duh, McFly," right? But in the past I thought I was being super helpful, right. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

And that's such a pleasant thought, isn't it, that I'm being helpful? 

Sione 07:13 

Yes yes. Yeah, good justification for all my poor behaviors. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah, which at the time you didn't know is poor behaviors. But I'm just gonna say, and I've said this to you before, but i'm really glad I get this version of you. 

Sione 07:13 

Yeah yeah we would not have been a good couple in our 20s. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

But this kind of goes back to what I like to call the easy hard, hard easy principle in the work that we're going to talk about today, because if we do things that are easy now it makes it harder later. If we do things that are hard now it makes it easy later. So if i avoid my spouse today and avoid having a hard conversation today because it's easy, it builds and it builds it creates resentment and it makes my relationship harder in the future. If I do the hard work now to have that tough conversation to engage with you in a way that that might be difficult, it makes it easier later, right? 

Sione 07:13 

And some of the examples you've shared is, you know, you've talked to me about things and you've said like "and it's not okay," and that kind of raises my defensiveness, so then it makes me go, "oh wait, what why am i feeling so defensive? Oh because what she's saying is true and i need to fix it myself." And yeah so those are all those. I agree that easy hard because it's hard to tell your spouse and "what you're doing is not okay" and it's hard to hear that and it's necessary. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Well and I think sometimes it's hard to say "and that's not okay" in a loving way. It's easy to say "it is not okay that you're doing this!" It's another to say "listen, I love you. You're doing this and it's not okay." But it's coming from a place of love, not a place of I'm attacking you. 

Sione 07:13 

Right, and you're trying to fix me and it's not okay. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah yeah, so there's some prep work that I think that we have to do. And I think both of us before we met each other did a lot of prep work to make sure that we were in a place to start having the relationship. Now, some of you are that are listening are single or in situations like Sione and I were, and some of you are in a marriage and you're like "listen, I don't want to get divorced but we've got some cleaning up to do here." Either way we have to do the prep work to start cleaning up our own stuff. And what that means is, first of all, I have to start seeing my own crap; I have to start recognizing what I am doing that is not beneficial, how am I adding to the dysfunction of this relationship 

Sione 07:13 

I think you also have to put blinders on what your spouse is doing because it makes it easy to justify your behaviors: "well, I am doing this, but it's only because he's doing that" or "she's doing that." You have to say, at least I had to say to myself, "her behaviors do not matter. It's my behaviors that matter to me and I need to be how I need to be and not worry about how she's being." And that was critical for me in learning how to be a better husband 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah, because that's all we have control over. 

Sione 07:13 

Even if we think we have more control than we actually do. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah, and so learning to see our own stuff, learning to see how we are adding to the dysfunction is super important. And then we need to own it and we need to take responsibility for it. We need to address it and say "oh I see that I'm engaging in this behavior," and then we got to tell ourselves that's not okay. 

Sione 07:13 

And not excuse it, right? Take responsibility for cleaning it up. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

And then we've got to just do the work to start cleaning it up. And that's not always easy, first of all. Sometimes it's hard to see our stuff. I remember sometimes in those years after my divorce when I was doing so much reading and working with a  coach and doing other stuff and I started to see stuff, I was like "wait a minute, I have never seen this before." Like I've mentioned this on the podcast, in fact just a few weeks ago when we talked about vulnerability, like when I first heard that from Brene Brown, I could not believe that vulnerability was a part of marriage. I knew it in the context of, you know, being in a dark alley or in a parking lot or whatever, but I did not understand vulnerability as sharing my real, honest, true-to goodness, good and bad self with my partner. 

Sione 07:13 

Yeah, and I was also... I didn't see that my behaviors to try and help her were actually not helpful at all and were controlling. And it took a therapist, a very expensive therapist, to say "hey, she can find this information on her own if she wanted it. She could figure this out on her own if she wanted to." And that's when I'm like "oh yeah, you're right, she does know how to use the internet and she could google this if she really wanted to," you know. And just obvious things like "oh yep, you're right, this is me being controlling, not me being not owning my own behaviors." And once I was able to own that that was my behavior, was this controlling stuff, then I was able to fix it and start to see it even more often. 

Sione 07:13 

One of the things that I did, maybe this is off topic but what the heck, so one of the things I did with my kids once I got my own therapist and we were starting to identify areas where I was being controlling, I put um five dollar bills in the cabinet. A hundred dollars worth of five dollar bills in the cabinet. We still had two kids at home at the time and I said "anytime that any of the three of you," my spouse and my two kids, "think that I'm being controlling, I want you to say "dad, quit being controlling," and then go get five dollars out of the cabinet. And it wasn't more than 30 seconds before my daughter said "dad, quit trying to control me." And I started to get defensive and thinking "I'm not," and then I went "oh wait, yep I am." And she went and picked out her five dollars. From then on it was game on. Everybody was looking for ways in which they could get five dollars. And I went through that first hundred dollars in less than a week, I think, but I never went through the second hundred dollars because once people started pointing it out to me and then I could start seeing it, it was so much easier to fix. And so we absolutely, like you said, have to own it, take responsibility for it, and if we're not able to see it have others who we trust help us to see it. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

And that's where sometimes a therapist or a coach is super important in helping us see behaviors that we're engaging in that we've got to clean up. So that's the groundwork I think that really has to happen before we get into the relationship stuff, the stuff that we do together, is we both, on an individual level, have to be willing to look at ourselves, to clean up the crap. And it doesn't mean, like when we got married, that we were both perfect at doing these things and aware of our stuff. But we were on the path to cleaning it up, right? 

Sione 07:13 

Right. And well and I think we talked about this before, that I had my own personal therapist and I will say that we spent almost no time at all talking about my spouse's behaviors. I don't even remember talking about the things she was doing, and I'm using air quotes, "wrong." We talked all about what I was doing and my thoughts about it. And I know you talked about that with your coaching as well, and what you went through with your coach when you were being coached, was it was all about your behaviors and had nothing to do with your spouse or your ex-spouse or your kids or anything. It's all about your own behaviors. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Yeah, so and as I work with my clients, same thing. As I work with my clients and individuals on an individual level and work through stuff, sometimes they're coming up and they'll say like "oh my husband, he's doing this and this..." and I'm like "I don't care. I don't care what your husband's doing, let's talk about how you responded to that. Let's talk about your behavior." So we have to be willing to do our own work because until we start cleaning up the bad behaviors that we are bringing to the marriage, things are not going to change. 

Tanya Hale 17:02 

Okay. Once we've started that cleanup process, then we can start implementing some really amazing tools to help us have an easy relationship. So we're going to talk about a lot of these tools. There's a lot of overlap sometimes in the things that we're going to talk about, but we came up with some ideas that should be helpful. So should we jump in? 

Sione 17:24 

Yeah, and by we, let's be clear, Tanya came up with these ideas that I agree with. 

Tanya Hale 17:30 

But we did talk about them and make sure that we're all on the same page. Right? Because we're equal partners, right? 

Sione 17:36 

Sure we are. 

Tanya Hale 17:40 

We are equal. This is just my wheelhouse, right? 

Sione 17:43 

Right. This is totally your wheelhouse. 

Sione 17:45 

Alright. So one of the first things that I think is so, so vital is that we see each other as equals and we treat each other as equals. And it's easy to say, "you're my equal, I see you as my equal," but not see all the ways that we really are not treating them as our equal. And it's because we grew up in a society where men and women were not considered equal. And, you know, and in both ways. You know, there are ways that in our society men feel like they are superior. And there are ways in our society that women feel like they're superior. And until we get to a place where we can look each other in the eyes and say, "you are my equal in every way," we cannot start creating this beautiful, easy relationship. 

Sione 18:36 

Yeah. And I think like one of the things that not only is traditional in our society, but also something that I bought into was that I was better at money management than you were. And it came out in several of our conversations about our finances. And I still remember you coming in and saying, like, "I managed my own finances without you or my ex-spouse for six years. And even before that, I did a lot of money management with my ex-spouse. I don't need your help to know how to manage money. And you are not better at this than I am." I don't remember exactly the words you used, but that's what I heard was, "I'm just as good as you are at managing money." 

Sione 19:28 

Just different, right? We approach it differently. 

Sione 19:31 

Right, for sure. But it's not that you don't understand that the bills still have to get paid with actual dollars and not just checks that may or may not have money in the checking account or whatever. It shows how old I am that I think of checking accounts still. But yeah, it's still a, you know, different, but yet neither one of us is better than the other at managing money or doing chores or housework or driving a car or any of those things. And so, um, yeah, just different. 

Tanya Hale 20:09 

Yeah. And so being able to really see equality and show up as equals is super, super important. 

Sione 20:18 

And if you don't buy into it, if you're just saying the words, it shows up. Like, you can't hide what you're really thinking. I still remember one of our marriage therapist that really changed my life once said, "you guys are communicating great to each other. You're just not using any words. There's no doubt that each of you know where you stand with the other person. So don't say you need to communicate better. You're communicating great. It's just not using any words to do it." And I think that even if you think you're an equal and you tell your partner or spouse, "oh yeah, we're equals," but you don't believe it, it's going to show up in other ways. And your partner is going to also know it. Like, that's nice that you said that lie and your nose isn't growing, but your nose is growing. 

Tanya Hale 21:09 

Yeah. And that might be some of the foundational work that we have to do on our own is to really get to a place where we see our spouse as an equal. You know, different talents and abilities for sure. But still equals. 

Sione 21:26 

Yeah. And of the same worth. 

Tanya Hale 21:28 

Right. Absolutely. Always. Yeah. So another thing that I think that is really important that we do to create this easy  relationship is we really need to genuinely desire our spouse's happiness as much as we desire our own, which means we have to stop thinking that "I deserve more than them" or "they deserve less than me" or whatever's going on there. We have to stop thinking in one-up and one-down ways and we have to start wanting their happiness as much as ours. 

Tanya Hale 22:04 

Yeah. And like I think, you know, Jesus said it best, love your neighbor as yourself, which doesn't mean that if you hate yourself, you can hate your neighbor, but it means you need to love both yourself and your neighbor. And that's the same that's true with this. You need to love your, you want, you want your spouse's happiness as much as your happiness. And you need to want happiness for both of you. And that requires the, I don't know if it's the diminishment of ego or sometimes I'll say in the operating room, like "check your ego at the scrub sink. You can pick it up on your way back out." When we walk in the operating room, safety is our number one priority, not, you know, were you right or were you wrong? You just leave your ego at the door. There's not room in the OR for that. 

Tanya Hale 22:54 

And in the marriages, it's emotional safety is what's most important here. Being able to create... 

Sione 23:01 

If you have a lot of ego at work or whatever, yeah, leave it in the car like you do your ID badge and everything else. You can pick it up in the morning on your way to work, but don't bring it in the house. There's plenty. 

Tanya Hale 23:12 

There's not room in marriage for the ego because the ego will destroy a relationship every time. Another idea that we came up with is that we have to remember that this person is our teammate. They're our ally. They are not our enemy. 

Sione 23:30 

Yeah, when you look at, and just because I'm a guy, I'm going to use the guy analogy. When you think of football players and they're, you know, a football team or a basketball team or baseball team makes a huge comeback after they've been way behind and they say, ""how did you do it? And they're always like, "I just believed in my guys. I believed, I trusted my teammates that we could do this," you know, and, and I think that's true in a marriage too. You just have to like, even if you're feeling down about things and you're behind in the game, just trust your teammate, you know, and both of you working hard, you can overcome the odds. You can make a comeback. And that's kind of what this is saying to me is like, you're teammates in this battle against life. It's not you against them, but it's the two of you against the world. And when teams don't make the comeback, oftentimes it's because that teammate relationship broke down, so-and-so tried too hard to do too much, or so-and-so gave up and quit believing in the team. And I think that's true in a marriage too. 

Tanya Hale 24:36 

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Another thing we need to do is to never give ourselves permission to be harsh or unkind to our spouse. And I say this because I think a lot of us, we start letting down our guard in a marriage, and then we start getting snippy with our spouse. We start criticizing. We start blaming. We start calling them out in harsh and unkind ways. And that's never okay. Harshness will never create beauty in a relationship. 

Sione 25:12 

Do you think that comes from a one-up standpoint, from an ego standpoint? "I can criticize you because I'm better than you at this" 

Tanya Hale 25:20 

Maybe, yeah. 

Sione 25:20 

Or maybe because you're not. So this kind of ties in all those other things we've been talking about. 

Tanya Hale 25:26 

And I just think it gets easy over time to forget, you know, and to start making excuses for how we behave. And that's just not going to cut it. We have to choose this person to, I will always treat them well. 

Sione 25:46 

Oh, so I can treat them unkind because they treated me unkind. Or they didn't recognize that I did all this stuff for them. So I'm not going to recognize they did all this stuff for me. 

Tanya Hale 25:59 

We just can't let down our guard. We have to just decide. It's never okay for me to call them names. Never okay for me to, I don't know, do whatever else, right? So we just have to always seek that. Another one is that we have to understand that taming our ego is infinitely easier than continual drama and fighting and contention in our marriage. We may think, you know, our ego wants to prove that we're right. Our ego wants to be more important. Our ego wants to get its way. Our ego wants to be dismissive. And we have to understand that our ego is going to destroy our relationships. And as long as we're listening to our ego and doing what our ego wants us to do, we are going to have fighting and drama in our marriage. And if we want an easy marriage, we cannot have fighting and drama going on. So we got to shelf that ego. 

Sione 27:02 

Well, and I think a lot of ego also can come from insecurity, right? And so you're like, "oh, I got to fight back because I can't let you because I'm feeling insecure about myself right now." And so I need to somehow provide protection. And that's when the ego steps in. And so if you're, if it's not a safe marriage, it's even easier for that ego to step in. But then if I'm not creating a safe space for you, then you're going to have to protect yourself, which then doesn't create a safe space for me. And suddenly both of our egos are occupying the whole room. 

Tanya Hale 27:37 

Yeah. Yeah. We just get so focused on me and my safety and all the stuff. And I have to be right. And it does absolutely tie back into our insecurities. 

Sione 27:50 

Yeah. Because it's safer to be right. 

Tanya Hale 27:52 

Yeah. Well, in our ego mind it is. But in the marriage, it's not safer to be right. Right. So anyway, next thing. We have to choose to be emotionally mature here. Being emotionally mature in one way means that I don't give myself a free pass. "Well, yeah, sorry, I swore at you and called you names last night. I just wasn't feeling well." Okay, come on. Let's just stop with that kind of nonsense because I don't care if you're sick. I don't care if you're hungry. I don't care if you're distracted. I don't care what's going on. It never is an excuse to treat your spouse poorly. Never. And emotional maturity means that I can show up behaving like the adult that I want to be even when I'm tired or stressed or frustrated or whatever else. 

Sione 28:55 

And it's always okay to take a time out to say, I'm tired. I'm stressed. I have to go to work. I have a big deadline coming up tonight or I have to get some stuff done tonight. And I want to spend the appropriate amount of time with this issue. So can I go for a walk for 10 minutes? And then I will get my amygdala offline and get my prefrontal cortex, my thinking and creativity, logic, brain back working again. I just need 10 minutes. Or I can do that all tomorrow. I just can't do it now. And that's being emotionally mature is recognizing where our emotions are at right now and deciding whether that's a good time or a bad time to engage in the conversation. 

Tanya Hale 29:41 

Yeah, absolutely. 

Sione 29:42 

But you can't just leave them dangling. I can't deal with this right now and storming out of the house. 

Tanya Hale 29:46 

Yeah, that's emotionally immature. Right. When we just, you know, throw a fit and walk out the door. Yeah. But absolutely, it's mature to be able to say, "hey, listen, I feel like I'm getting offline. I feel like I'm becoming emotionally dysregulated. I don't want to show up in this relationship that way. I'm going to go take a walk around the block. Can I come back and can we finish this conversation in 15 minutes?" 

Sione 30:11 

And that's owning your own too, right? Like, "you're making me so mad, I need..." you know, and that's not emotionally mature either. Right. But saying, "I feel attacked or I feel dysregulated or I feel unsafe" or something like that is acceptable. "You're making me unsafe. You're attacking me." All of that is not acceptable behavior in emotionally mature individuals. 

Tanya Hale 30:38 

Alright. So let's step into some emotional maturity. Next one, let's choose some love. We have to be willing to show up engaged and invested in our relationship. We cannot get to the point where we're just like, "oh, I'm just too tired tonight. So I'm going to watch TV" and do that every single night. I mean, occasionally, yeah, like occasionally all of us need some space to just kind of wrap our head around life because we're stressed or we're anxious. But if that's how it is every single night, something's got to change because relationships require time and effort and energy and conscious awareness. It requires all of that. And so we have to be willing to show up, engage, and invested. 

Tanya Hale 31:27 

Another one, we have to learn how to avoid, and I know you've heard these before, attacking, accusing, blaming, and criticizing. And Sione was pointing out to me, he says, oh, it's AABC, right? And then AABC, which is avoiding, attacking, accusing, blaming, and criticizing. Then if we do those things, it leads to defensiveness. Which is D. Oh, gee whiz, so we've got A, A, B, C, D, D. 

Sione 31:57 

Right? This is how I got through medical school. Little mnemonics and stuff. 

Tanya Hale 32:02 

Yeah. But anytime that we are speaking to our spouse, engaging with them while we are attacking them, accusing them, blaming them, or criticizing them, it will always shut down the conversation and the capacity to connect immediately because the other person's primitive brain immediately puts up walls and says, "whoa, no, no, no, I am not safe here." And that ends the conversation. So we have to really listen to how we're talking. We have to listen to the words that we're using. We have to get used to the small nuances in how we are showing up. 

Sione 32:43 

And I think that leads to the next one, which is owning your own. So instead of attacking, accusing, or blaming someone for your feelings or your thoughts, owning your own feeling and your own thought. So, but you can say, "when you say X" and then be very specific, "then I feel Y because I'm thinking," and then you put your thought in there. And it's, and then you get curious. "Tell me what your experience is with this" or "tell me what your goal was in saying that or what you were hoping the outcome would be," rather than saying, "well, you're making me mad," saying, you know, "when you tell me how to drive the car, then I'm feeling upset because I'm thinking that you think you're a better driver than me and you're not, "you know, or "you think you're a better driver than me. So tell me what your thought is." And then that allows more understanding for both parties and just totally hijacks that blaming cycle and that criticism cycle. And then maybe if you're the other person on the other end of that, you can recognize "oh yeah, that does sound a lot like I'm criticizing your driving. Maybe I shouldn't say that. And thank you for pointing out that the circumstance I was giving you was leading to you to thinking I'm thinking I'm a better driver than you" or whatever the word situation is. 

Tanya Hale 34:19 

That whole situation sounds vaguely familiar. You would think that we've had that conversation before. 

Sione 34:26 

Right. And then the understanding of, oh no, that's just what he says in his own mind the whole time he's driving. So, because I think a statistic once I read was 90% of drivers think they're above average, but like mathematically, that's impossible. So half of us are below average drivers and just mathematically. So I think I recognize I'm below average in my driving. 

Tanya Hale 34:50 

Yeah, but it is important that we learn to own our own. So I'm just as a side note really quick, look down in the show notes because I have so many podcasts on a lot of these things that we're talking about. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into them, go down to the show notes and find the podcasts that have to do with these. The next thing, no back burner issues. All right, come on. We cannot keep having problems in our marriage, stick them on the back pot, and just keep throwing crap in that pot and crap in that pot and keep it bubbling and boiling. It is eventually going to turn into this nasty, putrid, stinky, bubbly, boiling mess that turns into something that is irreparable. We cannot do that. 

Tanya Hale 35:33 

It's kind of like if I go out in my garden after I've planted it and I plant the seeds one day and three days later I go out and I've got all these little tiny weeds in there. What does it take for me to pull those weeds at that point? Two little bitty baby fingers, right? I can grab the weed and I can pull it with two fingers. But if I let that garden go for six weeks, then when I go  out there, I've got two-fisted weeds to pull, if not a shovel, right? I have to do some serious work. And so we cannot keep putting things on the back burner. When a struggle comes up in your relationship, we have to talk about it. It has to be brought to the forefront. But again, we don't attack, accuse, blame, or criticize. Instead, we own our own and we say, "hey, when this happened, you know, when I brought up this particular topic of conversation with you and you said, 'it's not a big deal, don't worry about it,'I felt dismissed because I was thinking that my point of view was not being listened to. Will you help me understand what you were thinking when you said that I shouldn't worry about it?" 

Tanya Hale 36:54 

We're taking these issues and we're addressing them when they're little teeny tiny two-weed problems, two-finger problems, rather than a double-fisted problem. 

Sione 37:05 

Right. And then owning your own and saying, "yeah, I don't think that's a big deal, but you do. So help me understand what your concern is or help me figure out why it's such a big deal." But don't be like, "no, I didn't dismiss you at all. I would never be dismissive." And it's like, no, no, you communicated very well that you were dismissing me. So don't lie now about it. 

Tanya Hale 37:30 

Well, the part of our brain that wants to say, I didn't do that, is the ego. And again, the ego is going to destroy our relationships. If all you're worried about is your ego, you have no right being in a relationship. You just don't. You cannot treat it with the respect and the care that it needs to flourish and grow. So if you've got ego going on, fix it or get out because we just cannot live that way. 

Sione 37:59 

Well, you can even look at the beginning, the beginning beginning. And ego is the whole problem, right? "My plan and my way. And I get it all." That was all the ego. 

Tanya Hale 38:11 

Yeah. We just got to keep an eye on that ego, my friends. All right, next one. Stay in your own lane. This is a place where we start to figure out what is my responsibility and what is their responsibility, and stay the heck out of their lane. 

Sione 38:28 

Well, and I would add the corollary, and your lane is not their lane. Right. Because you can be like, I am in my lane. No, no, you're in the other person. Yeah. There are lanes, and you're in the wrong one. 

Tanya Hale 38:38 

Yeah. And this is, again, a place where boundaries come in as well, right? Because sometimes people cross into our lane or we cross in other people's lanes and we don't realize it just because we have these pattern behaviors. But this is, again, where the no back burner issues, the having this conversation that says, hey, sweetie pie, like you're kind of straight in my lane here." And once we know that, and for us, we have that terminology, you know, but it would never be said like, "get out of my lane," you know, because that's the harshness. 

Sione 39:17 

When you slam the door shut. 

Tanya Hale 39:18 

Yeah, yeah. Harshness is not okay. But being able to say, hey, that feels a little bit like you're straying into my lane. Yeah. Like, I'm just pointing this out, sweetheart. 

Sione 39:30 

Or, "when you say that, then I feel like you're in my lane because I'm thinking this is my problem to solve, not yours." 

Tanya Hale 39:39 

Yeah. Yeah. And there's the own your own, right? And these are the pieces when we start putting this together and treating each other, gosh, like I love you, really? I'm treating you like I love you. That makes our lives so easy together. It's when we start treating each other with unkindness and harshness and contempt that things get really, really difficult. 

Sione 40:03 

And unfortunately, I think it is easy to go down that path. 

Tanya Hale 40:07 

Oh, so easy. I think we both know that, right? From previous marriage experience. 

Sione 40:11 

Well, even from this marriage experience, sometimes you have to say, "okay, I'm feeling tired." Oh, love. Okay. You have to pull out the love and do that instead of my initial knee-jerk response, which for me is not always love and kindness. 

Tanya Hale 40:30 

We're humans after all, right? And we're never going to always show up the best way, which makes this next tool really important. And that's the circling back around. And circling back around, we talk about the four A's. We talk about awareness that I've done something that's out of alignment with who I want to be. Acknowledgement to myself where I sometimes we see what we're doing that's in bad form and we pretend like we don't see it. 

Sione 41:01 

Yeah, we hope sweeping under the carpet. No one notices. 

Tanya Hale 41:05 

And we kind of pretend like we don't see it, but we have to be aware and then we have to acknowledge it to ourselves. We have to acknowledge it to our spouse. We have to say, "hey, listen, I am recognizing that yesterday that I was dismissive." And then the third step, we have to apologize. "I am sorry that I didn't listen to you. That is not the person..." this is the piece of this apology that I love: "...that is not the person that I want to be in this relationship with you." Right? We have to acknowledge that, listen, I want to be better than that with you. 

Sione 41:43 

Well, and also, I think a common thing that I have done in the past is, "I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'm sorry that you felt dismissed rather than," which is not an apology for your behavior at all. So "I'm sorry that my behavior was the way it was. I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you," because that's also part of the acknowledgement, right? You're right. I wasn't listening to you. You're absolutely correct. Rather than your ego going, no, I listened to everything you say, you know, like acknowledging, yeah, you're right. I didn't show up very well there, did I? 

Tanya Hale 42:17 

Yeah. And so the third step of that is the, I love that point. Thank you. The third step of that is the apology. And then the fourth step is getting back in alignment. And that's the place where we come in and we say, hey, listen, you know, we apologize. "That's not who I want to be. Can I try it again?" And if they, I mean, if this happens like in real time when it's happening and you go, "oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I see that I was just dismissive to you. That's not how I want to do this. Can I try it again? Can I circle back around and try it again?" And hopefully your spouse is going to be like, "yeah, sure." Like, go ahead. And then you practice it. You say it the way that you wish you would have said it. 

Tanya Hale 42:59 

Now, if time has passed and you can't just say, "can I try it again?" Even just saying, "if I could do it again, this is what I would say. This is what I would do." And being able to practice that in your head, it does a couple of things. First of all, it lets the other person know, I've been thinking about this. I've been working on it and I've been cleaning it up. And I have a plan for how to show up better in this relationship. The second thing that it does is it tells your primitive brain, oh, look, here's another option. This old poor behavior stuff that I did before is not the only option in my brain anymore. Now I'm starting to create a new neural pathway for a new behavior. And so when it comes time for your brain to start making decisions, your primitive brain to do that, that instantaneous reaction that it does sometimes, now you're giving it a different option. And over time, that new option will start to show up. 

Sione 43:57 

Well, and I think it also, you have to then also be ready for your spouse to say, "that was a great circle back. And here's what I think you could also do better on that circling around." Like, "I still don't feel quite as hurt. Thank you for apologizing, but you apologized for my feelings, not for your behavior," you know, and then and then you say, "oh, yeah, you're right. I got the first half of that, that circle back around right, but not the second half. Let me try that again." And then build that neural pathway, build that memory cycle so that you get it, so that you get it right. I mean, this is true of any sort of manual dexterity, right? Practicing musical instrument or doing surgery or a sports event or something like that. It's all about do it repetitively enough times correctly, you know, that you get it right. So practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. And so perfect practice makes perfect. And so practice until you get it perfect and then you'll do it right the next time. 

Tanya Hale 45:04 

Yeah. So as he's talking about the skills, that's equivalent to these tools, right? Right. These are all skills that we learn. They're skills that we practice and we get better at them as we go. I feel like you and I are way better at these skills than we were four years ago when we were dating. 

Sione 45:22 

And way better than I was 34 years ago. 

Tanya Hale 45:24 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, me and my previous marriage too, right? 

Sione 45:28 

Which I didn't even have these skills. 

Tanya Hale 45:29 

Whew, right. All right. Next one. Let's really seek to understand our spouse by asking lots of questions, getting curious. And remember, we're not asking questions so that we can back them into a corner and prove our point. 

Sione 45:45 

"Well, what did you think was going to happen?" 

Tanya Hale 45:47 

We're not asking them questions so that we can collect data and argue it back to them. We are asking questions really because, gosh darn it, I love you and I want to understand how your brain works. I want to understand how you see the world. I want to understand why this particular situation or circumstance matters so much to you. Help me know you. And I love that Jennifer Finlayson-Fife always talks about the essence of a good relationship is knowing and being known. I can know my spouse when I'm willing to ask questions to understand them, and not so that I can get my own way. 

Sione 46:33 

Yeah, one of the things that I learned from my therapist was to get curious and ask the questions, we didn't use those same words, and then never have an agenda to then get your point understood. To just say, "I just need to understand where she's coming from. I don't need her to understand where I'm coming from because I can't make her understand where I'm coming from. She has to be curious on her own. What can I control? I can control whether I'm curious." And so I just get curious about your viewpoint or the other person's viewpoint. And I never try to make them get curious about my viewpoint. And I think that's kind of what you're saying is like, understand, ask a lot of questions, get curious, because you can control that. You can't control if they're curious about you. And if you do that, then you're no, you're not thinking, "oh, she just said this. So now I can say that to rebut." And now you've missed understanding even more, you know, and there is no rebuttal. That's not how a marriage works. 

Tanya Hale 47:37 

Right. Yeah. So this place of really seeking to understand, this was a brand new skill for me in our relationship. So another one, a lot of validation. Now, not validating them because we think we can build their sense of self, because we cannot build their sense of self. That's not why we're validating them. What we are doing is validating our relationship, validating them in the relationship circle with us. And this can look like appreciation and acknowledgement, like things that say, "I see you. Thank you for taking care of..." whatever it was you took care of, right? "I appreciate that. Thank you for choosing me. Thank you for being such a great partner. Thank you for listening to me when I shared my concern with you today. Thank you for making it safe for me to share difficult things with you." This acknowledgement says, "I see you in the relationship. You being here with me is important." 

Sione 48:49 

And it also, I think the other thing that I've learned that it does, because this is a new skill for me from when we started dating, this, what you're talking about, is that it also tells me what's important to you. You know, like if you say, "oh, thank you so much for listening last night when I just needed someone to talk to." Oh, that must have been an important thing for her. Okay, good data. You know, like, and so by listening to the appreciation that you share with me, it helps me understand better what things you value in our relationship, which may be very different from the things I value. 

Tanya Hale 49:27 

Yeah. Very likely, because we're shockingly two different people. 

Sione 49:32 

Right. From two different backgrounds. So it just is nice because that, and at first when you, when we started dating and doing that, I'm like, "okay, you're grateful that I go to work. You know, like I would go even if we weren't married," you know, but then it just, one, it just makes me feel appreciated and I never get tired of that. But it also, like you said, says, "I see you. I see you getting up and going to work every single day. And I see you," at least in my job, "not sleeping sometimes. And I appreciate that you're putting in all that hard work for us," you know, and so, and that never gets tiring. 

Tanya Hale 50:10 

Yeah. And it's just one more way to express love, right? 

Sione 50:16 

Yeah. So for all you men out there, even if you, well, I shouldn't say all you men. So when all of y'all out there, when your partner does something, even something trivial, thank you for taking out the trash. Thank you for doing the dishes. Thank you. You just noticing that they did it and acknowledging it is just, it's just a little pebble in their, you know, their bucket of sand or whatever that just makes them feel appreciated. 

Tanya Hale 50:42 

Well, it creates a desire to invest more in the relationship. Yeah. Right. That can't fill their own bucket. It can't create their sense of self, but it says, "oh, I'm wanted here in this relationship." And that's important. It's important to feel wanted. 

Sione 51:04 

And I still think we do a good job of even after four years of marriage. Thank you for making the bed this morning. Thank you for doing the laundry, whoever did it. Thank you for cleaning up the dishes. 

Tanya Hale 51:14 

Thank you for putting my towels in the towel warmer for me! 

Sione 51:17 

You're welcome. We're such bougers. We have a towel warmer. 

Tanya Hale 51:23 

Alright. Two more that we want to share with you. The next one, ask for feedback, right? Ask your partner, "how am I doing at this? How do you feel I'm showing up?" For us, I think this shows up most likely when one of us has had a tough situation and we just talk about it the night before with our spouse or something and we discuss what's going on. And then the next day we kind of circle back around and we say, "hey, last night when you were sharing this with me and how do you feel about how I showed up? Is there something that you needed from me that I didn't do?" 

Sione 52:06 

You know? Well, and I think also, at least I've learned from you, a very good tactic is when I'm sharing or you are sharing something challenging in your life, a great question is, "what can I do for you in this moment? Like, how can I support you best," or whatever? And boy, that goes a long way to show you're just as invested in me as I am in me. Because you also recognize this is a big deal. And sometimes I just say, "look, I just needed to get it off my chest. I just need to talk about it." And other times, you know, I might say something different. I don't know if I've ever said anything different other than "nope. I just need you to listen." But I suspect that's super common to just need to be heard when you're in a tough situation. You know, like you can't go to work for me and anything like that, but you can listen to me talk about stuff and not fix me. "Oh, you should tell your boss this." 

Tanya Hale 53:12 

Well, and being willing to ask for that feedback is one, shelving our ego and saying, "I'm a human. I'm not going to do it right all the time. And I don't understand you because you're a different human than me. I don't always understand what you need. So help me. Help me know how to be a better spouse." And that willingness to ask for feedback, to be shown where we can step up, I think is a brilliant piece of making our relationships easier. 

Sione 53:43 

Yeah, and then understand and then be ready for the feedback. "Well, I would have appreciated it if you had..." and then not go, "well, I tried...!" You know, because then they're going to next time you say, "hey, how did I do?" They're going to be like, "you did fine." Because when I told you I wanted something different, you just threw it right back in my face. Oh, I don't need that. Thank you. You did great. Yeah. 

Tanya Hale 54:08 

So ask for feedback. And then the very last one we want to share is choose your spouse and choose your marriage every day. When we were dating, we came across the song from Andy Grammar called "I Choose You." And that's a song that we still like to pull out once in a while and we sing it out loud to each other. And just, you know, when we're kind of, it's never like seriously like looking, gazing deep in your eyes. But there are times where we really, we really connect with that phrase that I choose you. And so we found that when we were dating. And so when we were getting ready to get married and we wrote our wedding vows, we wrote them together. And we just thought that we would share those with you. Do you want to read that, Sione? 

Sione 54:55 

Sure. So here we go. I intentionally choose you to be your equal partner, yoked together in compassion and love, to create a safe space for you to grow and progress, to offer kindness, affection, and grace at all times, daily affirming my love, to walk side by side and hand in hand, heart to heart and soul to soul, for this day and all the days." 

Tanya Hale 55:22 

I still love that. 

Sione 55:25 

I do too. I especially like the last part. And I don't know which one of us, where we got that from, but the "all the days" thing to me has special significance because we both came into this marriage with some baggage. Nobody comes into a relationship without some baggage, whether it's their childhood baggage, even if you're getting married at 18, you're bringing your childhood baggage in or you bring your previous marriage baggage in, whatever. And to say you love all the days, not just today and the future, but also all the past that has brought you to this point. I think it just shows a learning and a growth mindset. Like, yeah, I've screwed some things up in the past and I love those days too because I learned so much. 

Tanya Hale 56:15 

Yeah. So choose your spouse all the days. All the days. All the days. Love them for who they are because everything that they've done in the past has created the person that they are. And though that may feel frustrating to you some days, when we can learn to offer compassion and grace and love for who they are and create a safe space for them by doing all the things we've kind of talked about today. It sounds like a lot and there are some specific skills there, but there's an awful lot of overlap in all of the things that we talked about today. 

Sione 56:53 

Well, what I found is there's also overlap in all my other relationships too. Not just with you, but with my kids, with your kids, with their spouses, with my coworkers, my colleagues. Yeah, many of these concepts don't just apply to your spouse. I mean, they absolutely apply to your spouse, but they also will help you in every other relationship. As you practice these skills with your spouse, you'll find that there's some overflow elsewhere. And you'll be like, "oh, huh, isn't that interesting?" And I'm using this understand thing at work too. And my coworkers are responding like, "such a good listener, and he really cares about me." And which is all true. And now I have the skill set to make it happen. 

Tanya Hale 57:46 

Yeah. So there you go. 

Sione 57:49 

That was a long podcast. 

Tanya Hale 57:50 

That was a long podcast. But these are the things that we really use. I think we use all of these. And I just cannot get over how easy this relationship is because we continually choose each other. We continually choose to show up emotionally mature, monitoring the things that we say. There are days where I'm just like, ugh, just don't want to manage my mind. I just want to like say what I want to say. And then I think, yeah, I really don't because I don't ever want to hurt Sione. I mean, I do because I'm a human, but I don't ever want to do it on purpose, you know, and I never want to treat him as though he  doesn't matter to me. And so the more I keep that at the forefront of my brain, the more I show up using all of these tools, and then the easier the relationship gets. 

Sione 58:47 

And I would also say that sometimes, at least for me, I show up with these tools halfway through the process. Like, "oh, crap, I did dismiss her." Or, "oh, that definitely wasn't how I wanted to show up." And "yeah, I was mean and dismissive" or whatever. And I can just step right into these tools and go, "okay, where am I at in the process? Oh, I'm in the circle back around step. Okay, perfect. Let me get that circle back around going." And so you can recognize when these things show up at any point in the process and start the healing. And so you don't have to be like, "oh, I messed up. Okay. I'm just going to ignore that. And then next time I'll try to do better." Then you can just, but so step in and say, "hey, do you remember last week when we talked about this and that? And I did this. I think I could do better. And I'm really sorry that I didn't." And anyway, you can start at any point in the process. And the sooner you start learning and recognizing things, the earlier in the process your correction will come. And I think we're pretty good about in the thought stage correcting. 

Tanya Hale 01:00:03 

Yeah, we're getting pretty darn good at a lot of it. And it's because it's a skill. Yeah. And the more we practice it, the better we get. 

Tanya Hale 01:00:11 

So that's going to do it for us. Thanks for joining me, Sione. 

Sione 01:00:15 

Yeah, my pleasure. Appreciate it. So you know, if I'm on the podcast, it's going to go long just as a warning for the future. 

Tanya Hale 01:00:21 

Yeah, just appreciate you being willing to come on and share some of your thoughts as well. Appreciate it. Thank you. 

Sione 01:00:27 

You're welcome. I don't know if I contributed any more, but... 

Tanya Hale 01:00:30 

Absolutely, you did. Thank you. All right. That's going to do it for me today. Have an awesome, awesome week, my friends, and I'll see you next time. Bye.