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289. How To Balance BOTH Your Work And Your Relationship When You Are Both Career Driven · The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with your hosts, nick and Amy.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: It's that time of the week again and we're excited to be here.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: This is going to be a good episode how to balance both your life and your relationship when you're both career driven, and I think this is something we can talk about right.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Like, we are both career driven and it takes a lot of work to balance both life and everything going on right yes, absolutely, and I'm excited to you, nick, prepared this one, so I don't really know what questions you're going to throw at me today I?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I'm going to surprise you or throw any questions at you, but, uh, I think it'll be a good topic.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of couples out there where both spouses are working on things, or maybe they're both career driven, and it is very, very difficult to find that balance.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: It seems like a lot of times when you're both career driven, when you're going out you're talking about work or everything revolves around work, as you get real busy, and so we this'll be a great episode.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: This'll be a great episode for those couples out there that are needing to find that balance.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Amy and I deal with it all the time.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We're constantly having to, you know, find that balance so that it doesn't get imbalanced so to speak.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: It's hard, it's hard, but I think I wish we would have taken a poll on this one, just to find out how many women are are working nowadays.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: I feel like it's a lot, and even even stay-at-home moms are doing, I feel, like, side things on top of being a mom, which which is a lot.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: So I think this could be really helpful, and this has been probably one of the biggest struggles in our relationship for sure finding balance between both of us, because we have both always been like this.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's true.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Good conversation.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: So let's, let's dive right in Um number one.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: The number one struggle couples have, when they're both career driven, is time management.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Ooh what do you think that means, or what does time management mean to you?
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: time management would to me is just balancing everything that you have and making sure that you still have time to be a mom and a parent or dad, and still have time for your intimate relationship and your emotional relationship and put your marriage like and then still have time for the spiritual things and still have time for your career and maintain your house.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And I just I think it's really, really tricky to find that balance, especially for people like me.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: I'm a workaholic, I'm very career driven.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: I always have something new on my plate.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: I'm always trying to push myself and I, and yet I still want to be an amazing spouse and I still want to be an amazing mother even when Amy's sleeping, she's thinking about I'm working or I'm stressing about my kids, or I'm, you know, like, I'm like, I think and most moms will relate to this, because it's, this is a great conversation, because you're going to get both sides.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: you're going to get the woman's side and a husband's side and, yeah, you're going to be probably different personalities than us, obviously, but it's hard.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: It's hard to turn your brain off as a mom, because there's constantly something to do.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think when you think of time management too, you know we often think that, like if we work longer we're going to be more productive.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: But sometimes that's not the case, right, Sometimes we can be very productive in maybe a shorter period of time.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Amy and I are both laughing because I'm like really I can be, I can never shut my brain off and be more productive.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Well, amy and I are both, uh, very like, detailed and task oriented, so it's like at the first of the day, we're making our list of everything we need to do, you know, okay, check this off, I got that done.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Check this off, I got that done the difference with us is that you can be halfway through your checklist and it's 5 pm and you're done.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: And my checklist is halfway done.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh wait, there's no way I'm stopping.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And even if I stop with this, I got another checklist called mom or household or whatever.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: And as a wife and as a woman, I like literally checklist isn't done, can't focus on anything else.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's just me, but but well and that kind of gets us into this is you have to manage your time, not only your work, but also your time together.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: You have to schedule time together and say, okay, we're going to put the work stuff away and we're going to spend X amount of time on a date or X amount of time talking or whatever.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: That is Right.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: You have to.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: You have to manage your time in both your personal life and your career.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Things um right, equally so right, I totally agree.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, moving on, or do you want to stay on that topic?
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: I, I think I just think finding that balance is hard.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: But, like I think you have to have self-discipline, you say, okay, my marriage is struggling, I now have to cut back on work and prioritize my marriage.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: What does that look like?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: How do I set goals to make that better?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: you know yeah, yeah, exactly exactly so, um.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Second one is communication breakdown.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I would say we were really good at communication breakdowns at the first of our marriage and that's not a good thing.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: And that's very common.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: That's very common.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Very common.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So why do you think that is, especially when a couple is really career driven?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Why do you think communication breakdowns typically happen more often or maybe are more important to deal with?
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: are more important to deal with.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I think as humans, we think our mind constantly or naturally goes to my stuff is most important, because I don't really know what you're working on or what your work's like or right.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: We're focused on our own thing.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and so naturally we probably don't listen or try to understand what our spouse is dealing with in their environment, their career environment.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: So, like that can cause a lot of frustration, where it can cause you closing up because you're like, well, you just don't understand what I'm going through or you're not listening to.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and I think for sure, when we're so focused on what we're doing, we tend to communicate less right, right, like, oh, I got my stuff to deal with worry about you, got your stuff to deal with worry about you, kind of just move forward and yeah, it's so easy to have a communication breakdown.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: And I think when you get stressed and we talk about this differently, like Nick's, different than me when I'm stressed I do things differently.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: I kind of like shut down, get in my own zone, just want to be left alone so I can accomplish the things that I need to do, and sexually shut down more right, like I can't focus on anything else because my mind's a mess, where I think you're opposite of that for sure.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, when I get stressed out, I want to connect even more right, like that's kind of an outlet and like, oh, I can take my mind off things and focus on my sweetheart and yeah, so I think what's really important with this one is just talking about, okay, how I think I mean we're kind of focusing on stress and stuff but, like with any aspect of your career, talking about deadlines and your feelings and your emotions and why you're stressed out or why you're frustrated, or just all those things it's really important to talk about like daily, like when you're both career driven like ours is different because we work together, we know what's going on in our business, we we're together all day, all day long, all day long.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Did you hear how?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Amy said we're together all day.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: I didn't do that, but sorry if I came across like that.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: No, I just there's a big difference, because if you were gone all day and I was busy at home or at my own work all day long, and then we came back together, we have no clue what each other's day is like.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Right, and so expecting not me, not expecting, oh, he needs to like, read my mind about, like what I'm going through, vice versa, right, like how, how was your day?
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: How was work?
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: What's going on with your work?
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: How can we help each other out?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: you know, just just open up that open that communication up right and I think for most couples it's different maybe than what it is for Amy and I, because, like Amy said, we're together all the time, right?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about things all the time.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: But for most couples that are career driven, that's probably going to look the opposite.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: You're both going to be working longer hours, you're going to be further apart, not talking nearly as much as maybe some other couples do.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: So that's why communication breakdowns often happen for couples that are so career driven, especially if your schedules are mismatched right, like, let's say, let's say one of these is a doctor and the other one you know they're working late night shifts and the other one's working a job during the day, whatever that is.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I mean you could see how you'd hardly have any time for each other.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And you're exhausted, right.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Then you got the whole physical aspect of like I'm tired, I'm stressed, I am like physically worn out.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: The last thing I need is like you trying to touch me or you trying to connect, like we feel that differently, right.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so what we're getting at is you really need to have good, open communication and express how you're feeling, what's going on in your day and with work and things like that, and how you can help each other, which we're going to get into yep yep.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: So the third one is work and life in balance oh, that's hard oh, it's totally, totally hard, which is kind.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: How is that different than time management, though?
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Just managing your time better, I think.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: So the same.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: No, I think time management is managing your time better and work and life balance is finding that balance.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Like with work, you know a workaholic could be working 20 hours a day and have no time whatsoever for connection with their spouse or their kids or what have you, Um.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: So I think it's really important, uh, you know, to set boundaries and say, okay, how are we, how are we going to make this balance work Right?
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: And and we understand, certain times in life and seasons it's hard to do right, like your job may you know if you're a small business owner?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: uh, whatever, like there's certain things you just have to do and you have to take care of.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: But you know you got to find that work and life balance, um, and try to make it work the best you can so we just have to get real here, like we're totally different.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm a workaholic.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna work all night long, like after my kids go to bed I would turn my computer back on and keep working like that's my personality.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Nick is like oh, it's five o'clock, I'm done and he'll shoot his, shoot his, shut his computer down and literally be done for the night.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: And it used to drive.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not gonna say you still drives me insane because I'm like there's so much stuff to get done and to prioritize and you have time and he's fine with just going and getting on his phone and scrolling his news and just relaxing.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: But we learned at our marriage conference this year greg taught us that too much of a strength becomes a weakness, and I took that to heart because I was sitting there thinking this is like one of the painkillers in our marriage is that I'm just like why aren't you this, this, this, this, this, this?
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: Just keep your list going.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: And I completely understand that that becomes a weakness, like when I'm overtaking quality time with my family, quality time with the kids, quality time doing stuff that's just equally as important, but I'm not putting it up as the same importance level.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: It does become a weakness and I think that is like key to when you're both career driven, really realizing that work-life imbalance or finding a healthy balance is so key to a happy marriage, because you have to have intimate time.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: You have to have quality intimate time.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: You have to have quality parenting time.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: You have to have like make time for date night.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Like look how many couples like I'm too busy with my work to go on a weekly date night.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: You just told your spouse.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: We hear a lot of people say that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you just told your spouse that your job is worth more than literally giving up two hours of your week, because you can go on an amazing date in two hours and have amazing conversations and totally reconnect with your spouse I think part of that work-life balance is also like clearing your head and having sanity, like if you're working 24 7, you're just going to get burned out, you're going to be miserable, you just like you do.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: It affects you.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: So I think part of it is like even just like mentally.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Just you know finding that balance so mentally you can stay sane and do fun things.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: I mean it's just, you have to enjoy life, but you have to.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: you know, going back to communication, you have to talk about it Because, like, if Amy's working and I'm like dude, I'm done for the day, it'd be real easy for her to, you know, get upset and think, well, why is he not working as hard, right?
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: I think that all the time yeah, okay, I'm totally guilty of it so and I've explained to her.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, like I need some time to digest, like so that when I come back the next day, like I'm I'm actually like excited to come back, where you know, because our job, our work never ends.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm always answering messages and different things all times of the night, and customer service and things like that.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: So what I'm getting at is whatever that balance is, you've got to talk about it as a couple and find that balance and even if you feel like, okay, my personality is not going to change, his personality is not going to change.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: It's okay that we're different.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: But I can't get upset that his personality is different than mine.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Like he wants to shut his computer down at five o'clock.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: He wants to be done.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: He needs all night to decompress.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: I need an hour.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I'm a different personality.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: I can go make dinner, put the kids to bed and go back at it and still be fine.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: We have different personalities and that's okay.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's respecting that things might look different and just finding that balance together which takes 100% communication.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly, all right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Struggle number four that people deal with is divergent career paths.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Obviously, this is when your career paths are kind of taking you two separate ways, right?
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Different goals.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Different goals, of taking you two separate ways, right?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Different goals, different goals.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: That that's hard to do too, because one spouse might, if their path is going a different way and your path is going a different way, like how do you determine whose is more important, right?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: How do you, how do you balance the time?
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Does one, I guess, ease up on theirs and support the other one more?
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Vice versa, I mean, that's just something that gets back to communication you have to talk about, right?
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: I think that can be really tricky because there's a lot of people that like midlife, midlife.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: They're like I want a new career, I'm tired of my career, go have a total career change, right.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden those paths that have been together for years start going separate ways, which can be really really hard on the other spouse.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: So, like you said, just um trying to realize where they're coming from, if something does switch or the paths do kind of go the other way, how do we bring that back?
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: How do we find this parallel and bring our values and our goals back together?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: because it is support.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: It is so important to support each other, but it also is important to find that compromise and say you know what You're busy, as can be.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe I need to compromise a little bit, right, maybe I need to end my work or get home early so I can deal with the kids, so I can support you in what you're doing.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, we've seen that with family members, right, maybe one of them works in the hospital and the other ones you, whatever, right, and just really supporting each other, um, during the different paths or this is where it gets really tricky is because a lot of women are working now but a lot of men are still stuck in the I'm supposed to provide stage, and so I think sometimes the woman's career gets downplayed a little bit.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: For sure, sure.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: And I think this can be hard.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: I think this kind of happened in our marriage a little bit and I don't want to like bring it up because it's a whole other story.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Bring it up, let's lay it out there.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Well, there was a time that I had to 100% financially support us right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: And then I still felt like I was being a mom and doing all the housework and doing everything, and Nick was working on a business that wasn't paying off and he still felt like his stuff was most important, right, like he was working really hard at it, and so that was a real struggle for us.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: That was one of the probably one of the biggest struggles.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: We went through a lot of stuff during that time.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: A lot of stuff.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: So my point is is nowadays, women are working, they're way more involved in the career field and a lot of them are making a lot more money than the husbands.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying one career is worth more than the other, depending on what you make.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that at all.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: But we have to find this balance nowadays because it's a different world that if you're both working depending on what doesn't matter what you make like your careers are both contributing and you're both working depending on what doesn't matter what you make, like your careers are both contributing and you're a team.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: So how do you come together and be like we're both a team trying to support this family, we're both equally important and we both have equal other stuff that we have to deal with when we get home, right, yeah, and we'll get into those, but but I think support and compromise in business or over your career path is no different than compromising, maybe in the bedroom, right.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: You have to sit down and talk about it and say, hey, this is what I want and this is what you want.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: How do we meet in the middle so that maybe it's not perfect but we're both happy, right, correct and realize that the end goal is to better your life, better your uh relationship, better your family life?
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: I mean you work together as one.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So how do you do that?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: The best that you can.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: And we always bring it back to communication.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: But if you're a couple that struggles with communication, you're like I can't talk to my spouse, they don't listen or they don't care.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: We get in a fight and we argue.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Go back to one of our episodes on how to talk to your spouse or just on conversation and healthy communication in general, because all the things that we talk about really do take healthy communication, like you've got to be able to sit down as a team and be like we have to talk about this.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: This isn't working.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: This is.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: This is getting really, really hard.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: This is causing a barrier with our emotional and our sexual intimacy.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Like we have to be able to sit down, look at each other, be respectful and realize and and try and like put each other, put ourselves in each other's shoes, right, I mean, like we're equals, we're a partnership.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: How do we talk about this and make this work going forward?
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Because if you really want a passionate marriage, it comes down to being able to have these healthy conversations.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: For sure I love the next one we struggled with this early on too which is emotional disconnect.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Emotional disconnect can look a lot of different ways, but I think one of the ways is like you, maybe you just stop dating, right, you stop dating each other.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Then you stop having those important conversations, or sometimes your conversations become more about work.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: If you're having those conversations all the time where it's just about work, you're not connecting emotionally.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You're going to have that emotional disconnect.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Connecting emotionally doesn't mean just talking.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: You've got to be having fun together and doing things that are going to bring you closer together as a couple.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Um, in my, in my opinion, right and I absolutely.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: I felt like early on in our marriage.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Um, it was a source of contention so we kind of just stayed away from talking about you know I kept trying to talk about it and you just kept pushing it which which is really, I'm not trying to throw nick under the bus, but that's what happens in most marriages, right?
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: husband's like I just don't want to talk about this anymore, and the wife's like we need to talk about this, we need to talk about this.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: And sometimes it goes the other way around.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: But you, you can't push anything under the rug if you want your marriage to get better.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Right, and we learned that, we totally learned that so how do you think what's the best way to um keep?
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: From having that emotional disconnect when you're both career driven and you're busy and things like that.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: What would you suggest?
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: I, I would say boundaries yeah I would say setting not even just boundaries but setting goals too.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Like boundaries and goals such I mean, they go hand in hand in my mind.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Because if you set a boundary and say we're gonna go on on date night every Friday night, we're going to give our marriage two hours, that's, that's going to be our goal, right.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: But then our boundary is we're not going to take our phones and deal with work messages on our date, we're not going to talk about work on our date.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: We're going to set some boundaries around our date night so you can make goals and set boundaries around that quality time together that can really bring back that emotional connection, and that's not just date nights but that's like 30 minutes every single night before bed.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: No technology right, or things like that.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And you really can feel a difference.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: When Amy and I go out, we're together often, so it's a little different for us.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: But when we go out and we have a date night, we don't talk about any work stuff and we're having fun, like you can feel a different connection there for sure, versus then when we go out and we're talking about work stuff, like you can just totally feel a different connection emotionally based upon the things that we're talking about and having fun or not having fun, like it.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I guess what I'm, what I'm trying to say is you can do it the right way or the wrong way right to connect, to connect emotionally.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a choice too.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: It's 100% a choice, like do I want to emotionally connect with my spouse tonight, or do I want to turn this into a work conversation, like it's all about your goal, right, and I'm guilty of that because here I am a workaholic.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: I'm like let's talk about work, let's talk about our goals.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Like self all the time.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Like started, I bring up work stuff.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: We both do, which is fine, but sometimes, yeah, we do, but it's fine.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying like, if you notice your marriage intimacy slipping away, like if ours is fine, it's fine that we talk like that, but if we notice that our emotional intimacy slipping away, we change the topic to something different and it changes everything right for sure so I think it's just like being in the space and really taking it in.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: What does our date nights need to look like, what does our quality time at night need to look like, and how do we change that?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: So I guess, kind of to wrap that up, like, instead of this little bit of time you are spending together talking about work, like talk about fun, talk about goals, that you have a vacation you're gonna plan, rekindle the feelings, talk about when you found those feelings exactly right.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I love, amy loves the next one I'm gonna let you yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah managing household responsibilities yeah, that's your thing it is yeah no, you like this subject, which is great.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: You want me to get worked up on it?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: No, I want you to lead us into this discussion.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Okay, I think everyone knows that's on social media, like how big of an issue this is becoming, because there's a lot of women speaking out on this, right.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: I think because we're in 2024 and because a lot of women are working that men are not realizing, oh, she still has the mom role, the household role and all the things that fall under that and she's working full-time.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: And I don't think men I'm not saying all men I think there's a lot of great men.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: I, I, my brother, both of my brothers, are amazing at doing a lot of these things, and so is nick now, but we struggled with this a lot in our first of our marriage.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: But there are many, many husbands who are amazing at filling a lot of different roles, but some are not.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Some some think I went to work, I'm supporting the family, I'm good, and if a wife is working, she's doing that and being a mom and taking care of the house and everything else, right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And so this is all about sharing responsibilities and, once again, communication, communication, right.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot of women that are just like throwing out all this stuff and making it a big, controversial topic.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: It doesn't need to be a controversial topic and it's not like oh, your husband or vice versa, is bad because they don't know it or understand it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Like this is a learning experience that we're all going through.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: So instead of being like you should be doing this or I'm disconnected because you're not doing this, let's bring that back to a positive way.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Let's think okay, how do we become a team?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Because maybe you're not even telling your husband how much you secretly do behind the scenes.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: He doesn't even know how much you're doing and and can't show appreciation with that right.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Or maybe he doesn't know all the stuff you're deep cleaning when he's not around or all the mental low tasks that you're taking on with the kids.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: If you've never talked to him about it or had those conversations or discussed it in like a, a couple's meeting, he doesn't know.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: So I think we have to be careful the way we approach this topic like meeting he doesn't know.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: So I think we have to be careful.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: The way we approach this topic, like like teach each other where the disconnect is.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I think it's so natural to like we, if we're working hard, we're focusing on ourselves and saying, man, I worked so hard.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Today we're we're almost like giving ourself an excuse as to why we shouldn't have to do those responsibilities and women are opposite, because they're like all I do is take care of everyone else all day long and I barely get to take care of myself.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: And so then we easily get upset at the man who's like you got nothing to take care of, right?
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and I so again.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people look at it and say, oh you know.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: First, again, this is in the past.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of times women took care of the household responsibilities and the husband went to work.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: But that is very very different, but I think the mentality is still there, that like oh, the household responsibilities are kind of up to my wife, right?
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: And they're not.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And they're not.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, you really got to take that burden off and share those responsibilities together.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: And this isn't supposed to start a fight.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: This isn't supposed to bring up negative feelings for couples.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: This is literally just something to point out.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: The times have changed, right, but why would you not want to help your spouse too, Like if you, if there's a lot of, if your wife's really busy and you can see that she's stressed, why would you not want to help around the house and do things to take that burden off right?
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: Well, if you truly, truly, truly want better intimacy, and I'm not just talking sex, man, I'm talking like the emotional, connected kind of sex.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Like you want to take some of that stuff off her plate so she can be mentally and physically there for that right like that.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: And and this is what most husbands don't understand is that wives actually want to be sexually intimate with you too.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: It's just they've got so much on their mind, it's such a mental thing for them.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: There's some kind of disconnect going on there, cause I can guarantee that most wives, if we ask them, okay, if everything emotionally and romantic, like like you felt like your relationship was in a really good, healthy and safe place, would you want to be intimate with your husband?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: I guarantee most women would be like, absolutely.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: But there's some kind of disconnect happening, right, that's like keeping them from saying that and it's literally just finding that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: So if the load is on her shoulders but you come in and you say, okay, yeah, half of this is mine because we're both working, and it's going to look different if you're not both working.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: It's going to look different to every couple, right, but if you came in with the attitude that I just want to love you, I want to, I want to do everything with you, I want to get it done so that your mind can be clear, and so you can relax, we can spend more time together, we can better our marriage.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: It all comes down to the attitude yeah, I mean exactly.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Imagine.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Imagine if most husbands out there were coming in and thinking from the standpoint like, oh I, I really want to connect with my wife later.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: What can I do to take off a lot of the responsibilities and really just start doing a lot of things around the house?
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: like that would change a lot of marriages absolutely, but I think women are easy to score.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Keep be like oh, you're just trying to help me, you still think it's my job to have those conversation with each other, without getting upset at each other, without being like why did you call it my job?
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: It's not my job, it's our job.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Like, just try to like change the tone, I think, around this whole subject and be like okay, here's everything that needs to be done.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, we've talked about this before.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Here's the entire list of everything that's on my mind, everything that needs to be done with the kids, with the house, sit down, have an conversation about it and be like this is what I take on on a daily basis.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Let's let's figure this out to make it equal, because I do feel and if husbands literally and humbly said I'll take half, I want this marriage to be fair the wife's entire like tire attitude is going to change, agreed.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: And I don't know what else.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: I mean this whole episode isn't on this.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: We can talk about this all day, but like it's really comes down to attitude and not making it transactional but being a partnership, yeah, and I think to sum this up, like you know, if you're in a relationship where you're both career driven, you don't find that you have much time.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: It all comes back.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Everything we talked about comes back to communication.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Right, you sit down, you talk about these things.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: How do we manage our time better?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: How do we manage the household responsibilities better?
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: How do we connect emotionally better, make time for each other?
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: How do I support you better in your goals and dreams that you have?
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And I mean, it's just real simple, right, just talking about it and putting together a plan and you do those things and you're going to see your marriage change in a big way you're wrapping it up.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: That's the end that's it oh, I thought you were going to add a piece at the end talking about sex um, yeah, you need to make time for it that was I I I'm gonna add struggle number six at the bottom You're so career focused that you're not realizing how important sexual intimacy is.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: And this can go both ways, because we're starting to hear more and more from high drive wives that their husband is so career focused that their sex drive is going down.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Can you believe that?
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I know you can't believe that, but it's true.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough to believe.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: So and we already know, the majority of women kind of struggle this if a woman's mind is on her career, she's definitely going to put sexual intimacy down, because our bodies are literally not created like a man's right yeah so I mean this could be a real struggle, because if you're both career-minded and you're both super busy and you're both exhausted, that intimate time is going to get put on a total back burner and if you go back and listen to an episode, I don't know how many ago, but not not very long ago pretty recently, we talked about the benefits of making love in the morning, right like before your day gets totally crazy and instead of saying, well, we just don't have time in the morning either, we'll wake up 10 minutes early, like yeah you really can have a quickie in 10 minutes but that's still, or buy the toy, yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Buy the.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: V-ring and have it in two minutes.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, buy the V-ring and have it in about 30 seconds.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: If your wife literally 30 seconds, I'm telling you.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Those are all just excuses, but they really, are you really?
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Can make time for that intimate connection and I'm going to add one more.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: If you don't have time for intimate connection, I challenge you once again, like I always do, if you follow us, go look at your screen time.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: If your screen time is over 30 minutes a day, which I know everybody's is, unless you have zero apps on your phone.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have time for your marriage.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: We had one guy messaging Amy back and forth for hours and he was arguing he's like I, just I don't have a minute in the day to connect with my wife, I was like you spent two hours.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I literally he was literally saying I don't have a minute in the day, Like I literally have no time to connect with my wife.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Yet he had two hours to go back and forth with Amy on social media.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: We're just like all right, dude you, you got issues.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Priorities people, social media, we're just like all right, dude you you got issues, but priorities, people priorities you prioritize what's important to you.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: He could have made love like four times during that that two hour literally not literally, but it doesn't work like that, but it's just so simple.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: If, if you have a screen time over 30 minutes or even 10 minutes, you probably have time to connect with your spouse, either emotionally, around the house, ask them how their day was, set goals together, be intimate.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Whatever you need in your marriage, you probably have time.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Those dang phones, those dang phones are wrecking intimacy yeah, well, if you're gonna be on your phone, be on the app be on the ultimate on the app playing a bedroom game.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, so I'm glad you brought that up because I think that is very important.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's really important and I can't believe this might be the first episode ever that I overlooked that, because usually I'm bringing.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: I was like wait, there's no more to this list.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: I'm bringing sexual intimacy into every any subject.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Like you could have a subject how to fish better and I would figure out a way to bring it into it that's true and so that I how I missed that preparing for the this podcast, I have no idea.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, unbelievable okay, so I have a couple resources resources to throw out to you real quick before you end.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Like nick said, it's funny because so many people will be like pushing the app or something like go download the app, it's free to download whatever you're like.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: So you're telling people to get off their phones and better their marriage, but then you're telling people to download an app that's right this is why we created the app.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Our motto was if you're going to be addicted to your phone, you might as well be strengthening your marriage.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: So yes, we are telling you that if you do want to be on your phone, a lot of these things we just talked about can be fixed or communicated about with some help.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: From the intimate conversations part of the app the regular conversations, the intimacy intimate conversations A lot of these questions will pop up.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Help you talk about it.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: The resources in the ultimate intimacy app there's some resources on technology and those kinds of things.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: There's lots of resources to help strengthen your marriage so there's tons and yeah, uh, you hear us about.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: You hear us talk about this often.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: You heard amy talk about it in the podcast.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: If you're a woman struggling to uh have the, the feelings that you want, what?
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Does that mean um, I don't know my mind have an orgasm yeah, I have an orgasm, yeah, yeah you could just be blunt, I don't know why I was so shy about saying that.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's because I'm getting older and I'm uh.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're a woman that has a hard time having an orgasm, go check out the v-ring.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: You ought to see the reviews we're getting like daily, yeah, like daily people are saying I I don't even know if I'll ever make love without this thing again.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: It was so amazing I've had husbands say well, I don't really want to buy your toy, she's gonna want that more.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: This toy is used together and it's not a replacement.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I'm telling you the women that have never had an orgasm that are like okay, I'm gonna try it, come back and they're like they're like wowza.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Wowza is a word that was used, oh my gosh, I have never loved sex so much.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: And the husbands are like thank you, it's like giddy up.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Now we're making love more often yeah, so it's a win-win.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Anyways, check it out shopultimateintimacycom thanks for supporting us.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you for all your support and email us with any questions.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: You may have podcast ideas that we haven't covered, things like that.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So we love doing these, we love sharing our thoughts with you and love hearing from you as well.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: So until next time, we hope all of you find ultimate intimacy in your relationship.