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197. Why You Need To "Disconnect" If You Want To "Connect" As A Couple · The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast

0:00
Intro: You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship.
0:07
Intro: 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
Intro: 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
Intro: The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.
0:40
Nick: It's the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with Nick and Amy, and today's episode is titled why you Need to Disconnect to Connect as a Couple.
0:51
Amy: And we're not just talking about phones.
0:53
Nick: Yeah.
0:53
Nick: So the first question I want to ask you is what in your mind, what does it mean to disconnect?
0:59
Nick: When you think of disconnecting, what does it mean?
1:03
Amy: Well, my first thought is to unplug.
1:06
Nick: Yeah, totally mine as well.
1:08
Amy: To unplug and my first thought would be to get off my phone, right.
1:14
Amy: But then the more I think about like if I had time to think about that, I think it is a wider, broader area.
1:29
Amy: I think that there's a lot more that you have to do to connect in your marriage than just get off your phone.
1:37
Amy: And that takes very much attention.
1:43
Nick: So I think a lot of the same thing when I think of disconnecting something, whether it's, let's say, you're disconnecting your phone, like you're literally unhooking the number so no one can get a hold of you Back in the olden days no one could call you, no one could get a hold of you on your landline.
1:58
Nick: When I think of disconnecting maybe TV you would turn off your cable, you literally cannot watch anything or disconnecting your computer or whatever, like no internet or unplugging it when I think of disconnecting, I think of that makes it so there's no way that people can connect with you or I shouldn't say people, but these outside things there's no way they can connect with you or you can connect with them, and I think that's really important and I think this is a great podcast subject to talk about.
2:36
Nick: Like you said, is not really anything necessarily all to do with technology, but there's many ways we can disconnect from so many things in our lives that we sometimes need to disconnect from to be able to connect as a couple.
2:55
Amy: I think that we hear way too many excuses when it comes to try doing this in your marriage or try doing this, this might help your marriage, and people are like I'm too busy or I don't have enough time or it's not a priority.
3:10
Amy: There's a lot of things that are causing too much busyness and disconnect to our marriage, and I think that's what we're going to kind of focus on today.
3:23
Amy: It's not just about phones.
3:26
Amy: There's actually a lot of things pulling at us.
3:29
Nick: Yeah, so the first thing we're going to talk about is work.
3:32
Nick: How would someone disconnect from work?
3:37
Nick: Obviously I totally understand this.
3:40
Nick: So obviously you guys know I mean I run this business.
3:43
Nick: For me it never turns off.
3:45
Nick: I get customer service emails 24, seven.
3:48
Nick: I get stuff all the time, and so for me it's really hard to completely disconnect, even if it's for four or five hours, because customer service and just different things like that.
4:00
Nick: So I totally get it.
4:01
Nick: But as far as work, and how do we disconnect from work?
4:06
Nick: People bring their work home and they're answering emails and they're making phone calls, or even if just work is on their mind, right, even if they're not doing work, if they're stressed out, how do we disconnect from work?
4:23
Nick: Hmm I mean obviously we have to set boundaries right.
4:27
Nick: Right, which we're going to talk about all the ways to do that, but yeah so yeah, so I was just going to say so.
4:33
Nick: Like, work is one of those things where you need to figure out a way to disconnect.
4:38
Amy: Yeah, and people.
4:39
Amy: I think when we talk about like how to disconnect from all these, they'll all kind of be the same thing.
4:43
Amy: But I don't think a lot of people realize how disconnecting from work and your career like sometimes that's really hard to turn off emotionally too that's where a lot of people struggles is work can cause a lot of stress, and stress is hard to just turn off.
5:02
Amy: But when we start getting stressed especially, I know for me Like that affects your emotional intimacy and definitely your sexual intimacy.
5:11
Amy: Right yeah, because work can create a lot of I mean, I don't know what your work like.
5:17
Amy: A lot of work and careers are very physically demanded or emotionally demanded or very stress demanding, and that's hard to just like turn those off.
5:27
Amy: It is, but there has to be ways to do it, right?
5:30
Amy: Well?
5:30
Nick: and it's natural for something in our life that really doesn't have anything to do with our marriage, how it can really cause us to disconnect in our marriage.
5:39
Amy: For sure.
5:40
Nick: You wouldn't think that.
5:40
Nick: You would think, oh, this really doesn't have anything to do with our relationship.
5:43
Nick: But in reality it has everything to do with your relationship If you're coming home and you're focusing on work and thinking about work and answering emails and you can't get away from that to be able to connect with your spouse, and you see a lot of people that their work causes serious issues in their marriage.
6:00
Nick: So we'll talk about, like Amy said, we'll talk about how or what people can do to reconnect and things like that.
6:09
Nick: But social media I mean, how much time and me included do we spend on social media, just browsing and watching the news?
6:17
Amy: You know you don't have social media.
6:19
Nick: Well, okay, you have social media.
6:21
Nick: Well, yeah, well, when I say social media, I'm kind of lumping together like just browsing the internet, or I guess.
6:30
Amy: Phones.
6:31
Intro: Yeah, phones in general.
6:32
Amy: You're talking about phones, yeah, what's?
6:34
Amy: Concentrate just on social media?
6:37
Amy: We've talked about this before.
6:41
Amy: We did an entire episode on this, but social media affects your marriage 100%, because you're usually comparing and we've talked about how comparison is like a trap, right, and you get sucked in Like so many couples in our polls express to us how my wife or my husband would rather scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll.
7:05
Nick: Then spend time with me.
7:06
Amy: Then spend time with me and especially be intimate, right, yep.
7:11
Nick: So social media has just become a total killer of intimacy in all areas, and I can say as we read through each one of these I can totally share and I think we will share experiences about every single one of these how these have been a distraction or caused our marriage in some way to disconnect during our 21 years of marriage.
7:33
Intro: So let's talk about social media.
7:35
Nick: So I mean, I think just in general, sometimes we're just well, I think.
7:41
Nick: Going back to social media, obviously we had an incident where we caused disconnection.
7:47
Nick: That's a long story.
7:48
Nick: Yeah, social media absolutely can cause us to disconnect.
7:54
Nick: I mean there's times that I'm on my phone or you're on your phone and we're probably on our phone more than we need to be and a lot of it's for work.
8:02
Nick: I mean, I have to do a lot of stuff from our phone.
8:04
Nick: But there's no question that sometimes we're on our phones too much throughout the day.
8:11
Amy: Yeah, and we'll talk about that.
8:13
Amy: I run most.
8:14
Amy: I mean I do most of social media for the business.
8:16
Amy: I mean we're both involved, but I do the majority of it and it's definitely time sucking.
8:22
Amy: So when you start getting comments and having conversations and messages, I mean you can start and we want to help people, so we're willing to do that.
8:29
Amy: It's part of our job, but it's it's.
8:32
Amy: You have to be careful.
8:33
Amy: What you start conversations you start getting yourself into, because it can affect your mood or your attitude and you do bring that back to your spouse and that's what I wanted to point out with social media is whether you're engaging in conversations or you're just looking at certain pages or whatever it is that I don't think we realize how much that shapes our mood.
9:00
Amy: Oh, no question.
9:02
Amy: It shapes our mood If you're talking.
9:04
Nick: Shapes, how we think.
9:05
Amy: How we think.
9:06
Nick: How we perceive things yeah.
9:07
Amy: It just shapes a lot, and so we have to be very mindful of that going back to work, because we skip that one.
9:12
Amy: You have an experience.
9:15
Nick: Well, I'm glad you asked that.
9:16
Amy: Yeah, you said you wanted to share something in all the areas.
9:19
Amy: No, I think.
9:21
Nick: Some of you have heard my story, but just how addicted I got to Some things I was working on, to where it literally Took everything.
9:29
Nick: I mean I put our, our family, in financial harm.
9:33
Nick: I Absolutely was not present a lot of the time.
9:38
Nick: My mind was, even if I wasn't doing stuff, I was so stressed and preoccupied I would say the work is probably the biggest thing that Almost caused Amy's am I's marriage to end, and so for me that's a.
9:51
Nick: I mean I look at that now and I'm very careful, or try to be very careful, about how I approach things or how I handle things, and I think too, a lot of Making a lot of decisions Together instead of, you know, just on my own, which I think could benefit a lot of couples as well.
10:13
Nick: I mean even if your husband is, you know, has his own job and works and it really doesn't have anything.
10:21
Nick: You know you're not self-employed or whatever.
10:23
Nick: If there's some pretty big decisions to make that could alter your relationship or where you live or, you know, job promotion or whatever, I think that's important to talk about together.
10:34
Amy: Absolutely.
10:35
Amy: So, let's skip to the next one, which is television and streaming Netflix.
10:42
Amy: All those things, all those technology Wastes of time.
10:47
Nick: Yeah, I think For Amy and I this isn't a problem because if we watch something, we're typically watching together.
10:53
Nick: Like I never typically Watch something unless I'm on my phone watching, you know, looking at the news or something.
11:00
Nick: But as far as like watching movies and stuff like that's something we typically always do together.
11:04
Amy: But a lot of people have issues with sports.
11:06
Nick: Correct.
11:07
Nick: I was just gonna say yeah, we're, you know, maybe husbands watching hours and hours of sports and different things from the family.
11:13
Nick: Yeah, yeah, I'm going going just into another room and just watching this sport.
11:18
Amy: I remember I'm not trying to put you under the bus or anything, but in our first year, some marriage, he grew up where the guys watched golf all afternoon on Sundays and the women slaved around in the kitchen Making dinner.
11:30
Amy: And I remember going into the marriage and thinking Wait, what?
11:35
Amy: Now?
11:36
Amy: I'm no feminist but I do believe in I'm gonna cook all day for you.
11:40
Amy: There should be a little bit of help, right.
11:43
Amy: Like either the men that like do all the cleanup or they can help During commercials.
11:50
Amy: I don't know, everyone's different.
11:52
Amy: Some women are like I'm totally fine, you're doing this for my husband while he watches football all day.
11:56
Amy: Hey, that's great if it's not bothering you.
11:58
Amy: But if it's bothering, you just have a conversation about it.
12:01
Amy: Like we, we had some conversations and I'm like you're gonna watch golf on me, sit next to you, I'm watching it with you and then we'll make dinner together after, like whatever works for your marriage.
12:11
Amy: So, yes, that can definitely not even just sports.
12:15
Amy: But like if someone's super addicted to and just always has the TV on and it's hurting the marriage, that's a big problem.
12:20
Amy: Like you got to disconnect from those things for sure I'm.
12:24
Amy: household chores and responsibilities I'm do you know what to say about this one?
12:29
Nick: No no no, really.
12:32
Amy: Makes like I don't know how that would affect.
12:34
Nick: No, I know I know it could, but I don't have any.
12:37
Nick: I can't really think of any examples.
12:39
Nick: If you have some, we're talking household chores.
12:44
Amy: This is massive for most women because they feel like it's on their plate and they're not usually getting.
12:52
Amy: I'm not gonna use the word help because it's not all their job.
12:54
Amy: They're not getting the equal.
12:57
Amy: I have to say the word help.
13:01
Amy: How do I rephrase that?
13:02
Amy: It's not help.
13:03
Amy: Household duties are you're?
13:05
Nick: not a team your you.
13:07
Amy: Those are household duties to do together as a team, unless you have decided that that's one person's responsibility in your marriage, that that's okay too.
13:16
Amy: Yeah but this definitely.
13:17
Amy: I'm gonna talk to women on this one because I think that we have more perfectionist most the time, unless the husband has OCD, I think most of time the household, everything has to be perfect, the kitchen has to be clean, the house has to be picked up before I can be intimate.
13:33
Amy: I think a lot of women suffer with that and a lot of husbands are like I don't care, nothing's gonna affect that for me right, yeah, like I don't care if the house is a mess.
13:40
Amy: Let's go make love, and a lot of women are like I can't focus until everything's done, and so this can be.
13:46
Amy: If you're too obsessed or OCD is hurting you, you could be so obsessed with, like household chores having to be done before your marriage becomes a priority that this can be toxic.
13:56
Nick: Yeah, I and I guess just think about it like really what's more important?
14:00
Nick: Getting some dishes done or connecting as a couple right?
14:04
Amy: sometimes stuff has to wait till the next day exactly, and that's okay and that's okay.
14:08
Nick: I love the next one, hobbies and interests.
14:10
Nick: I can totally attest to this.
14:13
Nick: So I used, I used to play golf and a golf round is five and a half six hours and I used to play a lot.
14:21
Nick: So for us in our marriage, hobbies and interests definitely got in the way of our relationship many times.
14:28
Nick: So I'm sure all of you have experiences.
14:32
Nick: Hobbies and interests, I think is a big thing, you know, especially sometimes for husbands.
14:36
Nick: You know they work all week and they're like oh, saturday's my day off and the wife's like wait, what Saturday's?
14:40
Nick: the day off, let's do something as a family and you know you got to really just find that balance.
14:45
Nick: And again we're talking about how to disconnect so that you can connect, and again we'll get into how you can disconnect from these things but but remember, we're not saying you have to disconnect all from all these things.
15:01
Amy: We're not saying cut, you can't have social media, or you can't watch tv, or you can't clean your house or you can't go play golf.
15:08
Amy: We're not saying that at all.
15:09
Amy: Like we're going to talk about, like it always comes down to balance yeah, it's always about balance.
15:14
Amy: Sometimes you have to disconnect from these things sometimes you do have to disconnect from these things or from this.
15:19
Amy: Maybe it's a addiction.
15:22
Amy: Whatever it is, now we're gonna get total hate mail on the next one.
15:26
Nick: But, uh, children, um, obviously being a parent is crazy demanding, but it's.
15:33
Nick: It's crucial to make time for each other, and sometimes that means your kids just need to get babysat.
15:40
Nick: You need to schedule date nights, um, sometimes you have to disconnect from the kids.
15:45
Nick: That doesn't mean that you leave your kids locked in a room for six hours.
15:50
Nick: It doesn't.
15:51
Amy: That doesn't mean that at all we're such good parents, so I yeah, yeah, that's not what we're talking about yeah, we're great parents.
15:59
Amy: I got hammered when you said that.
16:01
Amy: I just started laughing, because I got hammered when I said you guys should like put your kids to bed and go on a walk at night oh, totally.
16:07
Amy: And then I got destroyed on social media because I was like they're like you can't leave your little kids home alone at night and walk around the block and I'm just like, oh, that was yeah okay good luck to you anyways.
16:18
Amy: You have to disconnect from your kids sometimes.
16:22
Amy: That's why we go on date night every week.
16:24
Amy: That is why you put your kids to bed, lock the door and tell them they're not sleeping in your bed tonight.
16:29
Amy: That is why you set boundaries.
16:31
Amy: We're gonna get into that yeah for sure.
16:34
Nick: Um extended family and friends.
16:35
Nick: We've seen this a lot, where extended family or friends can cause significant issues in a relationship.
16:41
Nick: We even have family members that have literally had to basically get rid of friends or family completely and cut them out because they had such a negative impact on their relationship and their marriage, and so but we're not even just talking about cutting out once that are toxic.
17:01
Amy: We're just saying, if you're like best friends with your sister or your sister-in-law and it's like constant togetherness and your husbands feel like, dude, you spend more time with my sister or your sister than you do with me, balance in all things, like what we're talking about like, or your mom, or you're really close to some family, or maybe your brother, maybe a husband and his brother really close, hey, that's great.
17:27
Amy: We're not saying that's not great, just balance on all things.
17:30
Amy: Remember your spouse.
17:31
Amy: You leave your family to become one with your spouse yeah, that's what we're trying to see right like balance uh negative habits.
17:41
Nick: Um, I I've never really thought of this, but negative habits could be like drinking and smoking or you know other harmful activities um, just cut those ones out, yeah I mean, I guess, if you're getting plastered and drinking that, absolutely, uh, that's a way to disconnect.
17:57
Nick: Disconnect from that, that's right, disconnect from that.
18:01
Amy: What I gotta say is that it's time to disconnect for those things finance definitely harm your every part of your life yeah, financial stress.
18:08
Nick: You know, I think this is a really hard one to disconnect from especially right now yeah, it just follows you everywhere, no matter how much you want to not think about it.
18:18
Nick: It's almost impossible to not think about it, and especially as a couple, like if you're struggling financially or just barely making ends meet, like we get it.
18:28
Nick: We've been there, we totally feel for you and and that is that is something that is really hard to disconnect from, even for a short period of time it is, it's almost impossible.
18:38
Amy: But again.
18:39
Nick: We'll talk about some of the ways to do this.
18:40
Nick: Um, let's see uh news, yeah this is the one that news and information overload I you know, I you hear both sides of this like I'm the like, I'm the kind of person that I like reading the news every night.
18:58
Nick: Right, I get on my, I get on my apps and kind of see okay, what, what politically happened the day and what's going on and things like that.
19:06
Nick: I know sometimes it can be a time waster and I know also sometimes it can be so negative.
19:11
Nick: Is the world's just just in chaos right now and you, you're reading negative things that can impact your life, right?
19:19
Nick: You, it really can.
19:20
Nick: But I also think it's important to be um knowledgeable about what's going on so that you can be prepared and you can navigate things and talk about things.
19:30
Nick: And so you know, amy, and I try to find a balance in that.
19:34
Nick: I mean, sometimes you know it's I don't know I don't think you're too obsessive with it.
19:41
Amy: It's good to be informed about what's going on, and it's.
19:45
Amy: It can get to a negative situation when it's so much that it's like hurting your mood yeah, and then finally, um past baggage.
19:57
Nick: You know this would be disconnecting from past relationship issues or or trauma or baggage that you've had um previously in your, in your life, maybe when you were younger, and which can be really hard to disconnect from it can and in fact we're.
20:13
Nick: In fact, we have several people that we know and love very, very much that are dealing with this in their relationship and their marriage, just dealing with past things that have happened in their life or past trauma, and it's really amazing to see how much it impacts their marriage for relationship.
20:36
Nick: And you know, even if there was, if there was a way to just disconnect periodically for different periods of time, how much it could be helpful, you know, but we get that that one's really hard to disconnect from, we do so now let's dive in about how to disconnect to connect okay, so remember that we're talking about balance.
20:58
Amy: So healthy disconnection doesn't mean like complete avoidance, but rather just setting limits and prioritizing what's most important, which is your relationship yeah your spouse right, so it's about creating space for quality time, open communication and emotional communication or connection in your marriage yeah so really, we're just we're not saying that any of these things besides the smoking, drinking, those kind of things that you should probably do for your lifestyle, but these things should be done in balance, correct.
21:34
Nick: Correct.
21:34
Nick: The very first thing you need to do is recognize that you have an issue.
21:38
Nick: I mean, if you can't acknowledge that you have a problem or that something is causing you to disconnect from your spouse, if you don't recognize you have an issue there's, I mean that's the first thing.
21:51
Nick: If you can't get there, nothing else matters.
21:56
Amy: I want to add to recognizing is that if your spouse recognizes that this is a problem, don't get.
22:05
Nick: Don't disregard it.
22:06
Amy: Don't disregard it and put up a wall and be like no, I don't know, I don't like.
22:10
Amy: Sometimes you have to humble yourself and say gosh, you know, I didn't realize I was spending so much time on social media.
22:16
Amy: I'm really sorry that I am addicted to this show and I am definitely putting emphasis on that in our life and I can do better.
22:24
Amy: I mean, it's self-reflecting, right, like sometimes if your spouse is saying maybe need to cut back and just connect a little bit on this one thing, listen to your spouse, absolutely.
22:35
Amy: Listen to your spouse, because they.
22:37
Nick: Because it's obviously causing an issue for them.
22:39
Amy: Yeah, if it's causing an issue for them, then it's obviously an important topic to talk about.
22:44
Nick: Yeah, next is obviously quality time.
22:47
Nick: You know, trying to disconnect, focus on that quality time of what you're going to do.
22:55
Nick: If you're trying to connect as a couple, and let's just say that you know social media is getting in the way, what can you do to get rid of that social media and focus the quality time instead of on social media?
23:09
Nick: To focus that quality time on each other and being present with each other and completely disconnecting?
23:16
Nick: I mean that could be.
23:17
Nick: You know, maybe you have to, you know, figure out some boundaries in which we'll talk about as well.
23:26
Amy: The next one is boundaries.
23:27
Amy: Oh, we're jumping into boundaries and you know how we feel about boundaries.
23:32
Amy: What kind of boundaries do you feel like you could set with work?
23:39
Amy: I'm just going to go through each one of these because I think all these are so important on the whole boundary, I think boundaries boundaries might be the number one way to disconnect to connect.
23:50
Nick: Yeah, I think, with work setting boundaries and saying, okay, when I get home at five I'm not going to answer any emails, my phone is going to be turned off for work related things.
24:00
Nick: I'm not going to do anything regarding work.
24:03
Nick: Setting boundaries with social media Okay, I'm only going to spend X amount of time, I'm going to not look at certain things, or you know, boundaries with TV, same thing.
24:15
Amy: Well, hold on Hold.
24:15
Amy: On Social media, I would suggest, like, honestly, setting time restrictions even on some of your apps, even though you're an adult.
24:23
Amy: So I have on my Instagram, facebook, tiktok, whatever we do for business.
24:29
Amy: That's usually the only reason I'm on social media is for work, but I literally have set my own limits.
24:34
Amy: So after an hour, because I'm usually responding and answering messages and posting, like it goes really quick.
24:42
Amy: So like I literally have a little timer that goes off and says, hey, your hour's up, and if I need 15 more minutes, I'll sometimes do it.
24:48
Amy: But I try to be really careful to just be like my time is up, add my 15 minutes, finish what I'm doing, shut my phone off.
24:55
Amy: Sometimes, even though we're adults, we do need reminders.
24:58
Amy: We do need timelines where I mean it totally can work.
25:01
Amy: And I also wanted to add with social media is go through, if you feel you're spending too much time wasting seeing stuff that you don't want to see, there's affecting your mood, that you do feel like in any way is making you compare in your marriage.
25:13
Amy: Go through everybody that you follow.
25:15
Amy: If you have like a personal account and you can literally go through everyone you follow and just get rid of stuff that isn't bringing positivity into your marriage and into your mind and into your life, like it's just that easy, like we really are more in control of what we put into our mind than we think we are.
25:30
Amy: So if you're feeling depressed or anxious or sad or jealous or like if it's not positive emotions that you're seeing and putting into your mind, literally just take them off.
25:43
Amy: We have control over that.
25:45
Nick: Yeah, yeah.
25:46
Nick: I mean, I think we could go through boundaries with every single one of these, you know, whether it's kids or habits or financial stresses.
25:54
Nick: I mean setting boundaries, financial stresses set boundaries on what you're going to spend money, on what you're not going to spend money, on.
26:01
Nick: Talk about those things together, set a budget.
26:03
Amy: Set a budget that's right and stick to it.
26:06
Nick: So I think, I think, with boundaries, you can.
26:08
Nick: You can set boundaries with every one of these things that are causing you to disconnect.
26:14
Nick: For sure In your marriage.
26:16
Nick: So, and I would say that's probably the number one thing you can do is sit down as a couple and say, okay, what areas are causing disconnect in our marriage?
26:25
Nick: And you, you already know what they are, you're not going to have to figure that out You're going to say, okay, I feel like social media, or or you know, tv is causing a disconnect, I feel like the kids are causing a disconnect, or I feel like, you know, financial stress, whatever it is find out what's causing that disconnect in your relationship and then focus on setting boundaries, what you're going to do, how you're going to handle things, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable.
26:53
Amy: Make sure you do that together with a lot of honest, open conversation.
26:58
Nick: Yep.
26:58
Amy: Yep.
26:59
Nick: So I like the next one too a digital detox, if you're, if it's social media or your phones that are really causing the disconnect.
27:08
Nick: Set, you know, set a couple of days where you're not going to even have it turned on, or I mean.
27:19
Amy: I think we do really good with that on the weekends.
27:21
Amy: I feel like Monday through Thursdays are kind of chaotic, like just work days, kid stuff, and I feel like it's really been good for our marriage to not be in our phones so much Like on Sundays.
27:35
Amy: We do a really good job at that.
27:36
Amy: I don't feel like anyone's on their phones long.
27:38
Amy: We actually took our kids' phones away on Sundays.
27:40
Amy: We said we're gonna have a no tech day.
27:42
Amy: We didn't do very good the last week.
27:45
Intro: We didn't do very good, but our intentions were good.
27:48
Amy: We started for a few weeks there no, maybe it's been more than that.
27:52
Amy: We just started it where our teenagers, we take them lately Saturday night when they get home, and we have a no technology Sunday, and I noticed a huge difference.
28:02
Nick: For sure.
28:02
Amy: Cause I noticed when they don't have their phones, I'm less likely to be on my phone too, because I'm like, okay, I'm trying to have more quality time with my family and I'm noticing that I'm on my phone.
28:13
Amy: So I don't know, maybe just pick a day on the weekend that everybody can have a tech free day, or maybe it's.
28:23
Amy: I come home from work 5.30 pm and I put my phone on the charger in the bedroom or wherever you put it, maybe not in the bedroom, that would be good, but go charge it, put it away, turn it off for a few hours and just have some really good.
28:36
Amy: You know, dinner time, family time, couple time.
28:38
Amy: If you need to read a couple messages before you go to bed or whatever, that's fine.
28:42
Amy: But like I don't know, I feel like there's things that we can all do that will turn into habits really quick.
28:49
Nick: Whatever?
28:49
Amy: that is.
28:50
Nick: Yep, I love the next one, active listening, and I mean obviously that's having discussions.
28:56
Nick: We've shared this before and you know I don't remember the exact number, but it was like there's a couple of them but the bottom line is it's awful, but the average couple spends like 10 or 12 minutes a day, or less than 10 or 12 minutes a day in meaningful conversation, which is very, very low.
29:16
Nick: And if you're one of those couples, then obviously start talking and listening to each other, engage in deep, meaningful conversations.
29:24
Nick: Just that thing alone, just starting to talk and have those conversations again, that thing alone will be a game changer in your marriage.
29:33
Nick: While in making that time to have those conversations, which means stopping on your phone, which really I mean, if you look at your day, there's gonna be hours for most of you.
29:43
Nick: There's gonna be hours that you could probably prioritize your time and get rid of.
29:48
Amy: A little better, yeah.
29:49
Nick: Do a lot better at.
29:50
Nick: Yeah, I love the next one.
29:52
Nick: We just did a podcast on all this prioritize date nights.
29:56
Nick: If you haven't listened to the podcast the two, two, two rule go back.
30:02
Nick: You had probably a month or two ago.
30:04
Nick: That is a fantastic podcast talking about how important it is to prioritize date nights.
30:11
Nick: And when you're on a date night, don't bring your phone.
30:14
Nick: Or if you do bring your phone, just say okay, I'm only gonna have this if our kids need us.
30:19
Amy: Like emergency yeah.
30:21
Nick: Exactly.
30:22
Amy: Like it's pretty easy to put your phone on silent, put it in your pocket and leave.
30:29
Amy: Well, it's not easy.
30:30
Amy: I shouldn't say easy.
30:31
Amy: It's really hard for a lot of people actually.
30:33
Nick: It is really hard.
30:33
Amy: Because we notice all the time we'll go to dinner somewhere and we'll just cause this is what we do, right?
30:38
Amy: We just look at couples and watch them and see how they interact and, like so many times, we'll look at each other and be like there's not one couple sitting in this waiting room.
30:50
Nick: That's not on their phone, that's not on their phone.
30:51
Amy: They're not even talking to each other and you could tell they're on date night.
30:55
Nick: Yeah, and they're both just buried on their phone the whole entire time, not saying a word to each other.
30:59
Amy: It's so sad it is totally sad.
31:01
Amy: It's so sad.
31:03
Nick: Well, and the next one goes right in line with that.
31:05
Nick: It's, you know, vacations, getting away together.
31:08
Nick: And when people think vacations, they think, oh, I got to go on this lavish, expensive vacation.
31:12
Nick: No, get out for even a night and go out together, spend a night somewhere in a hotel or go camping or do something, and don't take your technology with you.
31:22
Nick: That is a great way to connect.
31:25
Amy: Absolutely, absolutely.
31:29
Nick: Obviously, digital free bedtime.
31:31
Nick: We talked a little bit about that, like Amy said, not taking technology into the bedroom.
31:37
Amy: We do.
31:37
Amy: We're not gonna act like we don't.
31:38
Amy: But we're really good at turning them off, charging them and being like we're done with phones.
31:45
Amy: I think, well, it's probably because we do a lot of work from our phone, starting the day Like I don't want my phone by the end of the night.
31:49
Amy: I'm so done with it.
31:52
Nick: Well, I was gonna say, like all these things we're reading or not for everyone, right?
31:55
Nick: Like a lot of these things, like some people aren't gonna have an issue with technology and Amy and I spend all day together talking, having good communication.
32:04
Nick: So what looks like for our marriage might be different for someone else's marriage, right, because they may not be home all day together working together and doing those things.
32:16
Amy: But I put us back in the first days of our marriage, the first 10 years where we both had other jobs.
32:22
Intro: Yeah.
32:23
Amy: And I remember, like when we'd both get home, like I would not want us to be on screens.
32:29
Amy: I'm like that was the time that we got.
32:31
Nick: We've been gone all day, right we were gone all day.
32:35
Amy: So, yeah, if you feel like there's one of these things that both of you, or just one of you are needing to disconnect from, sometimes it helps to look at why am I needing that so much in my life?
32:48
Amy: Like how, like what is causing me to feel like I need that and prioritize that more than my marriage, like there's a deeper issue going on and it doesn't take much to disconnect in your marriage.
32:58
Nick: It really doesn't.
32:59
Nick: It just takes a little bit of your mind or your time focusing on hobbies, or a little too much time focusing on work or killing time on social media.
33:10
Nick: We're not at all against killing time looking at your phone and doing whatever you enjoy doing, as long as it's not taking priority over your spouse or your kids or things like that.
33:21
Nick: And so just finding a balance and all things I think that's the purpose of this podcast is how can you disconnect from the things that are causing that imbalance in your relationship.
33:32
Nick: And if you're truthful and open and honest with yourself as couples and really look at things and say, okay, what things are causing us to disconnect, and you sit down and you talk about them together, man, it's gonna be so easy to put a plan together and find that deeper connection again.
33:52
Amy: For sure.
33:53
Amy: So, Agreed agreed.
33:55
Nick: Anything else to add before we wrap this up?
34:00
Amy: It just always comes down, like you always say, to communication is vital in marriage, and I'm gonna end with communication, because all of these things are gonna have to.
34:08
Amy: They all take you going and talking to your spouse about it, whether it's looking at yourself internally or pointing something out kindly to your spouse.
34:17
Amy: This is what's causing a disconnect for me.
34:20
Amy: Is there something that's causing a disconnect for you?
34:22
Amy: Do you see something that we're both realizing is causing a disconnect for our relationship?
34:26
Amy: It's gonna have to take talking.
34:28
Amy: Can't send boundaries, can't set healthy boundaries without discussing it together.
34:34
Nick: Yeah, and we see this as such a common theme, I think, for most marriages at one one point or another or a dealing with something, and we've created the Ultimate Intimacy Marriage Workbook with both sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy, talking about these exact things how, what things are causing couples to have disconnect, how to have that better communication and be able to talk about things and break down those barriers that are keeping couples from having the connection and the intimacy that they're desiring and their message.
35:07
Nick: So if you feel like you need a little bit more help and maybe a game plan or something to sit down and kind of prompt, ask the right questions and certain subjects, you can check that out at shopultimateintimacycom and we really think that can be very beneficial for your marriage.
35:24
Nick: So we hope you enjoyed the podcast and, as always, we hope until next time we find the ultimate intimacy in your relationship.