Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 08 | How to Navigate the Emotional Ups and Downs of Your Marriage

Transcript

Ep. 08 | How to Navigate the Emotional Ups and Downs of Your Marriage · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:27
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Back again in your ears. Hope you're not sick of us yet, even though it's only five minutes a day, for another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. Which, by the way, let us know on social media if you're enjoying the episode. We love hearing from you guys who listen. Today's episode is a big picture idea or question. Jeremy, I want you to take it. And it is with the wives, and this is not every wife, but we certainly get questions and hear from –
• 0:52
  Sometimes men who in the relationship with their wife, the wife has emotional ups and downs and they don't really know how to interact with their wife in that. And so a lot of times they'll disconnect, which is wrong answer. So what would you kind of say with that and how do you do that? Wrong answer.
• 1:07
  Yeah, so guys, this is actually, I had a really good conversation with a friend of mine, kind of a coaching opportunity where we were talking about how he was struggling with, when my wife is having a really difficult season, sometimes, you know, in this case, you know, his wife was really having an emotional several days in a row, and he realized that what he did in his house, he sort of started kind of giving up, disconnecting, wanting to be less engaged with the family, less in the house, totally understandable.
• 1:36
  And as we talked about this, one of the things I was telling him is, look, for definitely the first 10 years of my marriage, man, if April was struggling with encouraging me, if she was really down and needing me to pick her up or she was having a hard – sort of in a hard emotional season, it would really just destroy my motivation to be a dad almost. And I couldn't quite – why is this happening? Yeah.
• 2:03
  And so one of the things that I realized was going on in my own heart, my own head, is I was like, hey, this is a partnership. And she's not really on her game. And it's really bringing me down. So I just kind of want to be in my own individual game. And so I just sort of would disconnect. And I would find my motivation for the family plummeting. And, of course—
• 2:26
  When one person goes down, if the other person goes down, man, that's a really bad scenario. And I think a lot of families sort of face this problem. And one of the things that I started to realize that I was believing and that I needed this change was instead of disconnecting, I need to level up when my wife is struggling or in a tough season emotionally. I need to...
• 2:47
  take on more responsibility. I need to really see myself as, okay, this is my family, and my wife is really struggling, so I'm going to lean in or step in and take more leadership. I'm going to be more actively engaged in setting the tone.
• 3:05
  And I'm not going to let sort of my relationship with my family be dictated by sort of the mood swings that are happening with my wife or the seasons she's going through. This is not to—I think this is what my wife actually needed. She needed me to step up in those moments, not to disconnect.
• 3:24
  And so that's a really serious problem that I think can really get out of control in a lot of households if dads have this pattern of disconnecting. So my encouragement to you guys is, hey, if your wife's in a tough season and things are happening where she's, you know, you're starting to feel the urge to disconnect and to sort of be more and more of an individual and say, I want to be kind of out of this partnership emotionally.
• 3:50
  I would really encourage you guys to level up instead of step out. That really has helped me not get involved in this destructive pattern of disconnecting during those seasons.
• 4:03
  Yeah, it's funny you say that. I feel like that almost pretty much... You just pretty much read my entire diary, her journal, or whatever men call it, in the sense of that's exactly our marital relationship as well, where, man, it's when she's kind of not, quote-unquote, keeping up her end of the bargain, which there's so many hard spots for a young mom almost more than a dad. It's understandable to have waves. It's understandable to have hard spots. I would just become really bitter, resentful, or just kind of like disconnect in the sense of...
• 4:32
  What I realized and God really convicted me on is I was treating the marriage very transactional. When you do something for me, I do something for you, right? When that's not the spirit of Christ, that's not the actual spirit of marriage, right? The actual heart of marriage is a husband dying for his wife, sacrificing for his wife. And even more so, the scripture says, like Christ loved the church, and the way Christ loved the church is dying for them when no one cared or wanted him. Like actually, it was when...
• 4:58
  It was when those people killed him, right? Like, and he still, while being killed, said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. So there's an element that is so beautiful about that that breaks cycles. Because if you want to get into a really bad spiral and cycle, then start playing that tip for tat game or, oh, that's right.
• 5:13
  They're not doing this, so I'm going to retreat. And then they get more hardened, and then you do it. Like, it's just boom, boom. It's ping pong, back and forth, back and forth. Don't break the cycle. And husbands, you have that power. I think it's actually a responsibility. No matter who is at fault, the cycle thing of going back and forth with very typical kind of routine, emotional...
• 5:33
  routines that happen in marriage, that's on you. No matter who started it, that's on you to not let that kind of go back and forth, back and forth. So die to self, sacrifice, and level up, like Jeremy said, and understand that we have the mind of Christ, we have the Spirit of God, and we have the ability...
• 5:50
  So imperfectly though, but with the power given to us because of the resurrection of Jesus to show that model. And that's when your marriage starts to flourish, starts to grow. And it's hard, just like death on a cross is, but then there is resurrection, meaning there is a new level of life and a new leveling up that happens and it's beautiful and it's amazing.
• 6:09
  Yeah, one of the things that we talked about in this conversation, too, was that one of the dads said, does that mean that I can't ever be weak? And, man, that's a good question. That's probably its own giant thing. But one of the things I realized while he was saying that is, yeah, absolutely, men can be weak. We can be vulnerable. We need support. We need encouragement. But the timing is a really big deal. So an example is in a football team,
• 6:33
  If your football team's down, let's say, two or three touchdowns, and the whole team is discouraged, there's one guy that cannot give in to that discouragement, and that's the coach. The coach cannot be weak at that moment. The coach has to go in that locker room and has to bring energy to that team. That team is struggling. That team's emotionally down, and that coach cannot give in to weakness at that moment. Now, after the game, he can go cry. He can go cry.
• 7:00
  You know, like there's a lot of places you can go and be weak. But in that moment, you have to step up. You have to level up. You are that that is your role in the family. And so when you give in, imagine being on a team where like, you know, you're down a couple of touchdowns. You get the locker room and the coach just walks, walks away, you know, just walks out of the stadium, just says, I'm done. Like, like game over, guys. Totally. Like the coach can't do that. And so, guys, that's your role in the home.
• 7:24
  That's your role in the family. And so, yeah, you can be weak and vulnerable and you're going to need support. But, man, if you're in a tough season, your wife's in a tough season, there's emotional stuff going on that's bringing the team down, man, you've got to level up in those moments. That's the time for you to, like, really take sort of the position of the family, of the coach, and rally the team and really push through that hard season and lead in those moments.
• 7:48
  Hey guys, if you like this short content on 5-Minute Fatherhood, then you're going to love long-form interviews that Jeremy and I do with other dads just like you over at Dads Building Teams. We go much more in-depth hearing the stories, challenges, and journeys of different dads who are trying to build multi-generational teams on mission. Just go to whatever podcast platform you use and search for Dads Building Teams.