Latest / Uncluttered and Unfiltered: The Podcast For Women Over 50 / YOU CAN MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIP THRIVE AFTER 50: REAL ADVICE FROM WOMEN WHO'VE BEEN THERE

Transcript

YOU CAN MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIP THRIVE AFTER 50: REAL ADVICE FROM WOMEN WHO'VE BEEN THERE · Uncluttered and Unfiltered: The Podcast For Women Over 50

• 1:06
  I'm Carolyn. I'm Kristen.
• 1:08
  And I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture
• 1:11
  preservationists. Welcome to Uncluttered and
• 1:26
  Unfiltered, the podcast urging you to let it go and don't look
• 1:30
  back. We've nationally acclaimed
• 1:33
  professional organizer Christine Stone and self-proclaimed Hot
• 1:37
  Damn Mess radio and TV personality Eden Kendall.
• 1:43
  Welcome everybody to Uncluttered and Unfiltered were the podcast
• 1:46
  for women over 50. My name is Eden and Christine is
• 1:50
  here too. And Christine is a professional
• 1:51
  organizer. And in the course of us talking
• 1:54
  about everything that affects us since we've turned whatever ages
• 1:57
  we are, late 50s for me, very early 60s for you.
• 2:01
  Yes, very early. And but because you are an
• 2:03
  organizer and because I I've been asking for your help so
• 2:06
  much, people are telling us that just by listening to this
• 2:09
  podcast, they're getting a little more organized every
• 2:11
  single time, which. Brings a smile to my face.
• 2:15
  I. Know that makes you.
• 2:15
  So happy. We like to talk about things
• 2:17
  though that are unique to being our age and one thing that is
• 2:22
  unique and it may not be a situation that you or everyone
• 2:26
  you know is in, but sustaining a very long term relationship.
• 2:29
  Yes. We are not experts.
• 2:31
  We count ourselves as lucky as anything else.
• 2:34
  And we recognize that if you're listening right now, you may
• 2:37
  either be single again in a rocky relationship.
• 2:42
  And so we get this isn't going to hit everybody where they
• 2:44
  live, but we wanted your opinions and we're going to get
• 2:47
  to your opinions momentarily. But about what advice would you
• 2:50
  give? Because we now are at that age
• 2:52
  too, where whether it's from a a relationship that didn't work
• 2:56
  out or one that did, we are in a situation where we're being
• 2:59
  asked by the younger generation for advice.
• 3:01
  Yes, and watching The Golden Bachelorette brings up a lot of
• 3:05
  questions about marriage in general.
• 3:08
  And sustaining your term relationships.
• 3:10
  So whether this is just a conversation starter you have
• 3:12
  with somebody who is considering getting into a long
• 3:14
  relationship, maybe you are somebody who is in one now and
• 3:19
  trying to decide whether to stay.
• 3:21
  Whatever the case may be, just it is what it is.
• 3:23
  We are who we are. We are two women that have been
• 3:25
  married a really long time. Certainly we are not experts.
• 3:28
  Right. But what do you think is the
• 3:33
  thing you most attribute the fact that you're still hanging
• 3:36
  on? Well, I'll be married 36 years
• 3:39
  tomorrow and I thought about this question a lot because like
• 3:45
  anything in life, there's good times, there's bad times,
• 3:49
  there's hard times, there's easy times.
• 3:52
  And I think you really are in it for the long haul or you're not.
• 3:57
  And I'm not talking about if someone's being abused or an
• 4:00
  alcoholic or a drug addict. I'm talking about just two
• 4:04
  people that are like, I'm bored. The.
• 4:07
  Spark isn't the. Spark.
• 4:08
  I realized the minute we said I do, and I moved from Miami to
• 4:15
  Jacksonville, which 36 years ago was moving from the big city out
• 4:20
  to the country fields. Yeah, I knew that it had to be
• 4:26
  worked on. You have to, because you're
• 4:28
  taking one person out of their familiar surroundings.
• 4:32
  Everybody's young and then starts the mortgage and the
• 4:37
  children. And I don't think people realize
• 4:40
  it, especially with social media nowadays.
• 4:44
  I think that does young people a disservice because yes, your
• 4:48
  wedding day is important, but your wedding day is not a
• 4:52
  marriage and a wedding day doesn't make a marriage.
• 4:56
  It's one day out of a whole lifetime.
• 4:59
  And so it's really being realistic.
• 5:03
  And when you're young, thank God people are waiting longer to get
• 5:06
  married. Now, I do have to say that
• 5:07
  because we were both so young, you're naive too.
• 5:12
  You haven't lived life enough. So sometimes when you're
• 5:16
  younger, you're like, did I miss out?
• 5:18
  Did I do enough? Did you know?
• 5:20
  And you start to second guess and you think in your mind, I
• 5:24
  don't know about you. Well, shouldn't this be like a
• 5:27
  fairy tale? Correct.
• 5:29
  And it just isn't. The real life takes over.
• 5:33
  Things that you never expected ever in a million years happen.
• 5:38
  And then you have to deal with those things.
• 5:40
  And you either do it as a partnership or you don't.
• 5:45
  And I have a lot of friends who have been married more than once
• 5:49
  and they'll see me and they'll say, I really wished I would
• 5:52
  have stayed with the father of my children because now that
• 5:56
  we're older and we're having grandkids, it wasn't bad enough
• 6:00
  for us to not be married. It's I think we were just both
• 6:04
  bored. And it's hard to know because
• 6:06
  nobody has a crystal ball or a time machine to go back in time
• 6:10
  and see which which path would have been the happiest for
• 6:12
  everyone involved, right? I always go back to number one
• 6:16
  is choose wisely. Yes, obviously the first step of
• 6:19
  any long term, long sustainable relationship is you've made a
• 6:23
  good choice right out of the gate.
• 6:25
  The person you're choosing, you're choosing for the long
• 6:27
  term reasons. I always joke with my husband
• 6:29
  and we talk about how the the day I knew for sure I wanted to
• 6:32
  marry him, he was installing a ceiling fan for a friend of mine
• 6:36
  at her apartment. And I looked up and I was like,
• 6:38
  the guy your friend can call to come over.
• 6:42
  He's a guy, he's handy, he's willing to help a friend.
• 6:47
  There are all these things that I recognize while he's up on
• 6:49
  that ladder. I could and I wasn't seeing him
• 6:52
  a week down the road, a year down the road.
• 6:54
  I was seeing like, this is a guy who I could have a house with
• 6:56
  who down the road is going to take care of things.
• 6:58
  And I don't have to always pick up a phone to call somebody.
• 7:01
  And I think when you have those kinds of little pieces of it
• 7:06
  fall into your choices, it's obviously helpful because it's
• 7:09
  something that is long term if you're basing it on he's great
• 7:12
  looking, right? I forget.
• 7:14
  That's gonna pass. Well, they lose their hair, they
• 7:17
  gain a little bit of weight, whatever it is, as do we.
• 7:21
  And so he may have a full head of hair at 26, but when he's 62,
• 7:28
  he may be balding or losing hair.
• 7:30
  So you don't go just on looks. That's one thing I can say for
• 7:34
  sure. The sexual chemistry part of it,
• 7:36
  the, the mutual attraction, there are going to be times if
• 7:40
  you were side by side on a graph through your life where you're
• 7:43
  going to have what they call a glow up and you're going to be
• 7:45
  looking amazing, then they're going to pass you and they're
• 7:48
  going to look amazing. You're going to look like crap
• 7:50
  and they're going to right. So that piece of you can't even
• 7:52
  look at that. You can't even go by that
• 7:53
  because obviously people pair up based on attraction at the at
• 7:57
  the start, but that kind of thing doesn't sustain itself the
• 8:00
  way that it no, we're not in. It doesn't, no.
• 8:03
  And also, now that we're at a certain age figure in your late
• 8:08
  50s, I'm in my sex also. It's important, but it's not
• 8:13
  like it was when you were young because there are so many other
• 8:17
  things. You're dealing with elderly
• 8:18
  parents, your kids are older, you have grandkids, you're still
• 8:22
  working. There's so many other things.
• 8:26
  And also with menopause comes your whole body shifts and
• 8:30
  changes. And when you're young, you don't
• 8:32
  even think about it. And so that's why I'm saying a
• 8:36
  lot of times people don't look at perimenopause and menopause
• 8:40
  is something that's going to put them in a totally different
• 8:44
  emotional place, physical space. So that's what happens when
• 8:49
  you've been married a long time. Everything shifts and changes as
• 8:52
  you go. You morph into something
• 8:54
  different. And if you can recognize the
• 8:57
  fact that you're going to go through changes, even hobbies,
• 9:00
  things you like to do on the weekends, maybe you guys will
• 9:02
  come together on some hobbies and drift apart on others.
• 9:05
  Maybe in both of our cases, we have husbands that golf and
• 9:08
  neither of us have an interest in that, right?
• 9:11
  It's just a, a balance, a a regular ongoing reassessment of
• 9:16
  how you're going to spend time together.
• 9:18
  If right now this is how many weekends we're hanging out
• 9:21
  together versus how many weekends we're hanging out
• 9:23
  apart. That may not always be the case,
• 9:25
  right? I might meet a group of lady
• 9:27
  friends that want to go do something on a regular basis.
• 9:30
  It's a new hobby for me. And that gives him free time to
• 9:33
  go golf more, yes. But if I'm hanging on, well, we
• 9:36
  didn't used to do it right. That makes it very difficult.
• 9:38
  And I think that's what's really harmful.
• 9:42
  The longer you're married is well used to be well used to be
• 9:46
  is not going to solve anything. It's, and I think open
• 9:49
  communication as you've been married longer as well too,
• 9:53
  because women, like I said, and men have menopause, things shift
• 9:59
  for them and they don't like to talk about it the way women do.
• 10:03
  So they keep a lot inside. And then you deal with health
• 10:06
  issues. Some people start to have their
• 10:09
  own health issues or deaths in the family.
• 10:12
  You're dealing with so many more things as you get older that you
• 10:17
  really see what your priorities are in life the older you get
• 10:21
  versus when you're newly young and you have little kids and of
• 10:25
  course it's going to be stressful when you have young
• 10:28
  children. The lack of sleep alone almost
• 10:31
  did me in. There are stressors in every
• 10:33
  phase of your life. We asked you guys over on our
• 10:37
  ladies only uncluttered and unfiltered Facebook page, which
• 10:40
  please do take a moment and join.
• 10:42
  It's a private group, but we'll let you write in and we asked
• 10:45
  you. The way we phrase this was just
• 10:47
  to make it really simple was what advice would you have for a
• 10:50
  newlywed as far as sustaining a long term relationship?
• 10:55
  Now this advice could come from a place of not having success in
• 10:59
  a relationship because some of the best advice you can get
• 11:02
  sometimes is from somebody who made a mistake and is willing to
• 11:06
  share the wisdom they picked up along the way.
• 11:09
  Erica said that I love this. Do you want to be right or do
• 11:12
  you want to be married? She said that is a Doctor Phil
• 11:15
  thing and it's so true. Compromise is king IA. 100%
• 11:21
  agree, being a Leo myself, I had to learn that because I.
• 11:25
  Not being right all the time, yes, it's hard.
• 11:28
  Because my general nature is thinking, well, this is the way
• 11:32
  you should be doing it. And she's exactly right.
• 11:35
  I loved that Erica went on to say be in charge of some things
• 11:38
  and yes, let him be in charge of others because everyone enjoys
• 11:42
  control sometimes and everyone likes being taken.
• 11:45
  Care of other times. So when you can figure out which
• 11:48
  of those things you want to be in control of and which of those
• 11:50
  things you want to be taken care of about, I think once.
• 11:53
  I also think people don't realize when they get married
• 11:58
  they're bringing 2 childhoods into a relationship.
• 12:02
  They are, and nobody realizes that until after they already
• 12:06
  say I do. Our quality of life matters.
• 12:10
  Menopause shouldn't take anything away from us.
• 12:13
  No two women experience it the same way.
• 12:16
  And yet none of us are alone. And then they're like, well, I
• 13:52
  grew up this way. I my dad did it this way, my mom
• 13:55
  did it this way. And he's saying the opposite.
• 13:58
  Well, we didn't do it this way. And I think having these
• 14:02
  conversations before you get married is key.
• 14:07
  Very important, Edie says, start your financial planning
• 14:10
  together. And now money Talks can be hard
• 14:13
  and awkward and drives wedges between couples.
• 14:16
  There's never a right time to get started working together,
• 14:19
  and the longer you wait, the more stress it adds.
• 14:23
  That's so true. I I totally agree with that.
• 14:26
  Money is always one of the big factors, especially when you're
• 14:30
  starting out. I love this one from Candace.
• 14:33
  Have your partners back in public even if you disagree with
• 14:37
  them. Let me tell that and or when my
• 14:40
  kids correct me. You don't want anyone to ever
• 14:43
  just intentionally correct you or embarrass you in front of
• 14:46
  other people. But truly, if you can have your
• 14:49
  partner's back, at least until you can get somewhere else and.
• 14:52
  IIA, 100% agree with that. Even if you don't agree with it,
• 14:57
  wait till you get home and say I had your back.
• 15:00
  But you may want to think about this or that, whatever.
• 15:02
  But when someone doesn't have your back, you feel betrayed.
• 15:07
  Yeah. I feel like that's important
• 15:09
  with your kids too. They just need to know that
• 15:11
  you've got their back. It doesn't mean you can condone
• 15:14
  every single decision they make. Shayla said.
• 15:16
  It's easy to get caught up in kids in life, but you need to
• 15:19
  have time for yourself and time for each other.
• 15:22
  Both people need their own interest and friends and doing
• 15:24
  things together is important, but you also need to have your
• 15:26
  own things as well. It's about balance.
• 15:28
  I I feel. Like we have a bunch of really
• 15:30
  knowledgeable ladies stolen out some really amazing Nuggets.
• 15:34
  I do think for women especially, it's so important to keep your
• 15:38
  own life because as your kids grow older and leave the nest,
• 15:43
  if you've relied totally on one other person, I just think that
• 15:47
  sets you up for a lot of depression as well.
• 15:50
  Rudy says put God first. Dawn says accept the things you
• 15:55
  cannot change, work lovingly on the things you can, and know the
• 15:58
  difference. That's of course the Lord's
• 16:00
  Prayer there about having to do. Yes.
• 16:02
  And also as you get older in a marriage, you do realize stop
• 16:07
  trying to change them. That's what you're spending so
• 16:09
  much of your energy on is trying to make them somebody they're
• 16:12
  not. The minute you give that up, you
• 16:16
  see a shift. I think you see a shift.
• 16:19
  I think we we talked about that once in an episode about
• 16:22
  deciding if someone's always late.
• 16:24
  You just change your schedule and decide.
• 16:26
  We'll tell them a little bit earlier, we'll do it.
• 16:28
  You'll just live with whatever it is.
• 16:30
  Right, and you pick. Your battles exactly.
• 16:34
  Be respectful, Shanna says to each other.
• 16:36
  Choose your words carefully, and while big romantic gestures are
• 16:39
  nice, it's the small day-to-day things that really matter.
• 16:42
  Totally agree with that. Colleen says she has some
• 16:45
  thoughts about first and 2nd marriages and with kids
• 16:48
  involved. I think she could, she says.
• 16:50
  She's giving me the impression that she could probably write a
• 16:52
  little book. Well, I think second marriages
• 16:55
  alone, especially if you have kids, that's a whole different
• 17:00
  thing that can be really difficult.
• 17:02
  Do not be enmeshed with your family.
• 17:04
  Leave and cleave to your spouse. Absolutely.
• 17:06
  From Marcy, Jennifer says you should each have your own
• 17:09
  blanket in bed. It is the key to a happy
• 17:11
  marriage. Praise.
• 17:12
  It's you, Jennifer. Hallelujah if.
• 17:15
  I had to share a blanket with my husband.
• 17:18
  I'd be up all night. I have a weighted blanket that
• 17:20
  just covers me and then we have a blanket that covers the whole
• 17:23
  bed. He doesn't have his own blanket,
• 17:24
  but I've got to have my. We each have our own blankets
• 17:27
  and all. Even when we go to a hotel, I
• 17:30
  ask at the front desk for a separate blanket.
• 17:32
  Do you really? Yeah, I have to.
• 17:33
  There's something about it. I have to have my own blanket if
• 17:36
  I'm going to sleep. So young and in love.
• 17:39
  Listen if you hear nothing else we ever say.
• 17:41
  Right. Have your own blanket in your
• 17:42
  bed. It'll cause a lot of harmony,
• 17:45
  Holly says. Never stop communicating just
• 17:48
  because you have a license, Lisa says it doesn't give you the
• 17:51
  right to control each other. You be your own person.
• 17:54
  Marriage is give and take. It's funny how when we're
• 17:57
  reading all of these and they they just go on and on.
• 18:00
  I feel like we could you to this and you we could probably print
• 18:03
  a manual from all of these great pieces of input I got.
• 18:06
  I've got a shout out to Rita. Rita is actually a friend of
• 18:08
  mine and she turned 80 this year and Rita says after 61 years, I
• 18:13
  think the best advice that I was given by my parents is never go
• 18:15
  to bed angry. Talk it through, get it all out,
• 18:17
  kiss and make up before you go to sleep.
• 18:19
  I think that's great, but I feel that sometimes you need to go to
• 18:24
  bed angry and get a good night's sleep.
• 18:26
  It really clears your head and you wake up feeling totally
• 18:30
  different than you did the night before.
• 18:32
  When people are angry, they say things they don't mean and
• 18:37
  sometimes you can't take back those words.
• 18:40
  So sometimes you can just in a nice way, say I just need to go
• 18:45
  to sleep and when we wake up we can revisit this because
• 18:49
  sometimes you just need to clear your head before.
• 18:53
  You speech so the old adage never go to bed.
• 18:55
  I don't. Believe that you don't believe.
• 18:57
  No, I don't. I think that you need to really
• 19:01
  take a deep breath sometimes before you speak because you
• 19:04
  will say things you regret and it's never, it's never.
• 19:07
  Sometimes people say things so hurtful that you just can't get
• 19:11
  over them. I I can't disagree with you
• 19:13
  there, because I tend to really calm down over a good night's
• 19:18
  sleep. Me.
• 19:18
  Too. I was while you were saying
• 19:20
  that, I was trying to think of because I do think in a lot of
• 19:23
  instances that could be a really good idea.
• 19:26
  Maybe even back in the day when everybody was working regular
• 19:29
  hours and the kids were going from school.
• 19:32
  You don't want to end a busy day that's going to start a busy
• 19:36
  morning still dealing with fights from the night before.
• 19:40
  But for the most part I do like to cut things rest.
• 19:43
  Because when you get a good night's sleep, you sometimes
• 19:46
  don't even feel the way you felt.
• 19:48
  You could be contributing the argument to exhaustion, not
• 19:52
  feeling heard. The kids were running around
• 19:56
  like hellions and you needed whatever it is.
• 19:59
  When you get a good night's sleep and you're well rested,
• 20:02
  you're almost like, what was that fight about?
• 20:04
  What? Was it really that bad?
• 20:07
  No. Is there anything on here of, of
• 20:10
  all of these replies that stood out to you that you want to make
• 20:13
  sure that we get to? Because we're going to close out
• 20:16
  and ask you to add to this growing list on our Uncluttered
• 20:19
  and Unfiltered Ladies Only page. I, I thought they were all
• 20:23
  honestly, I learned so much from these.
• 20:26
  I, I, what I think is we had mentioned before, you're either
• 20:31
  married for the long haul and you have that kind of thought in
• 20:36
  your head as you go through your marriage, or else sometimes it
• 20:40
  just ends up falling apart because there are so many hard
• 20:45
  times in a marriage and times that you don't expect someone
• 20:50
  gets sick, whether it's your partner, your family member,
• 20:53
  your children. And it's really I fell in love
• 20:57
  all over with my husband the minute he held my daughter.
• 21:02
  I was in so much pain after having labor for almost a day
• 21:06
  and 1/2 with her. The last thing I wanted to do
• 21:08
  was be like they are in a picture book holding this.
• 21:11
  I just was in so much pain after I had my daughter and he just
• 21:16
  grabbed her and sat in a chair in the room and rocked her.
• 21:19
  And that's a side I never saw of my husband ever when we got our
• 21:23
  dogs. You know what I mean?
• 21:25
  I never saw that side of my husband.
• 21:27
  Every time you see a new side, when he became a grand father
• 21:31
  aside, I never saw that. I can't even explain to you.
• 21:36
  So there are other versions of your significant other on the
• 21:39
  horizon, and if you can just suck it up and get through the
• 21:41
  phase you're in right now, sometimes it's very worth it.
• 21:45
  Yeah, get counseling. Counseling is a great thing.
• 21:48
  It's not for everybody, but if you're going through a rough
• 21:51
  time, counseling can really help a relationship because it gives
• 21:55
  you the open communication that you need.
• 21:57
  Now, having said that, if one of our, our friends or sisters or,
• 22:02
  or people find themselves in a situation where they can't stick
• 22:05
  it out and they have to do the very, very difficult thing of,
• 22:08
  of ending relationship, then it's important that we're there
• 22:10
  for them. And we it wasn't, wasn't our
• 22:12
  shoes, we were walking in. And there's no judgement here at
• 22:15
  all. This is just a discussion on
• 22:17
  some successful marriages and why they worked and some maybe
• 22:21
  lessons from people who we're there and it didn't quite happen
• 22:24
  the way. Well, sometimes things can't be
• 22:26
  fixed. Sometimes they just can't.
• 22:29
  And it's more than just telling the other person we're in it for
• 22:31
  good. We we're gonna, nobody's getting
• 22:33
  out of this, right? Sometimes it's just really a
• 22:35
  matter of just reconcilable differences.
• 22:37
  And we, we believe that. So let's tell everybody all the
• 22:40
  different ways that they can be a part of this community.
• 22:42
  First of all, you've done the number one thing.
• 22:44
  That's just listening. Yes, sharing us with one friend
• 22:48
  is so huge. It's so huge.
• 22:50
  And then also, of course, we have our uncluttered and
• 22:53
  unfiltered ladies only Facebook page, our Patreon page.
• 22:55
  If you ever wanted to just listen with no commercials or
• 22:58
  see the video that goes along with it, that's where you can
• 23:01
  find that. And in the meantime, gosh, how
• 23:05
  should we close the show? I felt like you guys did the
• 23:07
  episode for us. Well, you have to watch next
• 23:10
  week's episode. Oh my gosh, yes, we have a.
• 23:12
  Big trip or not? Watch, listen, but more.
• 23:15
  Watch. More watch on Patreon.
• 23:17
  It's going to be a good one. It's going to be.
• 23:19
  Really good. We have some special guests that
• 23:21
  are joining us. We're not going to tell you it
• 23:22
  is, but we promise you are not going to want to miss this one.
• 23:26
  Until then, whether it's just petty grievances with your
• 23:30
  significant other or something bigger, sometimes you just have
• 23:33
  to let it go. And don't look back.