Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 61 | Staying Connected with Your Wife Throughout the Day

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Ep. 61 | Staying Connected with Your Wife Throughout the Day · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I think we should go ahead and use our technology since the industrial revolution is pushing us to work apart anyway. Let's go ahead and use that technology to try to have more frequent connection points.
• 0:16
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, 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.
• 0:37
  Hey guys, welcome to the Five Minute Fatherhood. How often should you text your wife? This is one of the questions that we got in the Facebook group. Actually, what Neil asked is, how do you stay synced up with your wife throughout the day? And one of the things that I think is important to realize, if you have pretty separate lives, which most of us are living, there is a lot of great technology that we can use these days to try to stay synced up. And it's really important, you guys, that we function like a team with our partner.
• 1:05
  And even though we might have activities, things we're working on that are separate, there's a little bit of divide and conquer going on, a certain amount of that's okay. I really think that as fathers and husbands, if we really want to build a family team, we have to kind of really up the bar in terms of the amount. And I would really specifically call out the frequency of the connection that we are initiating with our wives.
• 1:28
  This is a big deal. I know that when I went back to work full time after my wife and I worked together for a number of years, it took me like a couple of years to figure this out. Like I would go to work, I would be completely consumed with whatever I'm doing. I'd come home eight hours, 10 hours later, and I would try to catch up on things. And, you know, it just, uh, or you come home, I've heard with other guys like this and it's the expectation of, uh, you think it's going to be a great day, but then the house was burning down metaphorically with the kids. And so it's like just that collision of like, Whoa. Yeah.
• 1:56
  What's going on with the team? And are we a team? And you can really start to have this experience of creeping separateness. And how do you combat that? And so a really simple thing that I started doing is just trying to text April once or twice during the day. And even if you have to schedule this at first to make this a pattern or a habit, I encourage you to do that. If it's like every day around lunchtime or take a break in the middle of your day and just say, every single time I take a break, I'm going to text her, how you doing? This is something that's going on. I love you. I miss you.
• 2:24
  I'm praying for you. This is what I'm thinking about, whatever it is. That makes a massive difference. It might take you like two or three minutes a day to check in and to create this sort of sync up and increase that frequency. But man, that separateness can end this. Every relationship's different. Every couple needs to work this out, how frequent. But I would encourage you guys, I think the default is, especially if you work apart, is to assume that, hey, that's just me time. I can be 100% focused.
• 2:50
  And I can go eight, 10 hours straight without having any sort of connection, initiating any kind of contact with my wife. And that's a healthy, normal thing. I'm not sure that's healthy. I'm not sure that's normal. I think we should go ahead and use our technology since the industrial revolution is pushing us to work apart anyway. Let's go ahead and use that technology to try to have more frequent connection points. But, yeah, what are your thoughts about that, Jeff?
• 3:12
  Totally. And that's what I was going to say, too, is like it's it's it's one of those things where there's there's this vacuum created of almost like you can almost lead two separate lives and then you don't usually realize that until it really hits you emotionally, which is like two years too late. I mean, it's like, oh, you just wake up one day and you're like, I haven't really you know, I spend more time at the work.
• 3:29
  And, and, and I think separate work is totally fine. And like we said, and that's totally a lot of people, actually, that's the more that that's probably the most common scenario. And so it's totally fine and okay. But I think one way to redeem it is just to make sure that you're connected. I'll give you I'll give you guys if you're listening the cousin version of this as someone who works from home, because you still have to stay connected and you still have to do like that. But I
• 3:50
  I know for me, it's never really been an issue of like, how's the house or the team doing? Because I know a lot of my friends say that, like when I was saying they come home and then it's just like the expectations are different and all that stuff. But I know for me how they're doing because I can literally hear them every two seconds. So I know five minutes before we started this recording, there was like, our kids were crying. So something happened, someone stole something. And then five minutes later, someone was laughing. Like I can hear the whole thing, which is kind of an interesting ordeal, working from home. So I know exactly how they're doing. But what I'll say that the cousin of this that we've learned
• 4:20
  as we've learned, we can go a long time, even being in the same home, without having little talks or space set aside for the things that we're really thinking about, like things that are really on our heart or how we're doing emotionally or big decisions we need to make, but we don't want to wait two weeks till our next date night, you know, all that stuff. We realized that was starting to feel separate, like there was a separateness there. And so it was only this year, last year or whatever,
• 4:46
  that we started doing this thing where we realized the really, really good rhythm. It's kind of funny because you kind of have to test and experiment was essentially the really good thing that really unlocked this for us was something as simple as whenever Alyssa feels something or senses something or is like has a question or whatever. She emails me it. And for some reason that kind of just puts that basketball on my court.
• 5:05
  And then I'm able to look at it, read it on my own terms, think about it on my own terms so I don't feel bombarded of like – because sometimes we had that tension of like she would bring that to me. But then I was like, oh, I'm working, but I wasn't communicating that this was work time, all that stuff. It was just confusing. So like the email thing solved it for us. I'm like now all of a sudden that just solved it. And then she knows and trusts that I'll bring that back to her.
• 5:27
  Um, and with my feedback or my thoughts in the, in the conversational way, uh, that day or later that day or the next day or that week, once I've processed it and I don't know what it is, but it's just, that's helped and that's fixed it. So that would be the cousin version. I would say of people who stay at home is make sure you're still creating space to have more of the intentional conversations, not just how the home is feeling. And then like you said, for, if it is separate, then just checking in, it's like literally, and actually understanding what that's like is huge. So that's what we'd say to you guys.
• 5:54
  Hey guys, we know it's really challenging to try to build your family team when all the tools you've grown up with or seen essentially are aimed at only helping develop family members as a collection of individuals. That's why we launched familyteams.com where you can find all the tools we've developed with tons of resources at different price points, free courses, videos, writings, etc. that help you build up and transform you and your family into a multi-generational team on mission. Check out all the resources we have over at familyteams.com.