Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 36 | Cultivating Healthy Communication amid Different Personalities

Transcript

Ep. 36 | Cultivating Healthy Communication amid Different Personalities · 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 for another day of 5-Minute Fatherhood. Another question today from our Facebook group. Again, search it online. It's in the info of both the YouTube channel and the audio podcast, 5-Minute Fatherhood Facebook group for dads out there listening. But we got a question from Matthew, or more like a comment, and he wanted us to chat about it, which I thought was really good. He says, sometimes I feel like communication is off in my family. I'm the type of guy that likes to address the issue immediately. Oh, man, Matthew, I am right there with you. I just bulldozed Alyssa because I just want to talk about it right now, right now.
• 0:57
  And he says, and I like to say what I'm feeling, whereas my wife likes to think about it for a good bit of time before she's ready to talk. This is tough sometimes because I feel as though I have done something to upset her or hurt her in a way. And a lot of times it's not even me or an at-home thing. What do you guys do to talk through things like this and improve communication in the home? And then Jeremy, I love what you kind of responded with him briefly, if you want to elaborate on that or what you'd say.
• 1:20
  Yeah. So oftentimes, and maybe just broadening this, I'm going to talk directly to Matthew's question, but it's important to identify when there are patterns going on in communication between you and your spouse. They're just not healthy. They don't tend to lead to a good place. And so one of the things I told Matthew is, and just to give his example, so his wife is just, she needs to process. She's probably more of an internal processor.
• 1:43
  She needs a little bit of time. And that's just torture for guys like Matthew or like Jeff. Let's have it out. Let's talk about it. Guys who are extremely verbal, extremely verbal processor. I'm a little bit more probably like Matthew's wife. I can process verbally if it's about an idea. But man, if it's about my emotions, I need to go into a deep well to figure out what the heck is going on.
• 2:04
  And so what I encouraged him to do is say, okay, first step, take a step back and actually have a conversation with your wife and develop a new process or a new pattern for how you want to handle the situation. And I said, I don't know what that will look like for you, but an example, it might look like something like, okay, once this starts to happen, I'm going to take the kids, I'm going to give you 30 minutes to just journal, to think, to pray, and then in 30 minutes, I'm going to come, and then you're just going to share with me what you processed, and then
• 2:33
  I'll listen. I'll reflect back to you what I heard you say, and then we'll see if we can come to an easier agreement on things. And if not, I'll give you some more time when you've had time to really think about what I've said, what you processed, and then something new comes up. Okay. I want to take another 10, 15 minutes, process that. That is a procedure or trying to basically interrupt a negative pattern, trying a new pattern.
• 2:56
  And so these look different depending on the situation you have with your spouse. But I think for a lot of people, they just want to wing relationships. And man, when you have a covenant with somebody and you're going to be with them for the next 50 years, you have a pattern that's not working, don't try to wing it. Like actually look at the pattern, study it, think about it, address it, be creative, come up with new ideas, be disciplined about leading your wife in this area and saying, hey, let's sit down and talk and think about –
• 3:23
  how this might work that's better. And one of the things that really lock you up is if you think there's a right way. I think that intuition is really dangerous in a relationship. The right way to handle conflict is for us to have it out. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That may be native to your personality, and that may be really healthy for you, but man, your wife's different than you are, and so you need to really think about, okay, what actually is healthy for her? And if somebody's got to take a hit
• 3:50
  in terms of really changing for the sake of the relationship, dad, husband, take the first hit. Try to lean into how to help them process this in a way that's a little closer to the way they feel and the way their personality and the way they tick and the way they're wired. But yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts?
• 4:10
  Yeah, I'll just give a quick two thoughts there because I think – yeah, I think you said what I think is the most – the central part of it. But Matthew, for some practical things that we've done with this because this is a very similar scenario to me and Alyssa is we've gotten to the place where – first of all, you need a lot of trust and then we build things on that trust. And one of the things we've done is –
• 4:28
  We've each kind of promised each other or given each other one kind of rule that allows us to kind of play fair per se and play the game. And one of those is she is – Alyssa has promised me that she won't kind of leave a conversation just on a knee jerk. This is who I am. I need time to – like she'll stay in it basically. She says she'll promise me she'll stay in it.
• 4:49
  If she, and she's in charge of her own emotional capacity and until she can. And then I've promised her that she can kind of have an ultimate Trump card, white flag where I'll never push her or say, we need to talk about something. If she, we used to have like a code word. I can't remember what it was now. Now she just says like, I'm tapping out. Like I'm, I'm done. I'm tapping out. And I used to say like, no, no, no, we got to talk about this. We got to figure this out, blah, blah. But if she says that, if she says that phrase, I've promised her like, okay, I'm done. I will pause.
• 5:16
  And you go do what you need to do. And then usually she'll give me like a more actual measurable framework of like 30 minutes or whatever because she knows that helps me. But those are two tiny little things that have super helped of like I know that she's going to come to the table and not just kind of want to leave right away. And a lot of – and sometimes we can have that conversation because we're in good spots. And sometimes if it's a little longer or harder conversation.
• 5:36
  So then in the middle, let's say I'm tapping out. You know, we'll do this tomorrow or we'll do this in 30 minutes. And I've just promised, okay, for the sake of our sanity, I'm just going to, okay, we're good. And that's just one kind of quick little rule we've given each other that has just kind of changed everything. And like 99% of those problems have gone away because of that. So that's what I would end with, Matthew, of just try to come up with like what's one way you can serve each other.
• 5:57
  and how you each communicate. But definitely you take the lead as the husband of dying, of sacrificing, of leaning into that hard spot and kind of you changing first or leaning into that growth and leaning into that change.
• 6:13
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense in about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.