#023: Tips for Engagement, Wedding, and 1st Year of Marriage - Part 1 | Brigid Pontarelli

Podcast
Written By Restored
Joey & Brigid Pontarelli.jpg

Getting engaged and married is exciting! But it can also be overwhelming, especially if you come from a broken home. Joey and his wife, Brigid, share their story and what they wish someone told them about engagement, the wedding, and the first year of marriage. 

By listening, you’ll hear this and more:

  • Brigid talks about dating and marrying someone from a broken home - plus advice for people like her

  • How to keep building your friendship in a romantic relationship

  • A tactic to avoid allowing the wedding to dominant your relationship

  • How to handle money - one of the top reasons for divorce

  • Common money traps couples fall into

Part 1 of 2. Listen to Part 2 here.

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Special treat for you guys today. My wife, Bridget actually joins me on the show. We thought it'd be useful to talk about what we wish someone would've told us about engagement, the wedding and the first year of marriage. And so in this episode we just share experience and some of the practical advice that we've learned along the way.

And so by listening, what you'll get out of it is you're gonna hear Bridget briefly share her experience dating and marrying someone who comes from a broken home who comes from a divorced family. And she mentions some of the struggles that came along with that. And she gives some advice for any of you out there who are like her, who come from an intact family, but you're dating or marrying someone who comes from a broken home.

We talk about some good things to know about engagement, like how continuing to grow and to build your friendship is so important. For the success of your marriage. We encourage you guys to keep dating, especially going on dates where you don't talk about wedding planning at all. We touched on some conversations that you really need to have during your engagement.

And hopefully even sooner, we get into money cuz as most of you guys know, money fights are one of the leading causes of divorce. And so it's so important as a couple to get on the same page when it comes to money. And so we talk about how to create a plan for your money and get on the path to financial freedom.

So that money isn't a stressor for you and your relationship. And we share kind of some of the screw up some of the struggles that we've had to face as a couple when dealing with money. And we touched on some common money failures that couples need to watch out. And if money is tight for you, if you're planning a wedding, I know money's usually tight.

We just give some affordable date ideas that you can use. And we also share our story, how we met, how we built our relationship, how we ended up getting engaged, married, talk a little bit about, uh, our journey since then, too. And so my hope for you is that hearing our story. Gives you hope that even if you come from a broken home, you can go on and build a marriage and a family.

You're not doomed to repeat your parents' mistakes. You can write your own story. And so if any of that sounds useful to you, keep listening,

welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you cope, heal, and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce or separation. So you can feel hold again. I'm your host, Joey. Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is. 23. And we're in the middle of our love and relationship series. The research shows that the biggest effects from our parents' divorce, our experience in our romantic relationships.

Why is that? Basically because we don't have a roadmap for love. We've seen a broken model of love and marriage. And so when it's our turn, we feel lost and we struggle in numerous ways in our relationships. And so we're bringing you a roadmap, actionable tips and expert advice on how to find and build authentic love.

Now, this episode is part one of two. And in this episode, we're gonna focus on engagement. In part two, we'll discuss the wedding, including wedding planning and some of the challenges that you're gonna face. If you come from a broken home and we'll get into some good things to know about the first year of marriage, too.

So subscribe in your podcast app to make sure you don't miss part two. Before we get into the conversation a little bit about my wife, Bridget Pelli was born and raised in Philly. She comes from an Irish family. She's one of six kids. So big family. Her parents have been married 41 years. Really beautiful.

She's a pediatric nurse, which means she works with kids. She's worked as an ICU nurse and a PACU nurse, which basically means she does surgery, river recovery. She works with the kids after they come out of surgery. She went to Penn. For nursing, but after a year she decided that it wasn't the right fit for her.

So she transferred to Franciscan, university of Steubenville, where she graduated with her, bachelor's in nursing. And that's actually where we met. Bridget is a proud godmother to Maggie and aunt, to Jack and Marty. We love those kids. Bridge loves the beach, traveling, coffee, relaxing, sleep, and sports.

She's a diehard Philly fan. And honestly, sometimes I'm not sure if she loves me or, or the Eagles more in all fairness, the fact that I'm a Chicago fan who cheers for Chicago teams like the black Hawks and she being a Philly fan has definitely brought some struggles into our marriage, but. All that aside, jokes aside.

I'm really excited for you to hear from my bride. So let's not win any longer. Here's my conversation with Bridget bridge. Welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's great. Is it weird to do a podcast with your husband? For sure. Yes. . All right. We'll try to make this as normal as possible. We wanted to share our story with you guys just briefly.

We'll go through it. And then, uh, we wanna talk about dating, get into engagement the wedding day, and then talk about the first year of marriage a little bit as well. So we met, uh, at college. We actually met by working a similar job on campus. And from there we just developed a friendship. I remember. Uh, running into bridge.

I was headed to like our student union center and I didn't really know her too well. We had worked together, but, uh, that was kind of the spark that just ended up building a friendship. And from there spend more time together. An attraction grew my initial attraction. I'm interested to hear what you have to say, but my initial attraction, her wasn't actually physical.

Although I think she's beautiful. It was more emotional. I just thought she was a really good person and cool person, someone to get along with really easily and, uh, enjoyed our conversations. As I got to know her more, I became more physically attracted to her as well. So that was kind of the beginning of our friendship.

What, what would you add, babe? Yeah, I mean, for me, I saw you as a friend first and then over time. Yeah. Things started to happen and I was like, oh, maybe he is interested in me. And, uh, one thing led to another and yeah, we started to get to know each other, started hanging out, met each other's friends, and then he asked me on a date.

So are you sure you didn't like me at first? Uh, no comment no, no, no. I think it was actually gradual, right? Yeah. For both of us, it, it was a gradual yep. Mm-hmm yeah. Which was different than some of my relationships in the past one in particular, I know, uh, the physical attraction was kind of the initial impetus for the relationship and it didn't end up working out of course, but, uh, this was different.

So I think it can work either way, but I definitely, uh, appreciated the fact that it was more of an emotional attraction that then developed into physical attraction. So the first time we actually went out was our senior year dance. And that was like towards the end of. Time at college. It was what, two weeks before the end of college before graduation.

Yeah. Two weeks before our graduation, we went to a bow in Pittsburgh on the water and, uh, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. So we went to the small school in Eastern Ohio called Franciscan university of Steubenville and Bridget studied nursing. I studied finance and uh, yeah, like I said, we both did a similar job on campus and that was how we met.

So we go to this dance and by that point I was getting more and more interested in Bridget. I actually was away at a business conference and the dance was like on a Friday night and earlier, uh, that day I drove three hours away with one of my buddies to a business conference, but I wanted to go to the dance so badly with bridge that, uh, I ended up driving three hours to Pittsburgh from the conference that night, and then I drove three hours back.

So I literally drove six hours just to go to. Dance with this girl that I liked. And so I was impressed. Yeah. From there, it, uh, it developed, so we went on our first date a week before graduation, not something I recommend, but ended up working out for us. And then we both went home, Bridget to Philly, me, Chicago.

I actually went off to Italy to teach English over there for two months. And we weren't really sure what would happen. We had a talk beforehand before heading home, but up to that point, we were just going on dates. We didn't really define the relationship, but we both agreed that we wanted to see where this would go.

And so we agreed to stay in touch and kind of see what happened. Like what, what did you think would happen? Yeah, I mean, it was, it was definitely a overwhelming time in our life with graduation and moving on and moving home. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day though, Joey was very intentional with me and I definitely appreciated that.

And so as we went into summer, I felt comfortable going forward. Yeah, we were kind of in this weird limbo. We had, again, gone on dates, but we weren't technically dating. So we were still building our friendship from afar yet. It was clearly more than friends. So we were kind of in this weird limbo, but once I got over to Italy, I kept in touch with bridge.

We would text, we would FaceTime. And I actually thought because of the distance, we may just grow apart. That's not what I wanted, but I thought that may happen. But we actually got closer through that experience and it was awesome. So we built our friendship from afar, from a distance. And then I came back to the states and bridged actually came on vacation with my family, which was a brave thing to do.

Then after that, I went to Philly with her to spend some time with her and her family. And that's when we started our relationship. We became boyfriend and girlfriend. So then I took a job in Chicago and Bridget, uh, was in Philly and she was looking for a nursing job. And so we did a year of long distance.

And eventually after you know, about a year, I moved to Philly, got an apartment out there and, uh, I was close to bridge, so we we're able to see each other a lot. And that was good. Then a, a year after that kind of fast forwarding through our story, we got engaged and I won't go into that story, but basically little scavenger hunt.

And at the end with me, and I asked her to marry me then, uh, after that we moved to Denver. So we, we came and lived out in Denver. Uh, before we got married, kind of the stars aligned, there was a job opportunity. One of her friends needed a roommate and things just ended up working out. And so we, uh, we moved out to Denver.

We had always. Talked about different places that we might wanna live. If we were to get married and Colorado was one of them that we both agreed on. Each of us kind of had preferences in other states, but that, that was one that we both agreed upon. So we thought we're young, you know, we're not married yet.

We don't have kids. So we might as well kind of adventure a little bit. And so we came out to Denver. So then we got married in Philly, in April. And after that, we went on a honeymoon to the Canary islands, to, to Europe. If you don't know where the Canary islands are, they're off the coast of Africa.

Actually, it sounds super bougie, but, um, it, it actually was pretty affordable compared to like some of the other options and we saved up money for it. And it was, it was an awesome, awesome trip. I don't think I'd, I've ever been really to an island. I guess I went to ly years ago in college, but, uh, but was that the first time you had been to an island.

Yeah, first name. So that was, that was wonderful. But we wanna get into talking about engagement. Talk about the wedding day. Talk a little bit about the first year of marriage, but before we get to that, we wanna touch on dating really briefly. And this could probably be its own episode. And the last few episodes, if you've been listening, you know, have been about dating and finding your spouse.

But, uh, Bridget, I wanna talk you with you a little bit about as someone who comes from, uh, an intact family, I wanna ask you what it was like to date someone from a broken family. And so what was that experience like for you? Yeah, so a little bit of background is I actually knew Joey's brother first, before I met Joey.

And so I think in the back of my mind, I remembered hearing that their parents were divorced. And as I got to know Joey Moore, I could tell that it was something that was a sensitive topic. And so I knew not to ask questions and press him about his family. For myself being patient with him was huge. I let him share what he wanted in his own time.

And I feel like that was huge for us. He was then able to open up to me about his family when he felt more comfortable with it. And I definitely appreciated that as time went on and we, you know, were dating, you know, months into our relationship. I, I did feel more comfortable than asking Joey questions about his family.

And then he, you know, he was vulnerable with me and he was opening up to me about his past, about his family, about current situations. And I definitely appreciated that for sure. And, uh, and one more thing to know about my experience is that when we were ready to get engaged, I was the one that was ready first and I we've talked about this, but there, there was fear on his end and I, I had to be patient with that as well.

No, that's a good point. Was the idea of marriage scary to you too? Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, knowing you're gonna be with someone for the rest of your life. That's what you are agreeing to when you say yes, but at the end of the day, I, my parents now have been married for 41 years. And I grew up with that.

So you had that example. Yeah, definitely. So we'll talk about some of the struggles we faced a little bit later in the show, but just briefly when it came to dating, what were some of the struggles that you experienced or saw in me throughout the time we dated? Yeah. I mean, I, I could tell that you were struggling with something struggling.

I, I believed it was, you know, about your family, but I, I didn't know exactly what it was and I wanted to be patient with you sharing to me, you know, what was going on. So I think that was hard. Just not knowing. Yeah. And another thing is that I just couldn't relate to, to Joey, to his background. When we, you know, would visit families.

It, um, another struggle is that it, it would be hard to make time for each side of the family when visiting, um, especially right now, when we, both of us, we don't live by each of our families. So then that time is kind of cut in half. And then, you know, for Joey's side, it's even cut in half again. So it's always been something that we've struggled with and we're still trying to navigate that area.

Yeah. That's something we realized last Christmas and new year's that we were visiting my family and we spent some time with my dad, spent some time with my mom and it really cut the time in half because, you know, we were trying to spend time with both of them where normally, if you come from an intact family, you spend time with your parents together and therefore you have more time to do other things like sea.

You know, relatives or maybe friends of yours, especially if you're traveling your hometown. And so you really do have half as much time, or at least less time than you normally would would, and that's a struggle. And so just finishing this up bridge, what advice would you have for someone like you who's dating someone who comes from a broken home?

Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is just patience, patience with your significant other about them. Just sharing their story with you. And to know that at first it may just be pieces at a time, but then over time they will open up to you as they feel more comfortable. And the second thing that I would say is to listen because by listening.

they know that you care for them and that you're there. And one more thing to add. Typically, children of divorce struggle more in relationships. We come into relationships with a lot of anxiety, with a lot of fear and a lot of just different struggles, whether it's opening up or trusting someone because likely our trust in our parents was broken through the whole process of separation and divorce.

And so it can be really difficult for us to, to learn, to open up, to take our guard down, to put our shield away. In a relationship. And so, like you said, bridge takes a ton of patience. And just to understand that they're just kind of bringing this into the relationship, not necessarily by choice, it's just their experience.

And so the patience and listening, I think are, are great pieces of advice, but almost like expecting that to happen and expecting them to have struggles with intimacy. And some people may struggle more than others. I I've seen that even through this work, even through restored that some people are better adapted to love and build a relationship and a marriage, and then others really struggle for one reason or another in relationships.

And so, regardless of where, you know, you're a significant other, if you're listening to this and you're dating or engaged, or marriage is someone who comes from a broken home, just realize their experience may be unique and. Than what we're talking about, but most often the struggles related to opening up to trusting, to intimacy, to just relationships in general, um, are definitely there.

Yeah. And just one last thing to add to my experience with dating Joey is that as we dated certain situations would come up and they would be triggers for Joey and Joey's story. And I did not know about them until, you know, until it happened. And so that led to us growing in communication about different situations.

Yeah. And, and the, like you said, that led to us growing. They could really be opportunities for growth. If you learn how to handle 'em the right way and you won't succeed in every instance. And that's okay. There's gonna be times where you're triggered in one way or another, and maybe you get angry or you kind of shell up and pull away that's gonna happen.

That the goal of course always is kind of to revisit those things. To talk about them and to make sure that you both are on the same page, so that if anything like that happens again, you'll be ready. Both of you will be ready to kind of tackle that situation. That's what we learned over the years, but it certainly was not like a perfect performance.

It was something that we learned over time, mainly through messing it up. Yeah. And I mean, at the end of the day, marriage is two imperfect people trying to love each other perfectly. And so you are going to mess up, you're going to have failures, you're going to have arguments, but it's how you grow from them and how you learn to love each other in those moments.

And I've heard it said that marriage isn't about funding, like the perfect person, but rather about funding the right person for you and loving them in all their imperfections. And so it really is all about. when you fall, when you fight, when you have conflict repairing, that's kind of a funny word, but it's really about repairing the relationship and forgiving and getting on the same page and something that Jason Everett says a lot is, you know, there's three phrases that married couples need to know.

It's I love you. I'm sorry. And I forgive you and I'd say that's absolutely true in our experience that being ready to forgive, being ready to ask for forgiveness and just ready to express love, even through difficult times, just goes such a long way. So I'm sure we could talk about that for a long time about dating and what it's like dating someone who comes from a broken home.

And we really need to do a separate episode on that, but we wanna get into engagement. So we wanna talk about what it's like to, to be engaged. Some of the things that. We wish we would've known. And some just tips that we've learned through our experience that may be helpful to you. You know, a lot of these tips are very practical.

They're not super deep. So the first one is, uh, prepared to be exhausted on your engagement day. It is tiring when you get engaged from the guy's perspective, especially you're thinking about this, you're planning it, you know, you got the ring, you're keeping that a secret from someone that takes a lot of maneuvering and then you're planning this whole proposal.

And that takes a lot of energy. And then you're executing on the proposal. Sounds like a military operation. Uh, and then from there you're announcing to everyone. So it's a lot that goes into it. And man, I was exhausted. Yeah. I think that was the most exhaustive I've ever seen Joey before was on our engagement day that evening and that someone who.

Really ever has a problem with having enough energy. But that day, man, I was exhausted, but don't get me wrong. It's super exciting. Yeah, it is. The thing that I could think was most exhausting was so after we got engaged after did the little scavenger hunt, I asked her to marry me. Uh, we eventually had a party with her family.

I arranged it beforehand. So we were talking to them and kinda celebrating. And you know, my nerves were sky high. And after the fact they came down and that was tiring in itself, but then talking to everyone and calling our family, cuz again, I was living in Philly at the time. My family's in Chicago. My friends are really all over the country.

So we were just announcing it to everyone, to my friends, to Bridget's friends, to family members, cousins, and man that was tiring. So just what we're saying here, be prepared to be exhausted. On your engagement day, especially if you choose to announce it in more of a personal way by FaceTiming everyone.

And if you wanna save yourself some time, then, uh, just create like a social post and just say we're engaged and that'll probably be less exhausting. The next tip is to adopt the mindset that it's still a discernment. And by discernment, we mean, it's still a process of choosing of deciding if this is the right thing for you, if this is the right person for you.

And I think a lot of people assume that just because you're engaged, you're gonna end up getting married, but that doesn't always happen that way. It really is a, a different phase of your discernment of figuring out if this is the right person for you. And so don't lose. Keep that in mind. And if there is a reason where you think that, okay, this isn't the right person for me, or we should at least delay this that's okay.

I think it's extremely courageous to delay or call off a wedding, uh, because there's something big in the relationship that needs to be handled first or something's going on maybe in your life. And of course this needs to be balanced with the fact that children of divorce. Typically we have a lot of anxiety and fear when it comes to relationships.

And so we always need to kind of get to the root of our anxiety, our fear, cuz if you feel anxiety, if you feel fear. Coming close to the wedding day. Don't just assume that, oh, this isn't the right person. It may be the right person. You just may have a lot of anxiety and fear about relationships and that's okay.

So relying on mentors, relying on family and friends, talking through those situations, writing about them can be really helpful to really uncover, okay. What's the root of this fear, the root of the anxiety. Uh, but in some cases there may really be issues in your relationship that would prevent you from moving forward with getting married.

And there's nothing. Wrong with that. Sure. It might be a little bit embarrassing. Sure. It might be a hard thing to do, but it's much better to call off a wedding than to marry someone who you don't think you should be with and then get divorced down the road. The next tip is to build your friendship.

What would you say about this bridge? Yeah, I mean the basis of any marriage is really a friendship as your feelings fade. The thing that is left is your friendship. So working on that is so incredibly important and your feelings will fade. It doesn't mean you won't have feelings at all, but it's not gonna be the excitement, the initial excitement of a dating relationship, it's gonna become a more mature emotion.

And so we need to really learn how to love in the midst of that. CS Lewis had an awesome analogy. He said the posture of friendship is standing side by side. With your friend looking out at the world, pursuing a common purpose. Whereas the posture of lovers is facing each other, looking into each other's eyes.

And so you could have both, but the point here is that you really wanna continue to build your friendship. It's so easy to just focus on the romance, to focus on the feelings, to focus on the affection. But what you wanna do is still build that friendship. And one way that you can do this is just set aside time, where you're not being all cuddly.

You're not being all romantic, but you're just kind of acting as friends. You're doing things together that you enjoy doing with your friends or that you enjoyed before. Maybe you started dating and you're having good conversations, right? It doesn't always need to be super intense romantic, but just have good conversations like you would have with any of your friends.

And I know sometimes people say that you need to be friends with someone before you start dating before you get engaged and or married. And I think there's a lot of value to that. If you don't have that in your relationship, if you weren't friends beforehand, then I really do think you can build your friendship in the midst of your dating relationship or in your engagement, or even when you're married.

In fact, you really need to, and you have to. And so look for those opportunities to build your friendship. Look for those opportunities to, again, not focus so much on the romance and the affection, but just on becoming better friends curious. So what would you say that we did to build a friendship when we were engaged?

I think one of the things I've heard, it said that men bond through doing things through experiences and women typically bond through conversations. And I think it goes both ways. That's a huge generalization, but I found that too absolutely true for me. And so when we did things that one or both of us enjoyed.

I felt like our friendship grew like going to a baseball game or going on a hike in the mountains or doing something adventurous like that things that I love, things that, you know, you love, or at least you're interested in enough to, to do for me. I think that's when our friendship really grew. Again. It wasn't about, you know, being affectionate.

It wasn't about the romance necessarily though. There was a place for that, of course. But I think doing those activities together and, and the conversations we had too, what would you add? Yeah, no, I, I think that's right. Um, I think we shared a lot of experiences together. Like you said, things that we both enjoy.

Yeah. I mean, we both love sports and so that's actually something that we did when we were getting to know each other. We played volleyball and we loved it. And so. I think that's important. I think it's important to kind of go back to your roots and remember what you used to do when you first met, when you were friends in the beginning, or, you know, when you had a crash on each other, what were the things that you enjoyed doing?

Yeah. Those common interests. Yeah. You played volleyball in high school and then a little bit in college and I kind of played sand volleyball growing up. And then in college I played club a little bit and yeah, so we both love volleyball. So yeah. Again, those common interests I think, are really important and really help you to build your friendship and going back to something that bridge just said, encourage each other to have friendships with.

Don't become isolated. You really wanna focus on bringing people kind of into your relationship and going out and spending time with, with other friends, whether that's other couples or just single friends of yours, whatever, spend time with other people. I know wedding planning could be exhausting. And so it could be easy to just wanna like stay in and watch a movie all the time, but don't do that.

Like really make an effort to get out or have people over to spend time with them and, and have some good conversations and build those friendships too, because the more you build friendships with others, I've seen like genuine, good, authentic friendships, the better that your relationship will get as well.

Yeah. And like Joey mentioned earlier, your engagement is still a discernment. And so another great way to continue to discern your relationship is to have your friends meet your significant other and to get to know them and. Get feedback from them and for them to see you guys together and to get their input of what, if they see any red flags, if they see something that, you know, maybe you're, you don't see yourself.

So I think it's incredibly important to be around your friends, both of your friends. Yeah. No, that's a great point. Love can certainly be blinding. And so it's good to get other people's perspectives and feedback, and it's good to just see each other in different scenarios too, in different situations.

Cuz if you're always, you know, spending time at one of your apartments or houses, then you might not really get a good idea of how the other person would act in different scenarios. And so it's good to get outta the house. It's good to spend time with each other in different environments. Just kind of see how things go.

The next step for engagement is to. Dating. Something that I've always loved is that we plan our dates each month. Um, usually it's Joey, but it's usually, you know, once a week, once every two weeks. And we just make sure that we set aside that time to actually go on a date and this doesn't always involve going out to dinner, going out to a movie, spending money, you can be creative, but just setting aside that time, especially when both of your schedules may be so busy and hectic and chaotic with wedding planning.

It's so important to set aside that time. And we'll talk about some creative dates that you can go on that won't break the bank, some cheap date ideas that you can do, especially during engagement, if you're saving for your wedding and for your honeymoon and buying a house, eventually all that stuff, paying off debt.

What we're, we'll get into that in a little bit, but yeah, planning those dates, making it something that's kind of systematic has been helpful for us. I'm such a nerd. I try to be cool. I try to look cool, but I'm really a nerd at, at the core and, uh, every month. Well, uh, I have a reminder, that'll pop up on my phone for me to, to plan our dates.

And part of the reason some couples do like, uh, one night a week is there like date night. And I wish we could do that, but Bridget's a pediatric nurse and her schedule changes every week. So we don't have a consistent schedule where we could do one night a week. So we just plan it out at the start of every month.

I get that reminder of my phone and I plan out the dates and I, when I plan them on, when I put 'em on the schedule, I don't always maybe have an idea of exactly what we'll do, but I'll have like kind of a loose idea. And, uh, I keep a list of potential dates too, when I have a good idea from another couple or wherever, I'll write it down on our list.

And then we'll, we'll go and do that one piece of advice. That was super helpful to me, that I heard from a friend is to go on dates and to promise before you go to not talk about wedding planning, This can be really, really hard, but it was so rewarding at the end of your date because it just took the stress off and it just, it made you remember why you wanna marry this person.

Yeah. Wedding planning is super stressful. It's stupid. In my opinion, I, I kind of hated it to be honest with you. It was just like all this work and build up for just one day and, and I get it, like it's important and it's beautiful and it was so fun and such a good thing, but man, it can be a lot of work and it can just consume your relationship in your life.

And so, yeah, I love that advice taking time kind of away from the wedding planning to, to just focus on your relationship. Yeah. And I would definitely do this, especially closer to the wedding, cuz I feel like you need that time to de-stress together and to talk about important things that don't involve.

Wedding planning. and don't become so focused on the wedding day that you neglect the marriage. It's so important to really keep investing in your marriage, to, to keep growing, to keep developing your relationship. And it can be totally tempting to kind of just put that on the back burner, but it's much more important to have a great marriage than to have a great wedding.

And so just make sure that your priorities are straight. And I think this is maybe a little bit harder for the ladies, if that's okay for me to say, because you know, you've been dreaming about this day since you were a little girl and you want it to be perfect, not to say the guys don't care, but I just don't know for as emotionally attached to it.

And so I think it can be really hard, but equally important to make sure that the marriage is more important than the wedding. and I think we live in a culture where people spend ridiculous amounts of money on their weddings. And then these marriages just fall apart. Like what if we took the money and the time that we spent planning the wedding and invested that in our marriage, invested that in counseling, invested that in reading good books and going on trips, doing things together, uh, as a married couple or even an engaged couple that would help you to grow.

I can't help, but think that our divorce rate in the us and around the world would be much less. The next tip is related, and that is to grow together, keep growing together and grow together in all different aspects of life, whether that's your spiritual life, emotionally, intellectually, you wanna continue growing together.

And again, not just growing in your relationship, but just growing in general. And one way to do that is just by consuming good content to strengthen your relationship and to strengthen each of you as individuals. And, you know, listen to this podcast right now is one way to do that. But another thing that's been so helpful for me and for bridge too.

And our relationship is just reading good books, reading good books. And so we just have a few that we recommend that would be good for an engaged couple to, to. And if you don't get them all done during your engagement, that's okay. These are so good books. And so, uh, we'll have all of these in the show notes.

So don't feel like you need to write them all down, but, uh, if there's one that jumps out at you, then, uh, get after it, go ahead and download the. Audible book, go ahead and, and buy it on Amazon. But, uh, but here they are. The first one is the five love languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. And we talked about that in episode 21, and really it's all about learning how to make your significant other feel loved and how to help them love you in return.

The next book is saving your marriage before it starts by Dr. Les and Dr. Leslie parrot. These are two psychologists, a man, and a woman, their husband and wife. They both have the name, Leslie, which is hilarious. And this book is all about just practical advice on how to build a strong foundation even before you're married, but after as well, there's just a lot of good stuff.

It's very research based. And so pick this one up. I highly recommend I've read this a couple times. Love it every time the next one is by the same married couple, and that is love. Talk. This is all about how to communicate well, especially in the midst of conflict, you'll learn about your personalities and kinda how you solve problems and how you're most likely to end up fighting and how to deal with that.

The next book is men, women, and the mystery of love by Dr. Edwards in this book focuses more on like the philosophical foundation of love, like explaining, like what is love to begin with, how do you love someone in an authentic way? And it also gets into the practicals. And so this one is really good. It comes from a little bit of a different angle than the other books by the psychologists, but it really gives a lot of practical advice on how to love and continue loving your spouse in marriage and not just kind of growing distant and growing apart as so many couples do.

The seven levels of intimacy by Matthew Kelly. And this book is really all about how intimacy works, how, you know, sharing a part of yourself, letting someone in how that all works. So a lot of, again, practical insights in that book as well. Next book is a severe mercy by Sheldon van Hawkin. And this one, man, such a beautiful story, a story about a couple, and it will help you really see what a strong marriage looks like.

What a really beautiful love looks like. And I think so often, especially those of us who come from broken homes, we don't really know what it looks like. And so we need to see concrete examples of good strong marriages. And this one, even though it's through a book, we'll give you an idea of how beautiful love can actually be.

And lastly, the jeweler shot by Carol VO. Uh, Carol VO Tiwa later became Pope John Paul II. And he's just this brilliant mind, this philosophical deep mind, but he was also able to make things simple and some of his writing's complex, but this one is actually a play he wrote, and it's just really a beautiful meditation on love and marriage.

So check out those books. Those will all be in the show notes. We'll tell you how to access those at the very end. One thing that can be. A struggle. I know for couples we dealt with this is reading a book together. It can be hard, especially if you're, you know, living in two separate places, it can be challenging to kind of read the book together and then make time to discuss it too.

So there's a few different options that we just thought through and laid out for you guys that may potentially work for you. So hear them out. So the first option is you can buy two books, either the physical book or the audio book, and just read them together at the same time. That's the one option.

Second option. You can buy one book and you can switch off reading chapters. So maybe you have the same audible app, right? Both you can log in and after reading the chapter, you would kind of teach each other. Tell each other, the main points and then the other person would take over and teach the main points.

And you remember, I don't have the research before me, but you remember so much more of what you tell so much more of what you teach. And so this is a really great method that can work for you. The third option is to buy one book, again, either the physical book or the audio book, and to read to each other.

Again, this is good. If you have more time in your hands, but it could be really challenging if you both are, are really busy, but the most important thing is to discuss your takeaways and to make changes in your life and in your relationship, like it's good to read about these things. It's good to think about them, but if they don't actually change your life, if they don't actually impact your.

It's kind of a waste of time, so make sure to discuss them. It doesn't need to take forever to do that. If you're not someone who naturally loves deep conversations or having discussions, then give this a shot, keep it simple and make a plan to implement this stuff in your life. Again, doesn't need to be complicated, keep it simple, but it really comes down to what do you put into action in your life?

All right. So the next tip that we have for you guys is to get coaching. So this could be getting a mentor, couple going to counseling, going to friends, um, but to get help when you guys need it. And even if you don't have like an extreme need or there's a big struggle in your relationship, it can just be so good to learn from someone who's actually coached couples.

Or a couple themselves who've gone through some of the stuff that you're going through. Yeah. So for us, we actually started to go to counseling when we were about a year, a little over a year into our marriage. And it was something that we had talked about many, many times before, but we just didn't take the steps to do it.

Yeah. We were having some struggles, just dealing with conflict, communicating well, when there was something that we disagreed upon. And so we knew that we needed help, but, uh, a lot of it was preemptive. It was something that we wanted to get ahead of instead, letting get. Get outta hand, we wanted to kind of tackle it at the beginning.

And so don't be afraid if there's not like a big struggle in your relationship to, to go and to learn some skills about handling conflict, about communicating well about really building a strong relationship. Yeah. And for myself, I had never been to counseling, so it was something that was definitely scary and I didn't know what to expect, but Joey, he was able to push me in the right direction and encourage me to go.

And I'm so thankful that we did go because. Of our counseling. We did learn a lot of concrete tools of how to handle conflict of how to communicate better. And for that I'm very, very thankful. And one of the things we learned in counseling, it actually kind of surprised me, cuz again, I'd been through counseling up to that point, but never marriage constantly, of course.

And one of the things that the counselor did instead of just focusing on our conflict and how to resolve that and given us skills to do that, I kinda expected him to do that. I kinda expected him to say, you know, talk about this or, or do that in this situation. But instead of doing that, he actually asked us about our marriage overall kind of holistically.

And he really focused on the foundation of it. And so he asked us like, are you spending time talking together? Like what happens at the end of the day after work? Are you going on dates? Are you having heart to heart conversations where you're sharing your feelings? And so instead of, again, just kind of fixing a symptom in our relationship, which was the conflict.

He really went to the root and tried to fix that. And so he encouraged us again, like we said before to go on dates regularly to, to have those open conversations, to spend time together at night, after a long Workday. And so what he was really saying is that you need to focus more on making your relationship strong than trying to solve every problem that comes up.

And what you'll find is if you do that, if you focus on making your relationship strong, making things go, right, some of those problems will kind of just resolve themselves or they won't even come up to begin with. And when there is a real issue, though, it may be tense, though. There may be conflict, you'll be better able to handle.

And one thing to remember about conflict too, since we're talking about it is from Dr. Les and Leslie parrot, who I mentioned before, who wrote saving your marriage before it starts, they have this great line and they say conflict is the price you pay for intimacy. Conflict is the price you pay for intimacy.

And basically saying that conflict can be an incredible growth opportunity to go deeper in your relationship. Because when you grow close to someone, you're inevitably gonna have conflict, no doubt, but it's by working through that conflict together, even if there's strong emotions that allows you to build a stronger relationship.

And typically, especially people who come from broken homes, we don't see conflict like that. We have typically seen conflict lead to permanent separation, and so it freaks us out. And so we can shy away from it. But what we really need to do is kind of press into it. And if we've built trust with our spouse, then conflict actually doesn't need to be this war between two people.

It actually can be a pursuit of truth. Pat ly, a business writer that I follow. He says that when there's trust in a relationship, whether it's a marriage or a business relationship, then trust makes conflict the pursuit of truth. And what he means by that is trust, transforms conflict from just being a war between two people, to really a struggle, to find the best solution.

And so building that trust is essential and then learning how to really press into that conflict. And it's always gonna be uncomfortable. It's never uncomfortable if it's comfortable to you. You're probably a little bit weird for most of us. It's conflict. Isn't super comfortable. It kind of is awkward.

It kind of is weird, but don't be afraid of that. And again, go to counseling. I mentor a couple too. We had a mentor couple when we were engaged through our church and they were really helpful. It was good to just spend time with another married couple who had been married for years and who had some training in kind of leading couples in talking about things that you need to talk about when you're engaged or even before you're engaged.

So that was really helpful. They were a great couple. And so we met with them, uh, a few times before the wedding and it definitely helped us to, uh, to talk through some things that maybe we didn't address on our own. Yeah. We went over something called the focus inventory, F O C C U S. And it was a questionnaire for both of us.

We answered on our own and they had the answers to the questions that we disagreed on. And so we would kind of talk through those questions and see kind of like where each of us. What our thought process was. And so it was great for both of us. We would go over their house. We, you know, would have drinks and a snack.

And, and we went, you know, over, you know, what our thought processes were. Why did we answer this question this way? And it was, it was a lot of great topics. I mean, it went over probably all of the harder ones though. I would say money, conflict, sex. In-laws God. Yeah. Religion, children parenting. And so I would say joy and I both learned a lot from each other.

And from this couple who had been doing it for years through our church. Yeah. That assessment was really helpful in meeting. The couple was helpful. And I realized some things that, you know, I needed to change about myself through, through those meetings, which it was really helpful. And I'm really grateful to that couple spending time with us.

And so if you have that opportunity either through your church, or maybe just a couple that you look up to go ahead and approach them and ask them, Hey, would you mind coaching us? Could we just sit down and have coffee with you? Would you mind coming over for dinner or could we meet you for dinner somewhere and just talk through some relationship stuff, like ask them questions.

How did you build such a good marriage? And those mentor couples I think are, are really, really valuable. And this next tip is a bit controversial and kind of a hot topic. But our advice is that you don't live together before the wedding. And again, I know hot topic and something that really deserves its own episode, but for me going into marriage, I knew that I wanted to make it last.

I did not wanna repeat what I saw in my parents' marriage. And so I looked around, I wanted to learn, okay, how do I make this last, how do I lessen the chance that we will get divorced? And the research is super, super clear on this point, that couples who live together before the wedding have a higher divorce rate.

And I know that might sound ridiculous. It might sound strange, especially if you're hearing that for the first time, but we're gonna link to a bunch of articles, a bunch of research in the show notes. We don't have time to go into all of it, but the research shows that that couples who live together before the wedding have a higher divorce rate.

And you know, that doesn't mean that every couple who lives together before the wedding is gonna get divorced, that's not what we're saying, but the likelihood is much higher. And so if you wanna have the best shot and making your marriage last. Then we suggest strongly that you don't live together before the wedding.

And it's certainly a countercultural thing to do. It's normal to live together. I mean, we know a lot of people who, who do, and so this is certainly something that takes a lot of courage to do. And there's a lot of reasons. I know that couples live together. I don't think people who do are like evil or malicious or anything like that.

I just think maybe they don't, haven't seen the research, they don't know any better. And, and just kind of a funny story about this, because it is kind of odd today, not to live together before you get married. Uh, Bridget has a, has a story about that. Yeah. So I was telling a friend, um, when Joey and I moved out to Denver, we were engaged, but we were not living together.

And so. I just met someone and I told her, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm living with my roommate and she's like, wait, you're not living with your fiance. And I said, no, we're not living together. And then , and then she asked me, she was like, so are you guys gonna live together when you're married? and I looked at her and I was like, uh, I thought she was joking, but she was serious.

So yeah, it's a very comical question. And it's true. It happened. Uh, I did receive that question. Um, yes, we are living together. If you guys were wondering, I just wanted to clarify, uh, we moved in together after we got married, but yeah, it's, I, I love to tell that story. You should have said no. We're we're actually not gonna live together.

Yeah. It's just seen a reaction. The, the next step is to, to talk about the most important things. And we mentioned that that focus inventory that we did, that psychological assessment, the survey that we took that kinda led us through and prompted us to speak about the most important things. And when I say most important things, what I mean is those deepest held beliefs that you have.

So again, talking about God, talking about religion, talking about kids, how many you wanna have, how you wanna parent them talking about your families, in-laws talking about sex, all those topics that may not normally come up in conversation, but are so important to get on the same page on make sure you talk about those things.

And so again, if you have that mentor couple, hopefully you can bring up those conversations with them that can prompt better conversations between you and your significant other either way. Make sure you're talking about these things and for us. One of the big topics of course is sex. So we are both Catholic Christians and we decided to save sex for marriage.

And again, that's a whole nother episode. You can go back and listen to episode 18, 19 and 20. If you want to hear more about that in those episodes, we talk about the virtue of chastity, which sounds like such a foreign thing to someone who doesn't know what it is, but it's just a virtue like courage or honesty that frees you to love.

And the virtue of Chasity is not. Like being prudish or strange or like thinking sex is bad or dirty? No, not at all. We actually think sex is so good and beautiful that we wanna save it for our spouse and just experience it with them. And even if you've made mistakes in the past, you can still do this again, episode 18, 19, and 20, or if you just want to go on YouTube and look up Jason Everett, he has a lot of great content about the virtue of Chasity about why saving sex for marriage can end up making your love so much strong.

And one analogy I've heard is like, sex is like fire in its right context, right? In a fireplace or a fire pit fire is really beautiful. It's really good. But when you take it out of there, it can actually become destructive. And I've seen this in couples, right. They start having sex and they bond on that chemical level, right?

Because sex releases oxytocin in your body and oxytocin is a bonding hormone that is released actually when a mother nurses, her baby too. And one of the effects of oxytocin is that it actually blinds you to the faults of the other person. and this is really good in marriage when there's a lifelong commitment and there can be some personality differences and some annoyances, it can actually blind you to those and help you love each other.

But when you're dating and engaged and you're trying to decide if this is the person you wanna spend the rest of your life with you don't really want that. You wanna see. Clearly. And one thing that can be so tempting for couples is to cover their problems in their relationship, with pleasure with sex.

And that happens even in marriage too. And so if you take sex out of your relationship and I encourage you to do that, if you're having sex now, just try it, try it for a month, try it. If you can, until you get married, like if you're engaged right now, just wait. It will make your wedding night so much more special and beautiful.

I mean, we we've heard stories of couples too, who, you know, they go through the wedding day and they get to the wedding night and it's kind of like any other night, it's not really that special. And they end up just like falling asleep when it's really meant to be this really good and beautiful thing.

And we're not trying to shame couples who are having sex. We're just trying to say, if you want your love to be the most beautiful, the strongest, it can be. Practice this virtue of chastity, again, a radical radical thing. But if you wanna see clearly, if you wanna make a good decision about this person, if you wanna make sure that they're in it for the right reasons, right?

They're not just in it for the sex for the pleasure, but they're actually in it because they love you take sex outta your relationship and just see what happens. And again, Jason Everett is the man for this, look up his videos on YouTube and, and you'll get a really compelling reason and argument of why saving sex for marriage is the thing to do.

Next step. Don't go into marriage with any addictions, especially a porn addiction. Really get help for that. Yeah. I, I know a lot of women who have gone on date, it starts off great. And then. They have these hard conversations. And they said, Hey, I have standards. I have these non-negotiables and one of them is no porn.

And unfortunately these men have picked porn over these women and it's so sad and it breaks my heart that they have made these decisions. And I I've been through that. Like I totally get how addicting and how attractive pornography can. And so I really have a heart for people who do struggle with it.

So to understand that you're not alone, if you do, but you really owe it to yourself and to your future spouse to get help to at least start overcoming this problem in your life before you get engaged and get married, because really porn, what it does is it kills, love. It destroys your ability to love another person.

Because if you think about it, pornography is all about using another person to make yourself feel good. And that is a recipe for disaster in a marriage. And so you really wanna overcome this, or at least start the process and start making some real progress, a few resources for you to do this. Look up, fight the new drug.

We'll include this all in the show notes to make it easy for you guys, but fight the new drug is a great organization that helps people, uh, overcome pornography and really just understand the effects that porn has on you on your brain, on your relationship and on the world. Integrity, restored integrity.

Restored is another one that, uh, helps people overcome pornography and they go at it from a little bit more of a religiou. Standpoint or fight the new drug that I just mentioned. They're completely secular, not religious at all. Matt Fred is a speaker. Uh, he actually works with integrity restore, but he's got his own thing as well.

So look him up on YouTube, Matt Fred. He has some great videos on just really practical advice and practical steps to overcome pornography. Jay Springer is someone I just learned about too, and he's a counselor and a Christian pastor, and he's been working with people. Who've had sex addictions for years, and he has a book called unwanted.

He has an online course, but he has a lot of good wisdom, good insight into this problem and he'll help you to overcome it. And one of the things that he says is we can't just beat our struggles with pornography, beat our Lu into submission. We need to understand. And by understanding it, then we can overcome it.

But so often I think we just push it away and we try to kind of kill it, but then it just comes back again and again and again. And so it's so important to go to the root, to really understand where it comes from and to beat it for good. And if you need a counselor who specializes in helping people overcome pornography addiction, or at really any addiction, whether it's drugs or alcohol, go ahead to ReSTOR.

Dot com slash coaching. Again, that's restored ministry.com/coaching. We're building that network of counselors, who we trust, who we recommend, that you can go to, to get really concrete help on overcoming an addiction, or really any other struggle that you're dealing with in your life. And I think this is especially a, a problem for people who come from broken homes.

And the reason is basic. We go through the trauma of our parents breakup and in an attempt to kind of numb that pain to comfort ourselves. We turn to pleasure. I know that's certainly that was my story. And I've seen this again and again, in people's lives, especially those of us who come from broken homes.

And so you're not really weird if you struggle with this, but you owe to yourself to get over it, to, to beat this. And it's, it's actually possible to get to a point where you don't even desire this stuff anymore. It might be a temptation, but you really won't want it anymore. And you can get there. The next thing we wanted to talk about is money.

So this is such a hot topic because money fights are one of the top reasons for divorce. Hear that again? Money fights are one of the top reasons for divorce. And if you think of your own families, If you think of the reason that your parents separate or divorce, likely there was some tension around money, whether that was the main thing or not money can cause a lot of stress.

And that's especially true when couples are not on the same page when they don't have a plan for their finances, it just results in stress. And just a sense that things are out of control. And when you're going through a crisis, COVID for example, there can be so much extra stress on top of that, especially if you lose your job or maybe you're just going through any hard time.

If you don't have your money in order, then it's gonna add so much more stress onto that already stressful situation. And so our advice to you is just create a plan for your money and to, to create a plan for your money. We recommend turning to Dave Ramsey, and I know not everyone's a huge fan of Dave Ramsey.

There. A lot of people are he's helped a lot of people like millions of people get control of their finances and millions, millions. Millions. Wow. I didn't know that. And so he could help you too. He has these seven baby steps, which I'll list off now, but you can learn more on YouTube or anywhere. We'll link to this in the show notes as well.

But the, the seven baby steps here, they are quickly. The first one is have $1,000 in a starter emergency fund. And that emergency fund is just to put a little bit of cushion between you and life, because something's gonna break. Something's gonna go wrong. You're gonna need money and you shouldn't have to rely on a loan, your parents, or a credit card.

Baby. Step number two is to pay off all your debt except a, your mortgage. What using the debt snowball and the debt snowball is just where you list all of your debts from the smallest to the largest. And you attack that first one with full intensity, right? You're making the minimum payments on all of them, but you attack that first one with any extra money that you can muster until you destroy that.

And once you destroy that debt, then you go to the next one. And so on down the list and some people. Think debt is a way of life, but I'm here to tell you that you don't have to carry debt with you throughout life. And really personal debt can just destroy your finances because it just eats away at your income and eats away at your savings.

And so it's so good to get debt out of your life for good. Maybe step number three is three to six months of expenses in savings. So this is looking at okay, how much does it take for you to live for one month? Like, what are your expenses for just one month? And then you take that in times three or times six or four or five, whatever you take that.

And you can see, okay. If I lost my job today, and I just had to live off of savings. This is how long I would last. And for most Americans, over 70%, we just live paycheck to paycheck. I think it's actually 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, which is just so scary. It's such a scary place to be. And so having that emergency fund will put you in a good spot where if something goes wrong, if you lose your job, if you get sick, if something happens like COVID, for example, then you'll be able to live off of your savings for a little while.

And the difference between three months and six months briefly about that three months, the lesser time is if you have, you know, a really stable job. Or maybe you're married and both of you are working, right. You don't need as much saved up because you have a lot of money coming in. And also, you know, you're pretty secure in your job.

Six months would be someone, if you're single, you know, you're living on your own. Maybe your job is not the most secure, like if you're in a sales role or something like that. And so in that case, you want to go more towards that six month mark, but it's really up to you to decide kinda what you're comfortable with, but that emergency fund, man, it brings so much peace.

And when there's problems that come up, like when you have a flat tire, when something goes wrong in your car, when you need to fly somewhere kind of in an emergency. You can just use the money. There's so much peace there. So that's baby step three. And then there's baby step three B. And that is to save at least 10% of a down payment on a home.

20% is ideal, but at least 10% and 20% helps you avoid private mortgage insurance. And that's a percentage basically of the value of the house. So if you buy like a 200 or $300,000 house each month, you're gonna pay a percentage of the value of the house to private mortgage insurance. And what that insurance does is it basically just protects the bank in case you can't pay it off.

And so really it has no value to you, but if you don't put at least 20% down, then you'll have private mortgage insurance. Baby step number four is invest 15% of your income for retirement. Dave Ramsey goes into this much more, but basically we wanna be investing. We wanna be strategic about our money and making it grow.

And so investing 15% of your income could even make you a millionaire by the time you're retire. It's kind of insane. There's a lot more to this, a lot of math and calculations, but this is super, super effective. Baby. Step number five is college funding. So you'd save money for your kids and there's different ways to do that.

Baby. Step number six is to pay off your home early, the average millionaire, the average everyday millionaire, right? Ordinary people that you wouldn't really think are millionaires, but they are millionaires. They pay off their home in about 10 years. And so attacking your home payment, um, can bring a lot of freedom as well.

And then baby steps seven is just to build wealth and to give money away just to be outrageously generous, which honestly is the most rewarding thing. So those are the seven baby steps. Again, will link to those in the show notes. Really the starting point of getting control of your finances to making a plan for your money is creating a budget.

And I know some of you listening, you're like, oh no, I am not about that. I get it. I get it like budgets. Aren't a fun thing, but really it's a tool that helps you to have control of your money. And budgeting together is such an important foundation for your marriage because you're getting on the same page when it comes to your money.

Again, which can be such a stressor, which can be one of the leading causes of divorce. But if you do a budget, you're basically creating a plan for your money and it's not. Dave Ramsey always says that a budget is not a straight jacket. It's a guardrail it's really freedom to spend. And it's more of an art.

It's not necessarily a science, so we'll take some time for you to get it down. But Dave Ramsey will teach you all about how to budget. and just sharing a little bit of our story, our, our struggles with money. When I was a, a boy, when I was like 14, I started tracking like every dollar that I spent, again, such a nerd, uh, I majored in finance and college.

And so this stuff is just kind of in my blood, in my DNA. And, and I like it a lot. It's, it's kind of like a game to me, but Bridget was on a different page. Yeah. So I hated everything about money. I hated the word budget. I hated the word debt, student loan debt, everything about money. I hated. So it, it actually to be vulnerable here, it took us, it took myself about a year to talk about how much I had in student loans with Joey.

And that was a big step in our relationship. And Joey was very patient with me. And he walked with me. And the first step that we took, which was probably the hardest step is that we sat down and we started a budget. And for myself, I was very against budgeting. I kind of had a loose interpretation of what a budget was.

But we do follow Dave Ramsey. So we do do the, every dollar budget. It is an app. You can also get it online, which we go over every month. And it's helpful for both of us to use myself as an example. I was someone that hated the idea of a budget. Never thought I could do a budget. And here I am with my husband doing a budget every month and going over it every month.

And now when I go out shopping, cuz I am the spender in the relationship, Joey is the saver. So every time I go out, I, I, I feel a lot more free actually, which is kind of funny that we have a budget and I feel more free in a budget, but it's, it can happen. It's true. And I just encourage you all, who may be feeling the same that I did to just take that step.

It's so helpful. It's. It's very freeing to be vulnerable about your money situation with your significant other and to go over together. Because when you marry the other person, you combine your finances. It's not an a and a B team. You're the same team together and it will make your marriage stronger.

It absolutely will. Yeah. I mean, I hear about other couple's situations and you know, the wife pays for a, B and C bills and the husband pays for de and F bills and then whatever money they have left over, they use it for themselves. The first time I heard that it actually made me really sad because the point of our relationship is to do everything together.

You're not. Bridge and Joey, you are a couple together and your money is together. Yeah. And you, and you need to face your money problems together. There's no way out the easy way out is to do it by yourselves, the hard way, but the best way is to do it together. And I highly, highly recommend that. Yeah.

You've really come a long way. And I'm really proud of you. I have to say it's been a journey, but it's been a really good thing. And I can't say you said I've been really patient. I, I can't say I've been patient whole time, but what was your number one fear going into marriage about money. Yeah. But, but what was one of the stressors going into marriage?

Yeah, definitely. One of the stressors I think was kind of repeating what I saw in my parents' marriage. They really did not have control of their. Things didn't go well for them money wise. Uh, even though, you know, at certain points, we were never rich by any means, but, um, my, my dad made a good living, but my parents didn't really manage their finance as well.

And they'd be the first to tell you that I'm not trying to, you know, reveal something about them. They'd be the first to tell you that they didn't really have good habits. They didn't have a good plan for their money. They didn't stick to that plan. And so it just caused so much stress, so many fights that I saw growing up.

And I just knew I do not want that. I don't want the stress that comes from that. I wanna have control of it. I didn't wanna see things in my own marriage get out of control because money was such a point of tension. And so, yeah, that, that was a big fear of mine that we would kind of repeat that or that money would be something that we never quite agreed on.

Never got on the same team on. And it would just end badly. So it was important for me to really get on the same page, which we started, uh, a little bit while we were dating mainly during engagement, but then even after we got married, we kept working on it. And that, I think that's when we grew the most.

And I think for bridge, I think one of the biggest things that made her change was seeing other people manage money really poorly. And to understand that, no, this is like really important. This is not a trivial thing that you can just kind of ignore. You need to face this sooner or later. Yeah. I mean, I I've seen couples kind of laugh off really serious situations and it broke my heart and it made me realize how important money is and how important it is to be on the same page about money and what they can do to your relat.

Like Joey said it. I think that was the point in our relationship that made us grow closer. Yeah. And now it's really not a big stressor at all. It's kind of fun. It's like this game we play together every month. Like, okay, Hey, can we go out tonight to dinner? Do we have money in the budget? Yeah. And if we do, we go and that's awesome.

Again, it's freedom to spend, like you're saving so that you can spend you're saving so that you can do something with that money. It's not just saving for the sake of saving, you're saving for some good reason. And you'll be surprised how easy it is to say no to some things. When you have a good reason for saying no for all of you out there who this may be a struggle for you, especially at first, something that we did is we would.

these goals for ourselves. Like at the end of this baby step, we will buy, I think what we bought a big screen TV, cuz we didn't have a TV for the first year of marriage. So we bought a TV and then at the next baby step, we wanted to plan a trip. So we planned a trip and all of that is because we were dedicated and we sacrificed.

But in the end it was, it was very much worth it. Yeah. And you can do it, especially if you're discouraged about money right now. Just want you to hear that. There's a lot of hope. There's been some really rough situations that people have fought back from and you can do the same. And one thing I wanted to say Bridget's debt.

When she finally told me it didn't scare me, it really didn't. I was actually just excited to tackle it together. I saw it as a challenge that we can take down together. So, what do you do if you're someone like me where, you know, your significant other isn't exactly on board, on the same page with you about money?

Uh, four things. First thing I would say, explain why it's important to you. You know, like you heard me say. I saw what happened in my parents' marriage because of the way that they didn't have really a plan for their money, they didn't manage their money. Well, and it just led to stress just led to other problems.

Tell your significant other that say, Hey, this is why it's so important to me. It's not just cuz I want to control you or anything like that. It's really just because I want freedom. The next thing clearly define why you're doing it. So it's, it's related to that first point, but this is more doing it as a couple saying, okay, this is why we are doing it together.

And one thing that can be helpful here that Dave Ramsey talks about is just creating a dream together for your life. But even something in particular like Bridget mentioned, okay, we wanna go on a trip or we wanna do buy this or we wanna buy that. We're not gonna do it until we reach this certain point.

In our journey, right? The, on this baby step or after this baby, let's say so dream together, motivate yourselves in that way, work towards kind of a common goal and make that your why and remind yourself of the why, especially when it gets hard, cuz it can take years to do some of this stuff. So you really need to stay motivated.

Keep an eye on the goal and keep moving forward. Next one. Be patient. Be patient. It really pays off to be patient. You're not gonna change your significant other by forcing them to listen to you, forcing them to, to do something. You might need to give them a little bit of a push that's different, but be patient with them, give them grace and just kind of be along with them for the ride and continue doing the good things that you're doing.

Those good habits. You have to continue those don't just abandon them, maybe cuz their significant other isn't on the same page, but slowly. Patiently try to influence them to, to change. And one practical tip at the end here, slowly feed good content to the other person, give them articles, videos, podcasts that talk maybe about something that they're dealing with right now, when it comes to money, sometimes it can be better to have someone else from the outside, outside of your relationship to speak into that issue.

And the other person may be more likely to change. Then the next tip is combine your money after the wedding. So we recommend, and Dave Ramsey talks about this a lot. Don't fully combine your finances until after the wedding. And it's totally fine. If you have like a joint bank account for the wedding itself, if you're both paying for it, that's totally fine.

You can open a new account and both contribute money to it. Or you can just use money from one of the accounts and give the other person access. That totally works too. That's actually what, what we did. And one thing that is really helpful that I've heard Dave Ramsey say a lot is. Don't buy a house together until after the wedding.

And there's a few reasons for this, but one is, there's so many stories out there of broken engagements, right? Engagements, such as ended. And then you have this house to deal with. That's under both of your names and that's just a huge stressor as well. And so just wait of you can now, you know, if one of you buys a house or maybe you're a little bit older and you're able to buy a house, that's totally fine.

There's some exceptions to maybe that hard and fast rule of like, don't buy a house. But, uh, what we're saying is like, don't buy it together because if it somehow doesn't work out and you don't end up getting married, then it will save you a lot of headache. Next step, realize that your family may not be able to help with the wedding costs.

Some families can, some can't and that's even true, regardless of if your parents are divorced or not. But the research shows that children of divorced people come from broken homes are less likely to receive. Financial support for college from their parents. And so the same logic applies to the wedding.

Like you're less likely to receive money for the wedding. And the reason for that is divorce. Rex families financially, like completely Rex them. It's so expensive. It can be so expensive to go through a divorce. The attorney fees, the court costs. It's just ridiculous. And so just for practical reasons, your family may not be able to contribute toward the wedding.

And so you may need to do a less expensive wedding or maybe, you know, save up money for a little bit longer, whatever the case, just understand that they might not be able to help with those wedding costs. Another tip having to do with housing rent for the first year of marriage, my financial advisor, our financial advisor.

He told me that he said it's best to rent for the first year of marriage for, for a bunch of reasons. Dave Ramsey repeats this too, but of course, if you already have a home, that's totally fine, but it's so wise to just rent for a year because owning a house is a big deal and being married is a big deal.

And so that first year of marriage can involve a lot of adjustments. And if you're taking care of a house, it totally, it can be done, but it's just gonna add more stress onto it. And so. Typically for most people it's best to rent for that first year of marriage, especially maybe you're checking out a new area or you're figuring out where you wanna live.

It can give you more time to have those important conversations and to figure things out. Because again, planning a wedding is tough. It is stressful. And so I can't imagine buying a house at the same time. So put this off, do it a year after rent for the first year. And just practically speaking is if you guys aren't living together before you're married, that first year of marriage is gonna give you a lot of insight into each other and make you think about different things that you might have not realized beforehand.

And so going into buying a house together, that information will be really, really helpful. Yeah. Cuz maybe you're pregnant. Maybe you end up having a baby. So. Things are gonna change quickly. And so buying a house on that new information will be a lot more helpful for you both. If we've even had conversations, talking about like what we'd want in a house.

And I can't imagine having had that conversation during engagement, it just would've been super stressful, just overload. And I was doing my MBA during our engagement when we were planning wedding. So that really took a lot of time. So there's certainly, I think are some exceptions to. But typically the best thing is to rent for the first year of marriage.

Now, if you're older and you have money and you wanna buy a house during that first year of marriage, nothing wrong with that. But typically for most people renting the first year of marriage is best. The next money tip is to, to keep an eye out for these really common money failures for a couple. So the first thing that comes to my mind is that people spend more money than they make.

And I see this a lot. It breaks my heart. People are spending money on this and that, and they go into debt. They, you know, spend it on their credit cards. And so the biggest takeaway here is just to live within your means. And that is such a countercultural saying right now, because everyone wants the nicest thing.

So. The bigger things. They want the most updated things. They want the cutest house with the cutest furniture and you know, all of the things with that. And so my biggest advice with that is just your budget. It helps you do that. And so you can plan for it, but it may take some time. And that's the sacrifice that you'd have to make with that.

And if you live on less than you make, you will be financially free. And it may take some time because if you have some debt, you have to work through, totally get that. But if you live on less than you make, you will be financially free. Money will not stress you out. And I think our just our generation really struggles with that for one reason or another, we just don't understand what it's like to, to live within your means and living within your means can mean cutting down on your expenses.

Right? Not going out as much. Not maybe having as nice of a car, not living in it as nice of a place, but it also can mean just increasing your income. And typically you'd want to do both increase your income and decrease your expenses if you can. But like I said, living within your means is so basic. It's so foundational to financial freedom.

So you really have to do that. And it's such a common struggle for couples and just individuals to, to spend more than you make. The, the next one is comparison. Comparison. Yeah. And comparison is so big nowadays. Um, and especially, I, I believe with women, I believe that we compare our clothes, our shoes, our handbags, our makeup, um, our homes with each other.

And one way a practical way of. Dealing with that is just to practice gratitude. So gratitude every day for what you have. Do you have a house over your head? Do you have food on the table? Do you have clothes on your back? Those are just things that we take for granted. And to remember that every single day is huge and there's always gonna be someone who has better or nicer things.

So you're really just chasing kind of this infinite target. That's always gonna keep moving up the hill that you'll never catch. And so you'll never be happy by constantly comparing yourself. So I love that practicing gratitude is really the way to be content where you're at. And that doesn't mean you can't work to have a better life or work to have nicer things, not at all, but it means that you're content where you're at in the moment while still working toward your goal.

The next thing is just racking up. So nowadays through student loans, through credit cards, through different purchases, you can rack up debt very, very easily. Um, and then with that debt, it adds stress and it, it sucks money out of your pocket. So you don't have the money to, to spend on the things that you really need.

Yeah. And what we mean by sucking money out of your pocket, as you know, debt has interest and interest keeps growing, especially if you don't pay your debts off. And so it really destroys your ability to, to build wealth. So racking up debt, by buying a car that you really can't afford running an apartment that you can't afford going out too much, all those things and putting it on a credit card, all those things will just end up sucking money out of your account, sucking money out of your pocket, more than just the thing you spent it on because of the interest.

The next one is credit cards. So this is a hot topic and a controversial one, but it's so easy to spend money with credit cards. And there's actually, uh, a study that showed you actually spend more money with a credit card. You're willing to pay a higher price with a credit card as opposed to, to cash or debit card.

And even if you're doing it for the points, let's say you want airline miles. It's still dangerous. This study found that people were willing to pay up to 64% more for something. When they purchase on a credit card, that's just insane. So even if you're disciplined with paying off your card every month, you still are tempted to, to spend more money than you normally would.

If you didn't have the card. And the last common money failure for couples is just to spend way too much money on cars, right. To buy a new car. With an expensive car payment, like I've heard stories of people buying really nice trucks and their truck is like more expensive every month than the apartment that they live in.

It can really get insane. And so what we recommend of course, is just buying a solid used car. Don't take out a loan, save up the money for it. And I know this can be hard in certain situations, but you certainly can do it. There's people who've done it on, on far less than you. And so save up money. You can get a good car for a few thousand dollars and then save more money, sell that car, get a nicer car.

And so on. Dave Ramsey talks about this a lot, but cars can really suck money out of your account. And so to avoid that really buy a car within your means, and you can always upgrade later. And when it comes to dealing with money, the really best resource we've found as we've mentioned is Dave Ramsey. And if you wanna take his course, you can go to financial peace university.com.

Or FPU. Dot com and we'll link to this in the show notes, but again, fpu.com financial peace university.com. Once you're on there, you could actually start a free trial. As of right now, there's a free trial that you can do on there to, to work through the course. And you won't have to pay a cent. And if you want to continue it later, uh, you can, you, you can't pay for it.

And I think it's totally worth it, but, uh, but that this will really give you good content, good guidance, and help you create a plan for your money. So you can have financial freedom. And once you start that trial, you're just gonna watch the videos and do the action steps that they tell you to do. Now, if you're not ready for that, if you don't wanna start the trial, that's totally fine.

You can just YouTube Dave Ramsey. He has. Radio show every day you can watch it live. You can watch recaps. Uh, if you have specific questions, just type in Dave Ramsey, and then your question into YouTube and, and I'm sure he's covered it on his radio show. He's been doing this for like 25 years. Another thing is on his website.

They have a free money assessment. It's a way for you to start creating a customized plan for your money. And you can find this by going to Dave ramsey.com/get started again. Dave Ramsey Ramsey is R a M S E y.com/get started. And you don't need to agree with everything. Dave says to benefit from him. I, I encourage you to really hear him out because there's a lot of wisdom when it comes to money, but you don't need to agree with everything he says to get something out of his guidance.

Okay. So the last tip that we have when it comes to engagement is to invest money into your marriage. So this is related to everything we just talked about, but to really put money into your marriage, again, not just the wedding, but also the marriage. And what we encourage you to do is to have a budget for your date nights and have a budget also for buying content, buying books and videos and courses that will help you grow as a couple money to go to counseling and so on.

So yeah, so some creative, cheap date ideas that we have are there's a list of them. So go on a picnic, go on a hike, go on a bike ride. Do a night in play, some board games, play cards, go on a drive, go somewhere different that you haven't been before. Um, cook, make new dishes together. Do a day in watch movies shows documentaries.

You could also go to a rerun movie theater and we have one of these in Denver. It's called Elvis theaters. And basically they get movies. They are $4 a ticket. Yeah, it's super cheap. So they get these movies that are out of theaters, but not yet, maybe on like the streaming services like Netflix, I think it's even $3 during the day $4 at night.

So it's just like such a steal. So maybe there's something like that in your city. Uh, coffee shop dates too are great. You know, you buy a coffee. And that's it, it's like less than 10 bucks for both of you. And if you live in an apartment complex that has some amenities you can make use of those, like if there's a basketball court, a tennis court, a swimming pool, things like that, you can make use of those.

And those are free dates. There may be some museums in your area that maybe have free days go to those check 'em out the zoo. Some zoos are free, um, explore different cities. So if you live near. A city that you haven't been to go check it out, go on walking tours. Some of them are free. Yeah. On our way.

Back from our honeymoon, we stopped in Madrid, Spain, and we were able to do, uh, a free tour of Madrid. And it was, it was actually a pretty good tour. And we, we gave them a tip at the end, but overall it was. Pretty darn affordable. So, uh, yeah, there's certainly a lot you can learn and you could even just Google, you know, cheap or free dates and then the name of your city or in, you know, your city in Chicago, in Denver, in San Diego, wherever you're at.

And, uh, I'm sure there are a lot of ideas of, uh, of cheap dates. You can also go on brewery tours. If, if you're, you know, of age and you like beer, then go on a brewery tour, distillery tours, if you're into to whiskey and things like that. One thing that, that we've done is bowling went on Groupon and got like a really good deal to, to bowl.

And we would go out with some friends and it was a really good time. We haven't done this one as much, but I know there's some places where you can go dancing. Like we have friends who are. So different types of dancing. Uh, I know some of my cousins grew up dancing and you know, whether it's like swing dancing or, or something else you can go to, uh, to maybe like a dancing club.

Yeah. And then also on Groupon, you can find Groupons for escape rooms, with friends, especially if you get a good amount of your friends to go, it's really not that expensive at the end of the day. And they are a ton of fun. Um, something that we also have in Denver and in the mountains is that we have outdoor movie theaters.

There are a ton of fun. They usually are a little bit cheaper than your regular movie theater. And it's just a different experience for sure. You can bring your own snacks, your own drinks, kind of making a date night. It's a lot of fun. And then something, if you guys have a backyard of your own bonfires, I love a good bonfire in the fall.

That can always be a nice fun date night in, and then I know this is probably not something going on right now with COVID, but sports, Joey and I love sports. So obviously right now we can't go to sports games, but maybe you just go to a park and you play sports together, whatever that is. You learn more about each other.

Yeah, we got into tennis. It was never something that either of us really. Before we were married, but we got into tennis. Uh, someone gifted us to tennis rockets and some tennis balls. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was great. I think Justin and Lewis, my, my friends, they, they gave me thanks guys, if you listening. So it was, uh, it was a great sport for us, both to get into cuz it was a way that we can spend time together and be too competitive.

Ano another thing too is if you're more artsy, if you're not into sports, then make use of that. You can make candles, you can paint, you can draw, you can do all sorts of things and you know, you, you might need to invest a little bit more money into something like that initially. Or you can find a group on and go do that at some studio.

But, uh, but that can be a really good bonding experience and something that's fun yard games. So, oh man, we, we, we like yard games. Whether it's can jam or spike ball. That's really fun. So we love yard games, and those are simple. And once you have 'em, you know, maybe costs a little bit money to buy 'em or maybe you just make 'em, uh, if you can, you know, you can make like a corn hole set, but, uh, but those are really fun going walks.

We like going on walks. We like watching the sunset, especially over the mountains where we live. Uh, we can go down the street to the park and get a good view of the mountains. It's really beautiful. Another idea is camping, you know, get a group of people go camping. And lastly minigolf so I know some people call it putt putt.

That's just strange, but minigolf is, is such a good thing. And I always love, uh, beating Bridget and minigolf excuse me. No, I she's beat me once before. No, no, no. no, no, she she's beat me more than once. It's pretty humbling. She she's good at it. And, and I don't like to. So guys, there's a lot more that can be said about engagement in general.

There's a lot more date ideas that you can look up, but I hope this is helpful. This is just some stuff that we wish we would've known going into engagement. And so I hope we can kind of pass this on to you from our experience. One last thing to add. We didn't really touch on the length of an engagement.

We typically recommend eight to 12 months. We think that's enough time to plan a wedding to prepare your relationship, and also to discern if this is the person that you do wanna marry. And there's people that I trust who say that six months is enough. So I respect that. I would say that's on the short end.

I think on the long end, going up to 18 months is fine, but really anything longer than that is just too long. Unless you have some big reason to do it. If you've discern well, if. Relied on the people that you trust for objective feedback. And you know that this is the person you want to commit to. Don't let fear hold you back and don't wait for the perfect time or the perfect wedding, because honestly, marriage is a carefully planned leap of faith.

It's never going to be perfect. And so our encouragement to you is just, don't wait too long to close out the show. Our challenge to you is once this episode, Take a minute to think about what stood out to you and then talk to your significant, other about those things. Talk to your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your fiance, your spouse, about those things.

Ask them some good questions, get a good conversation, going go out for coffee, go on a walk, whatever. Just make some space for you to, to talk about it, share your thoughts and then pick one thing that you're gonna do in the next week and execute on it. And if you pick something bigger and you need more than a week, totally fine.

Just make sure to set a deadline and to focus on one thing. If you focus on more than one thing, chances are you're not gonna do it. That's it. That's our challenge too. And like I mentioned, in part two, we're gonna talk about the wedding day. We're gonna get into wedding planning, touch on some challenges that come along with being from a broken home on your wedding day and in the wedding planning process.

And we're gonna talk about some good things to know for the first year of marriage. The resources mentioned are in the show notes ever stored ministry.com/ 23. Again, that's restored ministries, just singular ministry, singular.com/ 2 3 23. Thank you guys so much for listening. We do this all for you, and if this has been useful, please share this podcast with someone that you know, who could really use it.

Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

Restored

Restored creates content that gives teens and young adults the tools and advice they need to cope and heal after the trauma of their parents’ divorce or separation, so they can feel whole again.

https://restoredministry.com/
Previous

The Key to Ultimate Wholeness
Next

Abuse, Addiction, and How I've Found Healing from my Parents' Divorce