#024: Tips for Engagement, Wedding, and 1st Year of Marriage - Part 2
If you come from a broken home, planning a wedding and getting married throws some unique challenges at you. Joey shares what he and his wife, Brigid, wish someone told them about engagement, the wedding, and the first year of marriage.
By listening, you’ll hear this and more:
Challenges you’ll face planning your wedding if you’re from a broken family or you’re marrying someone who is - and how to deal with them
Wedding day anxiety and what to do about it
Things to keep in mind about your parents for your wedding day
How to handle disappointments, frustrations, and conflict in your first year of marriage
One of the major pitfalls most newlyweds fall into
Part 2 of 2. Listen to Part 1 here.
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Brigid Pontarelli
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
If you heard the last episode, you know that my wife, Bridget, and I 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 we just wanna share our experience and some practical advice from the practical wisdom that we learned along the way.
And so by listening to this episode, here's what you're gonna get out of it. We'll touch on some of the challenges that you'll likely face in planning your wedding. If you come from a broken family or maybe you're marrying someone who comes from a broken home and how to deal with them, we'll get some quick tips on wedding planning and planning the honeymoon as well.
We'll talk about wedding day anxiety and what to do about it. I, I think a lot of us who come from broken homes deal with this, cuz there's a lot of fear attached to love and marriage. We'll get into some things that keep in mind about your parents on your wedding day. Really trying to encourage you guys to have some empathy for them and put yourself in their shoes.
Then we'll get into the first year of marriage, kinda what to expect from that first year of marriage. And some things they'll look out for along the way. We'll mention how to handle some disappointments, frustrations and conflict that are inevitably gonna come up eventually. And we also talk about one of the major pitfalls that most newlyweds fall into.
And so if you want more of. Keep listening.
Welcome to the Restored podcast, helping you cope, heal, and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce or separation. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pontarelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 24 and we're in the middle of our love and relationship series. Research shows that the biggest effects from our parents' divorce, our experience in a romantic relationships.
Why is that? 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, actual tips and expert advice on how to find and build. Authentic love.
Now this is part two of two in part one. The last episode that was episode 23, we permanently focused on engagement. We talked a little bit about dating, but it was mostly engagement. And as you heard at the top of this show in this episode, we're gonna focus on the wedding wedding planning and some of the challenges that are gonna come up for you.
If you come from a broken family, we'll also get into the first year of marriage. Now, if you haven't. Part one, I encourage you to listen that maybe do that now, but if you don't want to totally fine. You can just listen to this episode and you're still gonna get a lot out of it. Also. I wanted to say, I'm really sorry, but Bridget, actually, wasn't able to record this episode with me.
We had planned for that, but due to our schedules and the deadline for this episode, we weren't able to make it happen. And so I'm really sorry about that. But Russ assured that we actually developed this content together. And so I'm just gonna be the one delivering it, but know that Bridget was involved with.
As well. And so with that, I wanna just dive in to talk about the wedding. And the, the first thing to talk about is just some wedding planning tips that we learned along the way. And the first thing of course, like we mentioned in last episode is don't let the wedding become more important than your relationship and your future marriage.
I we see this all the time and we even fell into this too. The wedding day seems to take over your relationship. You stop going on dates, you stop having good conversations. You stop having fun together, and you just focus on the wedding. And man, this is so dangerous for your relationship, especially if this gets really serious.
And so just make sure you're investing time, investing money into your relationship into your marriage. In the last episode, again, we went into this a bit more. I'm not gonna get into it as much, but just remember. Don't let the wedding take over and ruin your relationship. And this tip might be pretty obvious, but do as much planning as possible, far in advance.
And I know a lot of people, you know, like to wait till last minute or they don't end up getting things done until the last minute you can probably think of back in school or work. And so one thing you can do to help you actually get things done is just set some deadlines and ask some of your. To, to keep you accountable.
So, you know, even if you need to make some artificial deadlines, like, oh, this has to be done at the end of this month, even though you could potentially wait like two months more, that's gonna help you get way more done way sooner than if you just kind of mosey along and wait till the last minute. One of the tools that helped us the most get a lot done and stay organized was having a to-do list.
And so we just made a Google sheet, a shared Google sheet, and we just had different tabs for different things. Like one tab was a to-do list. And, you know, Bridget had her section. I had my section and we would put due dates in there and just. Start executing, getting stuff done. Uh, we had another tab for venues, the different venues we were looking at and some info on them helped us store everything.
Uh, we had, you know, another tab for DJs and so on. It really helped us stay organized and save a ton of time, especially cuz we weren't living together. So we didn't need to wait till we were both together to talk about things and start getting things done. We're able to just go to the Google sheet, see what we needed to do and work on.
And since then, we've actually shared that template that we use, that we created, uh, with friends of ours and they've found it helpful. And so we'd be happy to share that with you. If you'd like, if you're planning a wedding or maybe soon planning a wedding or, you know, someone who's planning a wedding, just email us.
We're more than happy to send that to you. And you could email us at. wedding@restoredministry.com. Again, that's wedding restored, ministry.com and ministry is just singular. Next tip, delegate as much as you can, to your friends, to family members on your wedding day. And before it find some friends, you trust some family members who, you know, are competent.
And give them some responsibility and give them detailed instructions on what you want them to do, what you want, uh, it to look like, whatever it might be. And then what I recommend is having a shared to-do list for them too, maybe on the, the Google sheet, because there's probably tons of details that they don't need to know about.
Um, but you can use an app like apple reminders. And just write out the tasks you want them to handle. And then you can share that with them. If they're an apple user. Now, if they're not an apple user and you're not an apple user, totally fine. There's other applications out there that you can find like to do lists that you can share with them.
But we did this on our wedding day, showed up to Kendra, a friend of ours who is a huge help for us on the wedding day and even the days leading up to it. And she really allowed us to just focus. On our marriage to focus on getting married. She's a very competent friend. And so what we did is we had, uh, get, did a phone call with her and wrote out all the things we wanted her to do the wedding week, the wedding day, uh, we put it in that reminders app and shared that with her.
And so she had a list that she could pull up on her phone at any point, made it really, really easy. And so things were really clear for her. We laid him out exactly what we expected, what we wanted her to do for. She had the list. She can always go back to and look at if she maybe forgot something. So it worked out really well.
And so definitely delegate, delegate, delegate, and you don't have to do this alone. Okay. And I know this is hard for a lot of people, especially your control freaks out there. I get you because I'm kind of one of you, I've made a lot of progress along the way, but man, it's so easy to just want control over everything.
But if you can give up a little bit of that control, you're gonna get peace and return, especially. Because you're not gonna need to be thinking about everything. It's so stressful to keep track of everything. But if you have other people who are competent, who can help you with it, man, you are gonna enjoy your wedding day, your wedding week so much more.
Now the next tip is to make a plan to tackle the challenges. That may arise with your parents and relatives, an example of some of those challenges. First one, when we did invitations, we weren't quite sure what we were supposed to write because my parents are divorced. And so typically on an invitation, you've all have seen these, you know, it says Mr.
And Mrs. So, and so invite you and so on, but. Obviously we couldn't use that. So we had to think about, and we came up with something else, which I know, you know, other couples have used as well. And it was just a simple phrase that we had at the top of the invitation that said together with their families, and then went on to say, you know, bridged Joey.
And so on. The next thing that's kind of challenging is taking pictures of your family and your relatives on your wedding day. And so one of the things that we recommend is just having a list of the individual pictures that you want the photographer to get. So give them that list, make that. Take some time to think through it, give them the list.
And they typically will ask you, I believe for a list, but even if they don't just send it to them anyway and make sure they know that your parents are divorced, just so they don't, you know, try to put them together in a picture that may be kind of awkward for, for both of your parents and for you. And just understand that some things are gonna change in your wedding day.
You know, we didn't totally follow that list that we gave the photographer and we didn't plan on it, but we actually did get a picture with my mom, my dad, and my siblings together. And so my mom stood on one side. My dad stood on another side and, uh, it ended up working out. It it's a beautiful picture too, but, uh, just set some expectations and just know going into what you.
Speaking of pictures. Another challenge can be, there's a tradition you may know of where the bride and the groom will have on a table, the wedding photos from their parents and perhaps their grandparents. And I think it's just a beautiful, beautiful tradition, but obviously we couldn't do that. And for me, that was hard.
It was sad. It was something that I really wish we could have had, but. Couldn't. And so, uh, after the initial sadness and me kinda letting go of it, I started thinking about our future kids. And I started thinking that, okay, I want our kids to be able to do that, but since we couldn't do that, what we had were, uh, photos of family members that were deceased, that, you know, we wish they could have been there that day.
So that could be a good substitution if, uh, if you wanna go that route, another challenge is sitting arrangements. So, you know, there's always the question of which parents it's where and how do you make everything fair? Totally get that what we ended up doing. And it took some time and some thought to figure this out.
But what we did is at the church, my dad sat closer to the front and at the reception, my mom sat closer to the front, closer to the head table and then ended up working out really well. And we just made sure to communicate. I think I called them both and said, Hey, this is what's gonna happen. And it worked out well.
In fact, my. Siblings sat at the table with her. My dad's siblings sat at the table with him. And so they had people with them and it worked out really well. So just make sure you're communicating up front, make sure you have a plan going into it. And one of the last challenges that we'll mention, and this applies, even if you don't come from a broken home, but different family members have opinions about your wedding day, and they're gonna tell you.
And so what we recommend you doing is hear them out if it's healthy, if they're doing it in a respectful way. And, but just understand that it's your. And you're not obliged to do what they say again. Good to consider it. And maybe you do end up doing some of those things, but make sure that you know, that it's your decision.
Don't feel forced. Don't feel manipulated into doing something that you don't wanna do, just because someone's putting pressure on you. It's okay to say no, I'm sorry. No, that can't happen. And so the main point with all of these challenges really is to just set clear boundaries and expectations for the wedding day.
There's no magic formula here. Just start talking about it now with your fiance, make a plan and then communicate that plan to everyone involved just to set their expectations. So when they go into that day, they know, okay. This is gonna happen quickly. I wanted to give you some tips on honeymoon planning.
So what we did is I actually planned the honeymoon and I didn't tell Bridget where we were going. Now she had an idea of kind of what's a pack that she knew that we were going somewhere warmer, but she didn't know where we were going. And so we, uh, we ended up going to the Canary islands and island called, uh, rife.
And it's a Spanish island off the coast of Africa. It sounds super bougie, but it's. Decently affordable, considering some of the deals that we found and the money that we, we were able to save for it. And it was just awesome. But some of the things I learned along the way, it can be stressful first off. So just take a deep breath and don't overwhelm yourself.
You don't need to vet every single option out there. Just pick something that you think you'd like. But some of the steps that I followed, if you're more of a planner, more of a detailed person, this is especially gonna be helpful for you. That the first thing really to get down is what's your budget and there's nothing wrong.
Simple honeymoon. In fact, I think those are the best honeymoons because you're usually exhausted from the wedding and you're not up to do a ton of adventurous stuff. I mean, you may be at some point on your honeymoon, but simple honeymoons, relaxing honeymoons, I think are awesome. So don't feel bad. Don't feel like you have an inferior experience just because you weren't able to spend a ton of money.
No. And don't go into debt for your honeymoon, please. Don't do. It's just gonna cause more headaches for you later on. It might be a nice trip, but then you're just gonna have to pay off that debt. It's gonna rack up interest and it's gonna be a problem. So save the money in advance. Do what you can. It does need to be a super bougie trip and you could always do another trip, a nicer trip later, if you want to, after setting the budget and talking with your fiance about that.
You wanna ask your fiance? Of course, what type of honeymoon they would prefer. They likely have an idea of what they'd like, and you probably know what they like too, for Bridget. She's such a beach girl. I'm a mountain guy, but she's such a beach girl. And I was okay with doing the beach thing because I knew that I we'd be tired.
We'd be exhausted. And so the beach sound really nice actually. So once we kind of set that, I just got to work researching and I just gathered a bunch of info. I read a bunch of articles. I watched videos. I talked to people that I knew around the world, getting their advice on things and, uh, yeah, just gathered a bunch of info.
And then I made a list of some different options. And then I started vetting those options against our budget and some other things that we we wanted. So for example, you may want a place where you can go jet skiing, or you might wanna go hiking, or you might want it to be more secluded or you might want an all inclusive.
Sort of thing wherever you're at, maybe you can't afford all that and that's totally fine. Just know what you want and kind of vet those options against that, just to make sure that you're getting what you want, but at the same time, you're not going too far above and beyond. And if after doing all that, it's not obvious where you should go.
Just use the process of elimination to eliminate a bunch of options and just limit it down to like one or two options or maybe three. Options and then make a call. You know, if, if you're doing it as a surprise, you make the call, it was a little bit more challenging cuz I wanted to be sure Bridget liked it, but I couldn't talk to her about it.
I actually didn't tell anyone about it. And so there was a little bit more pressure I felt, but you know, if you can talk to your fiance, then you can make a decision together, but just make a call. Don't overthink this. Don't over plan. It, it is what you make it. And so make it awesome and just know that no trip is perfect.
If you've ever traveled, you've likely had things that go wrong. That happens all the time. I've traveled a lot and man things go wrong and you just have to roll with it. You just have to learn how to deal with it in the moment. Of course you could have some plans and how you're gonna deal with certain things if they go wrong, but just understand that no amount of planning is gonna make it go perfectly.
And so don't overdo it. Just make it. All right. I think this is the most important part of this episode. So really listen in here. I wanna talk about the wedding day, especially wedding day anxiety. I think this is a big deal. Like I mentioned four people who come from broken homes because there's a lot of fear when it comes to love and marriage.
We don't wanna repeat our parents' mistakes. And so we are terrified in a lot of cases and maybe that's not you and if not, that's great, but a lot of us do deal with this. And so just understand. I think it's normal. I think it's normal to be nervous. It's normal to be anxious. It's normal to be scared.
This is probably the biggest decision that you'll ever make. And so, yeah, it's okay to feel the pressure. It's okay. If you have doubts too, you might be thinking, is this the right person? Is there someone else who would be better? You know, am I gonna repeat my parents' mistakes or are we gonna just end up like my parents?
What I would say is just expect those doubts, those thoughts, those feelings to come up, just expect. And if you expect them, when they do, you're not gonna be freaked out from 'em, you're gonna know, oh, you know, Joey said that this is gonna happen and it's happening. Okay. You know, I'll get through this and you have to trust that if you've discerned your relationship.
Well, right. If you've gone through a process of making a decision about if this is the person that you should be with, if you've taken your time, if you've gotten the advice of people that love you, if there's a lot of respect in the relationship, there's authentic, love the person is a person to virtue.
Taking time to develop a strong relationship, then you have to trust your preparation. You have to trust your discernment and a sports analogy. Here. You can train, train, and train for a game, a big game, but you're always gonna get nervous. At least I did. I played baseball all my life. Played some different sports, play baseball and volleyball in college.
And you get nervous. And that's normal. And, and at that point, when you're going into the game, you just have to trust your preparation. Now it's not to say that there's never a legit reason to call off a wedding. You know, some of those doubts that anxiety inside of you may be pointing to some real issue, a red flag in your relationship.
And so just listen to that, get to the root of it, understand where's this coming from? And if you need to delay your wedding or even call it off altogether, Do it do it it's much better to go through the embarrassment and the struggle of calling off a wedding than to get married and be miserable, get married and get divorced.
No one, nobody wants that. And so have the courage to call it off if you need to. And most of those issues that would actually be red flags have to do with morality, right? The integrity of the person that you're marrying. And so if you're all good on the integrity front, the next thing that you need to know is that you're never gonna find a flawless person.
You're never gonna find a flawless person. And some people think that there's just one soulmate out there there's one person that's meant for them in this world. I actually don't believe that. I do think that God in certain situations can call you to be with a specific person. But ultimately I believe that it could work with different people, right?
It could potentially work with different people. And I think the danger to believing that there's just one person out there for you is that people get married and things are. right. They're in love. They're happy. But then the struggles come, they end up fighting a lot. Money's tight. You know, the husband doesn't put the toilet seat down, the wife shops too much.
And then both spouses think if I really found the one, it wouldn't be like this. It wouldn't be hard. And guys, I'm here to tell you, please hear me out. That's a lie. That is a lie. When you've gotten married, you go through those struggles and you think if. Was the one, it would be easy, not true. Just look at people who are on their third, their fourth, or their fifth marriage, still searching for the one somebody emailed me recently and said that their dad is on his sixth marriage.
Now I'm not judging him. I don't know his story. I don't know what happened in those marriages, but I can't help. But think that this soulmate idea played into. Either consciously or not. And so don't drive yourself crazy, trying to figure out if you've found the perfect person for you. Uh, this may sound odd, but you'll never know if things could have been better with someone else.
You'll never know, cuz you'll never have lived that out and it could be natural to wonder, especially leading up to the wedding day. You know, if it might be better with someone else. Totally get that. Don't beat yourself up for thinking that if that crosses your mind, but it is pointless to obsess about that, especially once you're married, because I don't think in this world it's ever possible to have a hundred percent surety about many things.
Maybe there are some things that you can have a hundred percent surety about, but I think there's always the possibility of doubt because we have free will, we can choose things. And so we may not always know this is absolutely the right thing to do. This is I'm a hundred percent sure. That this is the person for me.
Again, I'm not saying to just marry anyone. You need to go through the process of discerning, but just understand that struggles are gonna arise and your relationship's gonna be imperfect. And that's okay. And, and speaking about all this, uh, token, the guy who wrote Lord of the rings, he actually wrote about it in a letter to his son.
He said when the glamor wears off or merely works a bit thin, then they that the spouses. Think they have made a mistake and that the real soulmate is still to find the real soulmate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married if only.
Hence divorce to provide the, if only. And of course they are as a rule quite right. They did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life can make a sound judgment concerning whom amongst the total possible chances. He ought have profitably married. Nearly all marriages, even happy ones are mistakes in the sense that they almost certainly in a more perfect world or even a little more care in this very imperfect one, both partners might have found more suitable mates, but the real soulmate is the one you are actually married to.
And so when challenges come in, your relationship in your marriage specifically, it's normal. Just understand that it's normal love is challenging. It always will be the struggles in your marriage are not a sign that you chose the wrong person. They're not a sign that you should leave to find someone else.
It just means you have work to do. It means that your marriage needs some work. You need some help. And so go to counsel. Read some good books on relationships, invest time into your relationship, going on dates, doing things that you enjoy doing when you were dating. And it's also a sign that you and your spouse aren't perfect.
I've always said that the more virtuous the spouses, the happier the marriage, the opposite is true too. The more you struggle with advice with bad habits, the more miserable your marriage is going to be. And so it's so important that you work on yourself, that you encourage your spouse to develop virtues, right?
Good habits. And by doing that, I think you'll see that your marriage gets better. Just remember you can't make your spouse perfectly happy. If you can remember that you're gonna have a much happier marriage. It's kind of ironic, but you won't be looking at your spouse to fill you in a way that they were never meant to fill you.
And again, you'll never gonna find the perfect person. Just find the right person who possess as virtue, discern that relationship. Well, develop authentic love. Don't settle on moral issue. But don't at the same time, expect them to be a perfect European prince or princess. All right, moving on. Next tip is on your wedding day.
Have empathy for your parents. Just understand guys that as hard as it may be for you on your wedding day. And I totally get that. How the brokenness in your family, when these big life events come up, it's often more pronounced, right? We feel. The pain more in those moments. I totally get that at the same time.
I just wanna challenge you to kind of step outside yourself for a little bit, and just, just understand that your wedding day may be awkward for your parents, too. It may be hard for them to, and if you ask your parents to, you know, play a role in your wedding in some way, just understand that they may not be comfortable doing that.
And you know, maybe they will end up doing it. Maybe they won't, but just understand that. And it may not just be awkward for you, for your parents, for your family, but also your relative. Right. When the different families interact, who knows what sort of drama and tension could be there too. I know typically in a divorce people pick sides, you know, one side hates on the other, the other side hates on the other and it just gets really ugly.
And so a wedding could be tense because of that. One of the things that was kind of awkward for us, and I'm sure kind of hard for my parents too, was the rehearsal dinner. It was in a small Italian restaurant and my parents ended up sitting next to each other and ended up working out fine, but it was kind of weird because they really didn't talk at all.
And now they're like sitting next to each other in a room full of our family and friends. And it was just kind of weird and bridge. And I were, were sitting there too. So, you know, I felt for them in that moment and it was kind of an odd situation. So hopefully you can prevent that from happening, but if it.
Just be prepared for it as much as possible last tip when it comes to the wedding day, enjoy it and let the little things go. It's so tempting to just want to control everything like I mentioned, but just live the moment, live the moment on your wedding day, because it goes by so fast. And if things are not perfect, That's okay.
In fact, I expect them not to go perfectly and just roll with the punches. One of the things that happened was, uh, I was late to my own rehearsal. I, uh, went to the airport with my dad to pick a bunch of people up and pick up a rental car that bridge and I were gonna use. And, uh, the traffic was so bad that I didn't make it back in time.
I didn't even get the car on time. I had. Go to the airport and come back. And so it really was a waste of time to do the thing to begin with. But, uh, later that night, actually the night before my wedding, I had to go to the airport at like midnight, one in the morning to pick up this rental car. So, which is like a mess, like I'm such a planner.
And the fact that that happened is hilarious and was stressful, but eventually. Let it go. Another thing that happened on the wedding day was Bridget's Val kept flying away. So we just had to deal with that, especially during pictures and things, but it ended up working out something kind of embarrassing for me when we entered the reception room where all of our family and friends were, I, uh, Didn't know it then, but on video you can see, I was like yanking Bridge's arm too hard.
I, I didn't even realize it. I was just like excited and happy and just moving around. And, uh, when I was leading her behind me, I was just like pulled her arm too hard and she was fine. But, uh, but looking at it, I was like, man, gotta relax a little bit. So that sort of stuff is gonna happen. Oh, the last thing we actually, when we were leaving for the night, going to the hotel, That we, uh, had chosen for our wedding night.
We, you know, got all the bags, packed up. One of our friends helped us do it. And, uh, we, you know, go to our hotel and we were staying in the city and, you know, our friends were, were far away from us, but then we realized we actually had one of the wrong bags. It was a bag of one of Bridget's friends, Lacey, if you're listening, shout out to Lacey.
Uh, so we had to do. Swap. We ended up doing it the next day Lacey came down and she was able to, to leave the bag for us. But, uh, man, just like such a mess. So expect stuff like that to go wrong. You can't control everything. Things will go wrong and that's okay. Live the moment. Enjoy it. Soak it up. It's a really beautiful day, especially if you can let go of the little things.
So I'm sure there's lots more that can be said about the wedding day, wedding planning, all that, but I hope those are some helpful tips for you guys. Now we wanna transition into talking about the first year of marriage, you know, after the wedding's over the honeymoon's over, you're just kind of back to, to normal life.
But especially if you didn't live together before marriage, things are really new to you. And even if you did, uh, there may be some changes in your relationship now that you're married. And so I just wanna talk about some of the things that we've learned along the way. Some of these things are very basic.
They're simple, but hopefully they'll be helpful for you, especially if this is something that you're gonna be experiencing soon. The first tip is to embrace the reality of marriage, not the Instagram version in your mind. Get don't hear me wrong here. Marriage is so beautiful. Right. You have a life companion.
There's permanence to it. It's fun. It's adventurous, it's romantic. But at the same time, it's gonna be messy, right? It's not gonna be perfect. You may think that someone else has a perfect relationship. You may see their pictures on Instagram. You may see all these things about their marriage, their life, their family, but understand that that's just the highlights of their life.
So don't compare. The behind the scenes in your life to theirs, there were some quote, like don't compare your behind the scenes with someone else's highlight reels and know that you're not gonna have a great marriage by accident. It won't just happen. You need to actively work on it. You need to actively build it.
And again, don't be discouraged when your marriage isn't perfect because those people. On social media. They're not showing you the imperfections. They're not showing you the reality the day in, day out, the no filtered stuff. Oftentimes it's pretty far from reality. Next sip. Understand the two ingredients for great marriage.
The research shows that two important things that you need for a great marriage are a realistic concept of love and healthy expectations of marriage. When it comes to a realistic concept of love. The question here is, is your concept of love realistic. Obviously, when I was younger, I really thought that.
Love equaled feelings. And I maybe couldn't have put it into words, but I certainly believe that deep down. And then when feelings and my relationships began to fade, I thought that love was ending. And I was terrified cause I didn't want my love to end the way that my parents love did. And so I eventually learned that this is just a really immature concept of love.
And so I needed to, to purge that, to purify that, to learn that love is a choice. Love is an action. Love is something that you choose. Willing the good of the other it's desiring and doing what's best for the person that you love. And I go into this more in episode 17, with Miranda, the episode's titled six tips to conquer your fear of love, but we get into a lot of different components of love.
And there's a exercise that you can do. Actually, you can just write out what love looks like to you. So get a piece of paper, get a pen, pull up the, an app on your phone and just write out, say, you know, love means. Or when you love someone, you do this and just try to get a grasp, try to put these beliefs that you have inside of you into words.
So, you know, what you expect love to look like. And then from there, if there's any unrealistic ideas that you have about love, or maybe some lies that you believe you can. Bring truth into those, right? You can kind of smother them with truth, suffocate, those lies with truth. And again, go to episode 17. If you wanna hear me go into this a little bit more, but again, simple exercise, just get a piece of paper, pen, an app, and just write out what love looks like to you.
Love means this. When you love someone, you do this, or you say this, get it out of you. So you can really address anything in you. That is unrealistic when it comes to love. Like I mentioned, the next ingredient is healthy expectations of marriage. Are your expectations of marriage healthy. And for those of us who come from broken homes, I think almost always the answer is no, because we've seen a really broken model of love and marriage.
And so we really need to learn to set healthy expectations for marriage. And some questions that you can think about is, do you think that you'll never fight, right? Maybe, maybe you saw your parents fight a lot. So you wanted to go in the complete opposite direction. I dealt with this and you thought, okay, we are gonna have.
Picture perfect marriage. We're never gonna fight things are gonna be great. We're gonna have healthy kids. It's gonna be awesome. And obviously you're gonna fight. And so having that expectation that you'll never fight for example, is really, really dangerous to your marriage. That's just one example.
Another one is, do you expect to travel the world? But your spouse is a homebody, you know, get practical. What is this gonna look like? What is your marriage going to actually look like day in, day out, the special things that you do together and so on. You wanna really set some healthy expectations for marriage and in the book, saving your marriage before it starts by doctors, Les and Leslie parrot, they talk about unspoken rules and unconscious roles.
Again, unspoken rules. And unconscious rules. And what they're talking about with unspoken rules, we all have rules that we just kind of follow inherently. We just learn them in our families or someplace, and we just follow them somewhat blindly. And they could be as simple as you know, when you're brushing your teeth.
You squeeze toothpaste from the bottom, not the middle, not the top. And you know, it can be as silly as that, or it could be more serious things as well. You know? And so that's kind of a silly example, but that is an example of an unspoken rule. Another one could be, you know, you always put the butter in the fridge.
And then maybe your spouse thinks, no, you put the butter on the counter, you leave it out. And so those unspoken rules, just things that we live our lives by the rules that we live our lives with, that we never really think about, but we certainly carry with us. Unconscious roles are, are similar, but different.
These are just roles that people play in a household. So. In your house, you probably had one of your parents who was a better cook, right? They would cook more often. Maybe one of your parents was more of a handy person, right? Maybe it was your dad. Maybe it was your mom who knows. And so we tend to think on an unconscious level that those roles.
Will transfer into our relationship. But I remember something from the book I mentioned saving your marriage before it starts a guy and girl got married and the girl expected the guy to be Mr. Fixer upper to fix everything around the house. And the guy expected the girl to do that. And basically from the girls' perspective, her dad was like handyman, he can do anything, but the guy.
His dad was a busy executive and he was, you know, gone a lot, working a lot. And so his mom was the one who did that. So they both expected the other to fill that role of being the handyman around the house. And so it caused some tension in their relationship. So it's good to just be aware of the unspoken rules that.
You follow and the unconscious roles that you play as well. And so talk about this with your fiance, with your spouse, uh, an exercise that you can do on this front, when it comes to unspoken rules, just write out what are some unspoken rules that you follow? What rules were present in your parents' marriage, growing up in your family, growing up, and they could be healthy or they could be unhealthy.
Another example is, you know, never resolve conflict, never resolve conflict, or at least never resolve it in public. A lot of kids experience that they see their parents fight, their parents just go separate ways. Maybe one of the spouses leaves the house and the kids never see any resolution. And so it can be easy growing up thinking that, okay, when you have conflict, you just leave.
You just don't resolve it. And that's so obviously so unhealthy, but that can be maybe one of the rules that you're living life by. And they could be much simpler. Like I mentioned, such as, you know, never buy orange juice or only buy milk. So again, you can get a piece of paper pen. Pull up an app on your phone and just start typing out.
You know, what unspoken rules do you follow? What did you observe growing up in your family and your parents' marriage? When it comes to unconscious roles, same exercise. Get a piece of paper, pen and write out the different roles that you saw play out in your house. It can be cleaning, cooking, fixing things, managing finances, doing yard, work, all that stuff.
Just write 'em out. Know what you expected and then talk to your fiance, talk to your spouse about this. It's gonna help you to avoid a lot of conflict, a lot of, kind of unspoken expectations that lead to frustration. And so, yeah, just write about what do you expect your marriage to look like when it comes to those various roles?
That we need to play in our houses. And again, in episode 17, you can go to restored ministry.com/seventeen, or just pull up episode 17 on your podcast app for more on this topic. Another tip understand that one of the biggest dangers to your marriage is idolizing your marriage and your spouse putting that up on such a pedestal thinking, right?
Like I mentioned before that they can make you perfectly happy. and then later they don't and you're completely destroyed you think, oh my gosh, we weren't meant to be married. This is a total disaster. So again, it's easy to want the opposite of what you saw in your family, but just be careful though, you don't go too far in the opposite direction and create this unrealistic expectation for a perfect marriage.
And again, I couldn't put this into words growing up, but eventually I put my hand on it for a while. It was just kind of there untouched, but I really believe that my spouse and I wouldn't fight, we'd never get annoyed with each other. If we did have any fights, they would be few. They would be all cordial.
We'd never get angry. There would be few struggles. Our kids would be perfectly healthy. I know it sounds ridiculous saying it right now. Just try to understand the different ideas that you have in your head about your marriage and just avoid idolizing your spouse because idols always bring disappointment, always bring frustration.
When we put someone on a pedestal, when we think them to be better than they actually are, we expect something to happen when in reality, something else is gonna happen. And that leads in perfectly to the next point. Be prepared for the disappointments and frustrations that will arise in your marriage.
You are going to get annoyed with each other. It's just gonna happen. And you've probably already experienced that in your dating relationship during your engagement, but it's eventually is gonna happen. And maybe some couples, you know, don't experience this for a while, but eventually you will experience this and, and one area where it's common to get annoyed with each other is when it comes to organization cleanliness.
Right. It, it might take you a while to get used to your spouse's level of organization and cleanliness, for example. I'm a very organized person. I like things in their proper places. And that's just the way that I operate Bridget. She is organized. I wanna throw her under the bus, but she's not as organized as me.
And when it comes to cleanliness, she's actually more clean than me in terms of, you know, dusting things and wanting to clean the floors and vacuum all the time. Like I can kind of do without that. I think a lot. Guys are like that. But organization though, things in the proper places is important for me.
And so we're different on those two things and that's okay. But it's really important to, to understand, to have some patience with each other when it comes to those things. Like, you know, I'm not constantly following Bridget around and saying, Hey, you know, please. Pick this up, organize this, organize that, you know, from time to time, I will ask her, say, Hey, can we take care of this?
Can I help you with this? And we'll get it done, but I don't have this expectation for her to be like me. And on the cleanliness side, you know, she's typically doing more of the cleaning, but I will chip in and I'll help out and I'll say, okay, how can I help? What can I do to, to keep things clean? Or, you know, if I have a little bit of time to myself, I'll clean the bathroom or do something like that.
Cuz I know that makes her happy. One of the things that best prepared me for marriage actually was being from a big family and, and you know, always having roommates and things over the years, it just made me kind of get outside of myself and just deal with things, not being the way that I wanted them to be.
And so, you know, if you have some time now to do that, to practice that maybe with your own roommates, your own family, definitely do it. Develop that virtue now so that when it comes to marriage, You won't be as annoyed. You won't be as frustrated. You'll be better able to deal with any frustrations that come up.
Another thing that can be an adjustment to for people, especially if you didn't live together before marriage is being around each other all the time, it it's an adjustment, right? It's an adjustment. And don't think that you need to spend 24 7 with that person. And this may be obvious to a lot of you, but for some people it's not, you maybe feel like, oh, okay, now that we're together, we just spend all time together.
But it's actually really healthy for your relationship to give each other some space, to spend time with your friends, to go out and do things that you know, you're passionate about that you love doing. And of course, you know, you never just wanna abandon your spouse, not talking about that, but, uh, space is really good, really healthy.
And like I mentioned, when it comes to all these things, when it comes to your personalities, kind of rubbing up against each other, just go at it with patience with grace, know that it's not gonna be perfect, but you both can grow and change and improve. And I've seen it in my own marriage. You know, one of the things that I did wrong.
Starting out was I would leave the toilet seat up all the time and it drove Bridget crazy. And all the ladies listening right now, you're like, yes, it's so annoying if you've ever lived with men. I didn't understand that. I just didn't know that. Then she explained it to me and said, Hey, this is why, you know, in the middle of the night, when you go to the bathroom and the toilet seats up, and, you know, as a woman, you sit down, it's the worst.
so sorry team either. But, uh, it really helped me to understand. I need to change and I did. And you can ask bridge now. It never happens. I always put the toilet seat down for her. So , I dunno if that's helpful, but, uh, but you can change. You can develop new habits. You can't change old habits. It is possible, but be patient with each other and learn each other's personalities.
Right. Just know that you're constantly gonna be discovering things about your spouse. You know, like I mentioned, I'm a decisive, organized person. I'm an aggressive problem solver, right. When there's a problem I wanna tackle to the ground right now, a bridge it on the other. Is more of a reflective person.
She's a little bit of a slower decision maker. She can be decisive when she has to be, but usually she wants to think about things a little bit more, and that could be frustrating for me. And I know I could be frustrating to her because she wants to take more time to make decisions. And so there is some give and take there.
We have to be respectful of each other's personalities and, you know, we've had fights over this. We've had a lot of frustration over this, but thankfully we've been able to work through some of the issues and just understand, okay. They are not the same as me. They're not the same as me and they're not going to be the same as me and that's.
Okay. And so just respect the differences between you and even see value in them. For example, you know, I'm a go getter, I'm a decisive person. But bridge is more reflective. And sometimes I need someone to slow me down a little bit and say, wait, did you think about this? Did you think about this? And sometimes I don't and having bridged there to kind of pull me back and say, okay, before you jump out of the plane, make sure you're wearing your parachute.
You can really compliment each other in that way. So don't look at these things as just points of tension, but they really can help build your relationship up. If you look at them in the right light and you respect each other's differences. Next tip is something I just wanna repeat, cuz it's so, so important.
Your spouse will never fully complete you fully make you happy. I believe that when God can do that, but we consciously are not expect our spouses to make us perfectly happy and often to even heal us, to make our lives better, to make our problems go away. And that could just be so unhealthy for a marriage.
So just understand again, I mentioned this before, but I'm saying it again because it's so important. You have to understand that your spouse will not complete you. They may won't make you perfectly happy, but at the same time, they can help you. Right. They can't help you grow. They can't help you heal.
Marriage can actually be extremely healing. It has been for me, it's challenging, but it's also very healing, but understand that your spouse can't fix or. You, we have to do the work ourselves. Even if they're there assisting us, they can't be the reason for it. They can't be the one doing the work next tip.
And this tip gets to the heart of what I think is one of the biggest pitfalls for newlyweds. And that is don't become complacent. Don't become complacent. It's so easy when you get married to just kind of soak in the goodness of marriage and you should do that. It's a good thing. But often what can happen is that we just get comfort.
We don't challenge each other to grow. We end up just sitting around and watching Netflix all the time. And so my challenge to you is just, don't get cooped up in your house. Don't get cooped up in your apartment, get out, build intimacy, have those deep talks with each other. If you're religious, pray together.
Talk about your thoughts and your feelings on different things. Talk about your brokenness, build friendships with other couples. That's so helpful. Just spending time with other couples. For some reason, it just really helps your own marriage. And don't gossip about your spouse. That's one thing I think is so deadly to marriage is gossiping about your spouse.
And I've heard people who have been married way longer than me. Talk about this, how it really just kills a marriage. If you gossip about your spouse. So don't say anything to anyone who can't help solve the problem that you're currently facing. I wanna say that again, don't say anything to anyone who can't help you solve the problem you're currently facing.
And so if you go and talk to a mentor about the problems in your marriage, that's not gossip. You're trying to get them to help you solve the problems. But if you're talking to your friends, if you're talking, maybe your parents, siblings about your spouse in a negative way, that's gossip and it's never, never helpful.
And in fact, it's always toxic to your marriage and the people that you gossip. So don't become complacent. Don't become comfortable, constantly be challenging yourself. Get outside of yourself. Don't just stay cooped up, watching Netflix every night, go out with friends, volunteer, do whatever it is you did before to keep growing the last tip for you guys.
Learn to solve conflict in a healthy. Way, and this can be so hard. This is one of the biggest challenges that bridge I have faced. And she would tell you that right now, too. One of the biggest things, when it comes to conflict is listening, seeking to understand the other person before you try to be understood.
That can be so hard, especially if emotions are high, but try to detach emotionally, take a step back emotionally. So you can actually use your mind and you can respond in the right way to this person because I've been there. Guys. I'm ashamed to say it, but. The moment when I'm emotional, when I've been angry, you know, I'll say something I regret and, you know, bridge.
And I have been really good with apologizing to each other, asking for forgiveness, forgiving each other, saying that we love each other and making up. And that's another essential skill in solving conflict. Right? You need to be able to apologize to ask for forgiveness that takes humility, but then you also need to be able to forgive you.
Can't just hold these grudges over the other person. And so those are two really important ingredients as well, but. When it comes to the conflict, usually there's something going on underneath the surface, right? You may be fighting about this or that, but in reality, there may be something else that happened, you know, a month ago, a year ago, that's really eating away at this person.
So try to get to the root of that in the tense moment may not be the right time to do that, but try to understand really what's going on from their point of view, it takes. Stepping into their shoes, but you won't regret it. It will bring more peace into your relationship. It'll help you solve conflict better and even avoid conflict to begin with another thing to keep in mind when solving conflict is just know what the other person wants.
That's something that I learned from an FBI hostage negotiator. Chris Voss is his name and he literally would be negotiating. These people who were robbing banks or taking someone hostage. And he knew how to talk to them in such a way that would get them to trust him that would get them to give him what he wanted, which was to free the hostages and to, you know, ultimately surrender, um, by giving them what they wanted.
In whatever he could do, right. He couldn't give them everything they wanted, but he first tried to understand what do they want. He tried to build trust with them. And by doing that, eventually he was able to get what he wanted, which was everyone walking away safely and the other person ultimately being arrested.
And so just to understand in those tense conversations, you can just ask yourself the question, okay, what do they want right now? And sometimes it'll be as simple as they just want an apology. They don't want an excuse. They don't want an explanation, even if it's a warranted explanation, right. Even if you have something to say, that's worth saying, it may not be the right moment to do that.
And so just understand what the person wants in that moment and realize that you may just need to take a break if things are really tense. So, you know, give each other some space. Maybe you go on a run or you spend some time, you know, getting some things done. Or maybe you sleep on it. If you have to, you know, typically you'd wanna avoid doing that.
You wanna solve these things before you go to bed, but sometimes you can't. And so in that case, when you need to take a break, that can be frustrating for people who are aggressive problem solvers like me for me, when Bridget would say, you know, I don't wanna talk about this right now. I was afraid that we would never resolve.
And I was afraid that it would escalate and that we would end up being really angry at each other. And our marriage would end up to repeat what I saw in my parents' marriage. And I was scared of that. And so our counselor helped us realize that, okay, you can take a break. It's okay. Just make sure that you communicate.
When you're gonna talk about that thing again, and it could be as quick as 15 minutes and maybe as long as like 24 hours, I wouldn't push it out much further than that, but make sure there's some sort of a plan. And if you need to put it on your calendar, it's just important that both of you, especially the one who's more of the type, a aggressive problem solver that.
They know. Okay, we are going to actually talk about this. It isn't just gonna slide away, cuz like I mentioned, it's so unhealthy to have conflict and to never resolve it, that stuff is just gonna build up underneath the surface. It's gonna fester. It's gonna grow. It's gonna get bigger. And one day it's just gonna explode.
And so if you don't deal with it now you're gonna have to deal with it later. So deal with it. All right guys. I hope all that was helpful. Again, we're not experts on this stuff. We just wanted to share our experience and the things that we've learned along the way. And so thank you so much for, for hearing us out.
If you wanna get in touch with Bridget, I know, uh, last episode, we didn't give her contact information, but if you wanna get in touch with her, you can email her@bridgetrestoredministry.com. Now I'm gonna spell out Bridget for you, cuz I know there's a few different spellings. Her name is spelled B R. I G I D again, that's B R I G.
ID restored ministry.com. Just email her. And she'll be happy to, uh, to get back with you and also throw her social media handles in the show notes. And you guys are always welcome to, to contact me whenever you need to. You can contact me at Joey. At restored ministry.com. Again, that's Joey, a restored ministry.com in closing out the show.
My challenge to you is whatever stood out to you in this episode, talk to your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your fiance, or your spouse about it. Have a good conversation with them about it. Maybe send them this episode and have them listen to it and ask some good questions in that conversation. If you need to write them out beforehand, do it share your thoughts, share your feelings about the things that we talked about in this episode, and then pick one thing.
That you heard in this episode and focus on it and execute on it. And you know, if it's some sort of a goal set a deadline for it, if it's a habit, keep track of it, see how well you're doing with developing that good habit, that virtue. And that's really it guys. It's just all about taking these ideas and not just thinking about it and are talking about them, but actually putting them into action.
The resources mentioned are the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 24. Again, that's restored ministry.com/two four. Thanks again for listening. If this has been useful, please subscribe and share this podcast with someone you know, who could 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.
