14: Fights Every Couple Will Have

14: Fights Every Couple Will Have

What’s The Episode About:

In this episode, Paul and Stacey are going to dive into the most common fights that all couples have. When it comes to real-life issues like parenting, money, work, family, religion, spirituality, health, education, and others, most couples think that they share similar opinions until they get confronted by their differences on the same topics.

That brings about conflicts between them, and because they lack the tools to tackle that, the conflicts become frequent and eventually lead them to a worse place than they would have intended. Paul and Stacey will teach you what you need to know to overcome all that and build the relationship that your family deserves. 

Key Points Discussed:  

  • The accidental alignment predicament (01:12)
  • The next evolution of freedom (04:27)
  • The invincible assumptions will bite you in the ass (07:03)
  • Coordinating and working together to be successful (12:41)
  • Men’s assumptions on different issues (16:25)
  • A true authentic alignment design (23:12)
  • We all have gifts to bring every time (30:55)
  • When you design alignment, the accidental alignment predicament disappears (39:54)

Where Can I Learn More:

Get your ticket to the next Relationship Breakthrough Retreat here: http://bit.ly/rbr_podcast

When Did It Air:

July 25, 2019

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer:  The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

 

Paul:               00:00 Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast. Today, we’re going to dive into the most common fights that all couples have. I don’t care how amazing your marriage is, or how amazing you think someone else’s marriage is, without the tools that we’re going to talk about today in today’s episode, all couples will fight about this eventually, so let’s queue it up and dive in.

 

Intro:              00:25 So the big question is this; How is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, create their unshakeable love, and unleash passion, divorce-proof their family, without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them, and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer.

 

Paul:               00:54 Alright? Think about these topics; parenting, money, work, family, religion, spirituality, health, education. Have you ever fought over any one of these topics?

 

Paul:               01:11 and there’s more…

 

Stacey:             01:12 Yeah, there’s… you could keep going with that list. Here’s the thing. These are real-life topics, and they pop up in the day to day of a real-life relationship. When you’re in a long-term relationship, these things and your perspectives on them are going to pop up. And so, Paul and I created a tool that we teach called the Accidental Alignment Predicament. The accidental alignment predicament is kind of like, when you fall in love and you think, “Well, we fell in love so we’re gonna see money the same way. Right?” or “We fell in love, so we’re totally gonna see this parenting thing the same way. Right?” And, I know like, Paul’s laughing, you guys are laughing already, right? Because until that moment where something flies out of your partner’s mouth towards one of your kids and you’re like, “Oh my God, don’t talk to Johnny that way. You’re going to scar him for life.” Here’s the thing, the accidental alignment predicament is, “Hey, we’re just going to see these things the same way until we don’t. And then in the moment fights and arguments start.

 

Paul:               02:16 You know what happens is we kind of have this belief… there’s like this inherent belief that, “Oh, we’re just… we so get each other, or we love each other like, these won’t be issues for us because we understand each other, and we have a similar mindset”, until you’ve been in a long-term relationship, and you start to realize, “Actually new things have started up like, we have children now, and we didn’t foresee this, or we share money now”, and then you find yourselves actually being confronted with these differences and feeling caught off guard, right? That’s how it shows up. Like, “Wow, I didn’t see this as being an issue. Why is this such a big deal?” Yeah. That’s how it evolves

 

Stacey:             02:52 and a lot of these things show up in the day to day. So just think of that list and how often are these things showing up in your day to day. Now I’m just to tie it back for you, this accidental alignment predicament where you just think you’re going to actually see things the same way and then you don’t. It actually is based in demand relationship. So just to remember, demand relationship is where you tell other people how to change in order to make you happy where you demand, or you know, ask people to do things in order to please you. And that’s the opposite of what we teach, relationship Development. Demand relationship, just if you think back like 40 or 50 years, did a woman need to ask her husband for alignment on how to parent children 50 years ago? No, she didn’t. She had autonomy in that area and he didn’t get involved. By the same token, 50 years ago, did a man need to ask his wife what he should do about his work and how he should handle their money?

 

Stacey:             03:50 Noooo. Cause he had autonomy in that and he didn’t have to talk to her about that. See, demand relationship is… I’m just gonna… the way I see, this goes and you’re just going to have to deal with it. You’re just going to have to get on board. And unfortunately, that mindset has rolled into this time when everybody’s free and nobody believes that anymore. Like we all have a say. I, we all have ideas. Hey, I have strong ideas about how I want my kids raised. I have strong ideas about our money and our household and I have dreams and wants for this too. And nobody wants to be steamrolled or convinced to let go of how they see it, their perspective.

 

Paul:               04:27 And that’s the evolution. So keeping in mind like no one has ever really had to cross these bridges before and have a real alignment conversation or alignment skills because they weren’t really applicable back then. So we’re finding ourselves, rightly so. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great that everybody has that say is great that everybody has an equal say in any topic. It should be that way. And we’ve never had to learn how to do it. So no one taught us. It’s really about the evolution that we needed. It’s not about, oh, this freedom thing is a problem. No, obviously it’s just, it’s the next evolution of freedom, right? And it’s where we need to grow. That’s all.

 

Stacey:             05:07 Amen. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today is how to actually create alignment. True alignment in your relationship. Because that’s why I say it doesn’t matter how great you think your marriages or how great you think someone else’s marriage is compared to yours. If you don’t design intentional alignment into your marriage, into your family, you will fight about these things as they come up. I’ll give you an example. Most women assume we’re many women assume that men are going to run a household with them and raise kids with them, right? We get into marriage, we get into family and we think, okay, we’re going to run the household together. We’re going to raise kids together. But it’s never actually talked about explicitly and planned. And women go into running a house and having kids with an invisible assumption about how he’s going to participate, that he’s just going to see it the same way I do and he’s going to see that the kid needs to get into a bath by the same time I see it and that’s not an appropriate outfit or that they spit up on that so they need to be changed or there’s all these invisible assumptions that he’s just going to see this the same way and then it comes back to bite you in the ass because they don’t see it the same way.

 

Stacey:             06:20 They’re wired completely the opposite of you and it’s not that he won’t help or he can’t, it’s that it wasn’t designed and planned out in a way that allows him to cocreate the way he wants to do it too. The way he would like for his house to run to and these things were never actually talked about and so, so many times. And I support so many women who are so upset and so miserable because they feel like they do it all and everything about how the house is run and everything about what’s going on with the kids is all on their backs and they’re doing it all and they’re watching him sit there on his phone or sit there watching some stupid show or playing some stupid game and you’re running around like a chicken without a head. There are invisible assumptions that, especially women, because we were raised to not assert ourselves all that well carry with us about, hey, you should see me hustle in here and pitch in. But men are wired differently than that. And so that invisible assumption, that accidental alignment that we’re going to do this the same way, but we never really talked about it. We never really planned it is going to come back to bite you in the ass. And I know that guys have that the same way as well, but there’s another example that I can go through. Did you want to talk about that and about staying at home parents?

 

Paul:               07:40 Yeah. Yeah. So you know what? We see a lot in families is where one parent has decided to be the stay at home parent. And that could be the man, it could be the woman, it doesn’t matter. But what we see is there’s one person that decided to be the stay at home parent and then there’s fallout from that. So Stacey, do you want to actually think, do you want to talk about that dynamic first?

 

Stacey:             07:56 So we see this a lot and this is such a great example because so many people can relate very often when kids are coming into the picture and we’re looking at our finances and does it really make sense for us to get a nanny or put them in decor or should one of us just stay home, right? Because it’s more money than one of us makes. And we make these decisions based on what’s the right decision for us for the kit where we, you know, really believe that one of us needs to be home with whatever it is. And we make that decision in a vacuum of what’s the right decision, how is one of us going to stay home? And when we do it and we never actually design alignment around, okay, so how are we going to operate with one of us as a stay at home parent?

 

Stacey:             08:40 And then later it comes back to bite us in the ass because there’s an accidental alignment predicament that we fall into where you’ve got, let’s take a mom a stay at home mom and she has, you know, an 18 month old and is doing things and at one point realizes, or it probably a lot sooner than this, hey, if I want to spend money on something, how do I do that? And then they’re going to dad their husband and saying, Hey, can we buy this outdoor furniture set? It’s 400 bucks. And he’s like, I don’t really think so. Not right now. We have other bills coming in. She’s like, oh, okay. And then she’s like, well, can we do this trip? You know, my family wants to do this trip. And I think it would be fun for me. And you know, David, you know, he’s off for the summer and we could go and they don’t have nursery or whatever.

 

Stacey:             09:25 And I could go, but it’s like 600 bucks. Can I do that? And he was like, well, maybe we can do that. And you get into a situation of a grown woman asking a grown man for permission to spend money because it was never discussed. How are we going to manage our money if I’m not making my own money my whole life, I’ve made my own money. Now we decided I’m going to be a stay at home parent, but we never talked about how are we going to budget for our family, how are we going to make financial decisions for our family? And so we continue in this demand relationship paradigm of, well, in the past I made my money, I spent my money, you made your money, you spent your money. So I guess if I’m not making money, then it’s your money and I need to come to you and ask and that is total crap.

 

Stacey:             10:10 You cannot sustain that. And I’m picking this one because I would tell you about a hundred times a month at least I hear from stay at home moms who say, I desperately need your course to save my marriage, but I’m a stay at home mom and I don’t have any money, and yes, I’m getting on my soapbox here because when a woman who is in her forties and is raising children at home tells me that she doesn’t have money, this is like ridiculous. It’s completely unfair for a grown woman to falsely believe that she doesn’t have any money because she hasn’t made any money. Your worth is not in you having a job outside the house. When one parent leaves the house to make money and the other parent stays home with the children, then the money that comes into that house was made by both of you because of the woman did not stay home with those children.

 

Stacey:             11:08 The man is not leaving for work that day to go make that money. That is your money. That is your household’s money and together as adults, you need to decide how you’re going to manage that and how you’re going to align. So a woman doesn’t feel like a kept woman or a little girl or a slave in her own home because she’s not making the money and somehow it’s his money. This is not okay. It’s never going to be okay. The same thing applies to so many other examples from how the money is spent to how the house is run, to how the parenting is done, to how time is managed. Our invisible assumptions about what we’re going to do with weekends on what you’re going to do when you’re not at work and wait, what do you

 

Stacey:             11:54 mean you’re going to spend time with friends? I don’t get to go spend time with friends. All of these things are accidental alignment predicaments because it was never intentionally designed and that you know, the money one is such a good example because I think it’s easy for whoever’s earning the money.

 

Paul:               12:10 And again, I don’t want it just to say it’s the man or the one, like it could be either side, right? So whoever’s earning the money, it’s easy to see like I’m the one who’s providing the resources so I should be the one who says no, we do have the resources or we don’t. And that’s sort of the final word and that’s such a natural like sort of knee jerk reaction response from people. But as Stacy’s example pointed out so well it’s not reality because again, if that other person wasn’t staying at home with the kids, you’re going to be like, you will not be able to make that money.

 

Paul:               12:41 You will not be able to have that job. You will not be able to have that career if you wanted kids and you have kids, that’s the responsibility. There is no separating. There’s so much we could talk about in this one topic alone, but really could do six episodes. The belief when I was staying home with Jake and you went to work, this was you. Yet like I’m going to work. And yet what I realized though is you know when you have kids, if you’re going to be successful at this, you start to realize really quickly when you have your first kid, a lot of us anyway that look, we have to figure out when one of us is going to shower and the other one’s going to shower. Like because someone’s got to watch that kid constantly. You know? It really gets to be that difficult at times in the very early days of of birth and you start to realize like we are no longer two people like we have to be coordinating and working together in order to be successful in keeping this kid alive.

 

Stacey:             13:32 You realize that you were not able to go to work unless I was staying home like two of us making tons of salary

 

Paul:               13:38 and it’s really clear like someone’s going to have to be with that kid at all times and there’s no ambiguity about it. Someone’s got to take care of that child and it really comes down to recognizing early on if you want to be successful, you’re no longer two people. Whether you decided to live that way when you were married as separate individuals, you know, living together in the same house. That’s one thing. When you have a child, you are no longer separate when it comes to that child anyway. It’s the same kind of a thing here is you can’t separate the income when you have children with that example because you’re working together to support the family in the household, which all of your perspectives should be changing around anyway.

 

Paul:               14:14 You’re not an individual anymore who’s now providing for some other individuals as if they were like people you met next door. Like they’re literally, it’s your family, it’s your household, and together your household either thrives or just survives or goes down the tubes. So it’s not that you’re the provider who, whichever side of this is the masculine side or the feminine and sort of, I have the say because I’m providing no, you’re part of this household. You’re part of this family. The family comes first and there is no win lose in any relationship. It’s either win, win or lose, lose. So you can get rid of the false belief that, oh, I can win here and they can lose in this. Now you’re all gonna lose. It’s just a matter of time. You might not have lost in that moment, but you’re going to lose long term.

 

Paul:               14:59 So I’m saying it’s a natural knee jerk reaction to think, oh, I’m the provider. So I have the say in how this goes. Well you can look at it that way and it’s just a matter of time before things start to demand relationship. Like all of it. It will fail. So you will pay that price one way or another later. And then again, if your partner is losing in your family, whether that’s your child, your spouse, you’re all losing. You just might not have lost. I’m saying that in air quotes in the moment. So keep that in mind. You have won the battle, but you’re losing the war. Exactly. So we really need to get some clarity about what the dynamic is instead of just being the individual who goes through their lives with these knee jerk reactions. It’s about waking up. It’s about becoming conscious to what’s actually going on so you don’t find yourself, let’s say surprise, which is where a lot of people find themselves saying, I never saw this coming.

 

Paul:               15:43 I never thought divorce would ever be. I would never think it would get this bad. While you’ve been building it for a long time, you’ve been working in that direction a long time. We just haven’t been conscious to it. In demand relationship, this is why we’re trying to reverse this whole thing. It’s like the frog in the water, right? Yup. You know, you turn up the heat slowly, it doesn’t realize this boiling to death and that’s really what’s happening. So you have to recognize that. If you think, I’m the provider here, so I get to say how this goes, you are really shortsighted and I’m just going to call it for what it is. I’m not going to pull back for your own benefit. You’re shortsighted and you’re not seeing what’s really happening around you. If you’re not all working towards the wind when you’re definitely in a lose-lose. So keep that in mind.

 

Stacey:             16:22 And men have assumptions about these topics as well, right?

 

Paul:               16:25 Yeah, and they’re completely different assumptions as well too because we’re wired differently. Like when it comes to the parenting war, I am going to go to work and she’s going to be a stay at home mom or you know, we have a different perspective on that because we have a masculine model. I’ll just give one example. We have a masculine model and the masculine model, we’re autonomous beings in general and we take care of our stuff, right? We get our stuff done and that’s our responsibility and we do that. And then if she’s a stay at home mom, we have this belief that oh well she’s a stay at home mom, so she’s got that covered. She doesn’t need my support and for me to get involved because I wouldn’t challenge another man like, like step in and take over his duties for him.

 

Paul:               17:01 That would be very confrontational for another man. So we would find that inflammatory like what? You don’t think I have my act together. I got this, get out of my stuff’s great. Right. We have a different model of the world altogether. So you know, he thinks if you’re the stay at home mom and that’s your, I’m saying in quotes, air job or your job to get air quotes, your quads role, that’s your air quotes roll. There we go. Thank you. Um, you know that you’ve got that covered in that you’ve got that handled and you’re managing that and he shouldn’t be the one intervening instead of you saying, you know, no, I actually need your support. It’s right. It’s a different model. There’s so many pieces to this cause

 

Stacey:             17:37 I hear that as well a lot from people having parenting kerfuffles or like whoever’s the stay at home mom, masculine or feminine and please don’t freak out. We’re not trying to be sexist. Any crap like that. First of all, there are very, very strong patterns. We work with tens of thousands of families. Yes there are stay at home dads, there are more stay at home moms. I’m just telling you that I work with a lot of families. I don’t really care who the stay at home parent is, is just a really common dynamic. But it’s another great example that even if you both work, like Paul and I both work full time and so it doesn’t matter if you are a two-income family, a one-income family, it doesn’t matter if you care about your kids, which we all do today. Parenting is pretty much a full-time gig and it needs a lot of time and attention.

 

Stacey:             18:24 And so if there is an invisible assumption about whose responsibility it is to parent, and by the way, don’t dismiss that we both work full time so we’re both going to share parenting. Not Everybody has that same assumption. Just like Paul just said, like, Hey, if you’re a stay at home parent then that’s your Gig. My gig is the work. Or if hey, we’re both working, but you said we could manage working on the kids, then I’m sure you’re going to tell me how we’re gonna manage the kids. Like there is still an invisible assumption. I remember a mom telling me a long time ago when I first entered the workplace and I hadn’t had kids yet and I was in corporate tax and she sat across the desk from me and she goes, just want to be really real with you. It doesn’t matter if you work 60 hours a week and make a six figure salary.

 

Stacey:             19:08 You just remember that when you have kids, they’re still your primary responsibility and you’re still going to have to be the leader there. So just know that if you’re up for the task, you can be partner here, but just make sure that you have the ability to handle both because it’s going to be on your back. Now you can tell what her invisible assumptions were and it was just literally demand relationship playing out. It doesn’t have to be that way. We all want to participate. Now we care about our kids and we care about how we parent. But when these things are left to be invisible assumptions, you cannot know what your partner’s perspective is until you start to see it play out and when it starts to play out, it will bite you in the ass if you have not come to the table to cocreate and code design. And very often what we end up seeing is that when two conflicting perspectives meet in one household, we end up with a white knuckle grip. Tug of war. Yeah,

 

Paul:               20:06 that’s, that’s it right there. So if you imagine that you’ve got your perspective and you’re on one end of the rope and the other person has their perspective and they’re on the other end of the rope, what happens when one person pulls hard on their side of the rope? Like they start to dig in on their perspective, like my way, my way, what happens? They put a lot of energy there. What does the person on the other side do?

 

Stacey:             20:25 I have to match that. I have to pull just as hard and match that on this side.

 

Paul:               20:29 Even if that’s not really what they started off with. They weren’t that polarized on the topic. Suddenly now they’re going to find themselves really polarized on the other side cause they’re like, no, no, no, no. And they’re going to keep pulling back and then we just get into this tug of war, which can get really, you know, extreme at some point just because something started off where somebody was pulling the rope. It didn’t even necessarily start off that polarized, but this is how this thing grows and now you’re in a fight. Not even sure why it’s such a charged topic. You find yourselves fighting over simple little things, right? Who here just wherever you are and in, unless you’re driving, raise your hand. Did you ever find yourself wondering why are we fighting about something that seems like such a minor topic and this is such a, he didn’t fight. It started off with somebody pulling on the rope and you decided to pull on the other side because you don’t know any other model. You know, you hit the end of your skill set on this and you don’t recognize that you’re in a demand relationship model and that’s where it comes from.

 

Stacey:             21:22 The tug of war, the white knuckle grip, tug of war is literally a predictable pattern. They are pulling in the opposite direction. Listen to me in direct proportion to the intensity of the white knuckle grip that you have there. Intensity matches yours. So while you’re standing there yelling at your partner to get on board with you and see it your way and you want them to be more flexible in their being so unreasonable, just stop and look at your white knuckle grip around your side of the rope, release your grip and they can start to release theirs. Start collaborating and stop convincing

 

Paul:               22:05 and you’re not convincing anyway. You’re just trying to convince, let’s call it what it is.

 

Stacey:             22:08 Yeah. Amen. So what’s the solution for all of these? Whether it’s parenting or money or household religion, how family, Martin, all of these work, all these different things. What is the solution? The solution is alignment. Alignment. And what Panera are going to teach now is actual alignment, not the, I’m throwing the word alignment around like a soundbite. And what I really mean is convince everybody to do it my way cause I’m right, I’m talking about real alignment, which is legit, like real. That’s the solution to this whole thing. Alignment is created. It’s created explicitly directly through collaboration where everyone is heard. Now this cannot happen in demand. Relationship demand relationship is the win-lose and the winner wins and the loser loses. And if you’ve ever been on the losing side of that, which if you’ve been in a relationship for more than a few hours you have, it sucks.

 

Stacey:             23:12 So that’s not a longterm play. This can only happen when using relationship development, which is a win win approach. Now we created a set of tools for this process to give you the process for creating the alignment in a way that allows you to both be heard, both contribute and together create something even better than you would have a part. And I just want you to get like this will not accidentally fix itself. You will never just figure this out. No matter how great you feel your marriages, you will 1000% guaranteed fight about these key topics in marriage and family until you have gone through a true authentic alignment design. Meaning it’s not just, okay, so we’ll do this her way this time and we’ll do this my way. Cause like this is really my area. That’s really her area. Now see people will throw words around like alignment, collaboration, teamwork or other words.

 

Stacey:             24:08 But what they really mean is convince, convince, convince them of your way. Convince them, show them, oh you need communication tools. So okay, here’s the communication tools to get them to see it your way to convince them that you’re right and they should do it your way. Like that’s pretty much everything else that’s out there is demand relationship based of convincing others why you’re right. And all the communication tools and all the other strategies are all about. Okay, so nothing yet has worked for you to convince them. Let me tell you why this will work for you to convince them. It’s all crap.

 

Paul:               24:42 Compromise. Like literally convincing. Your convincing them comes down to somebody who’s gonna compromise and that to the level of them, the degree to which they compromise is the degree to which you sort of, you failed, you failed in this endeavor because they’re not really onboard to just like whatever. All right, well it’s not worth me fighting this anymore or I’m not heard so it’s just not worth my time. Whatever the throw in the towel response is, that’s really what that was. You didn’t really win anything. You didn’t actually build anything. That’s long term. Again, it’s a short term approach where you think things are okay, but here’s something else that I think you need to realize is let’s look at the opposite perspective because a lot of people think, well no, I am right in my head. My partner is just so wrong on this one and I get it.

 

Paul:               25:26 That’s where you think you’re coming from and I would encourage you to open your mind a little bit, but here’s something I’m going to show you on the other side of this, why the short sided approach is also hurting you in other ways. So years ago, I used to be a consultant. And what would happen is I’d worked with some really talented people and we would all come to the table and we’d have these challenges we would have to solve as a team and we would sit down and different people had different strengths in different areas and we’d all be at the table. And what would happen is we would start off and say, okay, so here’s what we all agree upon, are the facts of the situation. Like we lay out the facts, you know, we, each person would say, here’s what I think we should do.

 

Paul:               26:05 You know, I would recommend x, Y, and Z and here’s how I see it, blah blah blah. And we’d lay out this concept of what we see is probably the right way forward and the best, most efficient way. You know, sort of get this done, accomplishing the goals, things like that. And we’d feel really good about it cause we’d prepare before we would get to that conversation. And then the next person on a team would talk and you’d see like their different perspective. And some of it would line up, some of it would actually contradict and say, actually that’s not a good idea and here’s why. And I can’t tell you how many times in my own experience, and I admire the team even more because of it. We’d have like five people at a table, all have slightly different or sometimes substantially different perspectives on the same facts.

 

Paul:               26:48 And yet by the time we were all done, because all of us put in our own perspective, I’d often find myself saying, oh yeah, you know what? They’re right about that. I didn’t see it that way on this piece. And then the next person would talk like, I’ll actually, this is a better way. And it would shift the whole conversation cause it’s like, you know what? That’s a great point. And we’d all say, yeah and I think [inaudible] and we come out with this amazing outcome that was solid, it was sustainable and it would work. It would work because it had already been vetted through the other perspectives and people were bringing in different gifts to the table that had those perspectives. And our outcome was phenomenal. As consultants because we really saw all the pieces and all the flaws. There were so many perspectives that we ended up with a really robust, better solution than any one of us at the table could have come up with period.

 

Stacey:             27:32 Amen.

 

Paul:               27:32 It was synergy. Synergy is greater than the individuals. You put them together and it’s greater than the two pieces together could have created is something more and bigger. That’s the power of real alignment, real collaboration. And then the funny thing about that dynamic too is by the time everybody was done talking, two things happened. One, everybody felt heard, right? We had our chance to be heard. Secondly, the outcome was greater than what we had envisioned initially on our own side and it was solid and sustainable. That model works in any relationship. Most people don’t entertain that model. Most people are trying to convince the other one and hold onto their side. But when you’re really not thinking about yourself and you’re thinking about the solution that we were trying to achieve as consultants for a customer who is outside of us, a separate entity for the greater good of that entity, because that’s really where everyone wins. It’s the win-win, right? We all were working for the best interests of the other and we came out with this solution. It was amazing, and the customer was happy and something greater than what the company could have done on their own. Something greater than any of us as the individuals could have done alone. All benefited from that model of true collaboration, getting the synergies, getting that solid, longterm, sustainable solution that’s already been vetted from people who bring different gifts to the table, which is always going to be the case.

 

Stacey:             28:53 That’s it. That’s so beautiful. That is it. That’s alignment. That’s collaboration. That’s co-creation, and you can do that as partners, as spouses in your marriage for your family. That’s it. That’s alignment. That’s relationship development. Alignment is created. So if that’s like you’re listening to that story, you’re like, oh my God, we need to be able to do that. Let me just tell you, there’s a lot of charge when you attempt to do what you could do at work. Like what Paul was just saying, in your marriage, in your family, with your money, with your children, because people are have a tougher time releasing grip on their way because underneath your desire for how you want to parent your children is your fear that if they’re not parented right, they will suffer beneath your desire for your belief about your way with your money is your fear that if you release that you’ll be destitute and homeless.

 

Stacey:             30:00 So there are triggers that you have underneath every single my way that you bring to your marriage and your family. And that’s exactly normal. That’s totally fine. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And the trigger should not, when your family should win. And so if we stay stuck in demand relationship of protecting our way, then the trigger wins and the trigger lives on. But if we start taking the approach, like the toolbox that Paul and I haven’t and alignment is step four of our eight step system. So module four in our programs and on our live event, when you reach for the tools in our toolbox, they’re designed because we know this, we understand that when you start talking about parenting, you’re going to have fears that if there’s not enough discipline and there’s too much coddling, my kids are not going to be prepared for life.

 

Stacey:             30:55 Or when you talk about money, you’re going to think, oh my gosh, if you spend everything, we’re never going to have anything and we’re going to end up losing this house. Like we understand that there’s emotion behind it, but part of the tools, part of the roadmap to collaboration tool and the brick conversation tool and all the other alignment design tools that we have in our toolbox, or to take you through talking about that with your partner so that everybody is heard so that we can benefit from the other’s perspective so that we can solve whatever triggers that we have so that we can do the kind of co-creation and collaboration that Paul was just talking about, but from an authentic place where, okay, this was a phenomenal opportunity because I’ve been carrying around this money mindset since I’m little and it’s not serving me and I’m so glad we went through this process for our family because the outcome of the synergy was bigger than the mindset that I brought into it. And so many other examples just like that, because we all have gifts to bring every time. Paul and I are polar opposites, like we both have gifts to bring. I benefit all the time. From Paul’s perspective, he’s the complete opposite. And I’m sure it’s the same way. Yeah, slowly.

 

Paul:               32:13 So there’s always going to be that outcome when you start to recognize that the false belief that your way is the only right way and that everybody else in the world should see your Wayne. If they don’t, there’s something wrong because there’s actually a right way and a wrong way. When you can release yourself from that false belief, you’ll actually start to open your, your mind to something far more greater than you, because you really start to see those benefits. Just like I would see at that table because there was, you know, five often, sometimes like 10 people literally in the same conversation and each one brought something different. So you have to release that. But the other thing that gets in people’s way is, you know, there’s this feeling like if you don’t see it my way, then you’re not supporting me. That’s another thing that trips people on the way we should talk about, which is you know, this false belief that just because they didn’t align with you on your, your way, your method right out of the gate, you know, starting off that they’re just not supporting you and actually they’re not positioned to you in some way as a person or as in your relationship or what that means about you and your relationship.

 

Paul:               33:16 All of this stuff starts to come up and as bs is simply because you feel like your way has to be the right way and then clearly they must see it and if not, then they’re just not supporting you or putting any other label on this and the fact that, hey, there’s a need for some alignment conversations around this one because we see it differently and those meanings start to get a life of their own too. And I just want to say that if you see it that way, that they’re not supporting you in doing it your way and that’s the problem. I’m just going to tell you flat out that’s not alignment. That’s just you trying to convince them and putting a false belief around that that again, there was this right way and they’re just in opposition to you instead of in opposition to your perspective and that they see it differently.

 

Stacey:             33:57 I see this all the time with entrepreneurs actually since we’re entrepreneurs, we’re in a lot of entrepreneurial communities and a lot of times entrepreneurs, we’re married to regular normal people who have jobs and are not totally crazy like we are and there’s such a huge difference in perspective and it’s so sad to me how many times I see people who are entrepreneurs posting and saying, my partner is an employee and they don’t get me. They’re not supporting what I need to do to grow this business and other entrepreneurs saying, drop ’em leave ’em you’ll be better without them. Go make all your money. You’ll show them like you can’t stay with somebody who doesn’t support you that way. Like it is so horrible. The demand relationship that’s going on and people blaming their partner for not seeing it their way or not getting on the same page, which I use air quotes for getting on the same page because when most people use the words getting on the same page, what they really mean is you come get on my page and that’s not alignment. That’s convincing it’s demand relationship. Yeah. And

 

Paul:               35:02 you know, I’m just going to point out here, this is such a good example to the people who are saying that in those posts, they actually had your best intentions in mind. They think they’re actually supporting you, but when you have the blind leading the blind, you know, this is not their area of expertise. They’re just reacting to what it is in their own life. Right? So like I don’t have that support. So yeah, you should dump that person. Like seriously people. The funny thing is they have the best of intentions for you, but they don’t have the perspective or the wisdom in this area to be guiding you. So just keep that in mind. If someone tells you there is no other way. Stacey and I say this all the time, you’ve just run to the end of their, what their skill set. We say that in every episode, and this is another example.

 

Paul:               35:40 So I just want to point out, look, these people have good intentions. It’s not that people are trying to give you bad advice that you basically jump off a cliff. You shouldn’t have. What we’re saying is it’s that much off of everyone’s radar that with the best of intentions, people are giving advice that is wildly destructive and you need to be the filter. You need to be the one that say, well wait a minute, wait a minute. Does that make much sense to me? Like there’s no possible way to fix this that this person I love, that I have children with or whatever I now have to cut out of my life because it’s interfering with the way I run my business. Or is it that maybe you need a skill set here that you’re lacking and neither one of you have it at the moment. Just ask yourself the truth.

 

Paul:               36:21 Don’t take my word for it. Look around. Yeah. So what is the truth? All right. So the truth is that you both bring gifts to the relationship. You both bring gifts to your family. Again, Stacey and I are polar opposites and we’re not just saying that because it sounds good, like literally if you were to do assessments on us, you know, psychological assessments, you’ll see that besides being masculine and feminine differences, I bring an entirely different approach to the same situation in almost everything that Stacy and I do. And that serves us both as do I see the gifts of Stacey brings. Because her perspective will stretch me to where I’m like, wow, I let me try to wrap my head around this one because I don’t see it that way and I’m very clear how I see it here. So instead of saying I’m right, this is where I get the gift cause I get the grow from.

 

Paul:               37:11 I actually do see that now and over time actually start to understand it or I appreciate those differences. And you know, we use the balloon in the string. If you look at a balloon, for example, a helium balloon, you know, left untethered, that balloon will fly off into the atmosphere and pop and be destroyed and then on a string without a balloon is just garbage on the floor. It just lays on the floor. It doesn’t do much. Right. You know, but the string and the balloon together creates something really cool and withstand time. So is my string as say might fly and Stacey the balloon, which really stretches me outside of what it would be rigid rules and structure and things like that. So together we get the gifts of both narratives. One example of how our opposites, so don’t believe, again, this goes back to I guess I picked the wrong partners or they’re not like me or they’re not an entrepreneur or any other in another episode, right?

 

Paul:               38:02 Any other label you want to throw in that you can, you’re happy to throw whatever label you want on that. And I’m going to call it out because I care. I’m going to call it out that the moment you slap that label on it, you just shot yourself in the foot. Because now you have a story around why it’s okay for you to be different for them and that they’re wrong. They’re not. It’s up to you to grow. It’s up to you to evolve. And that’s what this is all about. So anyway, you know, we designed alignment despite being polar opposites. We designed alignment every aspect of our marriage and it honors both of us. And the more you do this, the more you see that, you realize, wow, this is such the great way it doesn’t become a challenge anymore. It’s just because again, people don’t start off with this skillset. It allows both people to be heard. It puts both of our dreams into the design of our family and our future. It’s a skillset and it can be learned.

 

Stacey:             38:50 Absolutely. And once you start doing this, you can just tweak it over time. Like, because once you get the skills to do this, you can start doing this all the time. And trust me, once you design alignment around money, you have that for the rest of your day is, yeah, you’ll tweak it now and then. But you designed the alignment. Once you design alignment around parenting, you have it for the rest of your days. You can live out the day to day knowing, oh the day to day is just us living out where we designed intentionally together once in a couple of hours sitting down and doing this process like we designed at once and now we get to live in it forever and it just, it gets quicker and easier over time to make shifts and keep things moving once you do at one time or you can keep falling into the accidental lineman predicament day to day, struggling trying to fight in the moment, trying to convince them, ranting and raving later about how they’re never listening to you. This happened again. I’m like the pain of not doing this requires much more time and energy than the actual time and productive energy of doing this. When you design alignment, the accidental alignment predicament disappears. No more lack of alignment on parenting or family or work or any other topics that keep coming up in your day. Is it worth it? Well, you are worth it and your family is certainly worth it.

 

Paul:               40:13 All right, so we want some action steps, right? We always want to be able to, it’s not, again, it’s not about learning this cognitively, it’s about doing something, taking action. Because if you don’t show up differently, if you don’t take action, nothing’s going to change for you. Let’s just call it what it is, right? Folks? So let’s do some action steps. Now. Let’s take some steps along the way. So step number one, notice what are the accidental alignment predicaments that you’re falling into. Start looking around to see where you’re having some struggles and saying, am I falling into this accidental alignment predicament? What are the topics where you guys are not yet on the same page and showing up in your day on that as if you are aligned, right? So look for those opportunities for change here. Number two, prioritize. Prioritize. What’s the most important one of those that you want to start with first?

 

Paul:               41:00 Like, pick something that you feel either is the one that you’re fighting about the most or the one that you feel has the most importance. Pick some kind of a priority. Pick one of those and start to take action on that. So the third step is take action. Start using the tools and strategies from the relationship development toolbox to get to the win-win on this one topic in the next 30 days. Then you can take on the next one. Okay, so like baby steps here. And then fourth, catch yourself. Even if you don’t see these or you did start being awake, start being cognitive. Catch yourself. If you find yourself in a win, lose dynamic somewhere where one of you is getting your way and you feel the other one is losing. And it could be either way. Stop yourself and get to the tools that you need to learn how to create that win-win because that’s navigating life successfully.

 

Stacey:             41:54 So if you’re ready for these tools and strategies, like some of you I know are listening, you’re like, “Man, I want that roadmap. I want the framework, the systems, the solutions”, like our relationship development toolbox is chock full of them, and you can start getting results today. You can jump into the quickstart program, join relationship you, whatever’s a fit for you, we’ll see you over there. Hey, if you got value from this podcast, take a screenshot of your phone, share it in social, spread the word. Every family deserves the freedom of these solutions. Rate and review our podcast. If you haven’t gone in to iTunes to rate and review our podcast yet, please help us do that. That helps us spread this opportunity to more and more families, because that is our mission, to do that, because together we are changing the way relationship done.

 

Speaker 2:          42:48 Hey, would you like to get big results in your relationships in just 10 seconds a day? If so, then subscribe to our daily inspiration for relationship transformers or The Dirt at Martinopodcast.com/Dirt.

4 comments on 14: Fights Every Couple Will Have

  1. Denise Sacks says:

    This is an amazing subject that would have served our family if we had heard this 30 years ago ! So excited that this will serve so many young families today. No one is wrong we just did not know how to do it! Now you will know!! Hurrah!

    1. rtpodcast says:

      You rock Denise! Love you!

  2. Michal says:

    I really love all of Your podcasts! Just bought one of Your programs and cant wait to start 🙂 You are a one BIG knowledge of relationships as a whole.

    I just want to point out ONE thing that I can’t agree with You!

    It’s about the boiling frog story – it’s just a myth but very well fits to all the stories that you relate to. For me, it’s not a problem 🙂 I like that myth but just wanted to let You both know ^^

    With Love,
    Michael

    1. RT Podcasts says:

      Awesome, Michal!!! We’re so glad you got in a program! And WOW – that is hilarious! Thanks for pointing that out!

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