I’ve got my hubby, Brian, here with me today and we are talking about liking your spouse! Not just loving each other, but genuinely liking each other and liking spending time together.
We get asked about this a lot, so we’re pulling back the curtain a little bit on our relationship, our friendship. And we hope this inspires you to start liking your spouse and working and investing in your relationship. Let’s jump in!
In This Episode Allie and Brian Discuss:
How being a team is important to liking each other
Not joking about “work husbands” or “work wives”
Working through your problems instead of avoiding them
Protecting your spouse
Speaking positivity/Giving positive energy
Watering your own grass
Being friends with your spouse
Hanging out together
Mentioned in this Episode:
Courses (Use the code PURPOSESHOW for 10% off!)
The Purpose Show Facebook Community
Date Night Ideas for Every Couple (this is FREE!)
Ep 057: Communication in Marriage with Brian Casazza
Date night is so crucial. Brian and I created a FREE list of date night ideas for every couple. There are ideas for things to do when you have to stay home because you have no babysitter, or fun things when you’re out on the town. Whether you have money to spend or literally zero dollars in the budget. There are more than 30 ideas in this PDF to help you prioritize date night.
Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to. I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days. I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it. Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and I know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
ALLIE: Hi friends! I’m super excited to talk with you today because my hubby is here with me. We started out hating recording together I feel like, but now I like it.
BRIAN: It was hard for me.
ALLIE: Yes, I wasn’t going to say it, but you said it. It’s a natural zone of genius for me and you really go out on a ledge to do this for people. We all really appreciate you stepping outside of your comfort zone and getting good at something that you’re not actually good at. And I love you.
We are talking today about liking each other and not just loving each other. This is how we translate that and how that’s looked for us. As always, all we can do is really open up and share what we have learned and what works for us in the spirit of hoping to inspire other couples. But we realize all of this stuff might not be your cup of tea and that’s okay.
So, just like all the episodes in this month, I polled my audience about what they would want to talk about for ‘love month’ outside of their love relationships—married or not, or dating someone, or whatever that looks like. I didn’t want to do a normal marriage episode. It’s just not our favorite thing to talk about. We’re learning with you. We’re trying our best and we’re figuring it out. We have arguments and problems like everyone else and it’s just not something that I’m like, “Yes! I know exactly what to say about that!” So, I just really didn’t want to do it.
But this came up a lot. People were asking about our friendship, how we spend time together, how we seem to really enjoy that, and what it looks like to like each other.
And social media can be such a lie. I mean it shows 1% of our actual life. It’s just so small an amount.
BRIAN: Especially mine. I haven’t posted a whole lot about anything.
ALLIE: I feel like I do a really good job at connecting with you guys on social media. I’m really good at that and I can confidently say that I’m good at social media. But I feel like the platforms themselves make you feel like you know everything about my day, my family, and my life, and you actually know almost nothing. It’s kind of beautiful because it’s connecting us without us having to be super connected, but it’s also very misleading.
And so, we wanted to open up about this particular topic instead of doing a big marriage month—we just weren’t feeling it.
So, we sat down and we talked together, trying to almost reverse engineer the fact that we do like each other, we like spending time together, and what are the aspects of our marriage that have cultivated that for us? And the first thing that we both agreed on was that we’re a team. It’s not separate. It’s not one person pulling more than the other. There’s no inequality in our marriage.
BRIAN: No. We work together. Your strengths are usually my weaknesses, so we counterbalance each other’s strengths and weaknesses to be this super team.
ALLIE: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we’re a powerful team together. What I am really terrible at—I’m talking about traits, not life skills, although that’s kind of the same—in character qualities and traits, we’re opposite. You have things that are my weaknesses that are your strengths and it works well.
But we also have things that are not opposite. We have the same weaknesses, sometimes, in certain parts, and that is hard, but we don’t let that pull us apart or take away from our teamwork. So I feel like we’re equal.
BRIAN: Yeah. I feel like we both help out with everything. We’ll find out, even through that, that you like doing this thing more than I like doing it and we’ll use all of those things, so that way we’re doing what each other is good at.
And we’re also happy at the same time because I know that you could be doing this thing and I would hate doing that, but it helps that you like it. It’s just that kind of teamwork that we’re always pulling together through everything that we’re doing.
ALLIE: And also, I feel like we own our life. We’re like, okay, we both agreed to be married, be a team, and we have four kids together. I don’t have four kids. You don’t have our kids. We have four kids.
BRIAN: Right.
ALLIE: And we are in this arrangement together and everything is split. The chores, the responsibilities, our life, is split and in different seasons that looks different ways.
BRIAN: Right. And there has been the time when I was the one doing more working—way more work, it felt like all I was doing was working. But I wasn’t like, “Oh, this is all I do and that’s all I can attribute because I’m the man and that’s what I’m supposed to do,” and not do anything else at home. You helped me with so many things so that I could go to work and everything, with the kids, and you set up time for us to be together and spend time together.
ALLIE: And I carried more of the housework weight when it was switched. And now, it’s actually the opposite. We both run the business together and you absolutely have such a vital role in the company. I feel like nobody sees that. Nobody understands it.
Brian is basically the spine of the company. And what does the spine do? It supports the neck and the head. Then what you really see, what you’re drawn to noticing when you look at a person, is their face, the head, the top of them. And that is exactly how we are in the business I feel like.
BRIAN: I thrive in that environment and I like that more than I would like doing what you do.
ALLIE: Briancasazza.com?
BRIAN: Yeah, I don’t like that and I wouldn’t want to be that. So this, to me, is perfect and this is what I feel like I was made to do.
ALLIE: Also, in terms, of being—I mean this stupid term, but I don’t really know what else to call it—the one that makes money, the breadwinner, you did such a good job of that when it was your role. You went crazy, pulling overtime, doing anything and everything you could to make ends meet in a really crappy situation.
I didn’t really realize this about myself, but now that we’re switched, and I was like, “Look, I have this business idea, let’s just go all in and let me try this,” you were so supportive. And now, I’m really good at that. I like being the one that makes the money. I’m a good business woman. I know what I’m doing and I thrive in this. I just need support because I can’t do it all, as much as I wish I could and sometimes try to. So, now it’s opposite. You do more of the housework stuff.
BRIAN: And honestly, I like that we had the chance for you to figure that out. We may have never known that if we weren’t in such a tough place. That was inside of you and you wanted to do something about it. I feel like it was so cool that we gave that a try and it totally worked out way better. I feel like this fits for us so much better than it did before.
ALLIE: Totally. It’s like we weren’t living inside of our God-given gifts and we were trying to be just kind of what we fell backward into, but also what we were raised to believe: “This is the way that men do things, and this is the way that women do things.” But it was opposite for us.
Anyway, I feel like our point is to like each other, you need to be a team. You need to figure out what “pulling your weight” in your marriage looks like for you, your lifestyle and your family. It’s going to be different than us.
Nobody really likes a person that is super selfish, not pulling their weight, not trying, and not helping. Like, “Wait! We made a deal. You said you were going to do this and you’re not.”
And it’s not perfect. I definitely will come to Brian and say, “I feel disappointed. I want to talk about it because I’m sure that I’m having too many expectations of you, but let’s talk about this.”
And there’s been times where the business will get scary, or finances will get scary, and you always come to me because that’s my thing. And we talk about it. I feel like we are so good at being a team and that really contributes to liking each other. And that was the first thing that we both put on this list, so I think that says something.
Another thing that we were talking about is: don’t joke about your “work husband.” And I’m using that as a funny example, as a very specific version of the point we’re trying to make, which is—don’t joke or talk about other people that you know in terms of being close to them or having a relationship with them. And this has been really important for us.
I’m going to share this story and it’s super vulnerable. I didn’t even tell you that I was going to talk about this. But I feel like people think if you’re married, especially if you’re a Christian and you’re married, that you’re dead and you don’t feel anything ever. You’re not attracted to anyone else ever. But there was a time (I don’t even know if you remember this; it was years ago) where there was a specific friend group that we were in and there was a specific friend…a man, another husband…where there was just this energy between us. I kept feeling it and then he made a glance and a comment almost alluding to acting on that. And we had both felt that for a year.
I came right home and I was like, “I need to tell you something.” I was honest and I said, “It’s weird. It’s like electricity or something between us. And he just looked at me like this, and said this, and I felt like he was alluding to something. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m way off base, but this happened.”
And Brian shared with me…How did that make you feel, that I said that?
BRIAN: Yeah. It sucks for me to know that you could feel like that, but at least it made me feel good that you told me and that we talked about it. You were being honest and that stopped, I guess, anything else that could have happened and built up over time because you would have never said anything and then it could have led to something. I’m not saying that you could have ever done that, but…
ALLIE: This was years ago, so it’s not like this anymore, but at that point in time we saw them often. And I felt like, “Okay, I’m not going to do anything here,” but I felt like I was harboring a little bit of a secret and I didn’t want it to be like that. Within an hour of getting home from that event, I opened up about that, and I feel like that increases the ‘like’ factor too, like, “Hey, I like you. You tell me things. You’re not afraid to tell me hard things and I trust you.” And trust is such a huge part of love and absolutely the ‘like’ factor.
BRIAN: Definitely.
ALLIE: So I feel like I hear a lot of this especially from my friends that work. They have their “work husband” and they joke about these things with their spouse. Or the spouse will joke about their “work wife” or whatever. But what is that doing? Is that constructive?
BRIAN: Well, we’ve seen it on one of the shows that we watch and they were joking about that. There’s a whole episode about that. Thinking of the guy in that situation, I would have felt, I don’t know, weird. I know that’s not a big deal in a way, and it’s a joke, but still it kind of feels like…I don’t know…it bothers me a little bit.
ALLIE: Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to say. What does it do for you? It’s not constructive.
BRIAN: It’s not positive.
ALLIE: Yeah. Okay.
The next thing that we talked about is…oh my gosh, I really want you to talk about this one…don’t avoid your problems. Don’t avoid problems that you have with the other person. Go to them. Go towards them.
BRIAN: Yeah. Oh man, we’ve just worked through so many things and we realize that working through them fixed so many problems in our marriage, and that has kept us together. Not having things build up because I’ve had at times things where I kept it inside or wanted to sweep it under the rug and just not deal with stuff. Then it built up over time and has caused such a bigger problem than if I would’ve just dealt with the problem right then.
I feel like our relationship has been built upon that now to where we don’t let anything like that sit between us. We’re always very clear. We’re always very close. I feel like that also harbors closeness and really good communication because we’re always doing that with each other. It’s such a big difference.
That’s something that I’ve learned to do because I’m the one who would want to sweep it under the rug or just not deal with stuff because I don’t super love dealing with conflict.
ALLIE: Yeah. I need to shout you out for a second, too. You sweep things under the rug. You don’t talk about hard things. No hard things. No matter if it’s conflict or just something awkward. You don’t talk about anything. Everything gets swept under the rug and I’m just not like that. I open up my arms to problems and I’m like, “Hey, what is this? What was that look? What was that comment? Let’s talk about this.” And sometimes I’m too aggressive and I’ll be like, “Fine, let’s just deal with it,” but I’m mad. But we balance each other out because Brian has really made strides. He’s realized, “Okay, to love and like each other, we need to talk about our problems. So, I’m going to be the one to really change here and not avoid them.”
Then my change came from being less aggressive, less attacking, and more like, “Let’s have a conversation. Why are you feeling like that? Why did you say that?”
BRIAN: Within that we worked as a team to come together.
ALLIE: It all comes under teamwork, right?
Okay, this kinda goes back to the, “Don’t joke about your work husband,” but the next one is—protect your spouse in the way you talk about your marriage and the person you’re married to.
I don’t want to give details about the person, but one example is our family, not mine and Brian’s family, but my family of origin is really jokey. We joke together and everyone talks about everything. There’s no rug-sweeping, so that’s why Brian was so foreign to me when he married me. We have a really sarcastic sense of humor. It’s just the way that we’ve always been. But, there’s this particular family member who goes a little bit too far and takes jabs at people. And whenever that person always takes the step that’s too far and they do it about Brian, I don’t take the bait. I don’t say anything. I don’t add to it. Sometimes, if it warrants it, I will actually say the opposite, “No, don’t say that. Oh my gosh! Too far!” And I stop it. That’s just one small example.
I think you have to ask yourselves, women listening, how many times have you used the excuse of “venting” to totally berate your spouse? Totally bring him down, to yourself and to the people that you were talking to? What are you saying about him in your head? What stories are you telling yourself about him? What are you actually speaking out about him to other people?
This is our job to protect. I feel like, especially in traditional circles, the protecting is done by the man and not the woman. That’s B.S. We have a job to protect him, too. We need to protect how he comes across to other people. If he wants to make a fool of himself by himself, that’s one thing. But if we are going and spreading negativity about him, bringing him down, and hurting his reputation, that is so not okay.
You are married to this person. It is your job to protect his reputation. It makes me so mad when I think venting is masked. I don’t think guys do that. Do you guys do that? Vent about your wives? Just like, “Oh, I just need to vent.” I mean I know they talk bad about their wives sometimes.
BRIAN: Yeah, well, they won’t say, “vent.” That’s not what a guy would say. They would just complain. It’s just complaints.
ALLIE: But it goes both ways. I remember when you worked at your old job that was a common thing that you would talk to me about—that they would come in and complain about the boss, complain about work, complain about the old bag at home.
BRIAN: It was just a lot of negativity and complaining all the time.
ALLIE: Like a ‘lack’ mindset. A complaining, negative mindset.
Every time that I get asked about my relationship with my husband, our marriage, and how we’ve made it through hard times together, I am always trying to get people to understand that it is about spending time together and cultivating a tight friendship within your marriage relationship. What do friends do? They hang out with each other.
Dating each other is so, so crucial. Don’t let it be a cliche that you know, that you sometimes act on, but not really all the time. I want you guys to know that I have created – actually Brian and I together – created a free PDF that you can download – Date Night Ideas For Every Couple.
There’s more than 30 ideas in here. There’s a mix of ones that you can do at home when you have no babysitter or for when you’re going out. This includes a lot of things you can do for free. It’s for every couple – wherever you live, whether you have a babysitter or not, whether you have a big budget or not.
alliecasazza.com/datenight. It’s free!
Brian and I are super passionate about helping couples go spend time together, to have it be intentional time that feels special, not just sitting on the couch like you always do, which can be fun, but sometimes you need to put in that extra effort to show each other that you care, this is important to you, and it matters.
That sometimes needs to look really simple with no sitter. And sometimes it can be a little bit more fun, a little bit more extravagant like a night out on the town.
So, more than 30 ideas of all different types of date night. This is for every couple; we called it that for a reason.
alliecasazza.com/datenight. Let us help you figure this out.
What do you have to lose? Just go! Get the free PDF and take a look. Maybe something will spark an idea. You never know when things can turn around and can change because of some effort that you put in.
ALLIE: Okay, so that brings us to our next point which is more about words, really.
BRIAN: Yeah. Speaking positive words to each other. And this goes with the negativity thing. So not coming to you all the time and being negative. Not complaining about this person at work, or someone over here, or this thing. And as a team together, living a life of being positive and not letting the negativity be something that we do. Because there’s a point when we can feel a certain way, need to talk, or you need to vent to me, or just get something out that’s bothering you.
ALLIE: Or there’s just something negative that needs to be addressed. It’s not like, “Oh that was negative so much, let’s not even talk about it.” I think that it’s about what you focus on expands. So if you, as a couple, are focusing on the negative—on the negative traits that the person has, on the negative things that have happened in your week or your day—and that’s what you open your mouth up and say to each other when you get home, that’s just going to expand. That’s just going to grow.
BRIAN: And you showed me that. I’ve always listened to podcasts or read books about negativity, and I’ve heard people talking about how it is such a problem that people do. I’ve heard that a lot. But you have been the one to show me that and bring that into our marriage by making sure that we’re not doing that with each other, or to each other, or even just speaking negative things.
Sometimes I’ll get frustrated when I’m driving or something and I’ll just start complaining and getting mad that someone cut me off or did something, and then that just snowballs into a hundred other things. You’ve stopped me before and got me to realize, “Oh shoot, I’m doing that.” And that’s good. I like that we help each other with that and with other things like that. But you know, that’s just such a big one.
ALLIE: It’s almost everything. It’s just like being a team. Speaking positive words to and over each other is really important. Practice finding the silver lining together.
It’s okay to be real. I’ll come in the house and be like, “Oh my gosh! I’m so done. It was just such a hard day. I don’t even want to talk.” And then later, I’ll need to unpack the day.
It’s not that there was nothing negative, or that we never say anything negative, but like Brian’s example of him in the car, it’s random, needless, spiraling negativity where we both try to stop each other.
BRIAN: Just not living a lifestyle or living in a habit of negativity.
ALLIE: Letting it fly.
BRIAN: Right.
ALLIE: And then also, you are really good at speaking positive words over me. I think the difference between speaking positively to someone versus over someone is: speaking positive words to somebody is saying positive things in a conversation and focusing mostly on the positive, even when you’re dealing with the negative. Reframing it and finding the positive and ending on that note. Speaking positive words over somebody is more like when you’re struggling, when you are like, “Oh my gosh! I’m just not meeting my goals, this thing isn’t happening, or I’m really frustrated.” I let you vent. I let you talk to me about what you’re frustrated with but then what do I do?
BRIAN: Sometimes it’s almost annoying because I’m feeling so negative, so down on myself and whatever, but you will bring me up, tell me positive things, tell me all the good things, make me realize, “Hey, you may feel like that, but look at this, this, this and this.” And that’s why, subconsciously, I will come to you in an event because you’re going to do that for me. And we do that for each other. It’s huge. That’s a big deal.
ALLIE: Yeah. And I want to say too, because you just said “vent.” I need to also praise you again for this. You have come such a long way. You’re not even venting anymore. You have come from, “I’m just going to puke out all the negative junk, be super negative, and fart all over the day,” and now you’re more like, “I am frustrated and I need to express my frustration with this. I don’t know what to do.”
And that’s not venting, that’s not negative speak. Even in venting you have gotten more positive. And I need to let you get it all out and you let me get it all out. We both know what happens when you interrupt me getting frustration out. I get pissed; I need to finish. But, then it’s like, okay, let’s look at what’s good.
You have come so far with all of your health and fitness goals, and your weight loss goals but when you’ve gotten frustrated about that, I let you get it out. Then it’s like, “Okay, I hear that. Let’s look at the picture you took six months ago. You look like a completely different person. You are stronger. You just went hiking with my dad and brother and you were leading the way. They couldn’t keep up with you. It used to be that you wouldn’t even be able to make it up the mountain.” Positive, positive, positive.
To give you guys a tangible example of what he’s talking about, I feel like that’s a good example and you do the same thing for me. This leads into our next point.
We borrow energy from each other. If I am feeling weak and I’m being beaten down, people are complaining about the work I’m doing, they are slamming me, I’m feeling so defeated…I am able to get it out and then you build me up. You let me borrow your energy because you’re not beat down and beat up right now. You are feeling fine and I’m not. You share that with me and I share it with you. I feel like that’s really important.
BRIAN: And then I also feel like with the venting and all that that we’ve also separated the difference between venting and needing to get emotions out or just talk something out together rather than blaming things on other people. Or taking ownership for what my things are and being frustrated with that and not using that to gossip about somebody or say something bad about somebody else or whatever. And that just keeps us a lot healthier with our emotions and our boundaries.
ALLIE: Well, you feed each other. If Brian comes in the house and he’s like (you know the famous quote that everyone always uses as an excuse to be negative), “I just need to vent,” and he starts berating a member of our family that we see all the time, or talking so bad and blaming something that he had some ownership in on somebody else—that is not doing anything productive. It’s totally bringing me down. It’s bringing the vibe and the energy in our house down. It’s bringing me down. It’s totally negative. It’s putting the blame on someone else rather than saying, “This person said this to me and then did this and I don’t know if I need to give them the benefit of the doubt or not, but that really upset me.” Then we can talk through, “Well, okay, what is our part here? What can we do? Do we need to go and talk to the person? Do we need to not hang out with them as much? Is there a boundary that needs to be set up? What is the cause?”
And that contributes to us liking each other because we’re constantly knowing that if one person runs out of energy, the other person has some to borrow. And you can borrow positivity too.
The other thing that we wanted to talk about is—the grass is green where you water it. It’s not always greener on the other side. And if it is, it’s because they water their grass. So, pour water on your marriage and stop planting weeds.
BRIAN: All these things could become weeds but we don’t let them grow or be there.
ALLIE: They definitely sprout up and we pluck those little babies right out and throw them in the trash because we don’t want those here.
And then too, friendship. We have a whole episode we’ve recorded on this so I’ll link to that in the show notes. But we’re friends. What do friends do? They hang out.
BRIAN: Not only do we hang out but we talk about stuff like you would talk to your friend. We are friends on a certain level to where we have things that we do together or talk about together. Like I just recently found a TV show series DVD set that’s been impossible to get and we share that together. We’re friends in that way and I love that. It’s almost separate than being your husband.
I do things that a friend would do because we are. You are my best friend. We do everything together because I want to spend time with you, be your friend, and hang out with you. We don’t like all the same things, but we like a lot of the same things. We have built that friendship where we have things that we do like together.
ALLIE: And when the other person doesn’t like something, I’ll get it for you. Like the concert.
We love going to concerts together so much, but we like very different music, so finding an artist that’s actually coming to our area that we both like is pretty rare. I got tickets for Brian to go with my brother to see their favorite band that I think is awful and terrible, but he loves it, so I support it. I make sure he’s happy. That’s what friends do. They get presents for each other. They hang out together. They talk about normal everyday things. Like, “Oh my gosh! Try this water bottle. It’s amazing! It doesn’t taste like toilet water. It’s so good. Oh my gosh! I found this song on Spotify. You should listen to it.”
We’ll share meditations. I listen to meditations every day. We’ll find a good one and Brian will text me, “I found this one, it’s really good.” The other day I was getting ready for the day and again, I needed to borrow energy. I just was not feeling it. And Brian was like, “You know what? You get ready. I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to leave my phone here and you listen to this meditation that I found.” He turned on Spotify and played this meditation music/sound and it totally soothed me, picked up my mood, and I felt so loved. It totally turned my day around. That’s what friends do.
And bonus: we live together, we’re married, and we get to have super fun, adult-style slumber parties all the time. It can be like that.
If anyone shouldn’t have made it, it’s us. And we made it. We are friends too, and we’re married.
The last thing that we wanted to bring to your attention when it comes to liking each other is, and it goes along with the friendship thing, you hang out with people that you like. If you want to like your husband, if you want to like your spouse, hang out together.
Brian is super good at this. Which, if I can be honest for a second and this doesn’t offend you, you really used to suck at this and now you don’t. It just goes to show that you can change. You as a person can change. The person you’re married to can change and evolve if you communicate and you give. Generosity begets generosity.
What I wish I would have known sooner in my marriage is that if I would’ve just stopped focusing so much on what Brian wasn’t doing “right” and just focused on how can I give more of what he needs from me, then that would have returned more from him and I know that now. Instead of feeling disappointed or like, “Why can’t you just do this?,” it’s more like, “Am I communicating enough? Can I give him more of what he needs?” And then of course you want to reciprocate and give that back.
BRIAN: Yeah, me seeing that, of course, I want to do that for you too because you’re not just telling me you want this or being upset about it. You’re just doing it in love and showing me that and I’m wanting to do the same thing.
ALLIE: Totally. So back to hanging out, hanging out with people that you like…
BRIAN: Well yeah, like the other night, we were so busy all day, so tired and done with everything. We had the kids with us and we wanted to be with the kids too. I wanted to take you out, go out with you, and spend time with you as if we were going to go out on a date. We didn’t have a sitter and I wanted the kids to come with us too. We needed the time out. We went out to dinner and got a big booth that we were in. We sat close to each other and let the kids be, hang out with each other, talk to each other, color and draw while we relaxed together in the moment and in the time that we could there. I didn’t think that could ever happen. I was like, “Hey, let’s give this a try.” And it was really good.
ALLIE: I do that too and it’s dumb, because we always go do stuff with the kids. We take them out to dinner. But in your head you’re like, “Oh, date night needs to look like this.” And we have a regular date night, but it wasn’t that night and we needed it.
And so Brian was like, “Well, let’s just break the rules.” He texted me, “Hey, whenever you’re done recording come meet me over here. I’m going there with the kids.” And guys, he sat me down and I was so done. We were both like out of sync and just tired. He sat down with me and the kids were being themselves and they were kind of a lot, but it was still worth it. And he put his arm around me, brought me into him, snuggled with me, and ate with me. We didn’t have to cook or clean up anything that night. It was just really good and fun.
That was teamwork. I didn’t have the brain capacity to think to do that, and you did. You took the reins there and normally, you guys, up until the last year or two, I would be the one to think of things like that and do that. And Brian just wouldn’t really ever mentally go there. That isn’t really wrong, but it definitely is tiring being the one to always do that. I stopped trying to force him to think of these things, to be what I wanted him to be and to let him be. I just was like, “Well, I’m good at this. I’m the one that’s good at thinking of these things and feeling into when the family needs something like this, so I’ll just be the one to initiate it.”
Once I stopped nagging and was like, “Oh, I’m just going to take ownership of this because I’m good at this,” and I just started doing it all the time whenever we would need that.
BRIAN: Obviously I learned a lot from you, but I learned a lot about what works for us, what we need, and more importantly, what you need when you’re feeling certain ways.
ALLIE: It’s like you picked up on the habit. It’s the thing that I used to try to force when we were first married and now, we’re 12 years in and you just know to do it. And that’s teamwork.
I don’t want you guys to think that we’re here talking about how to like each other and we’re both so positive, so on top of everything, so in love, and we’re so good at this. It was so bad you guys. We have been through the ringer. Things you wouldn’t believe that maybe someday we’ll share more about. But it has been a really rough road.
BRIAN: Yeah, but it took all of those things to figure out this stuff.
ALLIE: I just want you to know that we were persistent. We chose to stay together. We chose to ask these questions: How do we like each other? How can we get better at this?
And I think that all of these things we’re sharing are just what we’ve walked through, what we’ve figured out and dug into in order to have a friendship, to learn how to be in love and also like each other.
This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Did you know there is an exclusive community created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions surrounding The Purpose Show episodes? And to get you to actually take action and make positive changes on the things that you learn here? Go be a part of it. To join go to facebook.com/groups/purposefulmamas.
Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, and get step-by-step help from me, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, courses, classes, and ways to learn more about what the next step might look like for you and to focus on whatever you might need help with in whatever season you are in right now.
I am always rooting for you, friend! See ya next time!
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment