The Secrets to a Peaceful and Connected Marriage
Welcome back to the grounded union podcast. We're gonna be talking about the secrets to a peaceful and connected marriage. And this is something that I think every couple wants. It's interesting. I asked the guys in my my men's community app, grounded nation, what they were wanting in marriage.
Brandon:And a lot of them said peace, peace, peace. This is this common thread that so many couples are seeking for is to feel connected and for things to be at peace. In short, what that means is that your time together equals enjoyment instead of your time together leading to chaos and pain. And so I want you to think for a second. You maybe had a very immature or selfish reason for getting married that I just want to get married so I can have a slave that takes care of all my needs.
Brandon:Most people didn't actually get married with that mentality. It was I really love this person. For me, I love this person who's singing in front of me, Caitlyn. I really wanted to spend my life with her. I wanted to do amazing things together.
Brandon:I wanted to enjoy her, learn about her, build a family together. That's why we entered into marriage was to experience the peaceful connection and bond that was promised to us or this facade that we were given in marriage. And for most of us, get married, life gets a little rough. We get knocked off course. We get distracted.
Brandon:We break our commitments. And what do we know? Marriage is nothing close to peaceful and connected. And most couples then just settle. Okay.
Brandon:We're not going to have a connected marriage. We're not going to be at peace. A lot of couples end up creating two separate lives. I have my life over here at work. So then we both get full time jobs separate from each other.
Brandon:That's just that can be the norm. But then you work overtime, then you're hanging out with the guys from the office. We live these two separate lives because together, it's not enjoyable. It's not connecting. And so that's not what we signed up for.
Brandon:So if you are in this place where you're like, you know what? I'm done having chaos and pain be what defines our relationship. We've talked about in previous episodes, the role that addiction and broken trust play in this. Today, we're gonna talk about some of the practicals we've already told you, which is how you get to enjoy time together. How do you reframe seeing your beloved, being in the same room with her, being with your spouse, and being like, this is connection and peace is the normal instead of the the rarity.
Brandon:Maybe on your anniversary, you put your best foot forward. What if every day was enjoyable? What if every day you woke up and were like, thank goodness I'm married to you? I can't wait to see how we connected. That's what we're talking about in this episode.
Caitlyn:I love that. And we wanted to first do a bit of storytelling on our experience and our last ten years of marriage. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the common way that we all were taught or told or believed is like the way that you connect in your marriage. And that's through dates. And the disclaimer is that we are not against going on dates with your spouse.
Caitlyn:That's great if you wanna go on dates. What I wanted to bring about was the conversation of this kind societal norm, which is to have a connected marriage, you must go on a lot of dates. And so, of course, when we first got married, for the first five years of our marriage, which if you've been around for season one and the beginning of season two, you understand those first five years of our marriage were absolutely tumultuous. And so, yet you'd be surprised. You'd be surprised by a lot of things.
Caitlyn:You'd be surprised to find that we actually went on many, many, many, many dates. We actually set so much intention on going on dates that we would hire a babysitter weekly so we could go on a date and so that we could go to our small group bible study at the time. And so we, at this in the beginning had one daughter. So she would we'd have a trusted person come over, stay with her, we would go on a date. We even for many times tried, we need to go on these overnight like dates.
Caitlyn:We need to have a whole day away from our child, just us. We need to have a whole night together. This is how we connect. It's like, here's the prescription to connection. You must have time just together and time away from kids.
Caitlyn:And again, those things aren't negative. Those things actually can be connecting. Yet, what we found was that five years into our marriage, we had an absolutely disconnected union at the root level. Yet, we spent all this time going on all these dates, so why are we so disconnected? And what I find to be so fascinating, we were talking through this a lot before we even recorded is in the last five years.
Caitlyn:So from 2019, 2020 on till now, we've gone on maybe five dates.
Brandon:Wow.
Caitlyn:Absolutely shocking. People are like
Brandon:The marriage coaches don't date?
Caitlyn:The Brandon Talks marriage account goes on maybe one date a year. Like, maybe we were trying to trace back. We think our last date, the date that we all think of, that I spend time just together at a restaurant, we have no kids. We think that was two years ago on our anniversary. My mom happened to be visiting.
Caitlyn:We were like, oh, it's our anniversary. We will go on this standard date.
Brandon:So of course, we ended up on the side of the highway eating cake and fooling around fooling around in the minivan. Thank you. Cheers. We'll leave that one for another day.
Caitlyn:Like we said, we're not against dates. Like, I would go on a date tonight. That sounds so exciting and so fun. And at the same time, I loved as we're reflecting, I'm like, oh my gosh. The last five years of our marriage have been the deepest connecting years of our entire lives together.
Caitlyn:We have actually only grown in connection in our five years, and yet we've only been on one maybe one date a year, maybe even less. Five is just thrown out. I can't even think of one other than the one from two years ago. And so what we're here to propose is that dates do not equal the foundation of connection in your union.
Brandon:Dates are like going to church. So go with me here. You may be a good church going Christian. You may be you might not be a Christian. You might be a Christian and you're not sure where you go to church, what you wanna do.
Brandon:It's like church because we've been told or led to believe here in the West that if you go to church, you'll be close to God, that you need a punch in your church card. I even shared a few things about how we hadn't been off and on from going to church just on our own spiritual journey. You can judge me. You can take it or leave it. And people said you need to punch your one hour a week to go to church, and that's how you get closer to God.
Brandon:And I was like, I sure hope that it's not one hour a week is all I I punch my church card and then I'm good. It's my get into heaven card. It's the same thing with dates. Just because you go on a one hour, two hour date, week, once a week, once a month does not guarantee you are connected. It's actually cruel to tell people, hey, if you go on a weekly date, you'll have a good marriage.
Brandon:Mhmm. What do you even I I I see you know, we talk about how how bad this young generation is being on their phones. I see a lot of people in their sixties on their phones sitting at a restaurant. They don't even look up at each other. So going out to dinner does not guarantee that you have a connected marriage.
Brandon:Also, I do wanna throw this out. No. Some of you guys are gonna leave a negative review. Some of guys are gonna unsubscribe right now. Going to see a movie together.
Caitlyn:Yes. I literally just wrote dates equals movies.
Brandon:Oh, we're on the same page. Going to see a movie together is not a date. No. That is Boo. Boo.
Brandon:Boo. Unless you're not making out, but that's I don't know what you're it's time together where you're enjoying each other. I like the intention of it, but that's what we're gonna dive into is intention is the whole is the whole component of this. So if you think that if you go to church, you're gonna be close to God. If you go on a date, you're gonna have a great marriage.
Brandon:You're gonna be sadly mistaken. It's moment. It's the intentionality of your relationship. It's the quality of your connection, and it's once you've addressed the root things that lead you to a part, which is what we're so big on. That's what creates connection that makes every day special, not just every day special, but it allows you to create intentional times together that create connection.
Brandon:One of the biggest things that we have always been a proponent of is putting away screens. We're talking about entertainment, phones, TV, shows, movies. Keep them if you want. But if you're not happy with your marriage and you want deeper peace, deeper connection, take the distractions, take the messages that are that are being thrown at you. If you guys are sitting down at night and you're watching the news and you're finding about how horrible the world world is, you don't think that's gonna seep into your connection?
Brandon:One, you're not even gonna talk about how you two are really doing. Two, you're just gonna see the world from a negative lens, or you're gonna be inundated with sexualized content, things that make you think judge others, judge yourself, judge your spouse, and you actually don't even have time to connect. So we've always been big on, especially the second five years, putting the phones up, making eye contact, having a heart to heart conversations. We'll tell you guys at the end of episode how we have those conversations. But when entertainment is so deeply engaged, enveloped around your time together, you don't really have time together.
Brandon:You just have time around each other. It's not quality time. It's just filler time. That's why you don't feel close and connected, and that's why it's not producing peace.
Caitlyn:Mhmm. And one thing I wanna add to this is that although we've been on five or less dates in the last five years, like I said, this is the closest and most connected we have ever been in our marriage. There is no lack in our intimacy, in our connection, in our friendship even, because there's intentionality to the everyday moments, to the times that we spend together every single day. I see it as almost we nearly go on a date every single day. It's not the date you think of where we have to get the babysitter, we cannot have any distractions, we can't have our kids, can't have any noise, we just have to be sitting there.
Caitlyn:And like Brandon said, most people that go on those types of dates, if you observe, like, we go to eat out as a family all the time, and it's like, if you look around, it's kinda shocking. It's like, even people with their families, they're all on their phones. If they're sitting there on a date, they're staring at their screens. Like when their meal comes, they might put their phone down for a minute, and we'll talk about why why we why I think that is. Why we, even on our dates, our connecting time like Brandon opened up with, choose into avoiding time together is because we know if we put the phone down on the date, there's actually only chaos or pain to meet us in the face because we haven't actually addressed the root system.
Caitlyn:But Brandon and I go on nearly no dates and we feel no lack from that. We don't feel like we're missing out. Like somebody the other day was asking when we last went on a date, almost as if that was a negative thing and it's like, oh no. It's so incredible. We're actually so connected on the day to day to day to day that it doesn't feel like, oh, I just can't wait till we could have some help so we could go on a date together.
Caitlyn:It's just our souls are so fulfilled because we prioritize intentionality in every single day and every single moment that we have together that we are so fulfilled, so complete. The date is really the cherry on the top, which I think is the whole full circle moment here is the date is not the answer to your connection. The date is the cherry on the top to your connection. The date is what you do out of overflow of connection. Connection.
Brandon:One of the things I do wanna make sure we clarify is we do celebrate special days. Valentine we love the good hallmark. We all have a good hallmark holiday. You know, Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, Father's Day. We don't act as those days are normal days.
Brandon:In fact, one of the most damaging things I did during the first five years of our marriage is Caitlyn communicated to me very clearly that she wants special days to feel different. So anniversaries, birthdays, Mother's Day. She wanted to feel like there was an intention and there was a plan and that that time wasn't just gonna be a normal day. So on those days, over the last couple of years, we and I and Caitlyn make sure to have specific things that we do on those days that are different than our normal routine. So we aren't saying don't acknowledge an anniversary.
Brandon:We're not saying ignore special days. We're saying make them special for us in the context we're in. We're not empty nesters, and we cry thinking about being empty nesters. We have children ranging from one, three, six, and eight, and they're with us. And so we what we do is we create a sell celebratory day with them involved, and we we bring that intention to it.
Brandon:So we are not anti celebrating special days and going on a date. We acknowledge the special days, and I finally actually started doing them the few years because before I just I wanted to avoid the feeling of closeness. So when I felt uncomfortable, I just would fail to plan anything for anniversaries for anything until the very, very last minute. And I communicated a clear message scale, and I actually don't want this koi time with you. This is uncomfortable.
Brandon:Stay away. Now I look forward to these moments together where we are acknowledging, okay, this is our ten years together. This is a birthday. This is this is mother's day. This is Valentine's day.
Brandon:So we do cute special things. So we do, although we don't go on the standard date, I did take Caitlyn to Kauai for Mother's Day, so we're not anti dates. Mhmm.
Caitlyn:Yeah. And I think we really believe that the reason why those who are, like Brandon saying, maybe you're you're hitting this wall when you wanna go connect, when you wanna go have quality time. Whether that's through a date or whether that's through the intentionality of the everyday moments and you've all you can feel is chaos and pain. All you can feel is this need to run away, to escape, to dissociate. This was Brandon for the first five years of our marriage.
Caitlyn:And the reason why we believe this, is the reason why we believe there is all of the rifts in the marriage, is because deep below the surface of the foundation, there's still hiddenness between the two of you. So it's like, have you ever tried to connect, you know, magnets when you put them back to back on the wrong side?
Brandon:All the time.
Caitlyn:All the time. All of us in school, it's like they hand us the magnets and we're like, oh. You know, you have it on the right sides, they connect fully. Right? And if you try to put them on the opposing sides, you try to connect no matter how hard you try.
Caitlyn:You literally can never get them connect to connect together. You can keep trying and trying and trying to get them as close as you can, and they will not. And that's really how I see the concept of union with secrets. It's like, if you have secrets in your union, you're two magnets trying to come together and connect no matter how hard. You might get really, really close.
Caitlyn:And that's what that's what everyone in the church, everyone in the counseling offices will recommend is, you'll be able to get this close, and that's about it. And please, dear God, don't tell all the secrets that are keeping you from fully connecting because then your marriage will collapse. And what we tested and found to be tried and true is actually the things in between our magnets that were keeping us from being fully connected, those secrets, those hiddenness, once those got cleaned out, our magnets could fully connect. Yeah. We could fully come together and have union and intimacy because now nothing stood between us.
Caitlyn:I see secrets as such a literal energy in the room. They're literally like, look at the magnets, they cannot connect. Yeah. That's exactly what the two of us are. We have to stop believing that we can carry around secrets and have deep connection in our marriage.
Caitlyn:You cannot. You cannot come together in union. And so if you have all these secrets and you can't come together and connect, then guess what? Every time you have a moment where the kids are in bed, you're gonna turn on the TV. Why?
Caitlyn:Because you know that if you leave that TV off, all those things keeping your magnets from connecting, those are gonna start to come to the surface and you don't want to because there's chaos and there's pain in there and you're scared. So you wanna run away and turn on the TV. Then you get a date night and it's like, oh gosh. Here we are again, our magnets can't connect because there's all this hiddenness we've been keeping from each other, and so, oh, let's just pull up the phone. Yep.
Caitlyn:Pull up the screen, talk about something surface level, maybe even get in an argument. I wonder how many couples get in arguments on dates. We used to love to argue on the way to date, on a date, on the way home from a date.
Brandon:I didn't
Caitlyn:do crying, makeup streaming down the face because why not spend your time together actually just creating more chaos?
Brandon:For the record, I didn't have any makeup on. That was Caitlyn. We get triggered like that on dates. Like, you know what? If you think about the magnet analogy, which Caitlyn had me hypnotize his Watchfinger, the closer you bring to opposing magnets, the stronger that force is.
Brandon:And and then I think about it this way. The the times we're most emotionally triggered is when we're that closeness where it's like, woah. You're you're you're getting close to this thing I'm protecting. And so we're so big on getting the secrets out and getting to not just the secrets, but the underlying so the secrets are are blaring sirens. The underlying issues where there's pain and brokenness, that keeps you from enjoying each other.
Brandon:And so the reason you don't like talking to each other, and we'll talk in a future episode about how we conflict, is actually an it's an underlying condition. If you feel like you need to defend yourself, it's because you feel misunderstood at the root level. Well, why do you feel misunderstood? Because maybe you've hid behind a certain identity that is not true, and you're projecting that back on your on your spouse. If you feel like you need to defend or project, it's because there's an underlying issue in your relationship that you have not addressed.
Brandon:If you actually live in peace with each other, and I'm not just saying don't be mad about what's taken place, but actually repair where the disconnect started. Then when you talk, you're like, you know, oh, you're coming from this place. I know where you're speaking from. I feel clean and clear. I don't have all this inner chaos happening inside of me.
Brandon:I feel safe to connect with you. You know, there's a saying secrets don't make friends. They make best friends. But that's not the that's, you know, friends that keep secrets from other friends. The whole point of this is you sharing your secrets, you actually coming clean and being seen by your spouse, binds you two together in such a beautiful way because so much of our lives we're ashamed of.
Brandon:We try to keep from others. We try to keep hidden. And I did not like it that when I got married, Caitlyn could see through all my, my crap, all my BS. Was kinda like, woah, woah, like you preach on stage that people should live this way when we were traveling and speaking in churches, you're and then you come home and live this way. Those don't line up.
Brandon:And I'd be like, stop. Like, what do you mean? Like, don't do that, but that's actually a gift. And it's like, wait, all the parts of my life that don't make sense. So my spouse can clearly see is the opportunity then to clean it up and no longer live in a way that isn't in alignment with what you believe in, what you, what you say you're all about.
Brandon:One of the biggest things that has revolutionized our time together and we, we see in couples that are thriving is time in nature. When we're outside, there'll be so many times where it's, you know, the kids have had a long day. We've had a long day. We're in the house. Everybody's feeling cooped.
Brandon:Then we step outside our front door and we go for a walk and you begin to breathe again. Your body begins to relax again. Maybe there's sunshine. Maybe it's cold and you're you're taking in nature. The easiest way to create connection is to do so out in the wild, out where you have the trees moving, the wind blowing.
Brandon:You're out in the elements because it reminds you of of where you started, that we all came from dirt, and that we all are integrated into this world. And I think when we live our lives in our insulated boxes or the whether they're air conditioned or heated, we lose touch with the ebbs and flow of the season. We lose touch with where we are and what we're doing. And I think that when you step into nature, you become emotionally regulated and you begin to tap into an environment that actually supports you and the connection you're trying to create together.
Caitlyn:Yeah. So to summarize, to truly build connection and peace and harmony in your union, you're gonna start by connecting your magnets together. So you're gonna take them from being this opposite opposing magnet by getting out all the secrets, all that's hidden. If this is your first episode, we dive deep into the conversations of how you can get out all the secrets, all the hiddenness, and all of the other episodes. We dive deep into this in our courses, in our workshops, and all of our offerings.
Caitlyn:So if this is your first episode, go back and start at the beginning. To establish connection, you need to get out that little middle piece in between your magnets that's keeping you from being disconnected. And then you're gonna build upon that, like Brandon said, with getting rid of screens. When we were in the pits of our marriage in 2019, we got rid of all screens. We actually had already been living those first five years without a TV.
Caitlyn:And we again, I love all these examples. We still were so disconnected. We didn't ever watch movies or TV shows together, and we were still worlds apart. I can't even imagine if we added in the daily need to watch shows together. Like, how many more worlds apart would we be?
Caitlyn:And for many of you listening, you feel like you are so far away from your spouse that it feels impossible to come back together. And I'm gonna give you a little hint. If you remove your screens from your life, from your day to day life, those two worlds are going to get so much closer already. If you remove all the secrets and you remove all the hidden ness, woah. Your two worlds that felt inseparable or not inseparable, that felt so separated.
Caitlyn:Yeah. That felt incompatible. Your two worlds that felt incompatible and so separate are literally moving by heaps closer together, by getting out secrets, and by getting rid of screens. We continue to not have a TV. We continue to not watch TV.
Caitlyn:We continue to not watch movies. And when I say this, I mean, like, we didn't have Netflix on our phones. We didn't have shows we watched on our phones. We didn't have sports. Brandon wasn't like, oh, but I still have to watch my one sports show on Sundays.
Caitlyn:I mean, absolutely nothing. Brandon got completely off of all social media platforms.
Brandon:And video games.
Caitlyn:And Brandon was completely done with video games. That was another thing that he used to lie about all the time. And so for him in rewiring his brain, which we talk about all the time, from actually moving from one way of living to the next, you have to do something different. It's so silly to think, oh, I'm gonna transform and create a new marriage while doing all of the same things I've been doing every single day. It's like, come on, we gotta do something different here.
Caitlyn:So when we say, when we give a call, I feel always the need when we talk about screens that it needs to be so clear because most of all of America has And whether we wanna see it or not, most of us are actually completely aware of the addiction and the pull that we feel. And we just wanna let you know that you can totally free yourself from that. From every addiction, that's the whole essence of everything that we share. All you have to do right now is unplug your TV, remove it from the wall if you need to, put some art over it, remove your laptops and put them in a stowed away place when you're done working. Turn your phones, there's this little button, we all use it when we get on the airplane.
Caitlyn:And I just wanna let you know, you can actually use that at any other time of the day. You swipe your phone down and you click the airplane, and it will turn your phone off. When you click the airplane again, everything that you missed will come back. You don't miss any phone calls. You don't miss texts.
Caitlyn:You don't miss emails. Everything will still be there waiting for you when it's the time for you to address those things. Yeah. If you are with your spouse, if you are with your kids, if you just got home from work, it's not time to check your email. It's not time to work.
Caitlyn:It's not time to check your social media. It's time to connect. Yeah. It's time to do the things that matter. So many of us are like, why am I depressed and anxious?
Caitlyn:Because you do things that make you depressed and anxious. Because you're moving away from all the things that you love. All the things that bring life and vibrancy. If you wanna feel alive again, start putting things into your schedule that make you feel alive. Scrolling on social media doesn't make any of us feel alive.
Caitlyn:Sure, you might find good resources like this one on there, and you don't need to spend hours on there scrolling random stuff. You would feel so much more alive sitting down, looking at your kids, looking at your spouse, connecting in heartfelt conversation. Maybe you might take up knitting. Maybe you might get back out your guitar. Maybe you might start drawing again.
Caitlyn:Whatever it is, fill your life with the things that you love. As you remove consumption of entertainment in screens, you'll find, oh, woah. There's so much more time available for me in life to do the things that matter to me the most.
Brandon:And then that leaves so if I'm together with my spouse, we're spending quality time together. What are we talking about? What are we doing together? What's the activity? Because it can feel awkward, a lot of couples have shared that.
Brandon:Well, we have two phases we're gonna dive into now, which is that first phase, when you are rebuilding your relationship, you got a lot to talk about. And we think that true connection can only create come through intentionality and that intentionality only exists when there's no more hiding. There's no more secrets. There's no more disconnection. And so when you're healing, there's a lot of topics that you can dive into.
Brandon:One of them, which we talk a lot about is your sexuality. And I think that it's one of those ones that's not I don't like the whole idea of just, like, ripping off the Band Aid, but we need to face reality Yeah. And and kind of tiptoeing around it isn't helpful. I would say one of the most crucial things that empowered me was when I was starting to walk through my recovery process out of addiction, being forthright and saying, you know what, babe? I have a sexual addiction and I'm ready to face it.
Brandon:I wanna talk about what that's been for our relationship, how that's impacted you. And we have 60 questions we have our participants that go through our workshop talk through, but your sexuality, while you're healing, you're gonna have a lot to talk about. You're gonna have a lot to talk about the ways you lied, the experiences you had as a child, things that you kept from each other. And so those are things we talk about. Those are things we talked about for, like, a year, and we still talk about them.
Brandon:But in a in a very acute way, when you haven't rebuilt the connection, you talk about where the pain is. You sit with the pain. You you have conversations about it. You hear from your spouse, and you hear what they're facing, what you're processing. And so that's one place you start is you talk through where the sexual brokenness is in your relationship.
Caitlyn:Yeah. And I wanna paint a picture for what our nights have really looked like for almost all of the ten years of our marriage. Again, Brandon kicked and screamed for the first five years. In the last five years, this is what we've done nearly every single night. I can't think of many nights we haven't done this That brings and establishes the peace and connectedness in our union.
Caitlyn:And again, this is how you build upon the foundation of having no more secrets. If you go to start this right now, and you're still lying about your porn addiction, you better believe it's not gonna feel very connecting. It's gonna feel chaotic. You gotta spend your time together getting out all the secrets, and then move into this this segment of what we're talking about. But each night, Brandon and I, like he said, we have four kids, and we've done this through all the years of our children.
Caitlyn:We put them to bed. We actually all sleep together in one room. It's incredibly beautiful. And we have this large king-size bed. We have two trundle beds that are on wheels, and they move in and out perfectly.
Caitlyn:And our older children sleep on those. And the current house that we're in, there's this amazing twin sized window bed, and then we have a crib. And so our baby sleeps in the bed with us. Our children just the other three children disperse on those window seat, window beds, and the two trundles that move in and out. And so we all go to bed at the same time.
Caitlyn:We lay together, the baby's nurse, we lay with the children, we talk through the day, we tuck them in, sing songs, whatever it may be. That rhythm has changed over the years. They all fall asleep and Brandon and I leave the room. This always ebbs and flows. This could be anywhere over the years from 07:30 to 08:30 is around when we would exit the room.
Caitlyn:And so we're leaving the room and we go out to another space. Most of the time that's the living room. We snuggle on the couch. We light a candle. We've mentioned this in another episode.
Caitlyn:We actually use no artificial lights. We use no blue light after dark. We've been doing this for almost four years now. And so as the sun goes down, we honor the circadian rhythm. We turn off all lights if we had any on.
Caitlyn:We actually don't even. These lights are the only time we use them is during the podcast because you guys have to see our faces. And the same with our our season one, we had the lights on at nighttime so you guys could see our face. And so if there were any lights on, those would go off. We light candles.
Caitlyn:We have red light bulbs that we have in lamps sitting on our counter. So we come out from our room. It's already a really nice peaceful environment. Like talking about creating peace, if your environment is chaotic, really hard to establish connection in your union. Yep.
Caitlyn:And so we're creating a peaceful environment in our home. We've lit some candles, we sit together on the couch, we make warm drinks like tea or hot cocoa, we have non caffeinated chai, and we snuggle up and we look at each other. We make eye contact. Maybe we're snuggling when we're not looking at each other, but we we're nestling into each other with our eyes closed. We're connecting our physical bodies.
Caitlyn:There are ways to connect physically without only having sex and having an orgasm. And sometimes, especially when you're rebuilding trust and intimacy and connection in your union, connecting physical touch that's non sexual, in the sense it's not leading to actual sex and orgasm, can feel so connecting. Yeah. Can feel so vibrant to feel the warmth of each other's bodies, to feel close again. A lot of times, even in our workshops, people are like, I don't even love my husband anymore.
Caitlyn:And it's like, yes, of course, because he's been lying to you and betraying you. And I can guarantee as you get all that out, as you connect your bodies, as you make eye contact, light a candle and look at each other, you will begin to fall in love again. And we spent about thirty minutes to an hour. Sometimes we get talking and it's been so long that we're like, it's 10:30. We need to go to bed because we're like teenager best friends that are having like a late night sleepover together.
Caitlyn:And so many of you desire that for your union. It's like, I just wanna be best friends with my spouse again to where we're snuggling on the couch and we get lost in conversation because we love each other so much. And how you start is by getting everything out. Yep. Turning off the screens.
Caitlyn:If we had a TV on and Brandon and I came out to do that, we wouldn't have the merit. If we came out and watched TV, we wouldn't have the merit that we have now. And Brandon's gonna dive into what the conversations look like now for us, now that we've gotten out all the hiddenness and all the secrets. What does it look like? What do we talk about as we're connecting in this candlelit snuggle session?
Caitlyn:Session?
Brandon:I do also wanna give a disclosure that there's there's an occasional time that we're getting a tiny bit of work done or we're we're discussing things that we're gonna do be doing for our our marriage work. So there are times where we'll say, hey. I have about 15 of things to do on my phone. Caitlyn has fifteen minutes of things to do on her phone because Mhmm. We are around the kids a lot of the day.
Brandon:We'll accomplish those things, and then we put our phones down.
Caitlyn:So like communicated about in a time frame that we both feel really good about.
Brandon:On top of this time after bed, after bedtime routine for the kids, we also really love talking in the car. We love those two times, in the car and after the kids have gone to sleep. One of the the best things to talk about with your spouse and the things we enjoy talking about after you've began to create this peaceful connected marriage is we talk about the day. We talk about what we experienced today, things we enjoyed, things we were grateful for, conversations, funny moments. With our kids, we do the same thing, but it's high, low, and buffalo.
Brandon:What was your high of the day? What was your low of the day? What was something that surprised you today? So Caitlyn and don't ask each other, what was your high, low, buffalo? But what we do is we just begin to talk.
Brandon:We talk about things that we a funny conversation, a funny experience, a tourist fell down in the ocean. You know, we talk about all these funny moments we had or these insightful things, or we even go over things like, hey. Did you know that you said this? And it kind of offended the person you were talking to. I'm like, oh my gosh.
Brandon:Thank you for bringing that to my attention. So we'll kind of just debrief the day. So if you're thinking about what do we talk about, you can debrief your day. What were the high moments or the surprising moments? What was the cliff notes of your day?
Brandon:And and you can have there's plenty enough to talk about by each day. We also then dive into parenting. So we'll talk about, hey. You know what? I've noticed with our six year old that she's feeling disconnected from me or she's feeling this this situation we've been running up into, and we'll brainstorm how we can create a more connected situation for for that child.
Brandon:Or we'll talk about literally any situation with the kids. We'll brainstorm. Okay. This sleeping situation where we've been trying to put him down at this time, maybe we'll mix our day up a little bit to put him down for a nap at this time. We just go over the different dynamics of things we're facing with our kids.
Brandon:You might not have young kids. Maybe you have grown kids. That's actually a great thing to talk about instead of getting on Facebook for those of you. I'm talking to those of you in the older generation, because this just seems to be a common thing. Get on Facebook and you look at your kids and grandkids lives online.
Brandon:But instead of doing that, sit down with your spouse and think about ways you could send them a card, go see them, call them. When is the next time you're going to see your grandkids, not just going to see what they did on at the beach or on their last vacation. So I would say parenting kids, grandkids, the intentionality you want to bring to your family life is huge and a a big portion of what we talk about, and there's so much more.
Caitlyn:Mhmm. Yeah. We'll oftentimes dive into when we get lost in really long dialogues is we'll talk a lot about our intentions, our beliefs, things that we're learning. So we might each be reading a different book or we might have had a really intriguing conversation with somebody and learn something new about ourselves, something new about a belief system, a way of thinking. We can get lost in spiritual dialogue.
Caitlyn:We can get lost in even talking. We'll we'll retalk through our story, the things that we learned, the things that we really feel like so so much energy and potency to share with other people. These exact types of conversations that we're bringing you guys into, like, the date the whole this whole podcast came about because we were talking about, oh my gosh, like, woah, this epiphany of remember how we thought we needed to go on a date to be connected? And like, look at we and we were laughing like we've had less than five dates and look how connected we are. It's like we just started talking about the things that we believe in, the things that we're learning, the things that we're thinking about, and then these intentions that we're setting like, okay, what are we gonna be creating over the next week, month, year?
Caitlyn:Like, what is our vision for our next chapter, our next season? What is the vision for our life? Like, if you don't know, if you're kinda like, what do we talk about? It's like, let's start setting some intentions, like goals. Let's start setting some goals for what it is that we want to experience, what we want to create, what we wanna do together.
Caitlyn:Like, even when we have work conversations, they're so life giving because the work that we've chosen to create is bringing about love and connection in life in the world and other people's lives. So it's like, we could even down and talk about work and it feels so good for us because it's like, oh, this is creation being birthed inside of us and then being given an offer to the world. So if you're like, what do we talk about? We would already talk throughout the day. It's like, what do you wanna start experiencing together?
Caitlyn:What do you wanna start doing? What plans do you wanna make? Let the conversation flow from there. Share memories from childhood. Most people like don't even know that much about what their spouse experienced from zero to 18.
Caitlyn:Like, we spend so much time sharing memories, and that sparks another memory and another memory and a pattern and a belief and a way of viewing the world and a way of thinking. It's like, before we know it, we just fell deeper in love and deeper in connection.
Brandon:One of the other practical things is we'll talk about what our plans are for the week, the month, the seasons coming up. I think that, you know, a lot of couples get get out of sync with each other because they don't actually even know what's happening. So if you're feeling like you're just crossing paths, you had one expectation. I thought we were going here for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving's next week, and you both wanna go somewhere else.
Brandon:So at night, during your quality time together and you're enjoying each other, talk about the things you have coming up, make sure you're on the same page. It's incredibly practical. So to summarize the secrets to a peaceful and connected marriage, it's address where all the separation is first and foremost. A lot of people that can be addiction. That can be bitterness.
Brandon:It can be a lot of things that you've kept from your spouse. So until you go into the pain, you don't get to enjoy the fruit of a, of a thriving relationship. Once you dig out the dirt, the practical pieces are don't put dirt back in. So don't don't just go watch five hours of TV together. Go in and watch a walk in nature, plan an adventure somewhere, get your kids involved, begin to create a life that is beautiful, that is enjoyable, and that you can talk about, that you're proud of, that you're that you're constantly developing and improving.
Brandon:We wanna thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode on discovering what it would look like to have a peaceful and connected marriage. If you'd like resources to heal, we do have in the show notes my men's community app for men looking to rebuild their relationship. And if you're a couple working through addiction, we have our grounded intimacy program. All the details are in the show notes. If you got something out of this episode, please leave us a review so we can reach more couples just like you, and we'll see you guys next week.