Tanya Hale 00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 248, "Lessons from the First Year of our Second Marriage." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

Tanya Hale 00:21

Hey, before we jump into the podcast today where my husband and I are sharing some things that we have learned this last year, I wanted to let you know that I have two mastermind groups that are opening up in April. If you have not been part of a mastermind group, it is absolutely something you're going to want to check out. Because I would imagine you're here because you love this kind of content, and you love to be able to talk about it and discuss it and dive deeper in it, and that is exactly what a Mastermind is meant to do: an opportunity to do that with other people who like to do it too. So classes are capped at eight people so that you will have an opportunity to participate and they start in April. I have one called "Better Relationships," where we're going to talk about all things about how to show up better in your relationships, how to see your blind spots, the things that are keeping you from engaging the way that you want to engage and creating the kinds of relationships that you want to.

Tanya Hale 01:16

The second one is called "Life After Divorce," which is a class talking about the healing that needs to take place after we get divorced. Heaven knows that that is a tough, tough time to recover from. And then we're going to talk about how to move forward, how to start living the kind of life that you want to live even when you're divorced, and we can be happy when we're single, and we can be happy if we're dating, and we can be happy if we choose to get married later on. So you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can click on the "Masterminds" tab at the top and you can find all the information that you want to find out about those. Bring your friends. Let's have a great discussion and I'll see you there.

Tanya Hale 01:57

And now here's my discussion with my sweet husband, Sione. Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast today. We are talking today about lessons from the first year of our second marriage and so I have with me Sione.

Sione 02:13

Hey, everybody.

Tanya Hale 02:15

We just were talking about him being on here and he's like, "I actually think it's kind of fun."

Sione 02:20

It is fun.

Tanya Hale 02:22

So okay and then we had to kind of, like, pause. We got ready to press record and I started getting all emotional. This has just been such an amazing year. Today actually is our anniversary. One year today.

Sione 02:36

One year.

Tanya Hale 02:37

And we've had a lot of really pensive, amazing chats already today and then just going through this, getting ready for it, a lot more emotion as we just talked about what this year has done for us and what we've done to this year and what we've been able to create in just a year's time. Let's see, 53 years of tough marriage between us. You were married for 29 years.

Sione 03:02

Yep.

Tanya Hale 03:02

And I was married for 24. And both of those ended in divorce, for those of you who may not know any of that story thus far. And getting married a second time, kind of a scary thing in some ways. Do you agree?

Sione 03:15

Yeah, I think it's super scary because it's difficult to get divorced. It was harder for me to choose to get divorced than it was for me to choose to get married.

Tanya Hale 03:24

Oh, I agree too. I think getting divorced is a much more difficult decision than getting married for sure.

Sione 03:40

And so to jump into a second marriage thinking, "oh boy, what might happen here?" That was a little bit scary.

Tanya Hale 03:48

Yeah. I spent about five years though saying, "I'm not going to get married again. I have zero interest in getting married." And so after a lot of work with my life coach and all that, I finally got to the point. It was a hard decision for me. You know, it's interesting that 67% of second marriages end up in divorce. And I think that that, from my perspective where I'm at right now, I think it's just so many people are looking for a marriage to make them feel better rather than feeling better first, cleaning up their own stuff first, before they jump in. What are your ideas on that?

Sione 04:26

I think if you don't fix the parts of you that led to the divorce in your first marriage before you step into the second marriage, it's going to be the same thing all over again. It's important to have those conversations with your coach or your therapist or whoever you're working with to sort out and acknowledge what were your contributions to the divorce and sort through those things before you get married again because that other person is not going to magically fix all the baggage you bring into that second relationship.

Tanya Hale 05:06

It's kind of like that car analogy I've used in the past. You know, if your car is overheating and you just decide to drive a different road to work, you can't be surprised that your car still overheats because the road is not the problem. It's the car that's the problem. And I agree with Sione, if we don't go into second marriages, really cognizant of a lot of the stuff that we brought in and willing to see this stuff as more, stuff comes up in the course of being married, we're just gonna create the same thing that we did before, which would be a messy marriage. So yeah, gotta clean up our own stuff first.

Sione 05:43

And it's not to say that there won't be stuff showing up after you get married again, but then being able to say, "oh, huh, I forgot, I was carrying that backpack into this marriage. I'm gonna check this." It's time to let go of that backpack.

Tanya Hale 05:57

Yeah, I've had I've absolutely had some of those show up afterwards, but I think because I was already in the practice of noticing my stuff and realize that noticing my stuff wasn't going to kill me. And that it was okay to notice my stuff. I think that that made it easier for me when new stuff showed up in our marriage. So, okay, so first of all, before we jump in, I just wanted to do three really quick ideas about pre-marriage dating ideas, or about going into dating.

Tanya Hale 06:27

I would say first of all, before we start dating to get into a second marriage, I think we really need to be clear on what we want in a marriage. For example, your philosophy of life and being very clear on how you want to show up in the marriage, and then gear your searching around that. And so, for example, when I went online, and I was pretty honest in my profile about how I was, which was part of tat, like putting my philosophy of the kind of marriage that I wanted on there, and then within two or three communications with somebody, I started asking some pretty tough questions because I wanted to see are they introspective? Are they thinking about life in a more serious, I want to grow, I want to develo,p kind of way?

Sione 07:20

Two or three? You gave me one.

Tanya Hale 07:23

Was that it?

Sione 07:24

That was just one.

Tanya Hale 07:26

"Hi, how are you? Okay, so now tell me..."

Sione 07:29

"What were your three biggest failures in life?" That's how she led off our relationship.

Tanya Hale 07:35

Well, it was really important to me that I knew that you could recognize that. And if one of your big failures was I didn't make the high school football team, I was like, "I'm not sure if that's the kind of introspection that I'm looking for."

Sione 07:48

And for the record, I didn't make the high school football team, but I didn't even try out.

Tanya Hale 07:53

But that wasn't one of your big introspection things, right?

Sione 07:58

No, it definitely was not one of my big failures in life..

Tanya Hale 08:00

So I just think that that's really important and then...

Sione 08:04

And then I think it's also important that as you learn things about yourself, and you learn things about other people that you're dating, it's important to make some adjustments about those things. So if you had asked me when I started dating again after the divorce, what things were important to me and then if you had asked me right before we met what things were important to me, they were different. And so my list changed as I learned more about myself and more about other people and more about about how relationships can work together.

Tanya Hale 08:42

Yeah, so be willing to make adjustments but also be really clear as you make those adjustments of what kind of a marriage you want to create. I think maybe not so much the kind of person that you want to marry because those I mean, that gets a little bit checklist-y sometimes.

Sione 09:00

Yeah, yeah, check.

Tanya Hale 09:03

Checklisty? Checklisty. And so, and then the next thing, the next piece of that after that is I think you have to have enough courage to walk away from anybody who is not that. It's so easy, I think, sometimes as older people dating, we were both in our fifties, I think it's easy to start feeling a little bit of scarcity mentality and start thinking like, "well, this might be the best person I'm gonna get." This, you know, they're pretty darn, they're pretty good, they're all right, right? Like they've got their issues, but I don't know. I think the scarcity mentality creates some of that 67% of divorces for sure.

Sione 09:42

Yeah, and it's sometimes we have such insecurities about ourselves that we're afraid to walk away from somebody or we say, "oh, I've broken up with the last 10 people I've dated, what's wrong with me?" And probably nothing. It's probably just you're having the courage to say, "okay, this is not what I'm gonna want in life." And I experienced that as well with the people I dated, sometimes after one date I knew that wasn't my person and sometimes it took a few dates to figure out that that wasn't my person. But I was very quick to say, "yeah, this probably isn't gonna work out." And if someone didn't have one of those things that I thought was important, then I was really quick to say, "let's not get emotionally involved and make it harder. Let's just move on from here."

Tanya Hale 10:33

Yeah, I think there's a lot of scarcity there. Going along with that, I had a phrase that I used that said "if they are not going to make my life significantly better, they're not my person." And it's not worth it for me. At 54 when I got married, like the few years before that when I started dating, I just realized that, you know what, I have a pretty amazing, life. I loved my life. I loved being single. I loved where I was. And not that I didn't think being married wouldn't be great, but I was really happy with where I was. And so I just kind of decided, listen, if I'm going to marry somebody and it's going to make my life worse, no, not going there. If my life is going to be the same, why would I go through all the struggle and all the stuff that it's going to take and combining finances and, you know, all those things that can make life a little bit more tenuous? Why would I do that if my life's going to be the same? And just a little bit better? No, that wasn't worth it to me either. For me, I had to find somebody who was going to make my life significantly better.

Sione 11:39

Yeah, my sister said it differently when we would talk about who I was dating. She would say, "your job is not to rescue somebody," because I have this tendency to want to rescue and fix and solve all the world's problems and solve all your problems and solve everybody else's problems. And so she would have to sometimes roll me back in and say, "you're not there to fix that person. If they're not whole already, then it's not gonna, you're not gonna solve this issue and you're just gonna end up in a relationship like the one you were in before." So I was glad I listened to her on that.

Tanya Hale 12:16

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's jump into some of the biggest lessons that we have learned. I think for me, oh gosh, I don't know if I can rate these, but the first thing that came to my mind as I started making this list was needing to create an equal partnership. Equal meaning that neither of us is more valuable than the other. I think especially for women, those of us, and I think men too, being raised in the 70s and 80s and probably early 90s, there was very much this idea even within the church that men are just a little bit more important. Men are more valuable. I remember literally being told in a young woman's lesson that you'll get married and you'll discuss issues and then your husband will have the last say. And I know, Sione's eyebrows just went up like, "what?"

Sione 13:03

I don't remember that lesson!

Tanya Hale 13:05

But that was what was told to us, putting us in a one-down position, a place where the husband was more important and we just cannot create that equal partnership, that intimacy, that oneness, if one person's above and one person's below. And along with that, I've learned, and it's been hard for me to really step into at times this last year, that we both have a voice. And a lot of times I still struggle. In fact, we had a conversation a few weeks ago that made it a little bit difficult for me to have a voice. And we've been going through finances in this last week and there are times that, as I look back, I'm like, "I didn't really speak up much on that one," because there's a place of me feeling like I need to defer since you make more money than I do. And that's just a pattern of thinking that comes from when I was a child. And it's still there and I still need to work on it. But anyway, if I move myself into that space, then I'm allowing one-downing to happen. I'm one-upping you, I'm one -downing me. And one-up, one-down? We're never going to have that equal partnership.

Sione 14:18

And I will say there's lots of endorphins that come when you're in the one-up spot. You know, that makes you, "that's right. I am presiding, you know." And it's just not helpful. But our brains are wired to compare. So yeah.

Tanya Hale 14:37

Yep, for sure.

Sione 14:39

So it's also good for us to work on collaboration rather than compromise, right? When you look at an issue and you're both on the same side of the table, looking at the issue and how are we going to work on this together versus sitting on opposite sides of the table saying, how are we going to compromise on this issue? That mentality of thinking is getting part of that equal partnership. And I can't imagine that, like our Heavenly Parents compromise a whole lot. I imagine that they do a lot of collaborating. And I'm sure the Heavenly Father didn't say, "well, I'm the one in charge here. So I'm the one who gets to decide." Pretty sure that's not what He does. And so if that's the example that we're supposed to use in our lives, then we can't do that either and have any that equal partnership.

Tanya Hale 15:38

Yeah, I love that. I think the idea of both sitting on opposite sides of the table, it pits us against each other. Like it's me against you. And yet when, when I scoot around the table or he scoots around the table and we lock arms and we both look at the problem, then it's us against the problem.

Sione 15:54

Which is the really how it is. And we're the ones that put ourselves on the other side of the table.

Tanya Hale 16:01

Yeah, yeah, by not seeking to understand and all that other kind of stuff, which we're going to talk about later. So, another point I think that's really works into this equal partnership is that realizing that equal does not mean fair.

Sione 16:18

Ooh, you said the F word.

Tanya Hale 16:19

I did say the F word, the four letter F word. Fair, fair, fair does not exist. It doesn't exist in a marriage.

Sione 16:27

It can't, it's a killer, it's a marriage killer because that implies that it's possible for one person to put more into it than another person and yet still be an equal partnership.

Tanya Hale 16:39

Yeah, and as soon as we start keeping score, resentment starts coming in. We cannot keep score and not have resentment. It's just impossible. So, what that's required for us is that both of us are working to be all in, every day. And some days my all in is a lot less and some days your all in is less.

Sione 17:01

But we're each doing the best we can with the day that we're given.

Tanya Hale 17:05

Yeah. Yeah. And so for us on a daily basis, that looks like both of us just doing what needs to be done around the house to make things work, to make sure that all the things get done. We just do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. And that's amazing to me.

Sione 17:23

Yeah, we don't have a chore chart for each other.

Tanya Hale 17:27

Yeah. And we also don't move into a space of, and I talked about this a few weeks ago on the podcast, like "I cook the dinner so you have to clean up."

Sione 17:34

Right.

Tanya Hale 17:35

Right. It's both of us just doing what needs to be done. If dinner's easier for me to make or for him to make or make it together, we just do whatever's going to work for that day. So.

Sione 17:46

And it is much more fun to do things together.

Tanya Hale 17:48

It is fun, right? The cooking together, the cleaning together, we always have some great conversations and just a lot of opportunities to, you know, walk past each other and drag a hand across your backside. It's just, it's just...

Sione 18:04

...it's just physical connection and emotional connection are both important.

Tanya Hale 18:08

It's all there and I love that. All right. So here's another thing that we, um, that came to my mind is that we don't control the other person. We can only control ourselves. And I think that this was a huge thing for me in my past marriage where I thought that I should have more control over my husband than I did.

Sione 18:29

And I always thought that if I just figured out that one little thing that I could control how things would end up and I really like control. I think that's why I like my job so much because I get to control a lot of what's going on around me. And um, but in a relationship, it doesn't work.

Tanya Hale 18:48

Yeah. Yes. So I think for me, some of the big ideas under here were that, um, my job isn't to make Sione anything. It isn't to force him into any kind of behavior or any kind of thinking or any kind of believing. And um, that my job is then just to support him in his quest to fulfill his possibility. Remember the relationship circle from a few weeks ago?

Sione 19:16

Yeah. The non-Ven diagrams.

Tanya Hale 19:17

The non-Ven diagrams. Yes.

Sione 19:21

I don't know how to describe it except to call it a non-Ven diagram.

Tanya Hale 19:24

But just this space where I'm a complete whole person, fully responsible for all my growth and development and progress and everything else as is Sione on the other end. But then we come together in this circle and this is where we just come to support.

Sione 19:41

Yeah. And I just had a thought about this. The other person also doesn't control us. Right? So you don't make me mad.

Tanya Hale 19:48

Right.

Sione 19:49

You know, you don't make me happy.

Tanya Hale 19:51

Yes, I do! You know, I do.

Sione 19:55

That's true. No, but I'm responsible for my own thoughts of my own feelings and my own actions. Yeah. And you may put things in my circumstances. But how I think about those determines how I feel about those.

Tanya Hale 20:09

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I think that part of what we get to do here in this space is always work toward accepting the other person as they are, however they want to show up supporting them in whatever their challenges and their struggles are. And sometimes that's difficult. You know, when your spouse chooses to leave the church, or when your spouse chooses to start engaging in activities or behaviors that that might be difficult for you to wrap your head around. I think it can be really difficult. But our job is to learn how to manage our thoughts around them being them.

Sione 20:51

And that's, yeah, and that's where our ability to step in to becoming more Christlike shows up, is accepting them for where they are, not trying to control their behaviors.

Tanya Hale 21:04

Yeah, not trying to change them at all, right?

Sione 21:07

Right.

Tanya Hale 21:07

I think is as a 23 year old getting married. That was a big..t I Thought that that was part of what I should be doing. Like it was my job to make sure that he was being righteous, to make sure that he was living the gospel. And I pushed those things in a very self-righteous way.

Sione 21:24

Well, sure you got taught that as a young woman, right? You're you were responsible for my, as a teenage boy, for all of my feelings and emotions and if you wore that dress, well then how could I? It's your fault that I was having those unrighteous thoughts about you. It's, that's all your responsibility. So of course, that's what you were taught as a woman in the 70s and 80s.

Tanya Hale 21:48

Oh, thank you for validating me letting me know that it's okay.

Sione 21:50

So of course, that's how you would show up.

Tanya Hale 21:56

I love that you brought that up because I think that does show how ingrained in our society it is. That we can control other people. Yeah, yeah, nicely done.

Sione 22:06

Thanks.

Tanya Hale 22:08

That's why I like hanging out with him. He's really good about helping bring those things to light. Okay. So the third thing I want to talk about is communication communication communication.

Sione 22:19

Verbal communication.

Tanya Hale 22:21

Yeah, you want to jump in on this one?

Sione 22:22

Yeah, because that was one of the things in my first marriage that we talked about a lot. And it turns out one of our therapists who was really talented said, "of course you guys are communicating really well together. Like Sione, you're communicating that you want to control her and she's communicating that she doesn't want to be controlled by you. There's no lack of communication here. You're just not talking about it at all." And so it was all that nonverbal communication that was leading to a lot of the issues that we were having. And so it's important to bring things up verbally and talk about all the things. Don't expect the other person to be able to read your mind. Don't put things on the back burner and that's where the other F word comes in. "How are you?" "fine." Like, well, you just communicated that you're not fine at all. So those are all things that that communication is really important. So it's not just communicate because communication is always happening. Our body language, our looks at each other, tone of voice, all that stuff communicates to the other person things, but it's verbally communicating and acknowledging what's going on.

Tanya Hale 23:38

Yeah, I love that. Thank you. I think the piece that you touched on as well was the no back burner issue thing. And there was a podcast on that like last spring, sometime maybe about a year ago. So go back and check that one out if you haven't. But one idea that I love, another analogy for that is when weeds are tiny, you can pull them out with two little fingers. But if we let things sit and sit and sit and sit, it eventually takes a shovel and a huge hole in the ground. And it's really hard to take care of that. And, and so we've just found that for us, we talk about every little thing that is difficult for us. And usually, at least once a week, if not twice, we'll say "any backburner issues this week? What have you got going on?" because it's so much easier. I have zero data to support this. But I would dare say that 95% of the issues that come about in our relationships are just little small miscommunications, little things that we have just let blow up into something big.

Sione 24:41

Right, because we can perseverate on it and then blow it up into make it a bigger monster than it really is. But all that comes from letting it fester and letting it sit around longer than it should.

Tanya Hale 24:57

Yep. And then, but here's the other piece. Nothing is left unsaid, but learn how to say it kindly. So if you want to go back about five or six podcasts ago, owning your own, I don't remember, there's something in front of that, but the owning your own one. How do I say it kindly? How do I have this conversation in a way that it doesn't blow up into something bigger than the little thing that I brought to it? Because that's super easy to do.

Sione 25:24

Right, or blaming or shaming the other person for the behavior that they're doing. Because then, of course, they're going to put up a defensive wall and they're going to say, "whoa, you're throwing rocks. I need to guard myself." I think it's also good on the back burner issues to realize that the issue... bringing it to light helps sort it out. You don't have have to sort it out before you bring it up. So you can say, "okay, I'm having this back burner issue. I have noticed X, Y, or Z, and I'm not quite sure where I'm at on this, but I know that it's something that we're gonna need to talk about." And then that's okay. Now you've brought it out in the open. Now the other person can start thinking about it or noticing things about it, and that way you can put that on the table and look at it together rather than saying, "okay, I can't bring this up until I've sorted out how I feel about it or what I'm gonna do about it," or all those things that I used to do at least. Like don't bring it up until you've got the solution. And you know, then it just gets bigger, bigger, and bigger. Whereas if I just brought it up, then the other person could have said, "oh, that's the issue? That little thing? We can work on that together."

Tanya Hale 26:39

And you know, there have been times too that I have come into our marriage with with something that I was struggling with and I did not have my feelings and my thoughts figured out in order to do the own your own. But I bring it up and then Sione has gone into curiosity so well in asking me questions that he's been able to help me figure out what my feelings are and what my thoughts are about it. And then we can really have a good conversation. So I appreciate that space of moving into curiosity because that really helps me to clarify a lot of times situations that I'm like, "you know, I'm just struggling with this and I don't really know why but something feels off for me," or however I've put it but you've been really great at just asking questions moving into curiosity which is brilliant.

Sione 27:27

Yeah, well moving into "fix it" mode didn't work so well in my last marriage so. Curiosity is way better because then it's not my job to fix it. It's just my job to understand. So and I can get an understanding very easily with some questions.

Tanya Hale 27:42

Yeah, and I think that that's another point here to make with communication is seeking to understand the other person rather than just shove. Well, this is coming from what I used to do, shove my opinion and my viewpoint down his throat, right, rather rather move into a place of "let me understand all the things about what's going on for you with this and what are your ideas." And I also have found that when I do bring up an own your own back burner issue and I say "when this circumstance happens, I feel this way because I'm thinking this," then I can follow up with a question like, "tell me what I'm not understanding, what are you seeing that I'm not seeing?" And then that really helps to open up a place for a conversation where we can really understand one another as well.

Sione 28:32

Yeah, and it's also when someone, when you bring up those issues or when I bring up those issues, if I start to feel a little bit defensive about that you then that's that part of me that says, "okay, search for that truth that's in that back burner issue. What is it that she's saying to me that I wanna throw up a wall because I'm thinking, 'oh, I need to protect myself,'" but in reality, it's only because there's something in there about me that I didn't want to acknowledge that was in existence. And so recognizing when those feelings of defensiveness come up, and of course they're gonna come up, that's just part of being human. But instead of using that wall of defensiveness to then strike back or put up the shield to say, "oh, that's interesting that that shield just popped up there. Why did that shield pop up? Is that what part of there is truth in that?" And it's not always, it doesn't always mean there's truth. You know, it just, but it's important for me when we do communicate about that stuff to make sure that if I'm starting to feel defensive that I check myself and say "oh, why am I feeling defensive?" rather than saying "okay, I got my shield up now. Where's my? Where's my slingshot," you know or whatever so that I can start buying rocks back?

Tanya Hale 29:53

Yeah, I love that Yeah, that's been a really vital piece and you're really good at that.

Sione 29:57

I'm really good at being defensive.

Tanya Hale 29:59

Well, you've been good at noticing and and moving into looking for the truth. And then I think just one last piece that I would bring up on this communications piece is the importance of vulnerability. Being willing to say, "listen, I'm feeling very insecure here because I'm thinking this or I'm scared because I'm thinking this," right, really being able to move in and share those pieces that that sometimes can seem so scary. But that vulnerability is just such a vital piece of real open understanding communication.

Sione 30:41

And it doesn't mean you're not gonna have hurt feelings. You know, being vulnerable doesn't protect you from from having...What do you call them? You don't call them negative feelings? What do you call them...

Tanya Hale 30:56

difficult emotions.

Sione 30:57

Difficult emotions? It doesn't protect you from having difficult emotions, but it allows you to develop emotional closeness that then helps you deal with difficult emotions in a healthy way. So I think sometimes we want to protect ourselves from difficult emotions and avoid difficult emotions. But being vulnerable requires you to feel those difficult emotions. And it doesn't it doesn't mean you're not going to feel them. It just means you're going to let them guide your behavior better.

Tanya Hale 31:33

Hmm very good. Brene Brown has a lot to say about vulnerability as well.

Sione 31:38

Yeah, she's genius.

Tanya Hale 31:42

Yeah, she's very, very good at that. That was my first... vulnerability was the first sticking point for me after my divorce, about nine months after I'd just been in blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. And about nine months after I found Brene Brown, a presentation she gave called "Power of Vulnerability." And I listened to it and I was like, "what? Vulnerability? That's a thing in marriage?" I mean, it really was a brand new concept for me. But it was the first one that really started the ball rolling for me on figuring out so much of this stuff and leading me into life coaching and helping me really be able to show up differently this marriage.

Sione 32:20

Yeah, I independently saw that same talk before I was even divorced, actually. And I recognized the genius of it, but did not recognize how to apply it until much later.

Tanya Hale 32:34

Yeah. All right, here's another lesson that I've learned. I need to focus on how I'm showing up and not on how you're showing up. Um, context of that is in my previous marriage, I was always concerned about how is, you know, how is he, how is he not supporting me? How is he not loving me? How is he not being kind? How is he not being, whatever, spiritual enough or good enough parent or something like that? And, and this time around, I'm learning very clearly how important it is that I focus on

1. Like I decided actually before I even met you that a big piece of what I wanted in a marriage was to be able to learn how to love like I'd never learned to love before. And also I wanted to make you, well, I can't make you feel anything, but I wanted you to feel loved like you'd never loved before, been loved before.

Sione 33:39

Yeah. And I was so good at being one-up that of course I was the most loving, supportive and accepting spouse there was. And so I wasn't recognizing that I was showing up as that one-up.

Tanya Hale 33:50

In your previous marriage?

Sione 33:51

In my previous marriage. Yeah. And so once I saw how all that was so destructive, um, that self-righteousness and you know, "why, why are things so different between us when I'm so perfect?" It was a difficult concept.

Tanya Hale 34:09

I had a lot of that too. I had a lot of that too. But so I've, I've learned here to ask instead questions like, "am I being loving? Am I loving him as much as I possibly can? Am I showing him love? Am I being supportive of whatever's going on in his life? Am I being kind? Am I showing up all in? Am I, am I doing what I want? Am I showing up the way that I want to in this marriage?" In all ways.

Sione 34:37

I think supportive also because sometimes we'll say, "well, of course I'm being supportive. I'm the one doing the dishes and I'm the one doing, you know, cooking dinner and I'm raising the kids and blah blah blah." Of course that's being supportive, but I think for me at least when I was looking at that sort of thing I'm like "of course I'm being supportive. I'm providing for the family, I'm doing, you know, kids are in all these activities and they're loving life and it's great," and in reality though I was being completely passive-aggressively unsupportive of things that are important to her. That's a good question. What did it look like? It looked like me blaming her for not showing up as well as I was showing up. "Why can't you be as supportive of me as I am of you? Because look at how much I'm being supportive," and in reality I was resentful for what I thought was the unfairness in what was happening, which is totally untrue, like untrue thoughts. Like, you know, you talk about, well, first thing is, is your thought true? These were totally untrue thoughts, but I believed them really strongly. So, it was really one of the huge downfalls.

Tanya Hale 36:01

Yeah, and we all have those thoughts that are totally untrue, but that drive us, you know, to put ourselves in a one-up position.

Sione 36:11

Yeah. For sure.

Tanya Hale 36:13

All right. Here's another lesson we've learned. You want to do this one?

Sione 36:18

Sure. So, this is one of the ones that I thought of a lot because I was such a perfectionist that I would never give myself grace when I made a mistake. I would just beat myself up over it and learning that when I beat myself up, when I make those mistakes, rather than saying, "well, of course, I'm going to make a mistake. Of course, things are going to happen differently," and allowing that mistake to be something that I grow from rather than something that I shove away was really important. And so being able to say, "oh, yeah, huh, I did mess that one up. Let me circle back around." So having that grace to, in my own mind as well as I knew from you, to circle back around and try again until I got the landing right was a useful strategy. But being a perfectionist makes that really hard to give yourself grace because then you shame and blame and beat yourself up when you do things wrong rather than saying, "oh, interesting. Well, if I keep trying, I'm going to get good at it." And just creating that safe space in your brain as well as in your relationship that it's okay to make mistakes. Of course, you're going to make mistakes. That's part of the plan is to make mistakes. If that wasn't part of the plan, we wouldn't have needed all the Atonement and everything. We would have just been able to be perfect, but of course we need it. So of course we need to circle back around. So how are you going to circle back around? How are you going to show up in that circle back around? And recognizing that you need to circle back around, all that requires some grace. Because if you don't give yourself that grace, then you're going to stick to that landing even though you're going to crash the plane in the process. And there's just a lot of... In marriages over time, there's just a lot of water in the bridge. And so sometimes it's hard to give yourself or the other person that grace to circle back around when in the past that hasn't ever happened. And so I can see how it could be tough in them. And two people we've been married for a really long time to make this sort of change to allow some grace in the marriage.

Tanya Hale 38:41

But I think it's a vital piece.

Sione 38:43

Yeah, I don't think I don't see how you can move forward without the ability to say, "oof, I messed that one up and can I try that again?" And if the other person is like, "well, wait a minute, let me finish crucifying you first," or your brain says, "okay, yeah, you can circle back around again, but first let me crucify you," then it's... you're going to learn really quickly not to circle back around ever and not to give yourself that grace.

Tanya Hale 39:10

Yeah. So if you're in a longer marriage than us, I think we've been really blessed in the sense that we've had most of these tools for the whole time since we've been dating and we've been married. And so we've been able to establish a marriage based on these. If you have a 20 year of marriage where a lot of these tools have not been in place, it absolutely is a challenge to figure out how to implement them. And it's going to take some pretty open honest communication between the two of you to kind of figure this out and, and decide how you want to show up differently. But I absolutely believe that, that that's part of our growth and part of our process and it, it absolutely can happen.

Sione 39:50

And that's going to be that collaboration, right? Not like, "okay, how many times do you get grace and how many times do I get grace?" You know, and, but to put the grace on the table and go, "how can we incorporate this?" And let's look at this together," rather than saying, "okay, here's grace. We got to, we got to put it in." Yeah. Okay. "So you get five screw ups this week and I get five screw ups this week." You know, like that's never going to work. And so,

Tanya Hale 40:16

or put the defensiveness, the anger on the table and both of us sit side by side and we try and figure out, "okay, how are we going to work through this?" When this is our pattern of interacting with each other. I say this and you do this and then I do this, like, let's put that on the table. Let's look at it. Let's figure out a different way to approach this problem.

Sione 40:36

Yeah. That's probably another podcast for another day.

Tanya Hale 40:40

Oh, gosh. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So the last thing that we kind of talked about was check your buffering. If you remember, buffering is when we use something generally on the outside to resolve inner turmoil or inner conflict. So we're having uncomfortable emotions, discomfort on the inside, and we turn to something on the outside to distract us from those emotions. So a lot of people, food... is those people who say, "I'm an emotional eater." That's exactly what you're doing. You're buffering. You're taking at a difficult emotional time and you're trying to mask it or... Eat your way out of it. Eat your way out of it, right? With food. And people can use all kinds of stuff. They can use their phones, like playing games. They can use books. They can use exercise. They can use all kinds of stuff. So...

Sione 41:32

Yeah, I was an exercise and phone person. So during the most difficult years of my first marriage where I was realizing that things were not going well and when we were doing some of our most, not intense, but some of our... most often we would go to, we went to therapy a lot. We were in therapy for 13 years and so at times when we were doing therapy once a week, I was exercising hours and hours and hours a week to buffer from having to acknowledge where my faults were in in the marriage and in the relationship so.

Tanya Hale 42:14

And I think we've talked about as well how for me a lot of buffering was showing up as a mom. You know, I buffered myself with my kids and with putting myself in a one-up, better parent kind of position where "nope the kids need this, the kids need this," and feeling very satisfied with my engagement with the kids and and feeling like :oh I'm doing something good here," but often doing it at the detriment of my marriage.

Sione 42:41

And I'm good at using my phone too. Like, "oh, we're seeing down to this nice dinner together. What a great chance we have to talk to each other. Oh wait, but I got to check the news because I haven't had a chance to do that today or look at the weather or other things," that are not unimportant but it's buffering me from this opportunity to connect emotionally over the dinner table. Yeah and so that's why we have the basket on the countertop to put our phones in.

Tanya Hale 43:14

Yeah well connecting requires more effort and more effort is uncomfortable. And it's vulnerable effort too, right, it's not just "I have to try harder and I'm going to put my phone in the basket and then I'm going to stare at you and say why aren't we talking about things," right? Like you can and so it doesn't always work that way, but it's like, "okay I need to put the phone

in the basket because here's a chance for us to emotionally connect together and here's a chance for us to be vulnerable together and I don't want to miss that opportunity." Yeah. Alright, we could probably come up with loads more lessons but I think that that's a lot. But thanks. Any last words of wisdom, my dear?

Sione 43:57

Oh, I think I like the definition of insanity which is "if you try to do the same thing over again and expect a different result." That's one of the definitions of insanity. So if I want something different in my life, I have to do something different than what I've done in the past to achieve that result. And so if I wanted emotional closeness, which is what I really think I didn't create in my first marriage, I need to do different things. And so I got a therapist, or a coach I mean, I got a therapist but you got a coach. We both arrived at the same point. And then acknowledging where I could have been better and what things I need to work on. And as one of our therapists said together, "clean up your side of the street. You can't clean up their side of the street. That's controlling them. But you can clean up your side of the street and work on you." And then that way you can now have tools to create something different. But just going into another marriage with the same tools is not going to create something different magically.

Tanya Hale 45:10

Love that. Nicely said. Okay. So yeah, as we are closing up our first year of marriage, it's been an amazing journey. And just really grateful for the chance that we have had to circle back around in our lives. And to try it again. Yeah, it's been pretty successful. Yeah, it's been pretty amazing year. Okay. All right.

Sione 45:37

We won't kiss on microphone.

Tanya Hale 45:38

Thanks for being here. Okay. So that's going to do it. This is a space of growing up that for us has been pretty important. And we feel really grateful for the paths that have brought us where we are. We talk about that all the time that we both had some pretty difficult paths. But really grateful for the lessons we've learned on them and for how it's allowed us to show up here.

Sione 46:00

Yeah, I wouldn't change any of the difficulty.

Tanya Hale 46:04

Yeah, me neither. Me neither. All right, that's going to do it for me and for Sione this week. If you would like some personal help on anything that we talk about here on the podcast, I would love to chat with you. You can go to tanyahale.com and you can sign up for a free consultation where we can chat about coaching and see if it's a good fit for you. And just love it. I appreciate the opportunities to be part of your life this way. So thank you for showing up and I'll keep showing up as well. And I will talk to you next week. Bye.

Tanya Hale 46:40

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!