Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Love is a doing word. This could quite possibly be the biggest secret to a thriving relationship. If you remember that love requires action, deliberate movement by you to enable it to continue to thrive and grow. You will never look back. Understanding how to do love, however, might sound complicated. Don't worry, it's not get settled in as we unpack for you exactly how you can begin to do love and change the relationship game for you and your partner forever. Hey, we're Kim and Roger, and we're here to show couples how to get the best out of their relationship so they can start living their dream life together.
Speaker 2 00:00:39 We're a west Aussie couple who are living the life of our dreams. We don't entertain the word should we think about the future as a field of possibilities and will let joy be our compass.
Speaker 1 00:00:47 We've taken the simple idea of working as a team and applied it to our marriage, and it's been a game changer, allowing us to work out what truly lights us up in life and to go after it together.
Speaker 2 00:00:56 From living in snowy Japan to starting our own housekeeping business, we've achieved some big dreams, and most importantly, we feel fulfilled and are having the most fun we've ever had.
Speaker 1 00:01:04 Pick conversations from inspiring couples, thoughts from relationship experts and tales from our own lives as we help you to gain the wisdom and skills you'll need to turn your relationship into a real team.
Speaker 2 00:01:14 These are relationship conversations for real people buy real people. So sit back, get comfort from whatever tickles you pickle, and enjoy living the team life. So back in the late nineties used to be quite into my music when I had a lot of time to sit on my, uh, bean bag in, in my lounge room. And, uh, you're still into nineties and to listen and yeah, that's true, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:01:43 It's never
Speaker 2 00:01:44 Left you. Anyway, one, one of my favorite songs from the nineties, and it's still on heavy rotation to these days, is, uh, a song called Teardrop by a Massive Attack. And the, um, it's a beautiful song. You've probably seen the film clip before, which is, uh, a little baby, uh, in utero rocking out. Oh,
Speaker 1 00:02:02 That creepy film clip.
Speaker 2 00:02:03 That's the one, the creepy one. And, um, and it's got the, the, the, the bass is, uh, is like the heartbeat. It's great. Anyway, the, the first line with that song is love. Love is a verb. Love is a doing word. And I thought that was a great way to encapsulate a good theme for today's show, which is love is a doing word. You need to do things if you want to maintain the love. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:02:27 Absolutely. I think what we really wanted to do today was just come on and unpack what that means. What, why do we need to think about love as a doing word and not just a noun? And let's unpack some of that grammar first, because I know people are gonna come at me and say, but love can be a noun. Or maybe I've misunderstood the verbiage of it. Let me just preface this by saying, grammar was never my strong suit. I may have failed English grammar when I lived in Switzerland, and they did it as a second language and I took the test <laugh>. But moving on from that, love can be a noun and it can be a verb. So I'll just, I'll just demonstrate the difference. So the idea of love is more used in the nonsense. So babies fill their parents with love. For example, the specificity of loving someone is the verb. So I love you. He loved his wife deeply. That's the verb, the doing of the love. And you can hear it in the phrases, loving someone deeply is something that you do. And, uh, that's what we really wanna unpack today is how do we remember to do
Speaker 2 00:03:37 Love? Yeah. But by stating that love is a verb, you're implying that love is not just a feeling or this e emotion that that goes through us. That it's an active choice and requires effort, it requires action, and you show love by doing things.
Speaker 1 00:03:52 Yeah, absolutely. I think in the beginning, that's probably something that comes up really easily. And we know, and we've talked about before, the the chemical of cocktails that people experience in the beginning, the
Speaker 2 00:04:05 Cocktail of chemicals, even,
Speaker 1 00:04:07 What did I say? <laugh>, chemical
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Of cocktails, <laugh>, sorry.
Speaker 1 00:04:10 The cocktail of chemicals got messes back to Fran, the cocktail of chemicals that we experienced in the beginning. And those chemicals feel so good that they actually, they motivate us to, to undertake behaviors. So to be doing things that are going to support our efforts to receive more of the chemicals. It's just how our brains work. We, we feel good with the chemicals. So we, we think to ourselves as, as the problem solvers, we are as humans, how can I do more to get more of this chemical or this feeling that I'm having? And so we think about things like, uh, what food would, would my partner, like, you know, what meal could, could I prepare that would make them happy? What activities might my partner enjoy? My new partner enjoy? You know, what sort of dates could I, could I plan for us? What way could I support them? How can I show them that I am comforting them, that I'm holding space for them actively when they're struggling or when they wanna discuss something more deeply? And we're very deliberate in our actions to show love by doing things because we are so highly motivated. I mean, we've got that additional motivation, the, the cocktail of chemicals. As time wears on and the chemicals start to wane, we do often find ourselves less motivated to do
Speaker 2 00:05:28 Love. That first 18 to 24 months of a relationship, the romantic period, you know, where everything's about passion, your body is just naturally pumping you with dopamine and all these cool cocktails, uh, sorry. Cool, Kevin, I've done it well. I say actually I think we did have a lot of cocktails in those first 18 to 24 months. And what happens though is that after those 18 to 24 months where your body's pushing for all those things that Kim talked about, how can I make my partner happy? I've got all this love and emotion, I just wanna please them. I wanna make them feel good. I want them to make me feel good. After that, our bodies, our bodies are like, all right, my, my work's done. It's, it's up to you. And so we go from this romantic love to this more enduring love. It's a more deeper and stronger connection, but it takes work.
Speaker 2 00:06:19 And I can see how in our super busy lives how we might feel that we can just set and forget love because we feel we did all this hard work up front. You know, we had all this passion up front, we had all the nookie up front, but we haven't at any stage been taught the importance of this. And you know, that that's a huge part of why Kim and I do this podcast because so much of what we do in our lives is about you put in work and you see reward. Yet when it comes to a relationship, we don't seem to find that correlation. It definitely seems like we have this, this social thing of love should just be set and forget.
Speaker 1 00:06:58 Yeah, I completely agree. And I think you are hitting the nail on the head with that comment that we're not actually taught this stuff. I don't think we discuss enough how much nurturing a relationship requires. And that's what we're really getting to the guts of today. The do thinking about what you are doing in the relationship. That's really what we're wanting to drive home. You can't be passive in the relationship at any point. You're not at the beginning naturally because you're driven by the chemicals. The brain just, it's, it's like, it's such a advantage. Do you know what I mean? It's a bit of a cheat at the beginning because you're so heavily motivated to chase down more and more of the chemicals. But once they wane and you do end up in what you described Roger as the enduring space, it's very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and, and without, you know, it being something that people really dis talk about, discuss what are you doing for your relationship? You know, what are you guys actively doing for each other? And it's, it's no different to anything in our lives that we have to nurture garden, whatever it is. A car needs refueling. Like everything needs ongoing effort. It needs an ongoing action plan, something to be doing to actively support the health of whatever it is. And in this case, it's the relationship, the connection in the relationship. And if we aren't taking the action and we're just allowing what we think is love to exist, it's not gonna sustain the relationship.
Speaker 2 00:08:33 I think one of the most dangerous assumptions we can make in our lives is that our love will be maintained and continue to grow strong, or at least stay at the same level it was without us actually actively and proactively doing anything about it.
Speaker 1 00:08:49 Yeah, I agree. And I think there's this idea that I think some people take in, or a lot of couples take in because they don't know any, anything else that we were, we're a good couple and that's enough. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:09:03 We were a good couple. Why, why aren't we a good couple now? Shouldn't shouldn't the the past be a good indication of what the future's going to be? Well, we know that's not right.
Speaker 1 00:09:12 The other part of that, Roger, is maybe one partner is still thinking you're a good couple and everything's fine. And for the other partner that need has heightened because it's not being fed. So they're actually feeling like I am, am disconnecting from the relationship. And that is a real risk that one partner will need the doing quicker and more than the other partner. They will notice the gap faster. And that's when you start to get a divide. And also when you have the conversations around, it can be very difficult because the partner who thinks everything's fine is gonna struggle when you say, but you're not doing enough because you haven't talked about the higher concept of love requires doing. And I think that's what's so great about this topic today is it helps break it down for couples and gives them a manageable way to talk to their partner about it, externalizing it from themselves. It's not, you are not doing this for me. You can say relationships need active doing. That's what they are. They need you to be doing stuff all the time. Yeah. And it, and that's what we want, you know, when we talk about the relationship to externalize it.
Speaker 2 00:10:21 So if you can keep that in mind that your relationship is a separate entity and that's something that you need to take care of, all of a sudden it becomes tangible and you go, well actually yes, just like a garden, just like my car, just like my body, I, I've gotta actually actively do stuff. I've, I've gotta brush my teeth. That's a hygiene factor. If I don't brush my teeth, my teeth are going to rot. I've got to, uh, cut my hair. Th these are just simple life basics that we take for granted. And so why should, at any point we think that our relationship is any different. We we're, we schedule and we prioritize ourselves and we do that with our kids. Look, and I can understand how it can get this way because we are so busy. But often I think what happens is that we just don't see, as you said, the relationship as being something separate that requires care. You require care, I require care. The kids require care. We've gotta make sure the house and the car are maintained, but not the relationship.
Speaker 1 00:11:19 Yeah. And, and when we start to have the discussion, it can become very personal because we, we don't necessarily have the tools to be able to say, this isn't personal, this is the relationship we're trying to nurture. And it comes out as you are not doing A, B, and C. And that can, that can be really inflammatory. And for the partner who, especially for the partner who doesn't see a problem to be hit with, you are not doing A, B and C or I'm, I'm not getting enough of A, B and C, it's kind of a double whammy. It's not just that you're not doing it, it's just that you didn't even know you weren't doing it. So there's a lot in that. And,
Speaker 2 00:11:53 And give yourselves a break, first of all, because no one ever teaches you this. There, there doesn't seem to be a manual. You have a romantic exercise, you fall in love, you go have kids, you get married and then you go off on your merry way in your life. But, but that's not how life actually works. And that's why we have a 40 to 50% divorce rate. That's why couples are in relationships where they don't feel like they're appreciated or they feel like they're stuck. And you know what Kim and I really want to do is make people understand. It's like what you put in is what you get out. It's
Speaker 1 00:12:26 Not just that we've never been taught as well. It's also that dangerously there are these social norms around relationships that I think a lot of them are very unhelpful. There's the social norm of you need to retain your independence and always stay separate and put the individual first, which we just honestly believe in. The research supports that that is highly damaging to the potential success of a relationship. So it's, it is one of those things to give yourselves a break because not only are you, have you never been taught these skills, the messaging that you do get taught, if you wanna call it that or that you receive a lot of it, is actually not super helpful.
Speaker 2 00:13:07 What what happens then is when society's telling you, hey, you, you've gotta look after the individual is when you're in a relationship, which many people in almost all who listen to this podcast are is that straightaway puts you at an adversarial uh, mindset. Well, if I've putting the individual first, that means I'm putting me first. And it's like, well, how, how does that work when you've made a commitment to your partner to put each other first in the relationship first. So straight away there's that friction. And then what happens is you start fighting over resources and you are doing all these things that are damaging a relationship, but you are then not spending all the time that is required to nurture the relationship.
Speaker 1 00:13:47 So let's dig into that a little bit deeper. We've got three tips today for how you can begin to really start doing love in your relationship. So that's what you wanna hold onto here is it's doing what are the actions and the intentions I can undertake that are going to show that I'm doing love in the relationship.
Speaker 2 00:14:09 I love that. Doing love. So the first tip is bank your love interactions, just like you put money into an account and take money out with your debits and credits. The more you put in, the more credits you have, the more you take out, the more you're in debt. You do not wanna be in love debt. You wanna be in love credit <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:14:29 I love this one. It's, I mean, it's a, it's a gottman, uh, idea. And, and I, I'll unpack it now. I just wanna say I really love the word bank. I don't know why it like lights me up, <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:14:42 Ma making bank, making love
Speaker 1 00:14:43 Bank, making bank, like making love bank, bank it like take it to the bank. It's just, it's all about positivity in my mind. So I'm not that obsessed with money, I promise. <laugh> no obsessed with love, ob obsess. No, just like banking something. Maybe cuz I love numbers, I don't know. But the point is, think about the word bank. I wanna take it to the bank, right? I wanna bank it, bank your love. So in terms of what, uh, Gottman, who we've spoken about before is, is one of the leading researchers actually on relationships of which there are not a heap of researchers out there and a very skilled practitioner in relationships. So he's one of the, the gurus out there, in fact probably the leading researcher. There's not many people who have done research as for as long as he has. And he talks about what he's discovered in his research as the magic ratio.
Speaker 1 00:15:32 So he talks about five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. This is a really important thing to think about. So we, we definitely have negative interactions. Roger and I have negative interactions as well. Commonly that's not abnormal for anyone because life is busy as we talk about a lot. Different seasons bring different stresses, having children, uh, new jobs, family pressure, family illness, whatever it might be, personal illness, all of those things add stress and pressure to the relationship and can, that can really heighten the, the, uh, likelihood of conflict. But if you have five positive interactions as a ratio to the one negative interaction you've had, you have a much higher chance, like a very, very high chance of having a successful relationship. That's what his evidence has shown very, very clearly. And one of the reasons that is, is because when you have five positive interactions, the brain starts to accept that this person's intentions are good because I've experienced it over and over again.
Speaker 1 00:16:44 In fact, in a five to one ratio I've experienced it. And so what actually happens is not only do you get five good interactions when you then have the one negative interaction, the brain experiences it through the lens of acceptance of the human you are having the negative interaction and perhaps disappointment or sadness about the interaction itself, but not in the person. And I think this is a really important difference because it, it depersonalizes the conflict. And what actually happens as Gottman's research has shown is in a lot of those cases, people who are having even a hefty disagreement. And we experience this firsthand more often than not when we're having a disagreement, it's also filled with laughter. A little bit of like, uh, kind, kind poking and jesting together because we know that the conflict is just the conflict. It's not, it's not one person being an evil person or not understanding us or whatever. Maybe not understanding the discussion we're having, but we depersonalize it. And so the likelihood of the conflict being a, uh, being something that's corrosive to the relationship is drastically reduced.
Speaker 2 00:17:57 So what I love about that is around 15% of the time you can be a bit of a jackass <laugh>. You can have, you can have poor interactions with your partner and you can fight, but because you've built up so much credit in your love bank, your the other partner might go, Hey, they're just having a moment of weakness. Hey actually we are really good most of the time, but this one occasion we're tired, we're busy, we had a disagreement, I did something wrong, you did something wrong. And she actually do give each other a bit of a break because you've earned it. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, it's not giving you a break. It's like, Hey, just give me a break babe. And it's like, well actually have you gotta think to yourself, have you actually earned that break? And I think a great way to see this is don't see those five interactions.
Speaker 2 00:18:42 Okay, I've gotta go organize a massive dinner out or I've gotta organize a trip to Rado or Bali. I've gotta this. No, no, no. Your love interactions can be small, they can be the mundane, they can be the little things. They can be kisses at the front door when you leave for work or a hug. They can be saying your pleasers and thank yous Kim and I have been saying please and thank you to each other for things that are expected or acknowledged or planned since the day we met. And it, do you know what?
Speaker 1 00:19:12 I remember
Speaker 2 00:19:12 What, what, what do you remember <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:19:15 Back when we were like 18 and we had started dating and staying over at each other's houses, one would say, thanks so much for coming to stay the night. And the other would say, thanks so much for having me at every single I I can see us in the driveway of
Speaker 2 00:19:33 <laugh>, but that that, I love that. Um, oh so sorry. And we still do it and it's just, uh, you're like, oh thanks for coming to bed. But um, <laugh>, it was just thanks for snoring last night. Oh, but you know, you can see that, uh, please and a thank you is is already a one of your five. You know, and if you can think of that, if you can constantly like, hey, I, I, you know, I'm just gonna make that little extra effort to say thank you or I'm gonna make sure I grab your coffee from the store, not just myself and go, oh sorry I didn't realize you
Speaker 1 00:20:02 Wanted one. Or you see your partner grabbing stuff outta the car and you are sitting up on the veranda. Don't sit and watch them empty the
Speaker 2 00:20:08 Car. <laugh> go get it.
Speaker 1 00:20:09 Go grab something. Cause what? Don't even ask, just
Speaker 2 00:20:11 Do it. You are adding to your your love bank account. Yeah. Yeah. I
Speaker 1 00:20:15 And you'll be making bank as a partner if you add to that bank account. Yeah. So I think that's that. They're great examples Roger. They do not need to be big. You can build up that ratio really easily. So just thinking about holding that in mind, that's tip number one is thinking about the ratio of five to one. What little things am I doing? And if you actually, if you sat down, and this might be quite a fun exercise, if you sat down with your partner and went through the day and had a look at how many little interactions you have, you might find you actually have a lot already. You might see that you are starting to bank some stuff and it might spur you on and give you some ideas of how, where else you might be able to add some interactions and also give you a bit of a sense of um, you know, achieve a bit of a pat on the back, a bit of achievement for what you are doing. Because sometimes we don't realize the effort we are putting in and it's really important that we do take a moment for ourselves to say, when we are trying hard that that is, we are putting in that effort.
Speaker 2 00:21:14 And don't give yourself such a hard time as long as you stick to that 15% <laugh>. Alright? Um, so next we've got our second tip plan and schedule. And that might put some people off and other people might be like, oh goodness, I've been trying to talk to my partner about planning and scheduling for, for years and they, they just don't want to do it. But what I mean is plan and schedule for your relationship. Treat your relationship. We've previously talked about this. Treat your relationship as its own identity as an us. You've got you, you've got your partner, you've got your kids and then you've got your relationship. You need to schedule it in. You need to treat it as its own identity and prioritize it.
Speaker 1 00:21:54 Yeah, this is a really big one. Once you understand that the relationship is an entity, you can think about it like a business. You're going to nurture that business. That business is going to need to have a plan. It's going to need to have a direction, it's going to need to have supporting structures to help it achieve the direction it wants to go in. And that's exactly what the relationship needs. The relationship if you want it to grow and succeed and get better and better. And if you want life with your partner to get better and better. And this is what we've experienced in the last decade when we've become very focused and really treated the relationship as its own entity with its own identity is that you do grow the relationship. You don't just have a good relationship. Your relationship gets better and better just like a business that was growing wood.
Speaker 1 00:22:41 And it is super important to nurture that relationship is its own entity with planning and scheduling, which might sound unsexy but honestly they are the greatest providers of freedom. Once you know what's in the schedule, once you know what's happening, you don't have to worry about it. We talk about freeing up mental space a lot. Don't, don't let things float around when things are floating around. It's the same as being decisive about something once you've made the decision or in this case made the plan and the schedule together. You don't have to worry, am I nurturing the relationship? Have we got stuff going on here? You already know, oh yeah, we've got that date planned and we are doing this and we are catching up to talk about our goals at that point. How fantastic is that?
Speaker 2 00:23:22 We love to say on this podcast that planning is freedom a hundred percent because once you take care of the hygiene factors and what you have to do in your life, you are then free to understand where you've got your free time and what you can do. And what's really important in that is you should be able to look when you understand that your relationship's its own entity, you should be able to look at your weekly calendar or monthly calendar and go, Hey, do you know what's missing from this time for us? You know, we haven't scheduled anything for us in, there are some great examples of how Kim and I actually prioritize our relationship. We plan our active dates, we plan our time to dream. We're going out for lunch on Saturday. We're gonna go for a
Speaker 1 00:24:00 Quick, we're going out for lunch after this. We're going
Speaker 2 00:24:02 Out for lunch after this. Yeah, we did. So Kim came to me this morning and said, look, I'm a bit stressed about A, B and C actually to do with the business and and life we've and life <laugh>. We've got so much coming up over, over the second half of the year. And so she brought that to the table at our at where we created some space in the morning for us. And I said, well, okay, we were going to record two podcasts today. I said let's record one, let's use that time. We'll go out to lunch, get out of the house fresh brain and actually sit down with a piece of paper and plan how we're gonna do what we want to achieve and then we can always pull back if we're not going to do it. That is one me listening to Kim two, us working through our stress and three creating time for us. So that underlying tension that has been in the house the last few days doesn't continue over the next few days.
Speaker 1 00:24:52 You know, you're so right. Even just the making of the plan for lunch, like that is a plan in itself. And once we set that this morning, I was like, okay, I've got a plan for how we're gonna discuss this. And if I go back to the actual beginning for me last night I was sitting in bed by myself cuz you were doing bed duty and I was sitting in bed by myself and I was feeling super overwhelmed. I hadn't spoken to you about it yet, but one of the, one of the things that gave me so much peace was I thought, right, I'll raise it tomorrow morning because every morning we have time together, we sit out on the round and we have our coffee and our breakfast together and that is our, our deep time, our respectful reflection time where we chat about different things, whatever's coming up. Sometimes it's lighter, sometimes it's just chatting about the gum trees in front of us. But it, the opportunity is there. We know we have that time and as soon as I thought that, I mean I slept like a baby last night, which is pretty rare, but I knew that I had the space there already because we've also created that time. So just like wanted to take it back that extra step to to to last night.
Speaker 2 00:25:54 Yeah. Well I think and you know, the, the tip was you gotta plan and schedule your relationship in. And what we did is actually we cleared some of the calendar of our business because we've got a certain amount of work we need to do every day just like everyone else. And we cleared time in our calendar to prioritize our relationship mm-hmm. And how we were feeling. And yes, part of that's to do with the business but it was also about us because there had been a bit of an underlying tension in the house the last few days. So again, it is why it's so important that you do plan and schedule your relationship cuz that's a doing when you, when you plan and schedule something, you are doing it or you are planning to do it. And it makes it easier in our busy lives if you are, everyone is so busy, we're also time poor. Check out episode 24 on that. So the only way you are actually going to make sure that you are banking your love interactions and you are creating time for your relationship is if you plan and schedule the time for the relationship in.
Speaker 1 00:26:55 Yeah, absolutely. Right. Let's move on to tip number three. This is such a great one because it's, it's really something we've talked about in depth in, in another podcast. I can't remember Roger, you remember the episode numbers far better than me. Uh, it was, was it episode 19 Embracing change in your Relationship?
Speaker 2 00:27:13 Yeah, that was a big one about how we all change the identity. Yeah, good work.
Speaker 1 00:27:16 Yeah. So tip number three is to get curious because the relationship is changing all the time.
Speaker 2 00:27:22 A lot of the experts including Gottman, Stan Tatkin, they believe how important it's from their research and their studies that you need to be constantly attuned to your partner and how they're feeling. You also should be an expert on your partner because we've just talked about how love is a doing word. Well to do, you need to do the right things. So you need to make sure that the things that you do for your partner are still the right things now. Not what were the right things 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Oh, that's
Speaker 1 00:27:54 So good
Speaker 2 00:27:55 Love because as our identity changes, our needs change. Yes. Especially once we've had kids, you know, maybe we're going back to work as life sort of throws these curve balls at you or just the gradual change of life. It is important to understand that we do change. And so it's really important to understand, well how can I do things for my partner to meet their changing needs?
Speaker 1 00:28:18 Oh my god. You know, I think about when I did my counseling degree that I had a lot of changes in myself during that period. And you really had to get very curious because my needs in the way that I engaged our relationship, I mean they went up a notch because I was opening up so many new mindsets for myself.
Speaker 2 00:28:40 I was doing a master's on you while you were doing a master's of casting <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:28:45 But you did, you did, you had to come along. And a lot of us discussed this in the degree because some relationships don't survive that degree. It is so, it is so deep and so personally, uh, I don't even know what the word it cracks you open, it cracks you wide, wide open. And I think we had such a lovely experience with that because you did come along for the journey and you did get curious and you did adapt to the way you engaged me based on the way I was needing different engagement. And that's really cool now reflecting this.
Speaker 2 00:29:18 Yeah. And I, I had to learn what questions to ask. I had to learn to create the space. Like as we talked about planning and scheduling, I had to show interest in you. I had to notice things about you that allowed me to do things for you that you required now that maybe you didn't require in the first couple of years or our relationship when our love hormones were at their peak. Right.
Speaker 1 00:29:44 Yeah. And also we'd just grown and matured in such different directions. And I just wanna be clear, we did have some friction at the start with this. It took us a while before, you know, like any anyone, there
Speaker 2 00:29:55 Was probably more than 15% as well <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:29:57 But we did have some friction whilst we worked out and we did talk about that a lot. You know, you would say that you were struggling with I think the rate of change I was experiencing. So we did talk about that, but we stayed open and curious and now I look back, I'm very proud of that time particularly of you because if you hadn't been open to that and being so curious and being willing to have those difficult conversations, I think I would've felt like we were growing in different directions at that point in time.
Speaker 2 00:30:27 Yeah. So what we're saying is it's really important to get curious about your partner because the both of you are constantly changing. That's natural, that's supposed to happen. Uh, and the way you can do that is by asking questions. If you look on our, uh, if you look on our socials, there's quite a few education slides where we do actually give some prompting questions. They're in some of our old episodes. And the other way is to actually become really attuned to your partner and actually taking a step back and looking as like how, what are the things that are lighting them up these days? What are the things that are stressing them out? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:31:02 So it's really about getting curious. That's what that tip is at, at its at its core. We are talking about the fact that, or behind this is the fact that we are always changing and growing. The relationship changes and grows. And if you're not getting curious about that and doing your curiosity actively, actively doing curiosity. And I know people are gonna think the way I'm using doing today is weird, but it's really helpful if you actually think about it as doing so actually doing curiosity then, then you're going to be missing out on connecting in that change and that identity shift.
Speaker 2 00:31:34 Yeah. So just to go through those three tips again. One is bank your love interactions. Remember the gottman magical five to one ratio. Number two, make sure you plan and schedule your relationship. Treat it as an entity so you can prioritize it. We live such busy lives, it's important that you always make time for it. And number three is get curious about your partner. They're always changing. You are always changing. You need to keep up to date. Awesome. Okay, sweetie, what was your gold nugget from today's potty? Oh,
Speaker 1 00:32:05 I loved a lot of it today. It was really, you were kind of my gold nugget,
Speaker 2 00:32:10 <laugh>, boom, <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:32:13 Uh, no, let me think quickly. Oh look, for me, the five to one ratio is just such an important thing to remember. I just, it's a game changer for people. If you can just hold in mind how important it is to do the little things and what it, it's not just how important it is. What a difference it'll make it really, cuz we've definitely experienced the other side of it where you do get personal and you take every argument personally because we didn't have the ratio there. And in the last decade or so, we pretty consistently have that ratio. And our arguments look so different. They're still robust, but there's so much love behind them and they're not personalized because
Speaker 2 00:32:50 We've banked our love interactions,
Speaker 1 00:32:51 We, we've banked and we continue to bang them soon. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:32:53 For me, it's just in every other aspect of your life, you're told or you just know you. That what you put in is what you get out. If you want to succeed, you have to work hard. And it's the same with your relationship. If you want to succeed in love, succeed in your relationship, you've gotta do, you've gotta put in the work. You are amazing. You've just spent quality time on your relationship.
Speaker 1 00:33:20 Feel like you're on a roll. If you want more living, the team life, relationship, insights and conversations, head over to Kim and roger.com where you can find all the show notes as well as tons of other relationship goodies.
Speaker 2 00:33:30 And if you like today's episode, please hit subscribe or let another couple know where they can find us. It'll make them happy and it'll make us really happy.
Speaker 1 00:33:38 Until next time, keep on living the team life.
