"Must Be Nice!" 4 Ways to Stop Keeping Score in Marriage

0:00 He wakes up at like 4.35 to get ready to go out the door, to head to work, to do his thing. And he's thinking to himself, man, it must be nice to sleep until seven. And she's thinking to herself, though she's sleeping until seven, must be nice to get out of the house and not have to be stuck here with the baby all day and constant schedules and naps and feedings and all of the things, right? And so they already are starting to, They're already both starting from a place of scarcity. I don't have it. It must be nice. If you could only be in my shoes.

0:40 This is what ends up happening. Is we end up getting to a place where we believe the accuser's lies about our spouse. And then we start coping or acting in a particular way toward them. And we make our spouse out to be the enemy. The world is competing for your time, attention, and identity. But what if your greatest legacy is that you were famous at home? Guys, it is a delight to be with you today. I know that it's not too early because I'm already seeing Christmas commercials on television. But if you're new to the podcast, I just want to let you know we wrote a book.

1:28 It's actually a devotional called The 25 Days of the Christmas Story. an Advent family experience. If you've not gotten this book, we start December 1st, walking through 25 days leading up till Christmas, covering a specific character within this Christmas story, beginning actually all the way back to Isaiah because it looks at the prophets to start. And so we start with Isaiah and we go all the way through to day 25, which is Nazareth. So Nazareth is a character part of the story. What does Nazareth mean?

2:03 We really walk your family through what does the Christmas story actually say? And it's a devotional for your kids, to your kids, with you as a parent, and there's family experiences in here to be able to experience Advent with your kids. So if you have not gotten the 25 Days of the Christmas Story, we would highly encourage you to check it out. I have the link in the show notes there today. It is such a fun experience.

2:27 Without further ado, I want to jump in and have an actual conversation about what it is that I have been seeing and I experience in marriage intensives that we do also with married couples that we work with and just being out and having conversation around this particular topic. And when we talk about being famous at home, I think at the end of the day, the idea and the principle there is that we already are famous at home, that our biggest fans live under our roofs. And so...

2:55 When you realize that your spouse really is your biggest fan, but yet when we do not act, like for me as a husband, when I do not act toward Christy like I'm her biggest fan, even though I am her biggest fan. What we end up doing is we make our spouse out to be the enemy rather than our greatest teammate. And we don't even realize that we're doing it because we are so inundated and overwhelmed in our day-to-day lives. And so I was even processing through, what do I title this episode today? Do I title it, Your Spouse Is Not Your Enemy? Why Good Spouses Can't Get Along? So many different ideas here, but let me paint the picture for you. The picture is this, and this is very generally speaking, but I want to paint

3:44 the picture. I even had a conversation with a couple this weekend about it. And so on the weekend, here's what I experienced. I experienced a young couple, and they have a baby. They have a five-month-old, okay? He works full-time. She works part-time. I think it's part-time. She may even be working full-time. I don't even know. I think she'd take a step back, obviously, with the baby. But here's some of that. I said, hey, how are you guys doing?

4:11 And here's some of the dynamic that you experience. And this happens all over the place, no matter what age your kids are at. So he wakes up at like 4.35 to get ready to go out the door, to head to work, to do his thing. And he's thinking to himself, man, it must be nice to sleep until 7.00. And she's thinking to herself, though she's sleeping until seven, must be nice to get out of the house and not have to be stuck here with the baby all day and constant schedules and naps and feedings and all of the things, right?

4:44 And so they already are starting behind. They're already both starting from a place of scarcity. I don't have, it must be nice. If you could only be in my shoes, right? And we do this individually towards our spouses without even voicing these thoughts. And then as that happens, over time, he comes home, she is, and maybe he comes home later.

5:18 Maybe she's expecting him, you know, he comes home at six, 536, and she's expecting, by four o'clock, she's just like waiting for the, counting down, like when's he gonna get home? When's he getting home? And then all of a sudden he gets home And he's just thinking, man, you have no idea what I've been carrying today. And yet she is on him and passive aggressive or size or whatever the, I call them the asinine ways we try to get our spouse to love us deeper. Because this is what we end up doing. When we don't feel seen or heard, we get into our pain cycles and those pain cycles come out in varying ways. We dance in relationships. It can be sarcasm. It can be victim or martyrdom, like, oh, woe is me. And therefore, when we play woe is me,

5:59 we dismiss our spouse's feelings and concerns. Like, if you could have only seen what I did today, right? And it could be aggressive. It could be, I mean, gosh, it could be name-calling. It could be yelling. It could be attacking, right? Or it could be withdrawing altogether and just playing the silent game. I don't know what those are for you, but that's how we get into them.

6:17 When we don't feel seen, heard, connected with, we end up entering into these things because this is how we cope when we are in these feelings. And you know your coping style. You can probably even pay attention to it in your own marriage right now. So he gets home, right? And she maybe is pouring, you know, the gas, if you will, a little bit of gas on the fire without even realizing she's doing it because she hasn't felt seen.

6:43 She hasn't talked to anybody all day. They can even tie their shoes perhaps, right? So now all of a sudden she's thinking, man, it must have been nice to get out of being away all day and having a break all day or being on vacation. Christy used to say this about me. It's like, man, you get to go be on vacation while I'm home with the kids, right?

7:02 I don't know what those narratives are for you and your circumstance, but what happens is in our marriages is we create narratives around how good of a job we are doing, how we are crushing it. And this happens in our exhaustion. and yet we create narratives about what our spouse is not doing. And I was meeting with this couple this weekend, and I said to them, I actually looked at the husband, and I said to him, I said, you know, I have a question for you.

7:33 Do you actually believe at your core that your wife is lazy and doesn't want to be pulling her weight around the house. Do you believe that that's her character? He's like, no, that's not her character. Right. And I said the same to her. Like, do you genuinely believe that he is lazy, no good, just kind of, right? Like, is that his character? No, she said that's not his character.

8:04 But what we do is we find the little places where we wish they could be pulling their weight a little bit more out of our own exhaustion, out of our own desire to be seen, that all of a sudden these little resentments start to build over time. And if we don't bring them into the light, the enemy, the accuser, Satan, the accuser, will start planting seeds in your mind, accusing your spouse of being someone they are not.

8:41 This is dangerous place, dangerous territory. When we don't bring these things into the light, when we're not coming together in prayer together as couples, when we are not simply voicing, I did an episode a few weeks ago on 15 minutes and now 15 minutes a day can change your marriage, maybe even save your marriage. I'd encourage you to go back and listen to that episode if you haven't. This is how, this is what ends up happening is we end up getting to a place where we believe the accuser's lies about our spouse, and then we start coping or acting in a particular way toward them, and we make our spouse out to be the enemy. That's what we do. Our spouse becomes our greatest enemy, not our greatest teammate. What are some ways that we can begin

9:33 to come together and see our spouse as our greatest teammate not our greatest enemy. Let's talk about that. Before we do, I want to introduce you to our sponsor, Bernhardt Watches. Let's talk about an American watch brand that's been building timepieces for more than 20 years, Bernhardt Watch Company.

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10:49 All right, so let me talk about some practical ways that we can come together with our spouse on the same team. I just want to make mention of this, too, that we do marriage intensives. If that's something that you are interested in or you're like, man, I don't even know how we're going to get back on the same team again, feel free to reach out to us. The link is in the show notes there today for you to apply for a marriage intensive. I would love to set up a call with you to talk through if that's a fit. So take a look at that. We're also doing the Living Legacy cohort coming up in 2027.

11:19 This is for men. It's a very small group of men. It is filling up, so be sure to get in. If you have questions about it, feel free to enter into the website there, application for it, and we'll set up a call. I can talk you through that as well, but we'd love to have you. It's really focused on being emotionally safe husbands, relationally warm fathers, and learning to hear the voice of Jesus in our lives so that we can find our identity and live out our God-given callings in our local communities and into places we're called to serve. So what does it look like to be a living legacy? that we are living our legacy right here, right now, so that we don't miss these golden years as we raise our kids and connect with our wives.

12:04 And so that's what Living Legacy is all about. Would love to have you in 2027 for that. Check that out in the show notes. So what are some practical ways that we can do this? I want to start with this one because I think it's really, really important that we start with this one. Number one is this. Dr.

12:20 Carol Rustbelt found that an us-against-the-world attitude is one of the strongest predictors of marital satisfaction. An us-against-the-world attitude. So what does that look like practically? What that looks like is getting away from using you statements. You do this. You don't do this. Why does it always have to be this way, right? Instead of putting blame and criticism on the other person, starting to use we, us, our language.

12:49 So you use the words we, us, our. We are not connecting. I miss you. So if you use you, use it in a affirmative way. And I'll get to this here in just a second with the second practical. But how do you enter in conversation using us, we, our? We haven't been connecting. And because when you do that, what you do is you learn to own your part in the disconnect. You start to learn where and admit and take responsibility for rather than blaming or falling into shame.

13:23 By the way, this is what we tend to do. it's the tightrope of responsibility. We either fall on, as we try to walk this tightrope of taking responsibility, we either fall on the blame side, it's all his or her fault, or we fall to the shame side, and we feel ashamed that we're not pulling our weight or that we're not doing enough, and so we're afraid to bring it up, and so we just fall into our idols and our ways of coping, and we probably go silent in many cases, and we just veg and scroll, doom scroll, do all the things that we do. What is it to take the tightrope of responsibility to say, you know what? I was wrong here. I should not have done that and I'm sorry. Because what that is is an invitation. If your spouse uses that against you,

14:02 now all of a sudden, like if you go mouse and you say, you start with, I'm really sorry that I did this, that we're not connecting and here's my role in it and I'm really sorry. Your spouse really doesn't need to come in T-Rex and say, well, of course you should be sorry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

14:20 If you're married to someone of character, someone who can see, that is going to be an opportunity leading with an apology for them to really, and they might not apologize right away. They might not come in right away underneath an understanding because their resentment might be built up so much that it's like, man, thank you for saying that.

14:42 And so if you're expecting them to apologize right away, it might not come. But if you're accepting responsibility for your role, and I'm not saying accepting more responsibility than what's necessary. You accept your responsibility for your role. You apologize for that. There should over time begin to be a softening of the other person's heart because you chose to change the dance. You chose to change how you were communicating with the coping ways that you communicate, whether it was sarcasm, withdrawal, martyrdom, whatever that is. Because you are now entering it. And I put responsibility on this, particularly for husbands, number one. I think we as husbands need to take the lead with this and really begin

15:22 to look at our role in it. I know a lot of times we feel beat up in so many ways already enough, and we tend to veer on the side of shame. But I'm just simply saying, when we take 100% responsibility for our role in conflict, what we end up doing is we really start to, our wives start to feel seen. And this goes both ways. Our ability to be able to enter into the heart of the other and take 100% responsibility for our role, what we end up doing then is we can start using we, us, our conversation. We can start using we, us, our language.

15:57 And so... We need, I really believe, I miss you. We haven't been connecting. I want to take responsibility because I haven't planned it. I've gotten so caught up in work. I've gotten so caught up in all of that scheduling and all of these other things and busyness of life that I haven't prioritized our marriage. And I want to take responsibility for that. I want to plan a date night.

16:22 I want to plan a, and by the way, I'm not a big fan of just a date night being all an end-all be-all. That's not what I'm saying here. But I want to plan an opportunity for us to get out and do something together. I want to plan to take you to your favorite restaurant. The more specific you get there, I'll get the babysitter. I'll do all the things. You taking responsibility to do those things so that your wife can feel seen and heard and connected with and invite her into that. For example, this is where we have to know our wives. My wife does not like surprises. And I ran into this many years ago where I would surprise her or be disappointed that I had a surprise set up. I had a babysitter,

17:00 I didn't have a babysitter connected and everything. And then she already had a different plan because I didn't tell her, right? So she likes to, my wife likes to look forward to the event as much as the event itself. And so now I bring her in on it. Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this?

17:17 I will make the decisions, but I'm going to give you two options. That's how she likes it to be because she wants, she wants weigh in. She wants to She wants buy-in. She wants to do the things she loves to do. And so I want to invite her into that. This isn't us. We are a team. But I'm going to take responsibility for taking the lead in that, okay?

17:36 So now she feels seen. She feels heard. She feels connected to. And so connected with. And so we, us, our language. Use we, us, our language. But the key with that is that we have to take 100% responsibility for our role where we haven't shown up the way that we could have. The second thing, and I've got three of them, three practicals. Number one, use us, we, our language. Number two is name your opponents. Name your opponents.

18:02 So great teams study the film of their opponent the week before the game. So let's say football. They're studying the game film. Baseball players will study the pitchers. They'll study the batters and where they best hit, right? You're studying your opponent, right? And what are you trying to do? You're trying to exploit the weaknesses of your opponent to take an advantage. The problem is, and this is another title I was thinking of using, is good teammates, different scoreboards, right?

18:34 It's like, we want to be teammates, but we're looking at different scoreboards. I'm keeping my score, and you're keeping your score. So it's like, in that case, we're not even good teammates, right? We have two different scoreboards. Getting on the same team, we, us, our language, us against the world attitude, then therefore leads to who are our opponents?

18:59 So name them, bring them into the light. We have to bring our opponents into the light. If you keep it in the dark, the enemy, the accuser, will twist it. He will start planting seeds of doubt and resentment into your brain about who your spouse actually is, and you will begin to believe those things because that's not who your spouse actually is. Your spouse is a son or daughter created in the image of God and is deeply loved and is actually, in many cases, I'm not going to say doing the best job that they could do because I don't think we're always doing the best that we can do, but it's not like we're slacking, okay?

19:35 Like giving your spouse the benefit of the doubt. Give your spouse the benefit of the doubt. All right, so now, name your opponents. Bring them into the light. What's the first thing you can do? Label them, sit down, okay? What is the greatest opponent warring against our intimacy? And when I say intimacy, I'm talking about physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, your overall level of connectedness. What is warring against your overall level of connectedness, your overall level of intimacy? By the way, our greatest opponent came in weighing eight pounds, one ounce. Another one of our... Our child, right? Children are an opponent to your intimacy. Another one of our opponents was church and where we were like differing on

20:17 the church that we were a part of, right? So these don't have to be bad things. They can be, I do a lot of military intensives, marriage intensives for military. Deployment is one. Being physically away from your spouse. We work with professional athletes where during the season, the husband is typically gone from the wife. And so this creates a whole different dynamic. This is an opponent to connection or intimacy. And there's also negative things, right? Like jugs, alcohol, pornography, these types of addiction. These are also opponents, but they don't all have to be negative things. They can be positive things. Kids, you know, all that sort of thing.

20:54 And then you have job loss. You have financial pressures, right? What are the opponents that are most warring against your level of connectedness right now? Label them. Put them out there. Because if we don't label them and name them, we make our spouse out to be our enemy. And then what we end up doing is a slow fade over time.

21:13 It's a slow divide over time. Okay, so pay attention to that. Your spouse is your greatest teammate. Your spouse is your greatest companion. Your spouse is the one who is warring with you through the ups and downs that this world offers us, okay? It is warring, like the world is in chaos. There's a spirit of chaos in the world. How do we, as husband and wife, not make each other out to increase the chaos, but to weather the chaos together? That is the goal, okay? So name your opponents. Name them. And then number three is this.

21:52 The third one is this. Come together each day and identify and voice aloud. Really, this is all about coming into the light, bringing things into the light. Bring into the light, number one, that you're a team, us, we, our language. Bring into the light your opponent. And number three, bring into light every day, at least one time, that you felt seen, heard, loved, or connected with, or appreciated by your spouse. Voice it. Thank you so much for playing with my hair when you did that today as you walked by the kitchen table. It just felt so lovely.

22:26 I felt so seen. It just, there was a moment of connection. Because if you're raising kids, sometimes these moments of connection are very fleeting. They're in the moment. It's not like we're having an hour and a half, you know, time together every single day where we're sipping coffee and, you know, You're sitting outside and watching the sunrise together and you're holding hands. For many of us, that is not realistic. But you have these moments throughout the day that you have an opportunity to be able to share with your spouse or these little connections. Hey, thank you for asking me about my day. Thank you for asking me about that moment. Hey, thank you for seeing me and saying, hey, you know what? I got the kids

23:05 right now. You go find something to do for yourself. Hey, thank you for taking over dinner tonight because that was, thank you for just simply being in the kitchen with me while I was making dinner. Whatever it is, where you felt seen, heard, loved, appreciated, voice it. Put it out into the atmosphere. And here's why. Because that is fuel for your spouse to continue to do those things.

23:32 And what it also does is it also tells your spouse, hey, you matter to me. You matter to me. Our relationship matters to me. So I'm gonna repeat these again. Number one, us against the world attitude. We, us, our language. Number two, bring your opponents into the light. Label them, talk about them, write them out on sticky notes, have a little meeting over them. Hey, these are the things warring against our intimacy right now. And by the way, they could be in-laws.

24:00 Like there's so many, you know, adult parents, vacations, holidays coming up, right? Label them out and then start coming together in the same locker room. Don't keep score against each other, okay? You're not on different scoreboards here. You're both pulling your own weight. Give each other the benefit of the doubt. And then number three, name one way that you felt seen, heard, loved, or appreciated throughout the day.

24:25 Bring that out into the light. All right, I'm gonna give you a bonus here because I think this is probably the most important one and I didn't mention it If at all possible, I would say that this is a non-negotiable in many cases, pray together. The research on praying together is insane. That couples who pray together stay together.

24:51 There you go, right? Like it is that marital satisfaction for couples who pray together. Now, let me say this. I also don't want to add more shame. Because what can end up happening there is it's like, well, you've never prayed with me before. You've never taken spiritual leadership. And there's another resentment that I have against you is you haven't led me spiritually or the husband feeling like, hey, I haven't led you spiritually. And so therefore, I'm just gonna, I don't even wanna bring it up because I feel ashamed about it. I feel, right? That's the enemy who wants to keep you in silence. That's a great example of how the enemy wants to keep you in silence because he wants to shame you. He wants you, he

25:27 wants to accuse you guys that the other is the opponent. And that's not the case. That is not the case. The best way to start is to start and fumble your way through it. Even if you just come together for a quick prayer to say, Lord, protect us, unite us, hold each other's hands. And by the way, If you need prayers, feel free to reach out. Put them in, go to the podcast, famousathome.com slash podcast. You can put in comments. You can put in requests for topics. I will put it in the show notes there today. If you have questions around praying together or you need specific prayers, like warfare prayers that you wanna pray, I would encourage you, reach out to us. We will send those to you as well, ones that we use and that sort of

26:10 thing because these are just very powerful ways to come together as a team I think that the marriage relationship, guys, this, if you're a Christian, if you believe that Jesus is coming back and you read the book of Revelation, guess how all of this ends? In a wedding feast, in a marriage supper of the lamb. It ends in a wedding feast. Like this one relationship more than any other is a caricature of our relationship with Christ, the bride and the bridegroom. Here we are, guys. And yet, husbands and wives, husbands and wives, we get to live this out on this earth. And I think that there's so much supernatural power that comes when a husband and wife are in unison and connected together. And so I hope

26:57 this episode was helpful for you. Until next week, keep in mind that the greatest red carpet you will walk is through your front door. Thank you for listening to the Famous at Home podcast. If this episode was helpful for you, would you consider sharing with a friend, a coworker, a family member? And go wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a review. This is how people find out about it. And if you're interested in any of our coaching programs, check out famousathome.com or the show notes for more information. Keep in mind that the greatest red carpet you will ever walk is through your front door.