Episode 107: Who Are The Influencers In Your Marriage?

sShawna 02:06

I think when we’re talking about how to preserve a marriage, how to have that onset, I think it begins before you’re even married. I it begins with two individuals deciding, you’re my person, yes, and you’re my person to the exclusion of all others doesn’t mean you won’t have other people in your life or that that person is trying to isolate you, which is a completely different topic from your family and your friends.

You’re my person means you’re the first person I turn to. If there’s something that goes wrong, you’re the person I check with. And I think those are important conversations to have before marriage because a lot of times, a lot of what we see when we talk about quote unquote outside influences and what we mean by that is outside the couple, right? And a lot of times where marriages do falter and do fail is when children.

sSara (02:55)

Yes.

sShawna (03:05)

Are added into the marriage. And there was not a good communication before having children about whether there was gonna be a united front. So I think before you decide, I’m going to marry this person, you both need to determine how you’re gonna communicate with each other, that you are and will be the next person outside themselves that they check with.

On everything because you’re choosing to live your life with them. You are saying, and in the eyes of the law, you are saying, we are one. And that’s a big thing. And I think you have to make sure not just with a prudential agreement that your finances are taken care of, that maybe with this inner emotional, mental, spiritual agreement of this is how we protect us, this very fragile thing,

From everyone else.

sSara (04:06)

You know, one of the greatest things I’ve read in Steve Jobs’ book, well, it’s a biography by Walter Isaacson, is how careful Steve Jobs was to express an idea before he had formulated enough. He kind of put it in a cocoon and protected that idea before he shared it with anybody because

Any seeds of doubt or any seeds of judgment or any seed of that’s not possible. He just did not want to invite that into his idea. He wanted to protect this idea till it kind of grew some power of its own, till it grew some weight to it. And then he would present it to his most trusted confidants. And I almost, from what you’re saying, I think that applies in a marriage too, right? I mean, there’s this idea of us. There’s this idea of

This loyalty to each other, this idea that we are a team now. And in the beginning of it, it is actually quite fragile. And it is in sort of like its infancy stage of, you know, his family, her family have their expectations, they have their ego of, well, my daughter should have this or my son should have that. And this is the life that I want for my children. And then you have your friends that plant the seeds of, well, my spouse does this or my spouse does that or

These are the types of vacations we go on and this is how he or she provides for me. And these seeds could actually be very, very dangerous for the infancy of that idea of us. And it really could chip at it if you’re not careful. One of the things Hisham and I, my husband and I did to your point, exactly to your point, before we got married, we were very young when we started dating and we made a commitment to each other.

That in times of conflict, we would sort it out between ourselves. Before I would go and run to my friends and say, he did this and that, what do you think? Or he would run to his friends and be like, my God, Sara’s being so difficult. Because not that our friends couldn’t be trusted with that, we both have wonderful friends. It’s just so much of they could be imposing their own seeds and their own voices in our heads.

That wouldn’t be authentic to who are we and what have we decided for us. And I do think that the healthiest marriages have bumped their heads against us quite a bit till they figured out that dance of how do we get through conflict, especially when the conflict is with each other, because these outside pressures and these outside voices are where you can take solace to when the conflict is with your person, right? It’s one thing.

To face on togetherness, a outside force that you’re fighting, but it’s a whole different thing when the conflict is within the house, the conflict is within. Then who do you go to? Where do you turn? And I think that’s when it’s your most vulnerable to letting the voices of knowledge from your friends, your family, your religious community creep in to the point you stop hearing your own voice.

sShawna (07:25)

And to your point, I think one of the things that people have a tendency to do is to share with others when times are bad in their relationship or to gripe about the things that should have been done or shouldn’t have been done. But you never go to your parents and go, let me tell you how marvelous this was, right? What they amazingly did for me. Or if you do, it’s not as on the equivalent level, right? Share with them the bad times. So I think that it is a really good idea that.

Like you said, to decide how are we going to share this information because it is going to create biases if what you’re sharing is only the negative information and not a united front. You can still commiserate with your friends or your family and say, I was having a really hard time and this is how we resolved it. And that is, if you choose to share that beyond the outside of your relationship is a way to build support for the relationship.

Instead of a way to build support for the breakup of the relationship.

sSara (08:29)

You know, one of the ways I try to address this for myself is anytime I’m having conflict with my person, and you know, that could be in a marriage, obviously it’s my husband, it’s a sham. If it’s in a friendship, it could be like my best friend, right? It’s really paying attention to what is the voices in my head, right? And trying to identify them. There is a wonderful book by Don McGallery called The Voice of Knowledge. And he actually talks about

The voices of knowledge in our head. Could be coming from things we picked up from our family growing up, things we could have picked up from our parents. It could have been even things that they didn’t say, but we just watched through their behavior of this is the way of the world. So how do you know what those voices are and which ones you’re listening to? Because sometimes you’re even listening to a younger version of yourself. Have you ever done that? I’ve actually heard myself listen to high school Sara say,

Well, I will never have a marriage like that, right? And then I’m like, whoa, I am actually exactly doing what I said I wouldn’t do when I was 16 years old and knew nothing about the world. But that 16 year old is driving the bus right now and her ego and her self sense of independence and you know, the world is my oyster is fully driving that bus and it’s gonna take it off the cliff if I don’t pay attention to it.

sShawna (09:57)

And I think this really goes towards people who have had traumatic childhoods. Oftentimes, those traumas come back to drive our actual emotions now. And having to take that step back and say, okay, I’m not in that situation anymore because how you were raised, whether you have come from a full family or a family that had been through divorce or just a single parent.

Or just anything else that you went through as a child. And you know this, Sara, that’s going to influence your thoughts in it all is very in an immature way as you’re growing up and learning how to deal with those emotions that you’re experiencing that are very childish. A child, literally. And they’re coming up in your marriage, but you have to be proactive in deciding, how am I going to handle these things when they come up? Because I don’t necessarily just want to shove it on my partner.

Right, right. How do I get to a place where this is the me I want to be in this situation rather than this is the me I would have been in this situation had I not matured and gone through therapy or just grown up?

sSara (11:08)

Okay, so I love that you’re talking about that, because we’ve talked about this in the past of what is your emotional age, right? Because I think it’s more more clear to people that in any partnership, right? Marriage, outside of marriage, friendship, any partnership, when there’s true sense of us and we’re a team and we’re in this together, we’ll ride or die, you say, you know what, it’s you and I, no outside noises, we talk, we communicate.

That’s the first step that I think most adults at certain points, especially when they come to our ages, they get. The next level is being aware of, it’s you and I, but who’s inside your head and who’s in my head, even if I haven’t talked to them, right? And one of those players is the younger, more immature version of you, right?

sShawna (11:56)

Yes. And your parents, they had ingrained in you. What is your idea of love? What is your idea of community? What does it mean to be disrespected? And how do you react? My God. Disrespected. And all of those things that we’ve been formulated to be before we’ve met our person. And so you’re right. Think a lot of what we’re hearing is these inside noises that had outside influences. Yeah.

sSara (12:08)

I

sShawna (12:25)

That are no longer relevant to our grown selves.

sSara (12:29)

I think that there’s times when our person, again, I would love to expand this conversation beyond just marriage because obviously marriage is the one that’s the most in your face, can be the most attack on your identity, could be the scariest because your self security, all these things are kind of like wrapped up in it. But once you figure this out in your marriage, you can apply it to all your partnerships in life, right? Is identify what was said

That triggered what version of you, right? Which age did it trigger? And you’re absolutely right, because when you say things like disrespect, okay? It takes me straight back to my father at the dinner table telling us how much words matter, right? Like I grew up in a household where we studied ancient Persian poetry and my father would read to us from the great philosophers of

You know, this era and that era and the meaning of words and how special words are probably why I went into law. Right. So in my, to me, if you use certain words to me, you may truly take me to my childhood where I’m taught that I’m supposed to be spoken to in a very soft, very deep understanding way. And it may not mean that to anybody else.

sShawna (13:34)

Yes

sSara (13:54)

But all of a you see a much more immature response out of me than somebody else that just never put that kind of meaning on words, right? And I think that somebody that’s gone through some serious childhood trauma, there could be things you say to them that could provoke that emotional age in them where they went through the trauma. Who was present at that time of that trauma? What was their emotional age? Who were the players at that age?

All those voices could come back. And I think the follow-up question is, okay, great, Sara, Shawna, what do I do with that? I hear all these noises in my head. Swear I’m not hallucinating. You’re not schizophrenic. I’m not schizophrenic. What do I do with that?

sShawna (14:38)

Well, a simple answer for me is always go to therapy. But a longer answer, let’s face it, is sometimes we just have to quiet our own voices. And there is a way to quiet your voices. And whatever that is, it’s going to be very specific to how you do it. It’s not going to be how Sara did it or how Shawna did it. I like going for walks. There’s quiet that gets me back in touch with who I am right now, where I want to be, where I want to focus my energies.

sSara (14:48)

Yeah.

sShawna (15:09)

And really ask that question, is it that important? Is it that important that this person said, blue? And blue has now made me think of this really bad thing and it put me an emotional state. And we’ve all been there. This isn’t, you know, we’re not picking on one person or the other. We have all been in these situations where we feel disrespected or we feel angered it really has nothing to do with what they’re doing more than how we’re perceiving.

sSara (15:12)

Right.

sShawna (15:37)

How we’re being treated. And one, I do think you have to get to a place in your own self that you feel like you earn love, you deserve love, you earn respect and you deserve respect. And until you get to those places, I don’t think you have any business meeting your other one. So the first thing I think is, as I always come back to is,

sSara (15:59)

Yeah.

sShawna (16:07)

Be involved with yourself before you’re involved with anyone else.

sSara (16:12)

I I think we had a episode on your relationship with yourself. Know, it’s, that’s the standard you set for everybody else is that relationship with yourself. And I think that just because you have these, these voices come up in your head that you identify them, you notice them, take notice of them, you listen to them, you identify where they come from. And I think the process of identifying them helps you determine is it that important, right?

I’ve actually decided it is really important to me how somebody speaks to me. That is a value system that comes from my father. And many times in my life I have identified it. I’ve noticed it. I was like, is this something I want to carry on as a value system for myself? And time and time again, it’s come up that it actually is. I do want it. There are other value systems that were passed down as a voice of knowledge from my parents that I’m like, no, I’m good. You know, that one isn’t that important, right?

So I don’t think just cause you notice that it didn’t come, like it came from another source and it’s a voice in your head. Doesn’t mean you need to get rid of it. Doesn’t mean you need to judge it. And same goes with the actual voices of your friends and family. But being able to filter through that information and deciding what’s important, what’s true, what applies, what doesn’t apply. I think you’ll get the most.

Authentic version of what you want and which voices and which players get to have a say in this is when what they think of the outcome does not matter to you. That I think is the actual distinguisher. Are these voices playing a part here? Are these other players in your marriage being a part here because your ego cares about the outcome that they’re gonna perceive?

From what you do here or are you using it as information so that you can drive the outcome that you very authentically want? And that’s when I think you’ll get to the truth is when you’re sick and tired of caring about what other people think, you sick and tired of caring what these other players think, but you’re still benefiting from any knowledge that could help you. Thank you.

sShawna (18:36)

Thank you.

sSara (18:38)

Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to atlantadivorcelawgroup.com/resources.