Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
The Transformative Power of Open Communication in Marriage
Ever wondered why so many marriages fall apart despite the best intentions? What if the key to a thriving relationship lies in the power of open and honest communication, even when it’s uncomfortable? Join us for a compelling discussion as we unravel our own story, from the depths of betrayal to the heights of healing, and discover how transparent conversations transformed our marriage.
Facing the natural tendency to shy away from difficult discussions, we share our own experience of how honest dialogue about everyday issues, like Jeff's work stress, can lead to profound understanding and connection. By valuing each other's viewpoints and embracing feedback, we illustrate how these conversations can resolve conflicts and foster deeper intimacy. Learn the tools we used to navigate these waters and the mindset shifts that made all the difference.
We also delve into the concept of "working in your backyard," focusing on self-awareness and responsibility before addressing your partner’s actions. This approach not only transforms arguments into constructive conversations but also builds a foundation of mutual respect and collaboration. By sharing our journey, including the steps to lead open conversations, we hope to equip you with the insights needed to cultivate a healthier and more fulfilling marriage. Tune in and discover the transformative power of truly listening and being heard in your relationship.
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💥💥Everything you need to grow the marriage you long for is waiting for you in the Marriage Growth Community:
https://beautifuloutcome.com/marriage-growth-community
🎁 Free Gift for you! 100 Prompts and Ideas to Connect with your Spouse!
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Where you can find me:
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FAC...
Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for. Welcome to another episode of hey, Julia Woods. I am so excited you're here and I am very excited that my husband has joined me today for this conversation. Hey, hon.
Speaker 2:How you doing.
Speaker 1:I am good. So we are going to talk to you today about how to have an open and honest conversation. Now, if you've been in my community long, you've heard me talk about this phrase a lot. I talk about you know the beauty of what happens when you can have an open and honest conversation and that the goal that I'm leading people to is so that they can have open and honest conversations. And I began to recognize you know that many of you listening might be like what is that and why would I want to have open and honest conversations? That doesn't sound very fun. And if I did want to have them, you know why does it matter if I have an open and honest conversation and how in the world would I create one? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today is all of those things and invite you into the power, the life changing, transformative power, of open and honest conversations. And as I begin this conversation, I wanted to share a little bit of aspect is that there's really kind of like three different aspects of open and honest conversation. There's first the desire For Jeff and I I would say you know, 18 years of our marriage.
Speaker 1:We didn't really even recognize or consider that we had a desire to have open and honest conversations Because, again, that just sounded uncomfortable and we didn't know how to have uncomfortable conversations. So, you know, the thought of that was like ooh. And yet somehow there was this deeper longing, this deeper knowing that we did want that, but we didn't really come into desiring it until later in our marriage, after we face significant suffering. And then, all of a sudden, we found the power of open and honest conversation. So the first layer is getting to the point where you even desire them, and we're going to talk about some things today that hopefully will engage your desire to have them if you don't have that desire yet. The second level goes into participating, like your ability to participate. You can want an open and honest conversation, but the moment your spouse starts getting honest with you, how do you participate in that conversation? And that leads to the third layer, which is actually the willingness to lead them. And that's where I want to. You know, the couples that I work with, the spouses that I work with, that's my goal is. I want to walk you through what the desire of it, how to participate in it and how to actually lead them. And so today we're going to use our marriage as an example, and we have definitely not arrived, and I don't ever want to arrive, because that means we don't see the growth that's needed. So we are a work in progress and we have passed that. We are working to heal and we are continuing to take responsibility for what we want and ultimately creating the legacy that we long for for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.
Speaker 1:And this is all a part of that journey. It has brought me to be very, very passionate about open and honest conversations, and you're going to hear why, in as Jeff and I go on with our story, we got to the point where, um, we didn't know if our marriage was going to work. We, our marriage had failed. We had, we were facing, uh, an affair. Uh, jeff had wound up having an affair and we were devastated and didn't know if the marriage would work. And so you're going to hear where my passion for open and honest conversations came from in that journey. Um it, it is something that I have come to believe in the work that Jeff and I have done and in the work that I do with other couples that open and honest conversations is vital if you want a thriving marriage and in our marriage, in where we're at, I won't speak for Jeff, I'll speak for myself, in that I am passionate about all three. I'm passionate about desiring them, I'm passionate about being in them and I'm passionate about leading them. And, um, where would you say that you're at in those areas of a desire to have open and honest conversations, a willingness to participate in them and a desire to actually lead them.
Speaker 1:Before we dive deeper into today's episode, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. It's a game changer. Really. To have the relationship you long for, you must take responsibility for yourself and who you are being, moment by moment. It's not about what your spouse needs to change. It's about you taking control of the only thing you can control, which is you. That's the truth that nobody's talking about when they talk about marriage. But I am inside the marriage growth community where I will help you take responsibility for your ability to lead conversations with your spouse, to love and connection, so you can have the marriage you dreamed of when you first fell in love. At the very first link in the show notes, you can grab my marriage growth community and that's really going to help. I know that because it's based on the same principles. I've used to coach this couple and hundreds of other couples to marriage success over the last nine years. So grab marriage growth community at the top of the show notes. Okay, back to the show.
Speaker 2:I believe I'm in the. I have a desire to participate in them. I am growing in the capacity to lead them and I know that's something that you are requesting that I lead. And I'm not shutting that down. I'm just in a place where I'm happy to participate, hold a space for where you're at in that situation and look to grow into that more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean, obviously, this is what I do every day, this is my life's work to help couples in that. So I get a lot of practice, I get a lot I've invested in a lot of training what it looks like to have open and honest conversations. I want you to be able to recognize the context or the lens that at which you know we're looking at them from. Is that, um, the lens that I'm coming from is as I share with you the different aspects of what and why and how, and and what matters about it. I'm coming from the place of leading them and participating in them and desiring them, and Jeff is coming more from the lens of desiring and participating in the conversations that I'm leading up until now. And so the first thing that we want to look at is you know what, when we say open and honest conversation, what does that actually mean? And to me, it means things like sharing openly what you're feeling and what you're thinking about yourself and about the situation, sharing what isn't working for you. Rather than tolerating what isn't working for you and blaming your spouse, you're actually sharing what's there for you, like, hey, I recognize that this part of our marriage, that this, isn't working for me, and would you work with me as we wrestle openly and honestly about how this is working for each of us? What isn't working about it? It's taking fierce responsibility for your part in what isn't working. It's being honest, especially about the things that you don't want to be honest about. And rather than holding in your thoughts and ruminating about them because ruminating is where, like we're like you know we have a fight or something and your spouse says something that's like really painful, and you just hold onto it and you like think about it over and over and just like I can't believe they would say that to me and do they not even care? Do they not even know what they're doing? Like they're just such a jerk right? That's ruminating and that's not being open and honest.
Speaker 1:Open and honest is, rather than holding those thoughts and turning them over and over, in you, you're actually willing to express them in a way that's respectful, in a way that's open and honest. It's looking at what you don't want to see. It's bringing what's in the dark into the light, so that it doesn't keep growing into something bigger and far more painful. You speak openly and honestly about it, to where you bring the things out that are hidden, right Like if you've ever had a bread drawer.
Speaker 1:We had a bread drawer at several of our homes and, man, sometimes there was things that were hidden in there that once we found it it was like, oh my goodness, I wish we would have found this much earlier, because whatever's hidden is lurking in the dark and it's getting worse and worse and worse. So open and honest conversations are bringing what's in the dark into the light, and learning to make requests, learning to um, you know, own where you need to have boundaries, what it looks like to respect them, what it looks like to hold them, and making requests and finding a way to negotiate together All of those things. To me, that's a very broad, wide and yet hopefully specific definition for you of what I see as some aspects of what open and honest conversations look like. How would you describe open and honest conversations, jeff?
Speaker 2:I believe it's more, not more. I I come at it from a, from an open heart, and everything you just said I could. I can imagine some people are kind of like, maybe on pins and needles, a little bit like, oh my God, that that sounds like a, it sounds like a lot, but I do believe it's I. If I sit from an open heart, um, and not guarded which I have been in the past very guarded like because I can, I can make up that. You know it's a, it's about me, you're right, like I make up the story, this is about me and so, um, after hearing, I you know, asking you questions and what are your thoughts and and I think it's very important that you do it without closed fists, like you're open-handed my body posture, julia, is a very phenomenal. Her listening ears are like let's compare them to like basketball. It'd be like goat level, it is true.
Speaker 2:Trust me, people, if you've ever talked to julia, she could, pretty julie, be one of those people that they, if she's in a court of law, they wouldn't need to dictate somebody. They just ask julia what they say. Say back to them julia, um, because julia's can hear, and then she's, and she's, she's her mentor, our mentor, that's like one of the gifts that she has is her listening ears and it is situations where I go into this conversation without closed fist, my body language, so she can listen. But she can also tell by how I'm sitting or how I'm standing, my body language, and you know she can. I have given her the permission to always ask me. That she would.
Speaker 2:As much as I sometimes hate it, I still she. She knows she can ask me what did you hear me say? And sometimes that's like nails on a chalkboard. But you know it is a great opportunity exercise for me because it's like that game you played as a kid with the um, the whisper game. Well, I think it's called telephone. You whisper into the ear of some kid and that person's got to go to that kid and that kid and finally you realize that what you whispered has gone through 20 kids and it's like 20 different things and it's never the same thing. Uh, at the very end different things and it's never the same thing at the very end.
Speaker 1:And so for me it's like it's a good exercise because I need I up until now I'm developing listening ears and it's a really good analogy because that telephone game is like how a thought or something our spouse says. It goes through all of our filters and each of our filter is like a different kid that it's passing through right.
Speaker 2:So my identity filter.
Speaker 1:My, you know how things should be, all these different filters we have. What we thought we heard our. What we think we heard our spouse say is usually not at all what they said. Yeah, cause what we're hearing after it's passed through all of our filters.
Speaker 2:Sure, because you asked me what'd you hear me say? And I will say it. And she goes no, that's not what I said. And so it's like you know there is a part of her. It's like oh my gosh, you know, like what did I not hear? Am I that ADHD that I can't even pay attention? And so for me it's it's also the process of just being in a state of curiosity and continually to like ask questions, because I'm realizing that there's times where, um, hearing, being a bold listener can, can be a very useful and it's a gift if you can have those types of conversations where you're being a bold listener. I'm getting this look from her right now. It's just her eyes are smiling because she knows exactly what's going on. But being a bold listener is, I believe, I would say, would you say maybe even the number one key to having these open and honest conversations.
Speaker 1:Open and honest conversation starts with listening.
Speaker 2:Yes, and if you're not, it's something you get to work on. Like you know, it's like in sports. Like you may not be good at that, but if you keep practicing at it, you're going to develop a resistance to it. That's going to help it grow and stay in the tension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because default as humans is we listen for what we want to hear and we are wired for that, and it takes a lot of development to be able to listen for what you don't want to hear. Listen for the, the uncomfortable parts that were like, oh okay, you know somebody, you're at a gathering with somebody and somebody you know says something. You're like, oh okay, let's back away, let's not talk about that. We do that same thing in our relationship and yet those things that we don't want to talk about, those things that we don't want to face, are vitally important. So, real quickly, I just want to, before we keep going, I want to um invite you. If you're listening and you're like, okay, wow, I don't know how to be in, uh, I don't know how to have open and honest conversations. I just want to share with you a powerful um resource that can really transform your listening, and that is the marriage growth community. In this, in this resource, it's going to give you the tools that I use and continue to use to grow my desire, my ability to participate and my ability to lead open and honest conversations, and these tools are vital for every spouse to implement in your day-to-day life as a couple and you can grab Marriage Growth Community in the very first link in the show notes and it will walk you through how to grow self-awareness, ask powerful questions and resolve conflicts in healthy ways as you develop your ability to lead open and honest conversations. So I want to dive back in here through giving you an example of an open and honest conversation.
Speaker 1:So the other day, jeff and I were having we were just going about our life and Jeff and I work together currently and Jeff was complaining about a task for work and I recognized that I was feeling frustrated, right. So when I don't want to have an open and honest conversation, I'm just going to notice that he's frustrated and I'm going to complain, or I'm going to notice that he's complaining and I'm going to complain back to him about his complaining, and then we're going to spin off into a uh, you know, a closed, defensive conversation. That would really be the opposite of it. But I wanted to have an open and honest conversation I was able to sit with. Hey, he's complaining about something and I'm not liking that he's complaining about it. So I began to do the first step, which is well, the first step is get grounded in your backyard and what is it that's going on for you? And so I started wrestling with it and exploring what was there, and I realized that his complaining was leaving me feeling unsupported.
Speaker 1:His complaining was leaving me feeling unsupported and so I in this has been a common conversation we've had in our marriage that I will say to him I don't feel like I don't feel supported by you in my career sometimes and he, you know, in confusion is like what in the world are you talking about? Have you not noticed how I do this and I do that, and I'm your biggest fan, and how could you say I don't feel you don't feel supported? And so I asked him if he was willing to let me share something with him that was occurring to me, and he said yes. And so I said I know you've often asked me how in the world could I not feel supported? And I realized that when you complain about your work tasks, I wind up feeling as though I take it personally and I feel like you're not supporting me.
Speaker 1:And it wound up being a really powerful conversation because both of us he was willing to see that and see how that could contribute to me feeling like he's not supporting what I'm doing, when he's complaining about what he needs to do to be a part of what I'm doing, and he wound up being willing to see in himself this long pattern that he has. That goes along with when there's tasks to do. He complains about them, and I began to see stuff in myself that was like, oh, and why am I taking it personally, like that's his process. That's not really about me, but I take it personally when he's complaining because I like to be happy while I work, and if he's not happy while he works, then it must be.
Speaker 1:You know something about me asking him to do things he doesn't like or whatever, and so it wound up being a really powerful conversation. But that's an example of what an open and honest conversation is, where you come in owning that there's something that wants to be looked at, there's something that wants to be explored about both of you, in both of you, and inviting your spouse into. Would they, would this be a good time? Would they be willing to, to have the conversation and then each of you looking at yourself and what might there be to see in yourself? That's an opportunity to grow and learn. So would you share, jeff, your experience of that conversation?
Speaker 2:yes, so there was just. For me it was like it was. It was a new conversation, I think maybe the way you reacted to it and my way of explaining it was different in a lot of ways and I was able to see, again, not being guarded, and open hearted and not closed fist, able to hear your feedback, and it's taken me a while to understand there's actually gold in the feedback and it wasn't unsolicited feedback, but it was just, you know, feedback that I needed to hear, feedback that I needed to hear, and I was then able to get off my I don't remember the exact complaint or the task that it was. If you, if you, want to share that, that's fine, um, but I do remember like I was able to kind of like get off my own BS and see it from where? From your perspective, because I'm not usually looking at it from your perspective, I'm usually looking at it from my own perspective and my own story. And as much as I kind of want to, I want to validate the complaint. The complaint was really.
Speaker 1:Well, it was in regards to the audio.
Speaker 2:Yes Audio on a project.
Speaker 1:On a project that I wasn't happy with, and we're still in an open and honest conversation about it. We're still looking at it and, um, I'm getting clear on what I need from you, um, and your. What would you say is happening for you?
Speaker 2:Uh, for me it's it's start asking questions and asking other people, questions Like, um, my son, our son, who is a talented filmmaker and and does a lot of audio. I had him give me feedback on it and and so for me it's really like, okay, paying more attention to the details, that was the feedback and I could like I could hold that feedback and not be angry about it, like I could sit there and realize, okay, all right, I like there's, this is something that's that's true for her. And well, what do I gain by just being belligerent and being pissed and holding, you know, contempt, or holding, you know it's like okay, this is what's real, this is what's true for her and this is what's true for me. And where can those two things come together? And we can come to an agreement or we can come to a.
Speaker 2:What are the next steps to do in the future so it doesn't happen again Versus like, well, screw her, I'm just going to do like, well, screw her, I'm just gonna do the same, I'm just gonna do the same damn thing I did before. And if she doesn't like it, oh well, um, or minimize. I think for me I was minimizing what you were hearing, like I was minimizing you and your um complaint in that moment. So it's just a constant, I think. I think that the wrestle you and I are having, we could have the wrestle and still be cordial to each other and not yeah, cause that's the beauty of an open and honest conversation, is it doesn't?
Speaker 1:I've described the level. Tension levels range from one to 10. And when you're in the six to 10 range of attention level, there's no growth, there's no learning, there's like mad at each other for hours or days, or you know, it's really hurtful and painful. Open and honest conversations is what you're having when you're in the tension levels one to five, where you can easily put a pin in it. You know your kids can walk in the room and it's not a problem. It's a powerful conversation that's revealing and and just discovering um, new possibilities for both of you. So you know why, why. Why have an open and honest conversation?
Speaker 1:Well, for Jeff and I, it's it's very, it's very, very important for many reasons, because we didn't have open and honest conversations for the first 20 years of our marriage and we spent a lot of time ruminating on our upset about the other person and on the offenses that we had towards the other person. We were both growing bitterness and resentment and we were extremely lonely and leaving our conflicts unresolved because we had no idea how to have open and honest conversations and what that led to was an affair that we didn't know if we would be able to recover from. And yet what brought the recovery was open and honest conversations. We were in severe devastation and we just started being really open and honest with each other in ways that we had never been before, and we started be.
Speaker 1:It blew our minds what began to open up and what began to happen as we began to be able to talk about what we were feeling without worrying that we were going to upset the other person and if they got upset that was okay. We could sit with that upset and be open and honest about that. And it moved away from us pointing the finger at each other as the problem to hey, let's just collaborate, let's just talk openly and honestly about what's going on for you and what's going on for me and what wants to happen in the discovery of both of those things, and how can we work through this and find something that works for both of us and find what each of us needs to look at in ourselves. And so that's my experience of why they're so vital and why I'm extremely passionate about it, because they literally performed a miracle. Open and honest conversations created a miracle in my life and in my marriage that I didn't think was possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, without them. Also, it leads to walking around on eggshells, right, like it's just you passive, aggressive, you just try not to make the other person mad, so you just kind of avoid, um, and we've been in that season before where we just kind of, uh, you know, like just walking around and then you just enable or give in to what the other person wants, which is never successful, um, because you just end up holding, you hold onto that as a scorecard that you're this and you're going to bring it up later. So there's an enablement that if you're not having these opening up conversations, you just enable and you keep score. And if you keep keeping score, this leads to an unsettling, resentful bitterness that you just hold that grudge, um, and then that produces other things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we want to look and communicate from each of our perspectives what, for us, is the foundation of being able to have an open and honest conversation. So I'm coming from the place of more if you're looking to lead one, uh, and Jeff's coming more from the aspect of participating in one. So for me it starts with working in my backyard, and if you've been in the community long, you know what that means. And what that means is that I see marriage as a neighborhood, and each couple is neighbors and you each have your fenced in backyard, and in your backyard is your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your reactions, your attitudes, your tone, your everything that you have going on inside of you that's contributing to how you interact with each other or contributing to the marriage or the neighborhood, and your spouse has the same, and so what we tend to do as spouses, what's natural, is for us to go to the fence and point into our spouse's backyard and let them know where they've got some snakes over there and got some bushes that need trimmed and got some attitudes that need weeded out, and it sure be nice if you'd grow a little romance in your garden and all these kinds of things. Working in your own backyard is recognizing what I'm growing over here. I've got plenty of snakes in my garden, I've got plenty of overgrown things that need to be trimmed back and I've got definitely some character traits like love and empathy and grace that needs to be grown in my backyard. And if I will focus my attention on what needs to be grown in my backyard and if I will focus my attention on what needs to be grown in my backyard, it's going to grow into the marriage. It's going to beautify the whole neighborhood. Because I'm willing, focused on my work. So leading or being in an open and honest conversation starts with you working in your backyard. What's going on for you, which takes a lot of humility, which is a powerful character trait to grow in your garden, and you know it takes a lot of humility to look at what's going on in you, what you might be contributed, because you know when you have an argument it's easy to see my spouse is 95%, the reason we had that argument and maybe I did 5%, but who cares about my 5%? They need to look at their 95%. Well, the truth is, we're seeing it from a very skewed view and it's probably more 50-50 in who's contributed to what's not working, and all I have control over is my 5%. So if I will look at my 5%, I'll usually it'll wind up becoming a much larger number in my mind. I'll become aware of a lot more that I contributed and, you know, I can start discovering, like what's really going on for me.
Speaker 1:What is it that this is triggering in me? What is it that I haven't recognized? This is where I'm coming from, and when I do that work in my backyard, I can then begin to be in the conversation speaking about I rather than you. Right, when I haven't done the work in my backyard, I'm going to be like you had a tone with me and you said this and it was so hurtful, and you always do that. And when I'm in my backyard, I can be like what I'm noticing in myself is I feel really lonely in this conversation and I realize I'm not sharing with you what it is that I want, I'm not asking for what I need and I'm letting you go on and on and on the whole time. While you're going on, I'm thinking bad thoughts about you and telling myself you just don't care, rather than saying hey, can you help me understand how what you're sharing is connected to the question that I asked, because I'm feeling lonely in this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:That's an example of what it looks like, and at the heart of leading an open and honest conversation is is owning what you're wanting and needing. Because if you're not owning what you're wanting and needing like sometimes I'll come to Jeff and I'll just start blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm watching him like check his phone and do different things, and so then I'm like blaming him and criticizing him, where the truth is that I didn't come to him and say, hey, something happened today that I'd like to share with you. Is this a good time for you to listen? Because what I'm needing from you is some feedback. Is that something you can offer me at this time? And then you know, I might find out no, he's got a lot going on and he's got a pressing deadline and he can't do that for me right now. Well, that's helpful to know.
Speaker 1:This isn't a good time for an openness, an honest conversation, and he can be open and honest with me and say, no, it's not a great time. And you know, I would love to hear what you have to say Can we meet in the morning to have that conversation? That's both of us being open and honest, but it starts with the person who started the conversation. Are you being open and honest about what you want and need and find giving the other person the space to be open and honest as to whether they can offer that to you right now? What would you describe is the foundations for you to be able to be in an open and honest conversation?
Speaker 2:I think you shared a lot of it there in that last part, but I do feel it's just the willingness to speak out and not speak out in a way of, you know, frustration, but just speak out and share what's going on. You know, like what am I making up in the conversation? What am I making up in the conversation and then finding? I think the important part of all this is just finding the gold in the feedback, because feedback is not.
Speaker 1:Can you describe what you mean by that, because you say that term a lot.
Speaker 2:And you've said it multiple times.
Speaker 1:What do you mean for the listeners? Listening? What do you mean by feedback?
Speaker 2:Well, it's always feedback, right, and we can take feedback and take it negatively or positively, but no matter what, in both those situations there's gold in the feedback and sometimes the feedback. What do you mean by feedback Like, and how did I not show up in the complaint that you had earlier about the audio? There was feedback there that you gave me.
Speaker 1:Which all I said is the feedback's not the audio is not working for me, so you hear that as feedback, because it's something you were responsible for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll take it personally. So I mean, like we can take things personally and you know we can get angry about it, but to me, like okay, there's gold in the feedback because it's how they experienced you. It's how they experienced you in that moment.
Speaker 1:And so it's like I want to be able to hear Well, it's how I experienced the end result yeah Right, yeah. Well, it's how I experience the end result yeah Right, yeah, and so I want to be able to know, like, okay, where is you know?
Speaker 2:then I can go through my own processes of, well, is that true? Is there something that's true? Is true what I want to know? And you know, like, okay, she's right, you know there is something going on here, let me investigate it. But if I was just to say screw your feedback, um, and sometimes people give you unsolicited feedback, right, and so even in that I I still sense the need to look at it and and process it my own through a healthy filter, um, not through a negative filter, not taking it personally, but just you know, know, what could I do to show up differently in that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So those are some of the foundations of an open and honest conversation, and you know, what we're going to talk about now is what it actually takes to lead an open and honest conversation. And so, for me, what it takes to lead is first noticing noticing that I'm bothered, noticing that I'm annoyed, noticing that I'm upset about something and then choosing the self-awareness as to what is really going on for me. So, and just so you know, I'm walking through these with you. For you, if you're wanting to start leading open and honest conversations in your marriage, these are the steps. First, it starts with noticing that something is going on for you, and then it takes choosing self-awareness to wrestle with what is going on for you.
Speaker 1:Is there an offense that you need to work through? Is there a request that you need to make? Is there a limiting belief that you need to rewrite? So, like in the situation that I used earlier in regards to the audio, there was a bit of an offense that I needed to work through because I was. I had told Jeff a day or two before that the audio I didn't want that audio. That wasn't working for me. It was on a YouTube episode that had gone out and Jeff was like there's nothing wrong with this and I kind of felt like he was trying to make it sound like I was crazy. I was gaslighting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was experiencing him as gaslighting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was experiencing him as gaslighting, so I was offended and but I hadn't said that in the conversation. So I realized, okay, there's an offense, I feel like he's gaslighting me and that's something we've been talking about a lot lately. So I knew that that was one angle to look at. I also looked at what is the request that I have, and what I knew is that we hadn't made any action steps to move forward, like we hadn't looked at like, okay, I'm not happy with the audio, you're completely happy with the audio, what do we want to do about this? And so I hadn't gotten clear as to what I needed from him was for him to get clear as to what was going on, so that I would know and he would know that it wasn't going to happen again in the future. But if we couldn't figure out what the problem was, then there was, you know, no hope that anything was going to change and I was just going to keep coming into recording days, fearing that the same thing was going to happen over again and he was going to keep trying to tiptoe around my upset about the audio. So, and then is there a limiting belief that you need to rewrite, I think what kind of came in the conversation was I was recognizing that I was taking his complaint and there was certain levels that I was making it about me and I needed to recognize that it wasn taking his complaint and there was certain levels that I was making it about me and I needed to recognize that it wasn't about me.
Speaker 1:And so you know, leading open and honest conversations it's an ongoing growth process and growing it's like a muscle, right? I mean, the beauty of self-awareness is the muscle can just keep going bigger and bigger. There's no end in this lifetime to the level of self-awareness that we can grow in ourselves. And the more self-aware you become, the greater your ability to lead these kind of conversations and be able to sit in the tension with what's there and and life come out of it. Because the more open and honest you both are with yourself first and foremost, and then with each other, the more you discover, the more you learn, the more opens up for both of you into new awareness of things you didn't know, that you didn't know. What would you add? Anything you would add to that?
Speaker 2:No, I think you hit the nail on the head on all those points.
Speaker 1:So open and honest conversations. My hope is that in this, it's brought you to desire to have some open and honest conversations with your spouse and it's brought you to want to participate the next time your spouse is honest with you or open. Would you just allow yourself to participate in an open and honest way that isn't about defending yourself or being right or making them wrong, but just hey, let me sit with this. What if there's something to explore in here? And then would you want to start leading them where, when you recognize there's something you're not being honest about or there's something that you're not being open about, would you be willing to lead a life-giving conversation into openness and honesty that can begin to set both of you free and begin to offer growth and invite growth in both of you. So that's going to do it for this episode of hey, julia Woods.
Speaker 1:Now I have a quick favor to ask of you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating and a quick review in the app that you're using to listen right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable marriage growth tips and interviews here. This episode shares the power of what can happen when a spouse takes responsibility for who they are, being one conversation at a time. And if you want the marriage that you long for, click that first link in the show notes and this will take you straight to the resource that's going to solve that for you. I can't wait to connect with you inside my membership, where you can get the support you need to grow the marriage you long for. 24 seven. All right, that's gonna do it for the show. My name is Julia Woods. I'll talk to you next time you