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
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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.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of hey Julia Woods. I am so excited for you to get to hear from our special guest today Dylan and Kyla. They have just finished their second breakthrough retreat and have signed up for their third. So Breakthrough is the couples communication workshop that I do, and I know that when you hear about a marriage retreat, it can be like you know what is this thing, and I've experienced other ones in the past and they weren't so great, or we don't problems in our marriage, or all these different things that come up when you hear about a marriage retreat, and so I am excited for Dylan and Kyla to share their experience. So welcome guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Julia. We're so happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, excited to just hear more. I got a little glimpse from you two on Sunday as we were closing out the Spring 2025 Breakthrough, and I was just like, oh, I would love for more people to hear about this. So I'm excited to hear more about it as well myself. So I'd love for you to start by just sharing with listeners what has your experience of breakthrough been like? You know, what brought you to sign up and was it. What were the fears you had when you signed up and was it what you thought it was going to be? So just maybe some of the questions that listeners might have themselves. I'd love for you guys to just share some of that yourselves.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Do you want me to share first? Cool, yeah, I was the driving force behind our first signup, so I'm happy to share a little bit of how that came to be. I had seen your name, julia, pop up online over a couple of years. I feel like leading up and it's kind of this like chip on the shoulder of oh, we don't need help with our marriage, we're fine. Shoulder of oh, we don't need help with our marriage, we're fine.
Speaker 2:And then we went through a series of a lot of really difficult circumstances in our life with people we love and just I feel like after COVID, things were just weird and we had been married for I think, six and a half years when we signed up.
Speaker 2:We signed up around the holidays of 2023 to go to the summer of 24.
Speaker 2:And things were not great, but I didn't want to admit that in our marriage I wanted everyone to think, oh, we're fine.
Speaker 2:I wanted to believe to myself that we were fine, but I kept coming up in myself against this like tension and just almost anxiety of we don't want the same things and I don't know at what point the map that we were each kind of operating from changed. But there is this unrest within me of like we are not aligned and if we don't do something about this or like get a little curious about it and actually face it with help from another professional in a community, we're just going to get more of the same results. Professional in a community, we're just going to get more of the same results. So I think I came to you late it was like late on a Monday night and I was like, hey, so I found this retreat workshop thing and I think that it'd be really great, and I was not expecting him to get on board, because we're pretty big budgeters, so I was expecting resistance, but I feel like it would be good to hand it over to you from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I heard that and I had done a really good job of convincing myself that everything was great. The only real problem in our marriage was Kyla. So if we went to this marriage conference, at least someone professionally would be able to tell me and both of us that Kyla was the problem, that I had all everything figured out and that we could maybe get to the root of some of the things that were going on in our marriage once she figured things out.
Speaker 2:And I kind of bought into that. Honestly, julia like it. We signed up in the winter and we were going in the summer and we started getting the like preparation emails, getting excited, and I remember thinking I'm about to be found out by remote people Like they're going to see that I'm the problem driving the like, striving and more in our marriage and everyone's just going to pat Dylan on the shoulder and say they're there like we'll fix her, and I was really nervous going into it but it ended up being amazing.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 1:Well, I love the honesty and the courage to share what's true, because I think that most couples think that and, whether they think they're the problems or whether they think their spouse is the problem, it's kind of like I'm so great, I'm so grateful Somebody else is going to be able to tell my person or help me see that I'm the problem.
Speaker 1:And, you know, it's one of the things that I open up Breakthrough with is first, let me tell you what Breakthrough is not. It is not a workshop to fix broken people or broken marriages, because I don't think those exist, but it is a workshop to develop the potential leadership in each spouse, in each relationship, so that you can lead to breakthrough conversations. So, and just for context, each couple comes to breakthrough with a specific tension that they want to break through in their own marriage. So it's why it's a workshop, because we're workshopping live, a specific topic that each couple gets stuck on. So, or is getting stuck on, or wants greater resource, or whatever. So do you guys remember the conversation you came to break through in 2024?
Speaker 2:Yes. So we came with we were. We kept having the same conversation about what do we want next in life, Be it the timing of starting our family, where we were going to live, what our careers were going to look like. It seemed like we each kind of had an idea in mind of this ideal future, but they were not the same and, speaking for myself, I just assumed one of us is going to have to concede to the other, and I had a lot of fear that, whether it be me who is yielding to Dylan or vice versa, that there would be resentment, and so I didn't honestly have a lot of optimism that we were going to get far in a three-day experience last year. But that was I was wrong. We definitely had a very big breakthrough. Would you agree that that's what it was?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It was so discouraging coming up against some of these really important topics and feeling like we're just telling different stories and not knowing how to make those stories into one story. Or make a new story, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then what was the conversation you came to break through this year?
Speaker 3:This year our conversation was really heavily focused on how we show up in tension. We found last year that we kind of took a baby step and, realizing that tension is good, Like we want to press into that. But we found diving into those tensions this year had been very much. Okay, we're going to show up into that conversation and we both freeze, we both shut down and we've had the initial conversation. We've like like just peeked over the surface but we haven't really gotten to the depth of the conversation. That we know is there and so what do we do? Like like how, all the what's and how's. Like how do we make this more?
Speaker 2:how do we?
Speaker 3:is that?
Speaker 2:is that fair to say so, and an so, and an example too, to share some context with the tensions that we're referencing. An example of a tension that we kept coming up against in the months leading up to Breakthrough is we're building a house together and we're really excited.
Speaker 2:We're very blessed to have the opportunity and we both know it's a good thing. But it's very easy to have to make a big decision that is semi-permanent, because we're not going to knock the house down and start over, and so Dylan will come to me with you know, hey the builder needs this from us, or we really should be looking at a decision here in order to reach our goal of having the house be ready, and I would start to engage.
Speaker 2:But I'd feel this like I don't know, like angst and resistance running up, like kind of coming up in me, and I'd say, hey, can we come back to this? I need some time to think about it. Instead of recognizing the value of sharing with Dylan, I'm really scared of making the wrong decision. So can we talk through that together right now as a team, instead of me feeling like I have to figure it out and then come to him when everything's tidy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think these are so relatable because it is powerful how, when you're falling in love and you're getting married, it's like you have these big dreams and, oh my goodness, life is just going to be wonderful. And we're going to, you know, keep growing our careers, we're going to have children. We're going to, you know, keep growing our careers, we're going to have children. We're going to, you know, create this great life. And then you get married and life begins to look a little different than you expected.
Speaker 1:On, unexpected suffering arises. Things don't go quite as you expect and all of a sudden, what once used to be the exciting dreams that you had now all of a sudden feel like you're not the exciting dreams that you had now, all of a sudden feel like you're not aligned, like what you both thought you wanted, where you thought you were headed, when you thought it was going to all happen. It's not what you anticipated and I think often what marriages do is they feel what you guys were describing where that tension comes up. The conflicts start arising, the defensiveness shows up and it's like, okay, we're describing where that tension comes up. The conflicts start arising, the defensiveness shows up and it's like, okay, we're better just to not talk about these things. Let's just keep doing the things that feel fun. Let's keep going on date night and talking about topics that are easy and find some fun shows to binge watch and, you know, series to get drawn into, and I'm sure we'll be fine and eventually we'll figure this out.
Speaker 1:But over time the tension there just becomes more and more topics you can't talk about because it's going to create tension, and so I just love you guys' courage to say, okay, there's a problem if we're not aligned, and that's not just going to get better on its own. And now we are starting to move towards being aligned. However, we're still finding that when tension shows up, we want to run away from it and we want to have it all tied in a bow before we have the conversation. So did I hear you correctly? Is that kind of where you were? What was occurring for you in each of those years?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That resonates very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's very common. So what was your experience of breakthrough? You came with each of these tensions two years in a row and obviously you've decided to come back. So how was breakthrough different than what you thought and what has been your overall experiences with it?
Speaker 2:I think, speaking for myself. Last year I went in with that assumption that I was going to leave almost with like not that I thought you were going to slap my knuckles with a ruler Julia, she's a lot gentler than that but I just kind of expected like this is going to be the confirmation that I need to change my ways and, if anything, suppress the desires and passions that I have in order to keep the peace. And I was preparing my heart for that just because I wanted ultimate unity with Dylan and I was starting to think that maybe that was the only way to achieve that. And I don't know which part of the weekend it was probably day two but we were sitting out in this beautiful area on the property and the sun was kind of setting and I felt like you kind of cracked open and suddenly I was seeing how you saw me and it actually wasn't how you're saying that you started. So I feel like I should let you take it from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, I had this realization and part of the way through 2024 breakthrough of our very first, that I was living in just this heavy level of apathy that we, we kind of I recognized, or I should say was led to recognize through our conversations and through breakthrough, and I was showing up with almost this idea of here's how I need to look, here's how life should be looking. Um, yeah, and I guess, with this frustration and anger at Kyla for continually raising the bar of our life, so seeing in each moment that I'm striving for this, okay, I'm going to be the hero, I'm going to come save like and like, swo swoop in and say you know what you really want this in our life, I'm going to jump in, I'm going to make that possible. And all the while in my brain I'm thinking I'm like I'm the victim here. Kyla is making me work so hard to reach her goals and things, and and so I was coming into these conversations just with a level of of disconnect from Kyla.
Speaker 3:I think, julia, you called out in one of the sessions just the loneliness that you saw in in my eyes and that was the first time I came to realize that I had just this really big shell, really big wall that I built up even between Kyla and I, and I was showing up with this nice guy racket and all the things that came with that. All the things that I was benefiting from. That were things like that allowed me to be right. In all of these conversations about our future, I could be this wholly nice perspective of what the right thing to do is in our life, and so no wonder Kyla was feeling this I'm wrong all the time and I'm over here like, oh, fix her, like this is how this should be. But in that first breakthrough that really gave me an opportunity and us together an opportunity to crack through that and actually talk together Like for real, like actual, real conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was like cracking through this exterior that I didn't know he had and I didn't realize how lonely I was because, I am very passionate by nature.
Speaker 2:I'm a dreamer, I have a lot of vision and over the years of our marriage I was perceiving that Dylan was kind of becoming resigned to the fact that, like he was, as he was kind of saying, the fuel that was keeping the engine going, trying to reach, reach these goals. But I wasn't seeing passion from him and it honestly was like I felt, like I'm like, is this who I married? Like I, just the passion between us was missing because there wasn't that coming together and that kind of space we were in. And I saw passion. I saw like his eyes, just like light up and a lot of vulnerability that I hadn't seen and it made me fall in love with him all over again last year. That to the point that when we were driving off the property on the last day, I just felt so light, like this exhale of like oh my gosh, we're going to be okay, there's work to be done, but like I love this man more, more than I realized, excuse me, and that was very freeing.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 1:So what I hear you guys saying is that for you, dylan, like you realized that you were living out of shoulds and have tos Like here's who I should be, here's who I'm supposed to be, this is what it looks like to be a husband and I've got to have the answers and I've got to, you know, show up this certain way and in that you were getting more and more detached from who you actually are.
Speaker 1:The gift of who you are that Kyla fell in love with you were becoming your own vision or mind of who you were supposed to be. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely yeah, and I know that you guys shared this year with me that the breakthrough you had, kyla. You were sharing that there. You realized that you had been living life kind of through a template, looking for the template of who you were supposed to be. Can you tell me more about that and how that's different than what you're saying, dylan, happened for you last year, or is it connected? Just excited to hear more about, kind of what that means and if it's connected to last year or if it's new.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I didn't even realize this until we got home from breakthrough this year that this template concept, I think, for me started when I graduated high school and the roadmap of what was supposed to happen next in my life, that there wasn't rules anymore. Like you grow up and you know, okay, I'm going to go elementary school, middle school, high school, and then for people that want college, you just kind of have the next step laid out and my college journey was not straightforward. So I started to develop this fear of like okay, I need to know that whatever I'm working towards is safe and predictable and that I can see that it worked for somebody Like I need proof. So sometime in my early twenties, it worked for somebody I need proof.
Speaker 2:So sometime in my early 20s, a few years before Dylan and I met, I started to see examples of people online whether it be people who had a blog or small business owners or just people that were living a life that I thought that could be for me. They're living out a creative dream or they have freedom and flexibility, working for themselves, and it's led to a lot of freedom in their time and finances. So I kind of just decided, before I even knew, dylan, that I was going to be an entrepreneur and work really, really hard early in my adulthood to achieve a level of wealth and success that would allow to have the dream house and the experiences I wanted to have, like traveling, and just a level of, honestly, comfort and a standard of living that I saw was available to other people that followed that template and there were names that Dylan started to learn and I'd say well, these people this is, you know, look how they're doing it.
Speaker 2:And look how they're doing it, because when we met, I brought all of that with me into our marriage and just kind of assumed he would be on board. And early in our marriage I realized that I was kind of always looking for the next big thing I was we got our first place. We live in a condo Well, I'm thinking about the house and we paid off our student loans and I'm thinking about, well, what happens when we get to this goal financially. And in that I think what you were speaking to, dylan, about the bars being raised. I kept raising the bar for what we needed to reach in order to, like quote unquote arrive in our life and just enjoy our life no-transcript.
Speaker 2:And I think Breakthrough has really humbled me to see we can create a vision together as a couple. Dylan has great ideas and passions and in the Venn diagram of us as a couple there's a lot of good stuff in the middle that I just assumed was only on my side or only on his, and so I feel like I'm going on a tangent. I'll take a breath.
Speaker 1:That's. It's great. It's great. I think you really described. You really described what I think people naturally do.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's just in today's world or if it's been this way for a long time, but it's like you look for someone to latch on to and you're like, okay, their life looks successful. So that's what we do. We do this and then this and then this, and you don't enjoy the journey. It doesn't become an adventure that you're creating. It makes sense that it's a template that you're trying to turn into a roadmap for your own life. I think a lot of I can resonate with that in my own life. Right, we have. I can resonate with that in my own life. Right, you do this. You get good jobs, you have the children, you keep upgrading the house, you keep upgrading the car, you keep upgrading the vacations, and life becomes a white knuckle, tension filled, experience of why don't we feel very connected anymore, why don't we look into each other's eyes and melt like we used to? Because we're completely stressed out and overwhelmed. So anything for you, dylan, from a male perspective, that you would add to that that Kyla was saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, as we were looking at each of these templates and even from the very first moment that that was introduced, I would say, from Kyla into our conversations, a couple things happened in my mind and started to kind of unpack some of those things.
Speaker 3:And started to kind of unpack some of those things. There almost didn't seem room for me in those templates. Those weren't necessarily visions or dreams of the future that maybe I had even latched onto, or people that I even knew to have that kind of desire. So that area or that possibility for passion, passion for getting excited and teaming up with kyla about our future, right at the get-go there was almost just not space for that, and so I'd look for ways to hear kyla telling me and to read, I should say, to reinforce this idea or this bias that I have that I'm not enough for those that my worth is tied to not equaling this template or this idea of who someone should be, or bringing in this amount of money, or achieving this success at this age in life, and so that gave me the justification to go.
Speaker 3:well, if I can't hit it, why do I even try?
Speaker 1:And what did that resignation look like, Dylan? How do you see it was showing up in day-to-day life or interactions?
Speaker 3:I would say, the biggest thing, or the biggest way that that showed up for me in our, in my connection with kyla, is, as we were looking to do something, I would see kyla which demonstrates something that she's excited about, um, a next step or a new thing, and I would so easily go no, no, I'm content. I'm content with exactly where we are.
Speaker 3:I am and I'm happy with what I have, because that was what I can be winning and comfortable with with my own parameters of how I set success in life and I can hide behind that and not feel like I have to try so hard. It gave me this, this excuse to um to really try very little and to just appease Kyla in the moments when she was trying to push towards those things that I saw to be so unfair to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's powerful because what you guys are describing is what Jordan Peterson describes um, in in a union of a marriage, is the chaos and the order right. So male archetype is order and female archetype is chaos. And chaos means like life, like it's the woman that bursts the child, and there's a lot of chaos in a child being born. It's the woman who says I know, the living room furniture looks great the way it is, but let's change it all up, let's change it around, so that we hit bump into it in the middle of the night when we don't know how, where everything is at, you know, and men are like the order, like everything's great the way it is, we don't need to change a thing, we don't need to add another baby, it's all great the way it is, you know, and that God actually designed these to be put together. It's how nature is right. There's the order and the chaos. There's the rushing river in the midst of the beautiful, solid, you know, banks of the river that are held by the roots of the trees that keep it secure, and that it's when order and chaos come together in alignment that the beauty actually occurs. They need each other.
Speaker 1:But what I hear you describing Dylan, is what often happens when we make it about ourselves and we think, well, I'm not enough or I'm too much right. The chaos can easily think I'm too much and the order can easily think I'm not enough. And when you go to that personal, individual resignation, think I'm not enough. And when you go to that personal, individual resignation, it becomes a control battle. A battle of control Like who's going to win?
Speaker 1:The one who's going to say you know, we don't need any more chaos. Or the one that says, if we don't have more chaos, we don't get to grow, we don't get to experience what we long for in life. And so that's the beauty of who a man and woman is to each other is the growth that's required, the character development that's required to come alongside and live in the tension of order and chaos, lovingly, respectfully, walking alongside of each other and calling each other up in what the other is most uncomfortable with. Chaos doesn't want order, and order doesn't want chaos. And yet we need each other. What do you guys hear me saying in that, when you think about the day-to-day of how this was looking for you?
Speaker 3:you're just this, this beautiful balance of the way God designed us to be, this, this pair together to really leverage the way he designed us, the strengths that each of us bring to our marriage, to make this full picture and I just hear the hear some of the ways that you know up until now, kyla and I. I should say, even just in my own ownership, that I've been showing up with only half of that picture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I can definitely relate as well to what you shared, julia.
Speaker 2:I think I knew like I was like okay, I feel like since I was a little kid I've had all the dreams and the visions, so I did believe going into our marriage.
Speaker 2:This is part of the personality and the character that God gave me. But as the world started to show me examples of why, maybe I needed to like minimize the dreams and passions, and then I started to develop this like guilt response to Dylan's contentment with how things were thinking am I the reason, why are my dreams and visions and who I am a reason why we're both exhausted and pretty much burned out and disconnected from each other and our life to try to achieve more? Now it's almost like in this new beginning that we're in. We're dreaming together and I'm happy to share more about what that has looked like in the short time since breakthrough. But it's been so refreshing and honestly affirming of who God made us to be that we're not at odds with each other and he knew exactly what he was doing and bringing us together. But evil would not want us to think that.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I would love for you to get more specific, Like what was the breakthrough that you had? Let's focus on this year what was the breakthrough you had?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me it was.
Speaker 2:I had like two breakthroughs this year, the first of which being I realized that I have avoided feelings and missing out on the fact that what I'm feeling tells a lot to not only me, but can also be a resource to my husband If I share with Dylan. This is what I'm feeling right now. This is why I'm starting to shut down, or this is why I feel like there's whatever response I'm having to something, and that ties in with what we brought this year of tending to shut down in important conversations. But the second breakthrough that I had, which was really the Sunday when we were talking Julia, I realized that template piece. I was like, oh my goodness. I think the reason, like the missing piece to this unrest within me and potentially within our home, within our marriage, of wanting more and always striving and honestly starting to feel defeated, like we're never going to get to these places. So is this how life's going to feel? Defeated, like we're never going to get to these places. So is this how life's going to feel forever? Are we just going to continue to work really hard and force correct when needed and just not be happy and content as a couple? Just one of us will be content.
Speaker 2:At a time I realized I just had this light bulb moment while you were working with another. You were, you know, talk with another couple and I wrote down in my notebook. I was like, oh my goodness, I've been trying to fit our life into a cookie cutter template of somebody else. I never asked Dylan, what? What should we be doing together, like I've never considered? I think you used the word whiteboard.
Speaker 2:I had never thought about what if we together, each holding a marker or maybe sharing a marker and taking turns listening to each other, what if we define the vision for even just the next season of life which, ironically, is what we brought in last year and we each had a hand in sharing our desires? If I asked them what are your desires and what do you like about life right now? How can we continue to cultivate that even more deeply? And I think the breakthrough that I experienced went so much deeper on the way home. We're firm believers. By the way, if anyone ever signs up for a breakthrough and they live far away, drive because you get bonus time on the way home to just talk and reflect, and we cherish that so much. With our 10 and a half hour drive, we just took out a blank piece of paper together, and one of us was driving, the other was writing, and we thought through, rather than think about circumstances to aim towards what, if we together define our values as a family and then dream up how can we fulfill those in our life? And it was almost like all of the other idealized futures that I had carried didn't matter anymore, because I saw this shared passion for what our life could look like as us and not someone else.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? Amazing, yes. Imagine that Dylan and Kyla are designed to create their lives together, obviously reflecting on what other people are doing. That's working, but wow, what vision wants to birth through the two of you for who you're made to be, in the world, in the community, and the lives that you impact. Exciting, so exciting. What about you, dylan? How would you describe the breakthrough you had this year?
Speaker 3:The biggest piece of the breakthrough this year, for, honestly, for me and the way that I show up to even those conversations with Kyla has been calling out the emotions that I'm feeling as we're talking through those things. I think a lot of the time I've been spending, I'm saying I think, which is ironic a lot of time spending in the thinking side of things, in the Ooh, what's practical for our life together? Like does this fit within the budget? What kind of new job do I now have to get to meet this goal, this dream that we're building up together?
Speaker 3:All of these like very, very thinking related things, instead of really getting down to the core of hey, I'm actually feeling like fear, afraid of right now, like I'm. I'm feeling afraid of right now like I'm. I'm feeling afraid of of all of the, the, the things that could be a part of this future. But you know what? Like that's because I'm passionate about it. I'm passionate about what our future looks like together and being able to call out not only what I'm feeling but why I'm feeling that has really helped me be able to partner with Kyla, because I'm no longer sitting in this like shutting down all in my mind or out loud. All the things that she's sharing about what she dreams for our future, like the values, the excitement, the picture of what we could have together. I can actually go. You know what? No, I want, I want this just as much, maybe even sometimes more, than you do.
Speaker 3:What does that look like? Like how? How can I share that with you in a way that we can connect to that breakthrough of just having a an understanding of my own self enough to be able to communicate that to Kyla? We had a moment, even driving up, where I should say driving home and our bonus couples connection. I looked at Kyla and we actually, I should say she looked at me and it's like is everything okay? Cause we were just talking about our future, and I started to retreat into this. Like I was going into heavy fear, like anxiety, like, oh my goodness, like I just had all of these ideas of how this wasn't going to work out and fear, fear for these things, and she called me out on it, and then we're able to take a moment, name that I was feeling fear and then move on from that into the beautiful conversation that we had after that.
Speaker 1:It was so freeing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, powerful, yeah, and for those listening, you know there is, I think there's a very, there's an automatic sense when people start saying that I'm talking about my feelings, it's like, oh no, like those kind of people where it's all like I don't feel like going to work today, so I'm not going to go to work today, right now. Not that kind of feelings. It's about the reality that we are relational creatures and what connects us is our feelings, not our thoughts. And when we live focused on our thoughts, we become human doings. And yet what actually connects us, what creates intimacy, is human beings, and that happens by acknowledging what I'm feeling.
Speaker 1:Our feelings often are founded in lies, like a fear that, oh, my goodness, this, there's scarcity and I'm not, we're not going to be able to do this.
Speaker 1:And and it's in confessing it, it's in the vulnerability and the honesty of it that the fear can get the size that it needs to be and actually move into the gift of what fear is designed to do, which is take us to wisdom and take us to help and take us to faith. And then fear becomes a gift rather than a curse. But when we just leave it trapped inside of us, it actually invites us to pull away, to shrink away, to pull away from relationship, because we go to focus on self and relationship. Marriage is all about focusing on each other and the relational aspects that we bring so, so exciting. I can't wait to see what opens up for you guys and see what breakthrough you have next year. So, as we wrap this up, anything that you would say to your younger selves two years ago, when you first signed up for breakthrough that you wish you would have known, you know when you were signing up, or even to sign up sooner than that anything occur for either of you.
Speaker 2:I wish that I could go back and tell myself that the work that it takes is good and that any good marriage, like any strong, passionate, healthy marriage, is going to take work. I think I previously thought like that, saying I'm only the sick need a doctor. It's not true. I think I just had this, like that chip on my shoulder I mentioned at the beginning of like well, if we don't admit that something's wrong, then it's not, and I'm realizing how that ignorance really robbed me and I think us, of the time that we now are getting back, of the passion and the connection that I didn't even know was possible for us. Yeah, I think that's what I would say in regards to breakthrough for me. How about you?
Speaker 3:I wish I could go back, or I, you know, go back and just kind of shake my, my younger self on the shoulders as we were getting married and really communicate how important it is to to share those, those feelings, to really be just fully authentic in that, because there's so much beauty in just being real. And it doesn't, it's not manly, it's not um, it's not um. Yeah, I guess this picture of what a husband or a guy should be, this like stoic rock of a person that never feels anything and that's just always there to guide, to guide and protect, and all these things there's good moments for some of those things. But really feeling and being authentic, I want to go back and just be like choose that, choose that now, and I'm so grateful for the fact that we're walking into it in the season.
Speaker 2:I wish I could tell the you version of that too, how much more I fall in love with you, getting to see that vulnerability in that heart. I think I wish that like more. I don't know, I only need you as a man to think this, but I wish that more men saw the value in letting their heart, their true heart, show to their wife, because it really it's. I think it probably, I imagine, feels really scary to share things that maybe might feel too big for me, like if you're like oh, is this too much for her? But I think that's why there's been such an added depth to our marriage since the first breakthrough we attended is the fact that now we do let each other in and I get to see his heart and it makes me feel like I have more permission to feel too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't have to just keep it all closed in because I don't want to disrupt the peace or something.
Speaker 1:So, yes, and that's one of the beautiful things about breakthrough is it's done in community. So you see other men opening, sharing their hearts and it it. You see the difference it makes in the room, you see the difference it makes in their marriage and it's like, oh, wow, okay, that actually isn't weird, that's actually exactly what I want, and we don't know that because most of us don't grow up in homes or live in families or community. Where we ever see that, and so that's one of the gifts of Breakthrough is you see people who care about their marriages and love their spouses showing up in ways that we don't often get to to see examples of. So I love that. Well, I am so excited, so grateful for you guys sharing. If you are listening and you are like, tell me more about this breakthrough thing, you can find the link in the show notes below, and thank you so much, dylan and Kyla, for sharing your experience and continuing to keep coming back to grow your marriage at Breakthrough.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Julia yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having us and for doing what you do. It really it's helping impact our legacy so much. Yes, absolutely you.