Hey Julia Woods

What you don’t know is what is missing in your marriage.

• Julia Woods

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Marriage breakthrough happens beyond what we think we know.

Have you ever considered that the very certainties you hold about your spouse might be the walls blocking the connection you crave? In this raw and transformative episode, I share the profound revelation that changed everything in my own marriage—discovering the power of what I didn't know I didn't know.

We explore how our earliest experiences shape 90% of our core beliefs about relationships, and how confirmation bias continuously filters our perception to maintain these beliefs, whether they serve us or not. I vulnerably share how my husband and I were trapped in a cycle of disconnection because we both "knew" he wasn't interested in deep conversation. The loneliness grew unbearable until we were willing to challenge this fundamental belief.

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INSTAGRAM: Connect with me at @HeyJuliaWoods
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Speaker 1:

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 excited to talk to you today about something that has opened up so many possibilities in my marriage and in my life, and every year that I continue to apply this, I am more and more blown away by the power of what it does in relationships. So what we're going to talk about today is what you don't know is what's missing in your marriage, is what you don't know is what's missing in your marriage. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, as human beings, we love nothing more than being right. Like it is wired in us, we want to be right. Now, I am a person who believed I was right about not wanting to be right Like I'm. Like I don't. I know people who love to be right and I'm not like those people, so I don't think I'm really that passionate about being right.

Speaker 1:

Thankfully, I decided to consider what I might not know. I didn't know about my love of being right and I just started observing myself in life. I started noticing how, when my husband would say you're right about something I had said like oh, this thing jumped inside of me Like oh, thanks for letting me know I'm right. Or we would get in an argument and I would be like just tell me I'm right, like I know what I'm saying is right, and I needed him to tell me that I was right, and often I wasn't even right. But I just started observing myself and I'm like oh, wow, okay, I'm not a special case. I am just like other humans in that I love to be right. So that was the first thing I needed to look at is is my relationship with being right? Did I really think that what I knew was right all the time? And it did, it was true. And so, as human beings, what we think we know is what's got us where we're at. So, like, the current results that I have in my life are based on what I know currently and we think we know a lot. I actually was watching.

Speaker 1:

I've learned, discovered that 90% of what we think we know came from the first thousand days of our life and it comes out of our core beliefs. As human beings, we develop 90% of our core beliefs in the first thousand days of our life, so from conception to two years old is when we experience most of this development, and then, at three years old, what's called our confirmation bias kicks in. And our confirmation bias is this filtering system that keeps helping us retain or listen for the information that makes us right about what we think we know. And so I was very intrigued. As our granddaughter turned three, I started watching and noticing and observing when she would often tell me no, gigi, you're wrong, that's not how this is, this is what's true. And I was like, oh, my goodness, her confirmation bias is kicking in and often you know she didn't know what she was talking about where she would tell me that you know I was wrong about something, and I'm like, hmm, I don't know if that's quite true that it is the way you see it, but you know you'll begin to live life and get to explore that for yourself. But this is human that we observe life. We feel life, from conception to two years old, as we experience the things from our caregivers and the people we most spend time with, that begin to influence our beliefs that, like this, is how life works. This is what's true about yourself, this is what's true about others and this is what's true about life. This is what our core beliefs are made up of. And then, once we turn three, our confirmation bias begins to kick in, and then we live our lives. Our confirmation bias basically filters out 99.5% of the information that we are taking in in order to help us conserve energy in case we need it to keep us alive, and so it listens for the half to 1% of the information that's coming in to our world each minute and deletes, distorts and generalizes anything out that it doesn't think that we really care about or want to know, and the half to 1% it keeps is what it thinks we want to know, based on what we believe to be true, right.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, I grew up believing. Somehow, in the first thousand days of my life, I developed a belief that sunny days are the best kind of days, and so, rainy days automatically. I'm moody on rainy days. If I'm going on vacation, I need to see the weather report for weeks before I'm going to arrive, because I'm looking for the sun, because if there is not going to be sun on vacation, it's going to be a bad vacation. That's a belief that I have, and if I focus on that belief, I can wind up dreading a vacation before I've even gone on it. So I'm learning to interrupt that belief. I'm learning to consider that no vacations, the sun doesn't have to dictate whether I have a good time or not. I actually can have a great time regardless of whether it's sunny. So this is an example of what I'm talking about, where my confirmation bias is looking for only sun and if I see clouds, then it's like uh-oh, we're heading towards a bad day and it can literally hijack my whole day.

Speaker 1:

So this is If in your marriage as you're listening to me like Julia, what in the heck? How does what you believe about the son have anything to do with my marriage? Well, as human beings, we all have these limiting beliefs. We all have these beliefs that want to dictate how we see the world and how we see our spouse, and how we show up in conversation and at the heart of the work that I do, which is helping couples open up new possibilities in their marriage and create the marriage that they long for. Where we focus is listening, looking at their beliefs, looking at what it is that they think that they know, because what it is that they think they know is going to limit them from anything new opening up. So if you want more than what you already have in your marriage, you're going to need to look at what it is that you don't know. You don't know.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, my husband I thought that I knew my husband wasn't interested in deeper conversation and that created a lot of bitterness, it created a lot of disappointment, it created a lot of despair and ultimately brought me to want to just have conversations with other people about the things that really mattered to me, because I thought I knew he didn't want to have deep conversations. And a part of what brought me to believe that he didn't want to have deep conversations is he said he didn't want to have deep conversations. Right, he told me he's like, look, I'm not a deep guy. Like, just don't stop getting disappointed that I'm not showing up having deep conversations or sharing my deep thoughts or deep feelings with you, because ultimately, that's not who I am. And so we went. We both went about life thinking that. But the problem was is more and more loneliness was increasing in our relationship because the more I believed he didn't want to have deep conversations, and the more he believed he didn't want to have deep conversations, the less we tried having them.

Speaker 1:

And so then I began to discover or hear about the three domains of education. So in life there are three approaches to education. There are the education of what I think I know right. So, like, each of you have certain domains of education that you're pretty confident about what you know, like, let's say, you have gone to school and you are an airline pilot and you know that you know how to fly in a plane Great, that's really helpful. And you gain that knowledge. And now you know that. And now there are certain privileges that you have of flying a plane and we're very grateful that the airlines that we trust to take us places that we know that they know that the pilots that they've hired know how to fly the plane right. So that's kind of an example of the domain of I know, what I know.

Speaker 1:

Then there is the domain of education, that I know what I don't know. And for me personally, I know that I don't know how to fly an airplane and all of you that trust airlines are good are grateful that I know I don't know how to fly an airplane because you're never going to see me in the cockpit when you get onto the airplane. But if I decided that I really wanted to know how to fly an airplane, then I could go to school and I could learn how to be an airline pilot and then I could get my certification and then I would move to the first domain of education, in that I know what I know and I know that that is that I know how to fly an airplane and these are the most common domains of education that we know. I know that I, that I know how to fly an airplane and these are the most common domains of education that we know. I know that I don't know how to do something and if I wanted to know how to do it, then I could go and get education and I could move into knowing what I know. And often when couples come to me for marriage growth, they're like Julia just teach me what I don't know. I don't know about how to communicate, or teach me what I don't know. I don't know about how to connect with my spouse, and then I'll know how to connect with them, and then all of this will be solved.

Speaker 1:

Well, the problem with these two domains of education is they work really well for structure and unchanging things right. So, like how to fly an airplane isn't changing that much. Sure, I might need to get my certification upgraded and learn a few new things, but overall, once I know how to fly an airplane, I kind of know how to fly an airplane, and so those two domains of education work great for things that don't really change. The problem with trying to use those types of education in the realm of marriage is the realm of marriage is made up by two human beings that are consistently changing. We are human beings. We are consistently shifting in our being, we are continual becomings. Each day we're becoming new, and so in relationships we need the third domain of education, which is I don't know what I don't know.

Speaker 1:

This domain of education is the most powerful and most important domain of education if you want to deepen your relationship and deepen your connection. It's the opposite of what I think. I know it's the willingness to consider what I think I know might actually be blocking me from what I long for In the domain of I don't know. What I don't know is unlimited possibilities. There's no end to what I can discover. There's no end to what can open up right? So let's go back to the conversation around my husband and him thinking that he knew he didn't like deep conversation and me thinking I knew he didn't like deep conversation and that was increasing the loneliness in our marriage and that was increasing the loneliness in our marriage. And so as we explored what, as I explored what I don't know, I don't know it was challenging, I'm like I don't know what to do, like day after day, I keep trying to have deeper conversations with him and he's just not interested. So it seems pretty clear that what I know is that he's just not interested, pretty clear that what I know is that he's just not interested.

Speaker 1:

But the despair got so high in our marriage, the disappointment, the disconnection got so high in our marriage, that the marriage was breaking down. We couldn't keep going the way that we were going, and so we decided to get help. And as we got help, what we began to discover is that as human beings, we are relational creatures. We are designed for deeply connecting in relationship, and when someone isn't able to deeply connect in relationship to share what they're feeling, to share what they're afraid of, to share what they're angry about, to share what they're sad about and what their loneliness is about, it's actually a sign of something much deeper.

Speaker 1:

And what we discovered in my husband's life is that he had three pretty traumatic events happen in his childhood, all within about a six-month range of time. And what began to happen is he began to shut off his heart and he began to live as a human doing rather than as a human being. And as a human doing, all he knew how to do was share his thoughts. He couldn't share his feelings, and this is what we were coming up against in our conversations is that all he would share with me is his thoughts, but I was longing to hear his feelings. I was longing to hear his heart, but I was longing to hear his feelings. I was longing to hear his heart, and what began to open up was an awareness that he hadn't been fathered and he needed that.

Speaker 1:

Men are the ones that call men's hearts alive, and it's actually pretty common for men to have lost their heart, to have shut their heart away and to be living as humans doing versus humans being and that he began to surround himself with men. He began to surround himself with alpha men, and these alpha men were men of heart. They were men who could share their hearts, and what began to happen was my husband began to find his heart. To happen was my husband began to find his heart and he began to open up with these men and these men began to open up with him and he began to feel safe, sharing his fears, his doubts, his insecurities. And all of a sudden, he began to go deeper in conversation with me. He began to share depth in conversation that was deeper than even I was sharing.

Speaker 1:

And what's begun opening up is this depth of relationship two people sharing their hearts, living side by side, living in the true honesty of the depth of life and the despair of life and the grief of life. It's like wow, we're living life on life's terms, that the best we can experience in life is a combination of sadness and joy, because that's the most this life offers. That even in the most joy-filled days, there's a lot of sadness in knowing that day is gonna end and no matter what you're facing in life that's truly how life is that you may have had a great day at work and yet it was hard, because there was fears you needed to face and challenges that you needed to face, and maybe you found some things that are going to work, but there's the fear and the sadness that tomorrow these things might not work, because we live in a changing world, and so I hope this is making sense to you. I am speaking from my heart of some things that are opening up in my marriage that have come out of what I didn't know I didn't know marriage that have come out of what I didn't know, I didn't know, and as long as my husband and I were continuing on in what we thought we knew, we were never going to have the marriage that we longed for. And this began opening up for me 13 years ago, and we have gradually, gradually, gradually moved more into what we don't know, we don't know and, as of late, the levels of what we didn't know, we didn't know are going to an all-time high, and we're experiencing depths of connection and honesty and vulnerability and depths of relationship that we had no idea were possible, to the point that now my husband doesn't even want. There are nights where we didn't go a night without him wanting to turn on the TV, because he always wanted to, you know, veg out. And now, most nights, he has no interest in turning the TV on, because he just keeps wanting to get to know me, he wants to get to know himself, he wants us to get to know each other, and I am blown away. And so, as you join me and listen to this podcast again, I hope this is making sense. I hope this is connecting with your heart.

Speaker 1:

I am sharing from a very raw, candid place of awe and wonder that I want the whole world to know that there is no end to what you don't know. You don't know and, wherever you're at in your marriage, that you think that you know something. I'm going to invite you to challenge it, and you might be listening and wondering well, how would I know that? I think I know something? Well, look for the despair, look for the loneliness. Start listening to your heart, listen to what you're feeling, because your feelings give you a window into what you're believing. And if you'll start listening to your heart, listen to what you're feeling, because your feelings, give you a window into what you're believing. And if you'll start listening to what you're feeling and then listen to what are the thoughts that you're thinking about, those things it'll begin to clue you into what you might be believing and then just get curious about that belief.

Speaker 1:

Is it true that my spouse doesn't care? Is it true that my spouse doesn't want deep conversation? Is it true that my spouse doesn't care? Is it true that my spouse doesn't want deep conversation? Is it true that my spouse is annoyed with me? Is it true that my spouse doesn't really love me? Get curious, because if you were wrong, would you want to know? If there was a whole lot more possibilities than what you've decided is possible, would you want to know?

Speaker 1:

This is my invitation to you and I'm going to invite you to consider that if you're struggling, feeling lonely, if you're struggling feeling sad and giving up on what you long for in your marriage, I want to invite you that you need other people around you to help you see what you can't see, and the greatest resource for that right now in what I'm doing is there's two things.

Speaker 1:

There is my breakthrough workshops, which, if you haven't come, I strongly encourage you to come, and I'll put a link in the show notes for that. And I also want to invite you to my communication or my marriage growth community, where it's all about becoming life-giving communicators, and so these are two resources. If you are looking to go deeper, if you are longing for more in your marriage than what you currently have, sign up for a breakthrough retreat, and that may be a little bit off in the distance before you can join me. There, we're going to go deeply into what you don't know. You don't know. That's really at the heart of what that workshop is about. And if you want to get started today, click the link below and you can join the Marriage Growth Community, where I can coach you and you can get the materials and the resources that you need and the community that'll help you walk deeper into the marriage that you long for. Thanks so much for joining me and I look forward to connecting with you in the next podcast.