The Marriage Transformation Podcast
The Marriage Transformation Podcast
Transforming Relationships: Cody Butler's Journey from Struggle to Marital Success
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Ever found yourself trapped in a cycle of failed relationships and wondered if there's a way out? In our latest episode, Cody Butler shares his riveting journey from personal struggle to marital success, offering a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to improve their relationships. Cody opens up about his transformation through faith, education, and self-awareness, highlighting how these key elements helped him overcome immigration hurdles and financial woes, leading to a fulfilling marriage. His candid discussion about battling alcohol addiction and navigating family expectations is a testament to the power of responsibility and growth in achieving relational harmony.
Tackling tough issues head-on, Cody delves into the detrimental impact of addiction on marriages and the crucial role of honesty and self-awareness in healing. Through powerful metaphors and personal anecdotes, he paints a vivid picture of how denial can obscure the severity of personal issues, and how shedding light on these can disrupt harmful patterns. Cody's wisdom shines through as he discusses the importance of embracing vulnerability, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought existing relationship challenges to the surface, necessitating direct communication and accountability.
In a heartfelt exploration of marriage dynamics, Cody emphasizes the art of letting go, forgiveness, and sincere apologies as the bedrock for rebuilding connections. By prioritizing love over ego, couples can foster a future rich with mutual understanding, rather than being hampered by past grievances. Cody’s insights provide a compelling narrative for listeners seeking to enhance communication and intimacy within their relationships. As we wrap up, we express our gratitude to Cody for sharing his valuable experiences, encouraging our audience to explore his work further and reflect on the positive impact of embracing personal growth and responsibility in relationships.
This is Christina Gerena with Capacito for two. We are so excited to be here with you today. It's been a little bit of a hiatus and we've missed you very much, but we're starting on the steady and I'm very excited. Javi apologizes for his absence, but he's here with spirit and we're making it up to you. We're having a fabulous guest, mr Cody Butler, and he is going to share his wonderful experiences.
Speaker 1:And it's so amazing sometimes, y'all, when you have sort of a partner in crime, or at least actually two partners, because him and his wife are engaged in a marriage ministry as well, and so we feel such a kinship to all folks that really are on that spiritual journey with us right in marriage as a calling, as really in some ways, a mission in terms of how are you going to give sustenance and renewal and rebirth to not only your faith but your partner in your marriage. So I want to welcome and I hope that you give a good, strong, warm welcome to Mr Cody Butler, and it's such a pleasure to have you. So nice to see you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, christine. I appreciate you having me on here. It's every bit as much of a pleasure, I promise you. Thank you, christine, I appreciate you having me on here.
Speaker 1:It's every bit as much of a pleasure, I promise you. And the excellent thing, and you may notice, is that Cody is coming in today from Australia. So I love the international bond. It's the way the world works. It's a beautiful thing, so it's just so nice to have you here. We may be in a different hemisphere, but our hearts are aligned right and our faith is aligned, so it's a beautiful journey to share.
Speaker 1:I wanted to just ask you to tell our audience your story and to share with us, you know your walk with your faith and how you found yourself in this work of a marriage ministry, what it means to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll give you the short version because there is definitely a long version. But in my 20s I went through a series of really failed relationships and they followed a pattern and it left me in a very poor position really. It left me very depressed and caused some psychological issues and stuff like that left me very depressed and caused some psychological issues and stuff like that and I just got tired. I just got tired of, like, broken relationship after broken relationship and then at that point I decided to get some education and figure out, because what's the lowest common denominator in all of these relationships? Right, there was patterns that were being followed and the lowest common denominator was me. I'm like, okay. Well, the first point I really came to was I like to act where I have power and the place common denominator was me. I'm like, okay, well, the first point I really came to was I like to act where I have power and the place that I have power is on myself and I can look at the other person and say the other person has done this or the other person has done that, but then what I actually have done there is completely disempowered myself. I've put the solution in the hands of somebody else and I've put the problem in the hands of somebody else. So I just assumed that I was the cause of the problem and started looking for solutions.
Speaker 2:I started reading books, going to seminars, getting all the education I could get, and then, a few years after that, I met my fiance my wife now. We met, we started dating and none of the problems were there. Like all of the problems seemed to be solved. But the issue was she was from Australia and I was from England, hence why I'm in Australia right now. So this presented a whole new problem. Visas expired and immigration law started to kick in and we wanted to be together. We decided we were going to get married and she had to go back to Australia. She applied for a marriage visa to come back so we could get married and we got denied. We she had to go back to Australia, where she applied for a marriage visa to come back so we could get married, and we got denied. We actually got denied twice for a marriage visa. Yeah, the government can tell you who you marry and who you don't marry. They really can.
Speaker 2:So we were separated for a whole year there and, of course, I went back to my old habits of not dealing with things very well and my way, my way of dealing that was really excessive alcohol use. So that was a very stressful time because we didn't know when we was going to be together again. We really didn't have any finances at the time. To speak of the immigration process was hugely expensive. It was four or five thousand dollars for every application we got denied. Then we had to appeal, which was another two or three thousand dollars. They denied it, then we had to to apply again, so literally tens of thousands of dollars that we really didn't have. We never knew what. We didn't know when we was going to be back together again. So I started drinking and actually started drinking very heavily. So, long story short, we got back together.
Speaker 2:We came back together, we got married and her family weren't overly supportive of the wedding. Obviously my financial position wasn't great and she came from sort of an upper middle class background and I wasn't the standard upper middle class boy that they were looking for. So there was some friction there and she had some indoctrination while we were separated from her family. And when we actually came together we got married quite quickly, just because it was the best thing to do right, get married and immediately there were some issues there. My drinking started to affect my personality and affect my behavior within the marriage and some of the stuff that she was mirroring back to me coming from her family was really starting to cause some conflict. So we were off to like a pretty bad start.
Speaker 2:To be honest with you, it was a struggle from the very beginning and it never got better. It continued to get worse, continued to get worse until finally I agreed to get some help, just because I could see that would buy me some time, and I actually started seeing a counselor and it was just a joke. I just treated it like a joke, christine. I was going just because it was buying me some time and I kind of played with the guy. I thought I was intellectually superior to him and I'd go there and I'd play games. And after a year there was really no progress whatsoever.
Speaker 2:And a little bit more time goes by and finally she's like we need to solve this problem. I can't continue like this. So I agree to go to a second mentor and I'm expecting him to placate me and say oh, it's not your fault. This the usual nicey-nicey, let's talk about it, it's okay, it's going to be okay. And five minutes into the first session, he goes, he goes. I'll just be honest with you. He goes, this is hopeless, your situation is hopeless. And I was like it just really is a real pattern. Interrupter. I caught me off guard and I was like no, it's not hopeless. And he goes. No, it's, he goes in the natural world. This is hopeless in the natural world. This is hopeless In the natural world. This is hopeless. There's no hope for you or your marriage. And I was like whoa, I never actually, and what he did there was he gave me the gift of losing her. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That was the first time that I've actually faced with the consequences of what was going on in that relationship, and I and he gave me the gift of losing her, and and that's what I really want. Like whenever I see couples that are, that are struggling now, it's like that's the gift that I want to give them. I want to give them the gift of losing each other without losing each other, because that's leverage, right. That's like okay, well, this is, this is the path that I was traveling down, this was the consequence and that was the first time that I'd ever seen. This is the outcome of my behavior and I was like that is it. I know what the problem is. The problem is my drinking and now some additional drug use on top of that, which was very serious. We're not talking marijuana and stuff like that. We're talking some pretty serious, some pretty serious, some pretty nasty stuff, and I just didn't want to give all that stuff up before.
Speaker 2:I wanted to have my marriage and have that stuff right and I got to the in that session where I lost her, I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to choose. I'm gonna have to choose drugs and alcohol. I'm gonna have to choose my wife. I can't have both. And I told him. I said it's not hopeless because I'm about to be honest with you for the first time ever. And I said that's, I'll tell you why it's not hopeless, because I'm about to be honest with you for the first time ever. And I said I'll tell you why it's not hopeless, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And you're the first person that I'm ever going to tell the truth to. I'm engaging in these behaviours and I'm stuck in these behaviours and I need help. And the great thing is for darkness to thrive, it needs to be absent of light. Darkness cannot survive when light is shone into it. The second that you turn the light on in a dark room, the light, the darkness, does not stand a chance Light defeats dark 100 times out of 100.
Speaker 2:So the real key, the real takeaway for me and that was like you have to shine light into the darkness and for that to happen you have to be open and you have to understand. So I think a lot of people understand what the problems are within their marriage. They're just not willing to deal with those. They're not willing to shine light onto that because they want to keep their habits, they want to keep their addictions, they want to keep their bad behaviors. And that was the revelation for me was you've got to shine light into the dark. You've got to be honest and you've got to.
Speaker 1:You've got to really come face to face with the Wow, I really appreciate your honesty and your candor, your vulnerability, right now, just to be open, because I think in some ways that's revolutionary and transformational in itself.
Speaker 1:To just tell your story so straightforwardly, because this is a lot of our stories and there's so much shame around this sense of I'm making bad choices, I don't feel like I can get out of it or, like you said, almost like this binary thinking, like we get stuck in sort of this magical sense of we can have really what you know our weakness or, like you said, the darkness or whatever temptation that is.
Speaker 1:People can relate to it as sin or addiction, whatnot, and it can't coexist. You can't grow in that, you can't get closer to an unconditional love or compassion or self-awareness and closer to your faith. In that state it's just not possible. And I'm so impressed I mean, did you feel like you got? Did you have to get it to a state of readiness? Do you feel like that's? There was something in that moment that just opened up to you, yeah, or was it work as, like you know? Because it is a miracle in a way?
Speaker 2:it is a miracle, it's 100% a miracle. I don't want to, I don't want to downplay it and it's like, you know, just to throw some, some, some encouragement out there to people that are in this situation. It's like I mean, today, I, you know, it's like I work with a lot of couple, I do a lot of stuff and it's like I could be considered a marriage expert, right. But here's the thing every master was once a disaster. It was out. It was out. It was out of the disaster that my life was, that I had to build from that and I'm like I'm not staying in this place of disaster anymore. It's not like I had skills. It was because I had no skills that I developed the skills and it was recognizing that I didn't have the skills.
Speaker 2:And, to be honest with you, christine, I think a lot of people, most people, don't understand how bad their situation is. They're in denial, because we can call it, we can call it sin, we can call it addiction, we can call it indulgence, we can call it hedonism, we can call it whatever we want. It goes by a lot of different names. But a lot of people they don't understand how bad their situation is and what the consequences. Like porn is a great example. I mean fortunately. Fortunately, porn was not my struggle.
Speaker 2:You just read my mind. They think they can have the porn and have the relationship. And it's like you don't understand how bad your situation is while you are in this temptation. It is wrecking your life. It is wrecking your marriage. It is wrecking your physical body. It is rewiring your brain to where you're a different human being that you don't know. You're having no choice over this. You're being reprogrammed in a way. You have no choice and by the time you realize what's going on and how bad the consequences are, your wife or husband is going to be gone. Your body is not going to work properly. You're going to have a completely abnormal appetite in many ways and you're going to be a person you don't know who you are and you don't recognize and you don't like and you're not going to know what to do about it. It's like if you could understand right now, today, what the end result is.
Speaker 2:Wisdom is seeing the end from the beginning. Right, right, wisdom is more valuable than pearls and rubies and diamonds. It is to be sought above all things, above all wealth. Wisdom is to be sought and wisdom is to see the end from the beginning, and most people cannot. While they're in their temptation, they can't see the end state, because if they did, it would scare the living daylights out of them and they would change. People say oh, you know, you can't get off drugs, you can't get up. Yeah, big enough scare will get you off of it instantly.
Speaker 1:It's all about the environment and the consequences at stake, right? I mean absolutely. I think it's also really interesting to add in here, and I'm curious if this is coming up for you in your work with couples.
Speaker 1:I know that you counsel them and you're a huge support. What we see, too, is that people are just slowly and it will be stage by stage recovering from the trauma of covid, you know, and the pandemic, and having their families forced into quarantine for a period of time, or their, their church or their community being on lockdown for a period of time. It's's not like you. Just, you know, bounce right back in a week or a month after this prolonged period and I think it has taken its toll. I mean, I know it has on our parents that we've had to revisit.
Speaker 1:you know past issues and you know seek counseling and for us that, for I see that as an opportunity for growth because once you've been through it you kind of realize okay, so we're regressing. But usually in my experience a regression is sort of the prelude to big growth.
Speaker 1:If you're willing to consciously engage it and open your heart to it and both willingly co-create, you know, then you could do it. But I think that's one of the biggest struggles is that so many people do feel isolated and perhaps go or regress and don't necessarily catch themselves when you have these outside factors that are so big absolutely.
Speaker 2:and look with covid. I, like you, know, the thing with covid is like covid hasn't increased problems within relationships. Covid has highlighted, hasn't increased problems within relationships. Covid has highlighted problems that already exist within relationships. There's very few relationships that COVID has created damage where there wasn't. It's simply highlighted the damage that was already there. It's exacerbated it and sped it up, because again, what it's done, it's highlighted, it's brought people face to face with the cracks in their relationship.
Speaker 2:And my distraction was drugs and alcohol. Some people's distraction is porn. Some people's distraction is video games. Some people's distraction is distraction. It doesn't matter what it's, just distraction is all it is. And a lot of times we go to work.
Speaker 2:The way we stay married is we go to work because we can't be in the presence of that person 24 hours a day, or we go to the bar at the end of the day, or we go to the sporting event with our friends, or we we distract ourselves with other aspects of our lives, and the reality is we're only spending, you know, 10, 10 or 12 hours a day with our partner, and eight of those hours are asleep. So now, now we're brought face to face and and it's like we have to talk to each other. We have to communicate, we have to coexist. We can't distract ourselves from our problems. We now come face to face with our problems and I don't believe personally that COVID has created those problems. It's just simply brought us face to face with those problems and the question now is what are you gonna do about it?
Speaker 1:Right, what? How do you in your life, you know, in terms of being a support in your work, how do you continually work on yourself and your marriage and your relationship? Do you have a certain structure, cody? It seems like you certainly have done like a massive you know, healing transformation yeah, I'm curious around. Just what are some of those practical ways in which you keep yourself in check?
Speaker 2:So one way is to come on shows like this. Like there's two things really that if you want to master something, you have to teach it. So if you learn a skill like, my advice is, if you get something out of this podcast today, either from myself or from Christina here teach it to somebody within 24 hours. Find somebody to teach it to. Like mastery comes out of teaching. People say those who can do and those who can't teach. That's absolute rubbish, that's nonsense. That's complete nonsense. Those, those who can teach, like who was the greatest? You know? Look who was the greatest teacher ever in the history of the world? It was Jesus. You know, he didn't have to teach, he could have just done. The greatest of doers are teachers. So the first thing is teaching and sharing others the way out of the canyon, the way back. That's really helpful. And the second thing is coming on shows like this. It brings a massive amount of public accountability. It brings scrutiny to my marriage's. Like well, if I'm here giving marriage advice, I better have my affairs in order, right?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, when we first wrote our book, cody, my husband and I, so our book it's it's essentially boundless love, healing your marriage before it begins, and it it's a he she version or testimony around how faith saved us at the first, this breaking point, and it was a lot of unresolved patterns exactly what you spoke to for both of our families of origin and childhood, as well as the presence and dependency of alcohol and and, and both of us be dealing with undiagnosed depression, my husband dealing with real anger management issues.
Speaker 1:And it just had that perfect storm right, that combustion that just blew up.
Speaker 1:And practice goes wide open where you're so vulnerable right, you're, so you really are desperate, and so that was the ceiling that really transformed us. But one of the things that was so funny and I kind of just, you know, blew it off a little bit at the moment when it happened but we were at a speaking event and one of our friends said to us you know, well, y'all better not divorce now, like for real. Exactly, you know, it was like it's true. What you're saying and you're really speaking to that is when you put yourself out there. That's the gift of being accountable, because you then hold yourself accountable. That's what I'm hearing from you of leadership.
Speaker 2:You have to be willing to take the first arrow. You have to be willing to take the first bullet. It's like how do you get troops to advance into fire, which is about the most unnatural thing in the world? You have to be willing to put yourself out there and take the first bullet, take the first arrow. You can't be the general up on the hill saying I'm gonna be up here watching the battle from my binoculars because if I get hurt you're in trouble and a lot of it is going to be coming on, coming on shows like this and it's like you say, like being vulnerable, and saying, okay, well, this is what I was going through, these were my challenges. As ugly as they are, it gives. It allows other people to see that, hey, we're all going through that, we've all got our challenges, we've all got a a hill that we've got to take and it's okay.
Speaker 2:Nobody came out of the womb doing relationships, at at least doing them well. It's so counterintuitive and a lot of times we see these role models and they're so unhelpful because they present this picture of perfection. It's almost a problem with the church to some extent. It's like there's a lack of vulnerability in the leadership. It's like I'm not a leader. I'm just here with you and I want to share with you my story, because my story might be able to help you, my story might make it okay for you to come out and say, okay, I'm having those same issues, because nothing's going to change in your relationship until you confess.
Speaker 2:Right, salvation is conditional. A lot of people don't understand that, but salvation is a hundred percent conditional. It's conditional on confessing your sins and repenting. It's conditional on confess like step one, and it doesn't matter what your religious belief is, it doesn't matter. It's like you have to confess, you have to own up and acknowledge where you are. There is no there. There is no reconciliation, there is no improvement until you say, okay, this is the baseline, this is how bad it really is. This is how much trouble that, that ownership, and also ownership is.
Speaker 1:You know that transparency? It's like I think you know so much. It's just so powerful, to kind of put the veil back on the institution of marriage and to demystify it for people and to be vulnerable and real about it, Because I think you know, at least in the spiritual evolution of marriage as a spiritual partnership, why not just be real about how sticky and messy and ugly it can get?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:If we don't move through that, how can we heal like, how can we go to another place with it? There's no way that that's right.
Speaker 2:If we have an unrealistic expectation of of what marriage should be, which is a lot of times what we see right the role models of marriage it's like it's completely you're shooting at a target that doesn't exist. You're shooting for a goal that is unreal. It's like marriage is messy and it's like, yeah, sure, me and my wife we're in the marriage ministry. Does that mean we don't fight? No, we have ways to recover quickly. Does it mean that we don't have problems with each other?
Speaker 2:No, we just don't live there. We don't stay there for decades at a time. It's like we have all the same problems that everybody else has. We have all the same challenges everybody else has. We just don't live there. We just don't stay there. We recognize it, we confess it, we get it out of our lives and we move forward quickly. And that's the thing You're never going to have a perfect marriage. It's how you respond to what happens, not what happens, which is going to determine the level of success and the level of happiness that you experience level of success and the level of happiness that you experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, I couldn't agree more, because you know my orientation or my I'm a social worker, that's my trade, and so one of the things that is so key is it's not about eradicating behavior or, you know, dismissing or denying a problem.
Speaker 1:It's about looking at lessening intensity and frequency of the hiccups, right of those of those obstacles, and, like you said, you don't sit there, you don't wallow in it like you're not, you're not stuck in it for as long and it's okay to be stuck even for however long, but it's about are you moving forward right and catching on like? The other thing and I'm sure you can relate to this too is like what are the narratives and spiritual narratives and pitfalls of your marriage story? Right, and it's your individual narrative and your couple's narrative and how that? Then, once you get to own that and take responsibility and share it and be transparent around it, then this recovery time you're suggesting is quicker, because you don't have to kind of be like in the dark totally by yourself trying to you know, figure it out from like from zero right well, there's a great.
Speaker 2:There's a great parable about. Man was walking down the street and there was a hole in the road and he fell down it. Have you heard it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, but go for it yeah man was walking down the street and there's a hole in the road. He fell down it and there was an underground labyrinth of sewers or drains or whatever. It took him years, walking around for years, to finally found his way out after years. Was walking down the same street again a week later. Saw the hole fell in it anyway. Was walking around for months. Finally found his way out after months Walking down the street again. Saw the hole fell in it anyway. Took him a week to get out. The next day he was walking down the same street, saw the hole, stepped around it and walked on.
Speaker 2:And that's how our relationships work. We fall in a hole and we stay there for years. Now we get the skills to get out of that hole. It doesn't mean we're not ever going to fall in that hole again. We just don't stay there quite as long and we might have to fall in that hole two or three or four times, and that's okay.
Speaker 2:But eventually you're going to get to the point to where every time you fall in the hole it takes less time to get out and eventually you're going to get to the point where you just step around that hole and you never have to fall in it again, and that's a realistic analogy to the marriage recovery process. It's not that you're not going to fall in these holes ever again. We just can't stay there. We got to stay there less and less time. Every time we've got to remember our way out and we've got to action that very quickly right, and I love too, because none of that story includes a chapter on, like you know blaming the whole, no, there yelling at the whole like hiding the whole.
Speaker 2:Why didn't the government fix it?
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly like being victimized by the existence of the whole, like all these ways that we are humanists, like we can personalize or take, take it personally that the whole exists. It's like no, everyone's got it. This is part of the human condition and, like you said, it's like these small victories add up really and we want and we want to.
Speaker 2:We want to measure ourselves too. So I I found like, after working with like thousands of people, not just in marriage but in lots of different areas of life, like human psychology is just fast. It's my hobby, it's my, I've loved it. I've always been very fascinated with how human beings work and, and I can tell you, as human beings we tend to measure ourselves against the distance from where we want to be to where we are, versus from where we were to where we've come, and we get discouraged. We go, okay, well, I'm here, but I'm so far away from where I want to be. It's like, yeah, but look how far you've come. Why are in on on how far you are from what you want to be? Let's look at the progress that's been made and let's get, let's get excited about the distance that you've traveled from where you were.
Speaker 1:If you do that, it's very easy to get the momentum to keep moving forward well and and I think you're right so much that is like one of the most human sort of defense mechanisms or ways in which we fall, you know, crazy. Was this like the comparison right, the game of comparison? And?
Speaker 2:and shooting on ourselves.
Speaker 1:Well, I should be here, we should be at this place in our marriage or this place in our life for success or whatnot, and it a lot of it is like it said. It's falling into this trap of art, this sort of pretty picture which doesn't exist to begin with right and so it is.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of taking away and stripping down these illusions and expectations, like you mentioned earlier of what you think marriage is and, obviously, being able to discern and sift through how you were raised and what were the models of marriage in your life. As a kid, my husband was an orphan. He didn't have parents.
Speaker 1:So, me, mothering our children for him is, like him, healing a lot of the mothering he never got by proxy. And so what comes up with that? And so all of us, you know, I think it's, it's something that you don't realize sometimes when you get married, but it is where the rubber meets the road in adulting oh look, I.
Speaker 2:I worked with a fighter pilot one time and he was telling me that in in training they they obviously talk about getting shot down scenarios and they're taught that this, the faster you can accept that you've been shot down and what happens next? Every second counts. He's like, as you're going down in that parachute, they're looking for you and he's like, if you, if in your mind you go well, did I do this wrong? If I'd done that differently? The past is irrelevant, that that you've got to cut. The faster you can cut the past off and start looking forward, every second increases your chance of survival, and I think marriage is a very good analogy for marriage. We can look at the past and I always ask people when I start to work with them did anybody beat anybody? Did anybody cheat on anybody? Are there any serious structural issues within the marriage? No, okay, well, can we start from a point of view of if I've hurt you, I'm sorry and if you've hurt me, I forgive you? Can we just have, can we just say that to each other? Because that's like you're coming down in a parachute right now and every minute that passes by your marriage is in perilous danger If, if we've got to go back into that aircraft and decide should we have pressed this button? Should we have done that? Should? It's like this is not helpful. Can we just get to a point of if I've hurt you, I'm sorry and if you've hurt me, I forgive you, and move forward and start to put a plan in place to how we're going to resurrect this marriage, how we're going to recover this marriage, and not unless there's serious structural issues from the past? Can we just move forward and start to build from a solid foundation? And I think that's really important? We can spend a lot of time in the past and couples will start talking to each other.
Speaker 2:It's like well, when it happened, you had a fight. Every time you bring it up, I had, you have a fight. What is the issue here? Does it? And a lot of times I'm like neither one of you even remember, even know what happened. This happened 20 years ago or you have remaining that the facts have left you. Maybe a half of one percent of the facts remain and the rest is the story that you've been telling yourself for 20 years about what happened. Can we ditch the story? Can we agree to ditch the story because we we don't know what happened 20 years ago anymore. We simply don't know right.
Speaker 1:there's no way to get into the truth, so sometimes you have to release it. Just release it, surrender it and let it go and move on with what you have, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you want to be right or do you want to be married?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a biggie.
Speaker 2:That is a biggie.
Speaker 1:And that and that and it gets us all. I mean I definitely go through my phases of like, wow, I'm really committed to being right about this right now.
Speaker 2:You know like I can kind of.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't always catch myself, but it's like why am? I so like vehement about this kind of silliness. You know, and sure enough. You know, sometimes it's really basic. You know, I'm tired, I'm hungry or you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And then these, these things surface and bubble up and whatnot. It's that hard. But I do think you're right. It's like there is a moment in which you have to really say it's not worth rehashing, right like there. You have to arrive at some sort of midpoint, like okay, we're going to build upon the fact that we do love each other, and we don't necessarily know how that's going to materialize or look like now, but we're going to go in that direction right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, when you've got an event that's so destructive in the past, it's like why do you keep bringing it into the present? It's in the past, can we not? Can we not let the dead bury their own dead? It's like it's not necessary like now. That's not to say that, like talking about the past, there is obviously like issues do have to be discussed, but they only have to be discussed once. It's like we're gonna, we're gonna have this discussion and and a lot of times you know I'll ask couples of as well.
Speaker 2:When we're talking about issues, I'm like when was the last time you was able to actually have you was actually able to express a thought to its conclusion, you was able to express a complete thought without your partner jumping in and interrupting, yeah, and? And to the other partner, I'm like what's going on in your head? Are you listening to your partner to try and understand what they're saying, or are you listening to your partner to build your defense, to build your case, and you're just waiting for your opportunity to present your case? Because there's a case building is absolutely devastating to a relationship. It's like if you change, if you just do the simple act of changing how you listen to I'm listening to try and understand how my partner understands, to uh, from I'm listening to build my case to, to rebut you and to defend myself. It's like all she wants to do is express her feeling. All he wants to do is express her feeling. Let them do it and it will go away.
Speaker 1:The feeling will go away, yeah no, I see that with my kids right, I'm sure all parents do. It's so obvious when you're outside of another relationship, looking in, and it's like if you just say your piece and you say your piece, you don't have to talk over each other, everyone's heard and it evaporates. But until you get to that openness, right where people can actually trust, let down their guard and not protect and be available and present to the other individual, then you know, then it is, there is grace in that moment.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of dance and protectiveness sometimes to get there and that's where people misstep. Yes, and I see that in myself Definitely.
Speaker 2:And I worked in customer service for a long time and like somebody would come with a complaint and they'd just be like you're gonna do this and I'm sewing, and it's like you just sit there and listen and listen and say, okay, yeah, you're absolutely right. I understand you're upset. Is there anything more you'd like to add to that? And then you ask again okay, is there anything else, anything else you'd like to add to that? No, I think I'm done. Okay, what would you like me to do? Well, just like another hamburger, please. Would that make you happy? And that's it all they want to do.
Speaker 2:But if I, if I had jumped in there, like I learned very quickly, oh yeah, it's just like if, if somebody has a thought that they want to express and it's not like it's not a positive thought or it's not a positive feeling, all you're doing by interrupting is you're just suppressing that thought back into that person and you're pouring gasoline on it and it's going to come out at a later date.
Speaker 2:It's as tony robbins says we want to do battle with the monster while the monster's a baby. We don't want to let. We don't want to let the monster grow into a full-grown beast before deciding to battle with, and the easiest thing is to like stop building cases and just let the other person express their view to its completion and its fullness and ask them is that, is that a complete thought? Did you just express the complete thought or is there more you'd like to add to it? When they say, yes, that's a complete thought, that thought has now left them right. It has no home in them anymore. It's like it's out there and it's somebody else's problem now and it's the easiest thing in the world to do, but we just don't know to do it.
Speaker 1:We just don't know how to do it yeah, practicing that, you know, if you can self-regulate enough right to not be defensive and, like you said I love that I didn't think of it that way or put those two words together but case-build, then at some level you know you can you're really moving your energy in such a much more like really creative and constructive way in the relationship, because think of all of that like build-upup right that you're creating around something, but it's actually in your head, it's not even necessarily being spoken and, yeah, it's like spinning your wheels in a way.
Speaker 1:Really absolutely, it looked like that well, I could talk to you forever, you're still on it. It's so, it's so refreshing.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, you gave so many nuggets I'm gonna be processing this.
Speaker 1:This is fantastic. Where can people find you? Because I know that you're you do so much, but I know you're you and your wife have a website and you do counseling we do, we do help.
Speaker 2:We do help couples. Indeed, bettermarriagecomau is probably the best place. We've got some free resources on there. We got a. You can sign up for a free workshop there on how to end the fighting immediately, improve communication and restore sexual intimacy. We share with you how to do that very quickly.
Speaker 1:yeah, bettermarriagecomau is kind of the hub of where we, where we hang out okay, it's easy that and that's to the point right there, because that's what folks are looking for in that moment. It's easy that and that's to the point right there, because that's what folks are looking for in that moment. It's like how can I improve my marriage? And and, and you know, sometimes I really believe this.
Speaker 1:It's like it doesn't have to be fancy and I you know what I'm saying like one resource or one article sometimes can tip it, you know, in terms of being that quantum leap moment and the other thing, and I don't know how you feel about this, but I do believe that we cannot obviously control our spouse, but we can control our businesses If one person does the work, even if your partner is not doing the work or work. You are changing that dynamic. I strongly believe that Because a lot of people get caught up and I know I did around like well.
Speaker 1:I want my husband to change and it's like no, that's really not the focus. I need to mind my own business on this and start here.
Speaker 2:Can I just add one thing before we wrap it up? I think it's really, really, really critical. Like in a traditional marriage which we're talking about here, we've got to look at the covenant and the agreement right, and it's I promise to have and to hold, to love and to cherish to death. Do us part for better or better, for worth, to death, to death. Do us part. That's an unconditional promise and a lot of people say well, my husband's not doing the work. My husband, it doesn't matter, like the your.
Speaker 2:Your promise to have and to hold, to love and to cherish was not conditional. There's no condition on there in there on your partner doing the work. It. It's like this is an absolutely unconditional agreement where I promise to love this person and cherish this person and be there for this person, irrespective of their behavior back towards me. And a lot of times we forget that and I always say well, are you upholding your end of the covenant? Are you upholding your end of the agreement? Because you've entered into an unconditional agreement and now you're complaining that conditions are not being met. So if you're not meeting your end of the agreement, who are you to hold your husband or wife accountable until you are absolutely congruent with the covenant that you've entered into, the agreement that you've entered into.
Speaker 2:The only place to work is on yourself, the only place. Once you've entered into the agreement that you've entered into, the only place to work is on yourself, the only place. Once you've achieved that perfection and now you're giving unconditional love to the other person, now we can start to say okay, but until we get to that point, yeah, I am the only person I can look at in my relationship. I can't say that I give my wife unconditional love. Of course it's conditional. I'm human. Do I love her unconditionally when she, when she winds me up or annoys me? And in that moment that love, you know, I might withdraw that love conditionally. It's like my love is not unconditional permanently, as much as I would like for it to be. It's what I'm working towards. There are moments when I withdraw that love because she upsets me right. So I've got work to do on myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a great way to frame it and to look at it, because I think sometimes that's how we're taught, that's how we're socialized, and it's gendered and it's complicated. But I think to focus on your partner, it's almost like a welcome distraction, right, and, like you said, a temptation, and that's not. You know, you need to take the flashlight and point it inward, because that's really where I think you know, in your own growth center, in your faith in your ability to actually make an impact.
Speaker 1:That's where it's going to start and it will, it will affect them, but it just may not be in your timing or at your pace that's it.
Speaker 2:And I always tell people people don't understand what I've said. You're responsible and people don't understand what that means. It means, if you break that word down, it's you are response able, you are able to respond. You are able to respond. However, your partner's behaving, you are able to respond to that. You are response able. So I tell people you're responsible, it's not your partner's problem, you're responsible. And once they understand what that word response responsible means which is response able, it's like we're responsible in every situation. We can control our response to our partner. We are responsible for our marriage. It is our marriage. At the end of the day, we are responsible and really that's the beginning of healing and restoration is like you have to take responsibility and say I am responsible, this is my life, this is my marriage and I'm going to take responsibility. I'm not going to delegate that responsibility to someone else and outsource it and give all my power to someone else who clearly isn't responsible right now.
Speaker 1:Right, I know well. We had a guest once and she said something really beautiful around. You know her husband. They had been married for over 25 years or something and she really felt like they were at this impasse and that, ultimately, she was like you know.
Speaker 1:I don't feel like my husband's romantic, I don't feel like there's any element of romance in our marriage. And she said you know what I'm going to create, that I am not going to put that on him, I'm going to do what I I feel is romantic. And she said that you know it was unbelievable what just small gestures over a consistent period of time and how it shifted things and it really did affect him and of course, it was unconscious. It wasn't like he was all of a sudden like she spoke to him and and declared this or was trying to control his behavior. She was just doing things and setting things up and creating a different you know attitude and energy and environment in their relationship. And I strongly believe that it's like you have a huge sphere of influence in your relationship that sometimes we forget.
Speaker 2:We have absolutely and and ultimately, just to leave people with this. It's like it's not new information that will transform your relationship. It's radically seeking out and implementing new behavior. It's behavior that's gonna and I always say like, if you're watching this podcast today, don't, don't intellectualize this and go oh yeah, that that sounds good and that sounds good. Find one thing you can implement, one behavior. Just take one behavior that you can implement into your marriage, because it's radically seeking out and aggressively implementing new behavior.
Speaker 1:Behave differently and you will get a different response, and that is where transformation starts yeah, and I will publicly commit, because I'll tell you, one of the things that I've been working on in my marriage with my husband is making eye contact with him when he speaks because I know that's important to him to feel seen not only heard but seen, and I'm a busy bee, Like I know I'm always like on the go doing a million things, and so I really, and believe me, I still do that.
Speaker 2:I haven't changed my personality.
Speaker 1:But I am super more successful and intentional about pausing, you know, and listening and I'm telling you it is huge and in terms of the level of just intimacy and communication on a day-to-day, just by doing that one thing, it just like disrupts a pattern and it unlodges like more trust.
Speaker 2:Tiny little things right. New behavior it's seeking out and implementing new behavior. That makes the difference. Intellectual information doesn't change anything. It just puffs you up and makes you feel you know more qualified than you really are. It's about it's. It's really seeking out new behavior and radically implementing that new behavior. That's what's going to transform your relationship. So take just one thing and commit to implementing that and you, you'll see the transformation start to take place.
Speaker 1:100 well, I love it. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much, cody, I really wish you and pray for you and your wife, I'm sure you're fantastic and I can't wait to share your information and for everyone who's listening to this, we'll be sure to have all Cody's website address and links and all the social media online so you can easily access him and his resources.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, Cody, and have a wonderful rest of your day.
Speaker 2:No, thank you. Thank you for having me on, I appreciate it.