EP 24. Understanding When Your Spouse May Not Be Meeting Your Needs. Pt 6 of the Lovers Dozen Series

Welcome to the Married in Lovett podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It is great that you are taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to our weekly podcast.

The goal of our podcast is to provide you with a weekly dose of marriage teaching to help you keep focused on your marriage.

See it as a freshening up of your marriage, preventive maintenance, a marriage tune up, or fanning the flames of romance, love and passion.

You could even call it continuing education.

We will be covering everything that has to do with your marriage, including hot topics like sex, communication, love, and much, much more.

Our teachings are based on Christian principles, plus over 47 years of marriage to each other and ministry experience.

We want to help you make your marriage great by teaching you how to be married and love it.

It is an honor and privilege to have you join us.

Hey, thanks for joining.

And on today's episode, we're going to be continuing the Lovers Dungeon.

What that is is 13 principles that Greg and I applied since, and we still do since we restored our marriage after a near separation back in 1986.

And you know what?

We've been married for over 47 years now.

This particular series begins with episode 19.

So I want to encourage you to go back and listen to all those episod and catch up to where we are today.

Yeah, because each episode builds on the next one or the previous one.

So yeah, go back and listen to those.

And you know, Linda made the comment that these are principles that we applied after we got back together.

So what happened when we got back together?

We had to reevaluate things.

And we just went back after a period of time and looked at the things that we did to help us strengthen our marriage.

Because what we learned after that prepared us for the things we've gone through, through, especially the last 10 to 13 years, which we'll be talking about on and off in the different episodes.

But these are things that work for us now.

Maybe not everything we're going to talk about may fit your situation, but it's kind of universal across the board on what we need to have in our marriage.

So listen to these and I'm proud of you for joining in today because that's telling me you're interested in working on your marriage.

And you know, when you listen to these podcasts once a week, what it does is it allows you to focus on your marriage.

You could see it as a weekly dose of a vitamin shot or taking your pill just to give you a boost because life comes in and a Lot of times we get busy.

We got all these things going on in our.

Our minds, and we get pulled here, we get pulled there.

The kids, the finances, the work.

What we're going to do this evening with our spouse.

And if we just take that time while you're driving in the car, taking an exercise, walk or whatever, and you're listening to a podcast on marriage, it just brings your focus back and say, you know what?

I know to do that, but this helps me remember to do that.

Or it helps you thinking, yeah, what can I do to be a blessing to my spouse this week?

How can I prove my marriage?

So I'm proud of you for listening today and just allowing yourself to renew your mind on your marriage.

Because whether your marriage is hurting right now or yours is really good and people envy you, we all need that.

Little dose to keep us, like a reminder.

Yes.

You know, like.

Like what I said it.

That this isn't something we just restored our marriage.

But to.

We're still doing these, following these different tips today to.

To help us get on through.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how we got to 47 years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We need to keep doing it so we can get another 47 years.

Seven years plus.

Because life is still the marriage.

Masters try to come in.

But you know what?

Life hits marriage, really.

I mean, it's.

It's fun.

I just called Linda today.

She's my cheerleader.

I was coming home, and I said, I'm coming home to see my cheerleader, and I'm gonna flirt with her because when I met her, she was a high school cheerleader.

So you know what?

I still see her as my cheerleader and because she does cheer for me.

But you know what?

We're young at heart, so I just challenge you to stay young at heart.

If you got to be a little old fogy in your older years or you're.

Don't be a fart.

Yeah, don't be an old fart.

But you know what?

Reach over and hold your wife's hand sometime in your husband's hand.

Give him a little.

Squeeze his knee.

Give him a little pat on the tush sometimes.

Not if they got frying pad in their hand.

Bicep.

But you know what?

Flirt with them sometimes on the phone, send a little text.

Now we're getting off topic here.

But have fun.

Be young.

Springtime, enjoy.

Go for a walk outside, hold hands.

Since you know what?

You can be walking down the sidewalk, come underneath the little shade tree somewhere and just give them a kiss right there on the sidewalk.

And so why does somebody comes by, you know what somebody's going would come.

By and go with my, yeah, I.

Wish my husband or wife would do that.

Or man, they must be newlyweds.

They look like they're 40 years old, but they're acting like newlyweds.

So let your marriage also be a light to other people.

Yes, that's that, that's what God wants.

So let's get back on topic.

Number four of the.

This is episode 24 and we're going to go over principle or tip number four of the 13 items that we're looking at.

And this one is it's, it's going to piggyback on the one from, I think, episode 22, about having a passion to meet your spouse's need.

We're going to kind look at the other side of that.

So what is we learn to understand that the demands of life on our spouse or each other for me and Linda, may hinder them from meeting our needs.

Today, you could say we're going to be looking at the rest of the story.

We're going to look at the need situation from a different angle.

And I want to start off with an example.

A couple years ago, I was at a men's conference and there was probably about 5, 600, 700 men there.

And we broke up into some breakout sessions.

So I went to the one that was dealing with being a husband and, and being a father.

So I went in there and there's probably about 150 men in that meeting.

Great teaching on being a father, being a husband.

And at the very end they did some Q&As.

So about the last guy to raise his hand, he rose his hand and he stood up and he was a young man.

And he goes, you know, I got a question here.

We've been married for a couple of years and we had a baby recently and the baby's doing fine.

But I had one question.

It seems like the intimacy and our family has gone away with my wife.

We just don't have that much time together.

And we're honestly not having making time really to have make love and stuff.

I don't know what's going on.

And it got quiet for a moment and all of a sudden all the rest of the men just burst out laughing.

It's like, wake up.

That's what happens when you have a baby.

Welcome to the world.

And it's like he just kind of looked around and everybody.

Clueless, wasn't he?

Yeah, clueless.

And so the, the speaker heard what he said.

And the, the speaker went in and went ahead and explained to him reality and what's going on and stuff.

And I say that to talk about what our title is today, and it's called Linda.

Through the years, we have learned to understand that the demands of life on each other may hinder us from being able to meet each other's needs.

Well, here this young man is this young father, young husband.

His wife had a baby.

She's got to recover from having the baby.

And then once her body gets ready to spend time together with him, then you got a baby that's crying, hungry, and you, if you, if, if you're a mom or a dad, you know what I'm talking about.

So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that.

But he didn't realize it didn't click in that the demands on his young wife and mother to their baby was going to impact her ability to meet his needs the way he would like for them to be met.

And I'm sure she wanted to meet those needs.

You know, in life, we can get real busy and Linda's going to talk about our example in a few minutes, but our spouses can get pulled away doing good things, get busy and.

Or there could be other things we're going to talk about, but come in and it causes their focus to come off pleasing us or meeting our needs.

Because it says in First Corinthians 7, 33, 34, it talks about how a husband and a wife are wired to meet the needs of their spouse.

That's a natural desire.

It's a natural desire.

God put it in us.

Unfortunately, life hits and that can distract us.

And I'm going to be a little blunt here.

Sometimes we can just be selfish, just think about me, myself and I, and we're not concerned about meeting our spouse's needs.

And that can happen in a lot of areas.

Or sometimes that roommate situation starts and we're not concerned about our spouse's needs, but we're not going to talk about those issues we're talking to on this particular episode about the husband or wife that genuinely wants to meet their spouse's needs.

But unfortunately, issues in life are hindering that.

Right.

Because if that's the case, that spouse is going to be feeling guilty.

Yeah.

Because they want to be able to meet their spouse's need.

It's going to concern them, it's going to burden them.

And what can happen is the other spouse whose needs aren't getting met if they're not mature and they're on the self seeking side.

They can get into a pity party mode or they can develop resentment because their spouse isn't meeting their needs.

And then they may even, even say, well, if you're not going to meet my needs, I'm not going to meet your needs.

And then we got a downward spiral going.

So we're going to talk about how to deal with those issues because what happens if that's happening?

Both spouses end up getting frustrated at each other and in the situation.

And we don't want that to happen.

No.

So Linda, let's go ahead and take a minute and look at our situation.

Speak for myself here because there is a season that both of us worked and we were, had a lot of responsibilities.

We both had jobs.

Yeah.

We had two children young at that time and a lot was going on.

We had sports activities for the kids that they were involved in.

I mean there was a whole lot of stuff going on and it was frustrating.

I felt frustrated because I was wore out from number one working.

Yeah.

Then no.

Having the home responsibilities once I got home from work after we've done all the sports activities and carrying on with all that and then just normal stuff that need to be done at the house.

And I was tired, you know.

Yeah.

And especially when the kids were younger.

When they were younger and a lot of homework had to be done, you know, getting ready for the next day for school, a lot of stuff.

And it would frustrate me that I, because I wanted to meet Greg's needs.

But I'd plop into bed and just be going, I can't move a muscle.

Yeah.

But that would bother me because I wasn't able to meet Greg's needs and he never demanded anything.

Greg always understood how I felt and the responsibilities.

And then we're going to talk a little bit about how Greg stepped in there and supported as we were both working and we became, you know, he helped through all of that but he's always been really good to help stuff anyways.

But.

Well, my point being right now is I naturally wanted to meet their, the Greg's needs.

I wanted to be doing things for him and it was just frustrating to me that I couldn't.

Yeah.

And when, when Linda, she wasn't working when we first got married for quite a while and then down the road it came to the point where we, she, we just needed that income coming in which happens to a lot of families today.

Although we really, really see the value of moms being able to stay home with their children if they want to.

But I, it's a good situation for the kids, believe me.

But that's another whole topic.

But when she had to go to work, I told her, if you go back to work, I'm going to help you with what needs to be done around the house.

You see, a wife actually has two jobs.

If they're working, they wake up in the morning, their mom and a wife, then they go work for somebody else for another 6, 8, 10, 12 hours a day.

They're an employee or maybe they're even a business owner and they're having to meet everybody else's needs, not their own needs other than a paycheck.

And then as soon as they come home, they gotta take them the worker hat off and put back on mommy hat.

And then the husband, the wife hat.

And that's a lot of pressure.

And one, one problem happens a lot of times is if the wife is in a, a type A or cleric personality and she's a manager or supervisor or CEO, she's been out there in the man's world, so to speak, or the business world and she's got the charging, get the job done answer to the shareholders attitude and she comes in and tries to run the house like that.

And that caused problems, but she's got to change those hats.

So she's got two full time jobs that she's working.

And men, you know, when our wives come home like that, we need to say, hey, what can I do to help?

What would be the best thing to do?

And we're going to, I'm jumping ahead a little bit of it.

But that's what I told her when she went to work.

I said, you know, Linda, I'm going to be here to help you.

I want to assume those responsibilities.

Because what happens is when Linda can't meet my needs and I want to clarify, we're not just talking about sex, we're talking about all the other needs that could need to be taken care of the day.

And, and you know, we call needs anything from refilling your spouse's water glass if they're watching TV or doing something, to long term health care, all of that in between.

But when she can't meet those needs, of course she's feeling guilty like we said.

But then my needs aren't being met and say I need, I guess my love language is affection.

So if you've got a quality time.

Quality time.

So that's what I meant, quality time.

Well then all of a sudden I'm.

My needs not getting Met for quality time.

Yeah, you know, so then what am I going to do?

Have a pity party and go, woe is me?

No, what I have to do is since I am wired on how to please my wife, I'm supposed to be meeting her needs.

Well, when she walks in the door and puts that mom hat on, if she's, we got kids and the wife hat, I need to say, okay, my desire, my passion from the previous episode is to meet Linda's needs.

So I'm going to set my needs aside and I'm going to go over there and help her take care of the needs she has as a mom.

And then hopefully later in the afternoon or, or the evening, we get everything done and then we can sit down and have some.

Right.

It's a win, win situation.

It's called readjusting your needs.

I need this tonight.

My spouse isn't available.

She's got these other demands.

I gotta adjust, try, fail, adjust whatever terminologies is out there nowadays.

I've got to adjust and say I'm going to help her needs.

And then we end up both of us getting our needs met or the evening's going to go better than one person just getting frustrated.

I remember a few years ago we had a couple, we were talking to and this is a true story.

The wife would come home from work and the husband would come home and she said, hey dear, can you help, can you help me get dinner ready tonight?

Nah, no, I'm not going to just go sit in his chair.

Then a little later, can, can you help the kids with their homework?

No, that's not my job.

Hey dear, could, could you maybe help get them ready for bed?

No, no, no, that's not mine.

Nope.

I'm watching a game and watching.

He's doing something third quarter, I can't miss it.

Yeah, he's doing something.

He would, he would not help her with anything.

This is on a regular basis.

And then what he would do is time she's got everything done, maybe change out the clothes and the dryer and all that.

She'd walk into bedroom to finally be able to go in there, maybe get a shower, and he's laying on the bed naked, ready to have sex.

I may not repeat or can't repeat, maybe what she probably told them, but look at that.

Is that guy seeking to meet his spouse's needs or is he just thinking of his own needs?

And that's a true story, but I hear that repeated a lot.

And it can go one way or the other way.

It can Be different, you know, in different scenarios.

Not just on this sex, but one person's just thinking about me, me, me, me, what about me?

And we need to be looking.

What about you?

What about you?

So realize challenges in life are going to hinder your spouse.

What are you going to do about that?

Do you have a pity party?

Do you get resentful, revengeful?

Or do you roll up your sleeves and say, is there anything I can do to help them?

And the cool thing about it with Greg and I is when he came in to help me, my love language.

One of them is acts of service.

So it was almost double fold.

Yeah.

Because he'd be doing acts of service and that would be filling my love tank.

Yeah.

So that was like, hats off to.

I learned that pretty quick.

Yeah, that was really.

That was really good.

So there's a.

I'm going to back.

Up a little bit on that one scenario we shared now.

That wife could have said, you know what?

We're going to make love tonight.

Or she could go in there and go, oh, this is my duty.

And had duty sex, which would have began to build the wall that was probably already building because of the way he had been treating her, you know, or maybe she communicated, you know what, dear?

Tonight I just can't.

I'm just totally worn out.

But there's different ways that we respond.

But we don't want to put our spouse in a duty mode because that causes resentment, whether it's sex or other things.

If I would have gone in there and said, linda, I'm going to help you with the groceries and walk around, I mean, cleaning up the kitchen tonight, help the kids or whatever we got to do.

Like, it's my duty to do that.

And I'm just doing it begottenly.

That's going to make everything worse.

Everybody's going to be miserable.

So be cheerful.

Should be cheerful.

You're a team.

And we're going to talk about teamwork in one of the next episodes.

About teamwork.

Working together as a husband and wife.

As a team.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's a lot of situations that can come in and hinder our spouses from being able to meet our needs.

There's a lot, like sickness, you know, or health challenges of different sorts and, you know, other commitments that we might have done.

Taking care of your elderly parents, maybe.

Taking care of elderly parents and.

And helping out with the grandkids.

Oh, yeah.

You know, a lot going on there.

And maybe projects at pta, you know, going to a PTA meeting or church projects, extra things that you might be doing for your church and things going on there, you know, so there's a lot of things in life, good and bad, that can hinder us from meeting our spouses.

Like us with your health challenges.

Right.

Well, I want to back up just a minute and say, you know, we've.

I want to always realize when I might have a choice.

I'm at a crossroad that it's not that I have to meet Greg's needs.

It's not a duty.

Yeah.

So I get to, you know, I get to meet Greg's needs.

I'm the only one that ought to be doing.

So kind of do a little tweak in there on the attitude and realize, you know what?

I get to meet my spouse's needs.

That's a blessing.

Yeah.

So I think a key there is for all of us to have.

Are we the type of person our wife or husband wants to meet the needs of?

Are we.

Or are we doing our part to be somebody that they take pleasure?

They really want to, because they don't.

Think it's a duty.

They want to do it because they love us.

And we're not expecting it as a duty, but we're expecting because we just know they love us and we want to be blessing each other.

Right.

That's.

That's so true.

Right.

So on my health challenges, one the season in life, and we're still kind of going through it.

It's been about 13, 14 years.

Yeah.

It's been extended longer than we would like to have seen it.

But health challenges, you know, several surgeries.

I could just go down the list.

It's crazy.

And surgeries that have left me to where I couldn't do anything, you know, to.

I.

Greg had to do health care in home care, do the groceries.

I mean, he had to pick up the total load, and he's still having to do all that, you know, so these are things that really can wear on a marriage.

If you're not together in this and you're not understanding, thank God that Greg has been understanding through this whole thing.

I actually knew.

And we've seen several stories of where people picked up their bags and said, I can't handle this, and they walked out on their spouse when their spouse was in the time of need more than ever at all in their marriage.

Now, that brings me back to the vows.

Yeah.

Are people realizing when they say the vows what's really.

You don't expect that it's going to be for better you that's what you're expecting for better, better, better.

But the vows say for better or worse for in health or in sickness.

Right, dear?

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And for in richer or poor, you know, so it's times that we stick together and we're team.

Are a team.

When you, when we set our bowels, you know, you're.

I, I just picture sometimes those young couples in the old western movies.

They, they get in their wagon train and they're heading across the country.

They start a journey and they're gonna stick it out to the end until they reach their goals and start a family somewhere.

And that's what it is when we.

Say, yeah, I do, I do.

Yeah, we're saying I do.

And we're going to go on this journey no matter where it takes us.

Because you see, in this last 12 or 13 years, Linda's had all these different surgeries, primarily on her back, hips, heart attack, all sorts of things.

And she's had extreme chronic pain.

It's been different levels.

And I've been, been caretaking.

I mean, from getting her out of bed, bathing her when she's had surgeries, when she couldn't do it, hospital type care.

We're still.

She can't go to the grocery store on her own unless it's just around the corner for a few minutes.

Slight little bit of driving.

I'm pretty well doing housework, dishes.

Our sex life.

I'll say we had a great sex life before this happened, but it has taken a major hit because she's in major pain and other parts of this.

What's going on in her body.

But yet God has given me the grace.

And see, when you, when you're married and you're operating God's principles, he can give you a grace.

I haven't gone around and have pity parties and complain about having to clean the dishes or, or do other running around.

Yeah, She's.

Yeah.

Supervising.

Yeah.

So.

But I mean, I'm not.

She can still get in at different times, help clean the kitchen, but a lot of times she's just worn out and even to do our podcast.

Sometimes she's sitting here doing the podcast, a lot of times sitting in pain.

But she, she cares enough about you and your marriage to get in here and teach and explain and give information on how to be married and love it because she's, she's living her part and I'm doing my part.

We're not perfect.

Sometimes I can get, oh, no, I got to do this again.

Or she's, she, she's the medicine's kicking in or not kicking in, and she acts away.

But you know what?

We make it work.

We're a team.

And I love Linda.

I said I do and that I am.

So we go through this together, and God gives us the grace to do it.

And he can give you grace to get through the tough times you may be facing or what you're going to face in the future.

Not negative, but life happens.

The marriage busters come in and sometimes people are just sick and have a surgery and they're.

They're knocked out for two or three months, maybe three months.

And that spouse has got to take, pick up the pieces.

And a lot of times that wrecks people.

But you got to say, you know what?

At this point, I can't get all my needs met or I've got to do everything and help my spouse.

Well, you just pull up, put your big boy pants on or your big girl panties on, and you do what you need to do.

Why?

Because you made a commitment to your spouse.

Yes.

And you love them and you want to meet their needs and be a blessing to them.

I remember when I had my car accident.

I couldn't do anything for about three months, and Linda had to.

Had to do everything for me.

I mean, I could get up and go to the bathroom and stuff, but I had my mouth wired shut.

And she was having to make special foods to do that.

And there's some things I couldn't do for a while.

And then I had a trach tube stuck on my throat for about two or three months.

And one time that thing popped out.

Oh, my gosh.

And she about spazzed out, and I smashed out.

We were able to get it back in there, but she was meeting my needs with things I had to go through at that time.

So you and your spouse, yeah, you're lovers, but you can be caretakers.

You may be party animals, but sometimes you're cleaning the house animals together because you do what it needs to get done.

So anything else on that?

Are we ready to get down?

I think that, you know, just we have a few steps that we can look at on how to practically handle these kind of situations that are going to happen in our life.

Yeah, but, you know, I'm just going to back up a little bit.

You know, Linda and I, before all this happened, we would go for walks every day, and now we don't go.

That was our walk and talk time.

And the other day she.

I mentioned last week on the episode, we did get out and walked, but see, all that was stolen, but.

And I sometimes I go, I mean, I wish Linda could go for a walk.

There's things we miss, but we know and believe that that's going to get back.

But get in and just repeat myself.

Don't give up.

Focus on your spouse.

What can I do to meet their needs?

Especially if I, I'm not getting all my needs met.

So let's do the little evaluating here.

Yes.

You want to look at your marriage?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Evaluate.

Just little tips here.

Evaluate.

Look at your marriage.

What are the demands.

What are the demands and distractions that may be impacting your spouse's life?

That's what I had to do.

Linda's working.

How's that impacting her?

Linda's recovering from back surgery, from a heart attack, from a hand surgery, from hip surgery, replacement, and several other things.

How's that impacting her?

What does she need help for?

And then, okay, because of all that going on, we can't do A, B, C and D.

So then you evaluate and make a plan of action from.

From there.

Go ahead.

Well, the other thing is to help prioritize like we're going to be teaching.

Do a deep dive on communication.

Yeah, but just to touch on it.

It's so important in these situations to communicate with your spouse.

Yes.

Well, yes.

What are the needs?

And then prioritize them.

You know, if there's a little to do list that you might have in your mind, put it on paper and talk to, you know, it would help when I would tell Greg, spraying for mosquitoes outside of the house because they love to chew on me.

Please, I can't hear you.

I can't hear you.

So instead of, you know, I'd much rather go.

Go do the bug spray and then come cook.

You know, prioritize those things.

Those are just little things.

But, you know, it does make a difference.

It does help that communication.

Well, but yet.

But you need to communicate.

It's good for you to say for the person that feels frustrated because they can't do, say, you know what?

I, I'm really feeling frustrated this time.

You think maybe you could help me do something if they haven't picked it, you got to communicate how you feel or say, you know what, dear, I'm sorry that we haven't been able to sit down and chill together for the last six months because just all the kids, sporting events, and just everything we got going on.

Sure, that's.

That hurts.

What can we do to get through this?

Let your spouse know what you're thinking.

And feeling.

And.

And if you're the one that's on the other end, say, dear, I'm really getting frustrated here.

How can I help you?

I just want you to know what's.

What's going on?

How can we work through this together?

True.

Yeah.

So what can be changed?

Yes.

What can you adjust or compromise on?

You know, so what.

What can you think about it, talk about it?

Yes.

If you get a chance to have like a.

A date night or 15 minutes, reconnect time sort of thing, talk about it, what would make things easier?

You know, what are the things.

What are those demands?

What are those distractions that are happening in your life right now?

So what can you do to help each other out?

You know, and.

And for the watches made me go back to when we had our kids and they were really involved in everything.

You know, what Linda and I would do, we would go to the practices together or go to the games, but especially the practices if they had soccer or football.

And we would make that a time to have a talk.

That's when we would do our talking and connecting a lot of times, because we're just out practicing.

But you know what?

As a husband and wife, especially if you've got the young kids at home or teenagers and you're just going crazy, that's when you just got to say, what can we do to make this work better?

Do you need to give up something, cut something out, say no to other things?

Because you can't let your relationship continue to deteriorate.

Okay.

And you can't use those things for an excuse not to speak, meet your spouse's needs, because that's why.

That's why we're talking about, you gotta put together an action plan.

What can we do?

You know, I think Linda and I, when we were young and had the kids, we still made time to go out, sit together.

We still made time to have some date nights in there.

And we figured out ways, walk around the block, right.

To have intimate times.

And you just.

You just make it work.

You just find a way because your marriage is important.

You got to do it for your marriage.

Do it for your marriage.

Do it for your marriage and then make an action plan, you know?

Yeah.

How can you just like what you just said, basically, how can we work together to accomplish this?

So the whole goal from all of this is to realize you want to meet your spouse's needs.

That's what you're called to do.

You want to do it because you love them.

And laying aside all the selfishness and other type things like that, you know, down inside you both want to do that.

And I just want to close with this scripture here.

But your, your.

The point being is realize what's going on in your spouse's life.

Don't get bitter, don't get resentful.

Communicate and come up with a plan how everybody can win and what's going on and you can make the best of a sticky or stretch strenuous time in your life.

And I like the scripture.

In Philippians 2, verses 3 through 4, which I think I read last week, it says, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interest of others.

When Linda was a working mom, she had to take care of everybody at her mind was saying, hey, I want to take care of Greg and our marriage needs.

She.

She had to figure that out.

But my own personal interest, I couldn't sit around and say, no, what about me?

What about me?

No, I had to look and put.

Linda is more important, realizing that she was getting worn out, doing all she did.

So what can I do to take care of her?

Yeah.

Like you laid aside, going to the gym.

Yeah.

I could say several times this week you've done that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually taking care of you.

There is some situations.

I mean, I got shots for my back that didn't turn out very good, and it was a horrible situation.

I had adverse reactions and, you know, I needed extra caretaking.

Yeah.

That normally wouldn't have happened.

And you set aside going to the gym and stayed home to take care of me.

Yeah.

So that's just, that's just a small example, but that.

That's what Greg's talking about.

All about right there.

Yeah.

All right.

I just want to throw this in there.

You know, I'm not a psychologist, Lynn, that I don't have degrees in psychology or how to get people to open up and talk.

And you know, I'll just therapist and all that, but I'll tell you, I am an ordained minister.

Yes.

But we've been married for 47 and a half years.

We have lived and are living the things that we are teaching and talking about.

And so that's our goal, to take what we've learned, experienced and still learning and impart it to you so you can be married and love it.

That's right.

And as we close up, I just want to remind you to share this podcast with somebody Else hit the share button, go on your into your podcast and after you listen and hit the subscribe or or follow button so you'll be notified when a new episode comes up.

And head over to our website at www.marriedandlovet.com and sign up for our newsletter because we're going to have a good newsletter that's getting ready to start up.

Tell your married kids and your grandkids, you know, some of y'all have grandchildren that are actually married, so tell them about it so they can start listening to the podcast.

All right, well, we got a few honeydews.

Homework.

Yep.

I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So number one, kind of like what we said before.

What?

Ask yourself what are the demands on your spouse's life that are keeping them from meeting your needs?

Recognize them and maybe y'all could sit down and talk about them.

And then number two, what can change from that?

And number three, how can you help ease them and help them if they're going through a tough situation?

Like I'll get up in the morning and sometimes I just ask the Lord, how can I help Greg today to make his day easier?

What can I do to make his day easier for him?

And just ask the Lord, you know.

And I just thought of another one is depending on if you're the spouse that's not getting your needs met or the ones that's feeling frustrated, do a check up from the neck up.

How's your attitude?

That's good, dear.

That's right.

Something.

Are you dealing with your guilt?

Expressing it.

But if you're the one whose needs maybe aren't getting met the way you would like or desire, how's your attitude?

Are you in a pity party mode?

Are you allowing resentment to come in?

Are you seeing your spouse and what they're going through and say, hey, what can I help?

And then you guys can even pray about the situation.

But don't let a negative attitude come in.

Don't let resentment come in.

That's good.

Give it to God.

Yeah, give your situation to God, especially if it's a long term thing.

And you can break through that because we want you to be married and love it.

Ask God to help you.

Let him get involved in all of it.

Yeah.

And remember your 10 second kiss.

Grab your spouse, set your timer, get a good 10 second kiss and do it in the morning.

You come home for lunch.

If whenever you see each other even and do it at night.

Go ahead and step up your game.

If you've been doing it for a.

While, level up all right, well, okay, we're done for today.

See you next week.

And remember, you can be married and love it on purpose.