EP 31. Make Time to Chill and Connect with Your Spouse; From the Lovers Dozen Series PT 13

Welcome to the Married and Love it podcast.

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

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Hey, thanks for joining us.

Weekly dose of Married and Love It now today, episode 31, we're continuing the lovers dozen, which is 13 principles that we applied in our marriage that helped bring us restoration and healing when we almost separated back in 1986.

We have now been married over 47 years in order to create a lifestyle of this.

We're still applying these principles.

They work, but we have to be be intentional and apply them on purpose.

This series began with episode 19, so let me encourage you to go back and listen to them if you haven't heard them already.

And today's title is We Make Time to Chill out with each Other.

And this is going to be an awesome podcast for you.

I, I believe it's going to be something that you're going to have questions that you can ask yourself because this is, this is really a powerful episode.

So hang on.

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Things are going to bless you and then we're going to get into chilling out.

So hold on to your seat because this is going to be awesome.

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Lots of good stuff going on.

And we're going to go ahead and get into the day's topic, which is we make time to chill out with each other.

And this is one of the things that Linda and I have implemented on a regular basis after we got back together years and years and years ago.

Now, we did talk about making time and being busy at a few other episodes a while back, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes.

But this is.

This is going to be good.

So listen, Ecclesiastes 9.

9 says, Enjoy life with the spouse I got in their spouse.

It says woman, but with the spouse you whom you love.

All the days of Your life.

And we use this scripture a lot.

But key word I want to bring out on today is enjoy.

Say it to yourself.

I enjoy my married life.

And that means to take delight in.

To take pleasure in, to possess and benefit from.

So when you saying.

When you're saying, I enjoy life with my spouse, that means you're taking pleasure.

You delight in that.

You.

Now, here, here's a key point.

The scripture does not say be with.

Be busy with your spouse whom you love.

It doesn't say that.

But, dear, what do we hear people say all the time?

All the time we're hearing people say, I am too busy.

We are too busy, too busy, busy, busy, busy.

So here's a question to ask yourself.

Are you really enjoying your life?

Are you really enjoying the things you're doing?

Your marriage?

Are you actually.

The things that you're doing, are they actually making you too busy?

Because in the back of your mind, while you're sitting there trying to enjoy your life, you're actually thinking about all the things you ought to be doing, and then you're stressing out about all those other things.

So where.

Where does enjoyment come?

In the things that you're doing because you're busy.

Can you really enjoy it?

Right.

So now you're busy all the time.

And things that should be bringing you pleasure, a lot of it, because they're not going grocery shopping is usually not a pleasurable thing, but they're fun doing that.

That's.

That's true.

So, but that.

The point is, we get so busy, we can't even enjoy the things we want to do.

It's like, I remember when Lynn and I used to take our kids to softball games.

And maybe you go to softball.

Maybe.

Now you may be past this.

This phase of life.

We know not everybody's got small kids or kids at home, but think about it.

And the principles are the same.

You take your kids to softball practice, you're sitting there in the chair, but you just.

You can't sit there and just enjoy outside necessarily.

Because what happens, you start thinking, when I get home, I got two loads of laundry waiting for me.

I haven't cooked meal.

I don't know if I got any Hamburger Helper.

I really don't want to stop at some restaurant on the home and there's homework to be done, and you start getting stressed out.

You can't even enjoy sitting outside in the nice weather and maybe talking to a friend or your spouse.

Right?

And supper's not cooked or whatever.

Yeah, that's a good example.

Dear.

Yeah.

And you're thinking about to do list all that.

Right.

All that.

And then let's top it off.

The team mom comes over and says to you, can you cook and bring some cupcakes for a team get together after practice on Saturday?

And of course, that's what you're doing.

In your head, being the super mom that you are.

No problem.

I.

I'll be glad to do that.

And that maybe in 10 minutes later or as it gets closer to the weekend, what are you thinking?

Why in the world did I do.

Yes.

So once again, are you enjoying life or are you too busy to enjoy it?

Now, those are simple questions.

But in this particular podcast, we want you to really be thinking about this.

Yeah.

Because your connection with you and your spouse is so vital.

And when we're being busy all the time or the majority of the time, it weakens that lifeline you have, and that can bring in problems.

Now, I know when Linda and I would go with our kids, we had usually two of them at the same time at softball fields.

But we made a effort to sit away from stuff and away from other people.

Yeah.

Not bring a bunch of stuff.

And we, we made, we took advantage of that time to sit and talk about the day and what's going on.

So there's ways you can beat the system, so to speak.

And we're going to talk about that more.

Are you so busy that you can't see how busy you really are?

We get blinded to be and how busy we are.

That's what we call crazy busy.

And crazy busy is not God's plan for you as a married couple.

No, it isn't.

Yes, there's work to be done.

There's always going to be chores to take care of.

You got to go to work or you're staying home all day taking care of the children, which.

That's another whole job.

You're raising the kids.

But you know what?

You don't have to be crazy business busy.

We're all going to have that busyness and that is normal.

And there's going to be seasons when you're more busier than others.

Right.

You know, the.

When you got small kids at home or their sports season.

A new baby.

A new baby, a new.

Or maybe somebody's having to work overtime for a short period of time or, or maybe somebody's sick.

They're in a hospital.

There's always going to be.

Of those times.

But you know what?

We have to learn how to balance that.

And we do talk about that in episodes Seven and eight.

But if you don't stop the busyness, if you don't learn how to balance that out, if one busy season turns into the next busy season and turns into another busy season, before long things are going to get out of control.

And before long you're getting worn out and fizzled and it can cause problems in your marriage relationship and you begin to be roommates.

And that's when people begin to separate affairs take place.

The kids are wondering what's going on.

But you know what, you don't really notice that happening because you've, I know you've heard of the story of how do you bowl a frog?

Boil a frog.

Boil a frog one temperature at a time because the, the frog's in the water and he doesn't know he's cooked until it's too late.

And that's what can happen in our lives if we, if we're not on purpose.

That's what we call married and love it on purpose.

Right.

If you're not watching out, your life can get crazy busy if it's not there and maybe you've been there.

Okay, so let's move on.

Well, like Greg said, Episode 7 and episode 8, we, we talk about crazy chaotic busyness and how to balance your life.

So once again I want to encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes.

There's some really good tips on how you can balance your busy life.

What we're going to talk about now is when your busyness gets to the critical state and it's impacting your marriage in a negative way.

And we need time to have time alone to stay connected on a consistent basis.

Yeah.

Because the enemy life, the marriage busters, the devil people, they're going to come in and steal your time.

And the whole key to your marriage is you and your spouse spending time together, communicating and bonding in all those different areas which we'll talk about more.

But we have to have that.

And if you're not getting that, that's when the problems come up.

See, if your marriage gets interrupted, your kids lives is getting interrupted and your kids are going to base their marriage on how you're seeing your marriage is.

Yeah.

And if all they hear about is being crazy busy, then, then they're going to develop that attitude.

I remember one time we had this one young child said, oh, I wish my mom would quit taking me to all these birthday parties and all these strawberry field trips.

I'm tired.

Here's I want to take a chill pill.

My mom has taken me to all These things.

So what happens if you realize your marriage is spiring into crazy busy sometimes?

Or if you're on a good routine and you're just saying, man, I just need to sit down with my husband.

We just need to get away for.

Get a coffee break so we can regroup going into the next week.

Sometimes, especially if you're in the crazy busy zone, you just need to put your foot down and say, world, life, stop.

Stop.

The treadmill.

Yeah.

We've got to have time.

We got to clear our calendar.

This weekend we're going to go on a date.

This weekend we're going to go out of town.

This weekend we're getting a babysitter and we're going to stay home.

Whatever.

We're going to send the kids somewhere.

We have to stop the world, regroup and say, we've got to spend time together and put your marriage on a new course.

Yeah.

And you may be saying, well, we're not that busy.

Maybe you're not.

But even in your not in the busy, busy zone, you still got to make sure you're staying on course.

Consistent.

So critical.

Yeah.

You know, in the perfect world, daily, weekly.

If you can't do daily, weekly.

But you've got to set that time.

And we talk about that more in a nut.

That's not our whole purpose today to get in.

But on a regular basis, you've got to be communicating.

You've got to have that time together.

And sometimes you got to say, stop.

I know there's been times in our life when we've had the kids, especially when we had the kids younger, where we just had to say, you know what?

Oh, we gotta take a break.

We gotta take a break.

Linda, I've gotta.

We gotta go on a date.

We just gotta get away from the house.

And you.

Yes.

You have to get babysitters if you got kids.

You know what, Even if you don't have any kids at home, sometimes it's just good to get out of the house.

Yeah.

Because you don't have the bills staring at you.

Don't have your problem staring at you.

Just get out and do something.

That doesn't mean go and had a double triple date with some people.

I mean, sometimes you got to be alone by yourself, together.

Well, do you realize that your marriage is a separate entity from you and your spouse as individuals?

We.

Our marriage is like a whole entity.

Yes.

Within itself.

In that, dear.

Yes.

So what does your marriage need?

What is your marriage need and what does your spouse need?

What can you do that is There something going on?

You know what, dear?

Somebody needs to hear this.

Yeah, this.

This podcast is divinely orchestrated for somebody out there.

They desperately are needing to hear this message today.

You know, what is it that your marriage needs?

Where is it in your life?

Do you need to just say stop?

You know, and it's not what.

Necessary.

You need.

What does the marriage.

The marriage need.

Right, exactly.

So, like an example, like Greg said, we just need time away from the children, time so that we can talk without being interrupted.

We can reconnect.

You know, and maybe one spouse thinks that the marriage and everything's all okay, and the other spouse is thinking, oh, I really need a break.

So our marriage needs to be number one priority.

So what that person would do is say, okay, I'm.

I'm.

I feel like we're okay.

My honey feels like she needs to talk, but okay, our marriage needs.

Maybe I don't think I do, but my marriage, that entity of our marriage needs me to go sit down with my wife or husband and have a talk.

Because our marriage needs us to be reconnected.

Right.

Our family needs us to be reconnected.

Yes.

And you know what?

That goes back to the last episode we did on communication.

Yeah.

Somebody needs to speak up about it.

Yeah.

Hey, I need some reconnect.

Time to regroup.

I need that, you know, we're not married to the kids.

We're not married to our house or our job, that for us, ministry.

We're not married to the TV or a device or a video game.

We're not married to the church or, you know, but we're married to each other.

And once again, I want to emphasize the entity of our marriage relationship.

Do it for the marriage.

Right, Right.

The Bible says when.

When.

When I talk about we're not married to all these other areas.

Well, there's scripture that actually says to leave and cleave.

So that would mean shake off church activities for a time.

You know, shake off chores, the laundry.

Shake it off and pay attention to your marriage.

You know what?

You know, have that quiet chill time.

Give yourself permission.

Yeah.

To do that.

Because, you know, sometimes we just think, I can't do that.

I don't.

You know, I don't have time for all that we make except excuses.

But we got to give ourselves permission and leave and cleave.

Cleave to your marriage.

That's right.

Because I know years ago when we first got married, we were involved in.

It was volunteer stages.

I've still worked.

Linda was working, and.

But we were involved in Some high school ministry.

And we were there all the time.

We didn't have any kids, so we didn't have that time commitment to have to take care of kids.

And we loved being with high school students.

But there was times when Linda said, hey, can we go?

Can we go to the Merit Young Marriage class?

Can we.

Can we go to a weekend seminar?

And I'd go, no, we need to be here.

We're committed.

See, I didn't marry the youth ministry.

I didn't marry the youth pastor.

He didn't ask me to get married.

I didn't marry the commitment.

I was married to Linda.

But that's just an example.

Our work can be that.

Our volunteering at church could be that.

It could be our friends.

It could be watching tv, your job, your household chores.

We're not married to that.

Yes, they're all important.

But you know what I notice at church a lot of times, and this is through all the churches I've seen, usually there's a small group of people in a lot of churches that do everything right.

All the volunteer, they're there all the time.

And I can look at them and say, what?

When, when are they ever home?

You know, but that's because a lot of people, and this is another topic, don't ever get involved in serving in the church.

So somebody's got to get the job done, but we got to be careful with what we're doing or we make sure we're not over committing things and such.

Now I'm starting to meddle a little bit.

Oh.

So a question for you and your marriages.

Honestly, when you get done with this podcast, do an evaluation.

Do you feel like you're too busy enough?

Are you saying I'm not taking time to chill out?

Right.

And not taking.

Yeah, not taking time to chill out with.

By yourself.

But also primary.

We're talking about with your spouse.

Your spouse.

Are you saying that on a regular basis?

If you're even thinking that you're getting close to the crazy busy, now's the time to take action to correct it.

Give yourself permission.

Right.

To correct it.

Don't put it off until tomorrow because then.

Then it might be too late.

Yeah.

You know, don't put it off.

You know, in Exodus, it talks about Pharaoh had a whole bunch of frogs running around in his house, his bed, everywhere, because he wasn't letting the children of Israel go.

Yeah.

And Moses said, I can take care of this right now, today, and Pharaoh said tomorrow.

What in the world was wrong with that man?

So I'm Saying right now, think about what's going on in your family and in your life with the busyness and how much you and your husband or you and your wife are really connecting.

And are you willing to say, you know what?

We need to evaluate what's going on because we are in the crazy busy zone.

And if you're not in the crazy, it could creep that way.

Yeah, it kind of happens.

Subtle.

And our prayer is, everybody can be.

And it does, like Lynn just saying subtle, like the frog.

But our prayers, we can all learn how to handle the busy and do what we need to do, but we can still enjoy one another.

We can take time out to watch the sunrise together at the beach or at the lake or out in our front yard.

Yeah.

We just got to say no.

We got to realize when it's time to just say no.

Like, no to certain things at work.

Like, someone might ask you to pick up a little bit of their workload because they're gonna go chill.

Yeah.

And you are gullible, and you just say, oh, yeah.

Okay.

Sports, kids activity, church activities, birthday parties.

Oh, my word.

I have never in my life seen so many birthday parties that parents, you know, take their kids to.

And you know what?

That's time and money, you know, so it's something to evaluate.

Proverbs 16:2, verse 2 and 3.

All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives.

Ooh, you know, I had never seen that, dear.

Yeah, the.

The Lord weighs the mode weighs the motives.

Commit your works to the Lord, and your plans will be established.

So ask yourself this question.

Are you trying to keep up with how maybe your mom did it?

I mean, you might be thinking, well, my mom did all this, and she seemed to be doing just fine.

You know, when you were growing up, did she have the house a super clean.

You could eat off the floors, you know, and someone said, yeah, you could eat off of my mom's floor.

You could eat the macaroni that had fallen.

You could eat the, you know, the food that had fallen on the floor.

That's a joke.

Anyways, leftovers.

I don't think that floor was very clean.

But anyways, ask yourself, what is your motive?

Are you trying to keep up with the Joneses to be involved in all the birthday parties?

And why are you doing this?

Is it a status quo?

Is it a guilt issue?

You know, you feel guilty that maybe you didn't have all that going on in your life as you were growing up, so you want to make sure that your kids have the pleasure of getting to all the birthday parties and being there and getting involved, you know, so just ask yourself that question.

What is your motive behind all of that?

That's really good because we can get involved and volunteering even at work.

You know, what's your motive for saying, yeah, I want to work overtime and there's so much pressure to perform to stay extra hours at work.

Yeah.

But maybe there's a time when you go, you know, my motives aren't pure.

Yeah.

Or I just need to.

I need to be home with my wife, I need to be home with my husband.

My kids can't stay in the daycare today, extra hours because I want to work to try to get a promotion.

And work overtime to impress my boss.

Right.

So look at the motives, you know.

And I keep coming back to this.

Someone really needs to hear this about giving yourself permission.

Yeah.

To chill out with your, with your, with your husband.

You know, I keep coming back to that.

And you know, allow yourself permission to relax, to calm down, to get with your husband, to take that time, you know, so Proverbs 3, verse 6 also says, in all my ways, I acknowledge him, and that would be God, and he directs my path.

So what would you say about that scripture?

It's get God involved again.

It's the God factor.

Even in Proverbs 16:2 or Linda talked about your motives, God says, in all, all the ways of a man are clean in his own side, but the Lord weighs the motives.

Then he says, commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.

Commit our works?

Commit your schedule to the Lord?

Yeah.

The Lord wants you to enjoy your life all the way around, but he knows if you're too busy and you know, if you're stretching yourself too thin for the wrong reasons or even the right reasons sometimes.

But the wrong reason, you know what?

You're not going to be able to give a hundred percent.

That's true.

You're not going to be given your best when you do volunteer or when you do, you are at work or when you're trying to do things for your kids.

So you got to look at those motives again.

But it says, commit your works to the Lord and God will help you figure this stuff out.

And you know, if you put God first, you're going to get more done in the long run.

Yeah.

Now here's an interesting point.

Maybe you're at an activity or event together with your spouse, but you know what?

You may not really be together because while you're there, you're getting pulled in different directions.

Let's say you're at a gathering.

Maybe it's a.

A Christmas party, a birthday party, a work party, or maybe it's something even going on at the church.

Well, you get there and all of a sudden the.

The guys, the husbands, all of a sudden they're over here, maybe moving some tables, and then over here they start talking about football game, they start talking about work.

Maybe they're talking about the Lord who knows everything.

And that whole night, they're kind of in their own world.

What do ladies do?

They're over there talking about all the lady things and maybe help serve in a little bit, but.

So all the ladies are over there, and the whole night, you're there for two hours.

Oh, we spent.

And you go home, man.

We.

We're.

Well, you might have arrived together, and then you leave together, but you never saw each other in the middle.

You go home.

Oh, we can check the box.

We spent the night together.

But you know what?

You're not involved in connect.

No.

Because then you get home and maybe one of you gets a little frisky or, hey, you know, we had a good time tonight.

Yeah.

Like, oh, no, I'm tired.

I'm worn out.

Oh, yeah.

And then you go, well, I didn't see you the whole night.

Where were you?

Right.

But you know what you can do when you're in places like that?

You know, you're getting pulled apart.

You're there together.

I know people that even drive to activities, separate cars.

Yeah.

I mean, look at how we're getting pulled together.

Hey, you know, if that's the way it needs to be.

But, you know, is it always the.

Way it needs to be?

Sure.

That's for you to decide.

But another way to handle that is if you get to an activity, a party, church, function or work part, whatever it is, it could be it.

Maybe you're even at a baseball game, watching with a bunch of people, and you're not right there together.

You know what?

The guy could look over and see his wife.

Maybe give her a little wink, a little smile, or maybe flirting with her.

You flirt.

Maybe one of them walks over.

What?

The wife walks over and says, hey, good looking, what you got cooking?

Can I.

Can I.

I just want to tell you, you look so good standing over there.

And then a little later, the other one walks over, puts the armor, and the man walks around, puts the arm around his wife, say, hey, can I get you a refill on your drink?

Are you.

Is everything okay?

Is anything I can get for you.

Yeah, I'm glad you're here.

To connect with each other.

Then later you can, depending on what type of party or what activity, I mean, everybody's got a closet or another room.

You can actually grab your spouse and say, hey, hey everybody, can I have my, Can I see my wife or husband for a minute?

And you just pull them over to a little private area.

A word please.

Can I have a word please?

Can I have the room?

But you just bring them all and put your arm around them and give them a nice kiss and say, I can't wait till we get home tonight.

And you look so good over.

But you flirt with your spouse.

You have those little moments of connections, so you're able to enjoy everything.

But those are little practical ways to make those events.

Be intentional with your connections.

Yeah, I mean, even if you're at the kids soccer game and you're sitting there in the chairs and usually the guys are talking standing up or you know, just walk over there and plant one on your spouse and everybody else is going to go, whoa.

Or you give them a hug or.

Slap them on, you know, what behind.

We need to be intentional in our connections.

I remember one time Lynn and I sided.

We need to get away from the weekend, from the kids.

And my dad had traveled a lot, so he always got us free nights at La Quinta hotels.

This is back years ago.

So we would go out of town and we would get over there, have a nice pool, nothing fancy, go out to eat, get in, unpack, get in there, get in the pool.

We bring our own floats.

Nobody's there because of the daytime.

And one time we went and it's like everything was just kind of, it.

Was blah, blah, blah.

And you know what?

And usually we'll sit there and listen to our floats or Linda, be in the chair.

And I said, you know what, we need to take our walk.

Because at home we always would take a walk almost every day and take that time to connect.

So what we did is we went up, got back in the bed, went back to the hotel room, got dressed, and we took a big long walk around the neighborhood that was behind the hotel.

Walked all the way around, talked about life, business, what's going on.

We just had to connect.

Yeah, we couldn't relax and chill out until we had that connect time.

Right.

And so when we got back, took our clothes off, got our bathing suits on, went back to the pool and had a great weekend.

It was very relaxing.

Gotta have those times connection.

In other words, it's making it simple, but maybe it's not.

In other words, wherever you're at, whatever you're doing, as much as you can, act like lovers, have a love affair with your spouse.

And that means.

That means when you're in places, you're always talking to each other, you're looking each other, you're connecting.

I mean, I go back to the time we talked about a friend at church.

He was standing there talking to us and we talked about this on another podcast.

And here comes his wife and he goes, hey, my queen.

My queen is there.

And he gives her a kiss on the cheek.

Yeah.

He grabbed her and pulled her right to him.

Yeah.

I'm thinking, oh, and he's been.

They've been married over 50 years.

50 years, yeah.

I mean, that's connection.

That's seeing each other and, and they, hey, I'm not going to say who they are right now, but they've been very involved in that church, but they're still young at heart.

So have that affair.

Make your connections.

Now, back in some episodes, we talked about people's different personality styles.

So the connections that we make, you know, according to certain personality styles.

Yeah.

And the chill out time that we have together and all that.

You know, I'm not going to go into any detail about that right now, but take that into consideration.

Yes.

Your spouse might be a whole different personality and would want to chill.

Totally different than you would.

So consider your ways when you're looking at different ways that you can relax with each other and chill.

Yeah.

And then we want to look at the red flags.

And while Linda mentioned the chilling part, when we first got married, Linda was the high.

She's the.

A sanguine.

So she's always looking at this and trying to sanguine.

Cleric.

You know, I'm do it.

Produce, produce clerics.

Now I'm cleric too, but she was more cleric.

My other part, she was saying, when cleric, which is party and be the boss, I would be the boss.

But let's lay back.

So when we got married, I was all, she would always be in there cleaning, doing this.

I say, linda, please just come and sit down and we can enjoy right.

The evening.

I thought, I got to do.

I got to do.

No, you don't have to do that all the time.

But what's interesting, because we've been married so long, and even before she started having health issues, which put more demand on my.

My efforts, we begin to notice I took on some of her traits where I would say, hey, I want to get this Kitchen cleaned up.

I don't want us to have to come back in here later.

And she would say, no, come on in here and let's chill.

Let's just chill out.

But those temperaments are there.

But let's look at red flags, okay?

In your marriage, you're going to develop routines with your kids, your work, your activities, and you're going to have a good rhythm going, because not everybody is in this situation.

Right?

But watch out for the red flags.

You got to be observing, have your eyes open.

When you see yourself saying, start to say, oh, we're just so busy, we're tired all the time.

Or you're not getting things that done that need to be done and you're not having fun.

Ask yourself, are we having fun in our marriage and our life?

Right.

Then maybe you're not connecting with your spouse as much.

So be aware of the red flags and find out what you need to do to get that connection going.

And now our spot, our spouse, they might recognize the disconnect.

One spouse may.

Another spouse may not even have a clue about a disconnect that's going on.

Right?

So listen to your spouse again, communication is important.

What's important for your marriage and what's.

Important for your marriage.

Now here's some ideas on how to connect.

A lot of you been thinking, well, how can I connect?

I mean, maybe you've gotten so far out there you don't even remember what, like when you were dating, what did you do?

You made time for each other.

Make time.

You have to make time.

Play together.

Go on a date, Take a walk, you know, do a little mini moon getaway.

You know, find some kind of common interest, you know, like gardening or.

That's true.

Walking.

Yeah.

And, you know, or just sit down and have a cup of coffee or tea together.

Um, maybe there's a certain devotional book that you're reading together.

And so talk about it.

Get creative.

Carve out time for sex and intimacy.

All of these things are ways that you can connect with each other.

You have to be on purpose and be intentional on this, because otherwise life is just going to.

They're going to run you over before you know it.

So use this as a warning if you're not having these problems.

And even if you don't have any kids at home and maybe you're retired, you can be busy doing nothing and ignoring one another.

True.

Or get caught up in volunteering for stuff.

Right.

Or thinking, we've arrived.

I don't know what it is, but.

Or maybe you're playing that somebody's playing pickleball and golf all the time and they're never home or the other person's playing bridge or going or going to church all the time and the other person's not going.

Learn to say no.

Make time to connect.

Do some of these things Linda just mentioned.

Enjoy your marriage and do it and connect.

Yeah.

Be aware, be mindful of those red flags like Greg talked about.

So I guess in closing, dear, we got a few little honeydews.

Yes.

Number one honeydew.

Get rid of the crazy, crazy busy, busy, and quit saying I'm busy all the time.

Start saying, I have all the time I need.

We have time and money, but you have all the time, all the time I need.

And the money helps.

And, and it does.

So number one, honeydew.

Ask yourself, are you saying, are you hearing yourself say I'm so busy, or, you know, we're so busy.

Do a checkup from the neck up.

That's a number one honeydew.

Another one would be.

So when you start seeing these things, what actions can you take?

To slow down a little bit.

To make more time.

Yeah.

To reconnect.

Or number three, let me just throw.

Something in on that.

Yeah.

You know, maybe, maybe you can't.

The baseball games and stuff are good for all the kids.

I'm just using that for an example.

But maybe there's times you can work out with some other parents, especially on practice nights or maybe even if it's the game, if you really can't find time.

But to say, hey, we'll take the kids to practice and bring them home.

You guys go out and get a cup of coffee together.

The next practice, if you'll want, do our kids or at least watch them, then we can go out and Starbucks or somewhere and get a burger or something and have.

Get creative.

Yeah.

So ask what ways you and your spouse.

Ask yourself that.

What are some ways that you and your spouse can connect?

You know, and so what a number four.

Number four is, y' all know what's coming.

If you've been listening, it's the ten second kiss.

So what I want you to do this time is when you get ready to have that 10 second kiss in the morning before you head out the door or whenever you decide to do it.

And you can have more than one, but just look at your spouse today and say, you know what?

You're still the one for me.

And then grab their little cheeks, pull them to you.

Which cheeks?

Oh, well, you can all of them if you want so.

But pull their little mouth together and bring their mouth.

Bring their lips to your lips.

Get some contact there and have a.

Serious kid do a connection.

Yes.

Because they're still the one.

Whether you've been married 10 years, one year, or like us getting ready to go on 48 years, you're still the one.

Yes.

Very good.

Okay.

We got to practice that one, dear.

Yes.

All right.

Well, thank you for joining us, and I hope that you've gotten encouraged today in what we shared.

Now listen and chill out more together and we look forward to you joining us next week.

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

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