Bring It 2 The Table Podcast

In this episode we talked about should you be content with your spouse just going to work and bringing his or her money home to just pay the bills or do you need more in your relationship?

There are some individuals that feel that they have these demanding jobs and they make a lot of money or more money than you, so you don’t have to worry about things not getting paid but don’t count on them for much else. They may even take these jobs that require lots of traveling to avoid being present in the day to day relationship, but they bring home the money. This can be challenging if kids are in the equation. Or are you the one that says hey he or she can do whatever as long as you don’t find out about it and they keep your lifestyle status at a certain level?

Me myself as a mother and wife that just don’t work for me. Call me greedy, but I want it all. I need you to be emotionally present and help with the day to activities as well as pay the bills.

The question posed is can you be friends with your ex and not let it affect your marriage? It takes boundaries and maturity and clear communication from all parties involved. Now if children are involved then you definitely have to put the kids’ needs first before your personal feelings. You all should be able to get along cordially for the sake of the children so they don’t feel like they have to choose sides.

This episode on family communication touched on communication between couples, with the kids and family members. Both my husband and I had different perspectives to share.

I want to start off with asking the question of do you listen to respond or listen to acknowledge? Myself being the wife wanted to discuss the importance of understanding each other’s love language and apology language when in a relationship. This is key because if you don’t know what your partner considers love and affection to be then you may feel that you are not on the same page or in sync with your significant other at times. My husband and I did the love language test and discovered that his love language is “quality time, followed by touch” and mines was “acts of service followed by quality time”. Once these were brought out it makes more since on what means the most to each other. We also discussed the 5 different apology languages and how if you don’t know what your partner needs to hear then you could be missing the mark and stuck in a crazy 8 cycle. Have you ever wondered why you can’t seemed to forgive and move on from hurt? Well perhaps it is because you don’t feel resolution has taken place because you have not heard what you needed to hear for acceptance to you to so that you can move forward.

Technology plays a big part in family communication these days. Do you text? Or do you make a phone call? Which is your preference? We have created a family group chat with our kids to keep everyone in the loop. Our second son, third of the children created the group chat because he was tired of getting grilled why he only told mom something or only dad something and the other parent didn’t know about it. This was a genius move on his part and have worked out well for us.

Healthy team building family projects are good ways to keep open family communication going. Anytime you can create opportunities for the family to talk is great. We enjoy having family meal time together and catching up with what the kids have going on in their lives. Good communication is so important to have within families.

Since it is the holiday season we thought this would be a great topic to discuss. So the activities that your family do for the holidays would you consider them to be traditional or non traditional?

For my husband and myself we both agreed that we grew up doing the typical traditional activities, but as we got older things changed and we grew into more non traditional activities.

As a couple you learn to create your own traditions and try to carry on some of the things before that matters most to you. You have to also learn to balance your time visiting between both families during the holidays. As well as a couple you should come up with a plan of the order in which you will visit friends and family and where you will stop by for quick visits and longer visits to eat and relax a bit. This schedule will allow everyone to know what to expect.

There are times when certain medical conditions cause you to change up your diet so you are no longer eating the traditional foods during the holidays. Are you can just choose not to eat the traditional foods as a personal choice.

Are you big on decorating for the holidays? If so when do you start decorating and when do you take your decorations down? Do you do it together as a family? Cherish those special moments and memories that you are creating as a family.

Our family like to play uno and phase 10, others listen to old school music, watch movies and go to the movies, watch black and white tv shows. Do you have any special traditions that you or your family do during the holidays? One year we prepared food for the homeless and went out to feed them as a family. No matter what you the time you spend with your family is priceless.

This topic of blended families is near and dear to us as a couple because we are blended ourselves. This was a fun blog to write and we hope that something we share can help someone.

On our podcast show we discussed open communication, mutual respect, love and respect, a solid marriage, discipline

To start out with open communication. We did a poll and asked: what do you feel is the most important factor in having a balanced blended family? Is it communication or bonding and spending time. Well 40% of the people said communication was most important and 60% of the people said bonding and spending time was most important. One of our viewers said that both are equally important to the family. We felt that communication was most important for us and is key to everything. Being open minded as adults and having good communication together from all parties can help with the blended process. Also understanding the kids have a voice in the process and to involve them.

Everyone must respect one another and have mutual respect. Just be yourself and not be fake or phony. Understand that it may take the kids a little longer to come around and open up, but continue to show genuine love and eventually their resistance will decrease and it will all fall into place in it’s natural order. Remember to exercise patience with the kids accepting the blended family and keep the communication open.

As a blended family how do you handle discipline? Well it all should start with you being the couple on the same page. So that requires you to sit down and talk through what it should look like and then present it to the children.

Having balance with a mom and dad is valuable to children, whether you are in the same household, separate households, married, or just co-parenting. It gives the children two different perspectives on the same situation.

Finally how do you handle communication with your ex spouse when it relates to the children? Can all the adults be cordial for the benefit of the children? If this can happen then the children wins. Adults have to not be selfish and take their personal feelings out the equation and do what is right for the children. We shared some basic personal tips on how to work together as a blended family and we shared researched tips from a study on how to plan your blended family.

This topic can be very sensitive for some. Many families have been exposed to this at some point in their lives. The kids voices often times goes unheard and suppressed which can lead to issues in their adult lives.

We began by starting off with the definition of a dysfunctional family. Then ask yourself if you know better, then why not do better? Learning to have knowledge of self means you learn to have understanding of your true history in return may alter your previous way of thinking and acting.

Alot of the way we take care of our bodies and the foods we grew up eating in the African American household have been traditionally known for giving us African Americans high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, and kidney disease. Even with us knowing this we still prepare these foods day in and out for our families which include the children. This is the continuous unhealthy cycle that our kids learn from the adults and later have to deal possible health issues since the odds are so high in this particular culture relating to poor eating habits and lack of exercise.

Now we can touch on the traumatic or dysfunctional things that could have occurred in your childhood life either to you or a family member that you were told to keep quite about, keep hush, brush it under the rug, wipe it out of your mind, convinced that it really didn’t happen, you will get people in trouble if you tell someone..the list can go on and on. Some of these encounters can come from dealing with alcoholism, rape, domestic violence, child abuse, mental illness, drugs, and incest to name a few. If these things are not dealt with early on, chances are you will see some behaviors in the adult life that stem from that suppression. As the wife, I encourage you to have these candid conversations with your spouse or significant other so they can have a better understanding of each other’s background and why you may react the way that you do. You two can learn together how to relate and communicate uneasy conversations and the best positive way to do so. There may be certain things that will require you to sit with a licensed professional to learn how to acknowledge, forgive, express your thoughts, feelings and manage them in a healthy way going forward. There is nothing wrong with that. You owe it to yourself to no longer live in bondage and to break the chains and generational curses and cycles for your children.

This episode talks about do you feel it is okay to go to strip clubs when your married? Also how social media can play a big part in dividing couples due to inappropriate behavior. We touch on the importance in protecting your marriage by being cautious of the behavior and activities that don’t match up with the vows you took. We talk about that and more.

So going to the strip clubs when your married was a pretty engaging topic with our live audience when we taped this episode. There were many different views brought up, so I am just going to dive into it.

First we discussed if you are married you should not be entitled to look at another person in the way that you do in strip clubs because God made the husband and wife to be as one. So when going to these type of atmospheres it invite sin and negative energy into your home. It brings on thoughts of another person and it leads to some people wanting to react on those thoughts.

Someone else brought up that they feel it’s okay if the couple goes together to the strip club.  The problem I see as the wife, is you are both fantasizing of other people and those thoughts should only be for your spouse. So I wonder if you feel that you are missing out on something? Is there something you are missing in your relationship and you have not communicated that with your spouse? You should keep it spicy and role play if needed, wear sexy lingerie and heels, put on your feel good music , learn some lap dance techniques, or even get you a pole in the bedroom. Now this is my opinion, but it goes for both men and women. Keep it fun and love on your spouse and keep it in house only.  

Another point was brought up from one of our listeners on the show stating what if someone is in the strip club to witness? We just feel like yes you can be there witnessing, but is the message really getting heard through all the distractions? This also brings up a good point because there may be some men or women may have to go to the strip club for their job if they are in the music business (artists, promoters, record labels, marketers). If this is the case then communication, trust and understanding is key in the relationship along with transparency to prevent problems in the marriage down the road.

Now switching it up, but still talking about distractions in a marriage, our next sub topic was social media. How can your activity on social media affect your relationship? The first thing come to mind was in-boxing and dm’ing someone for personal inappropriate reasons. If the conversation you are having can not be shared with your spouse then chances are you should not be having it. If you are approached and you are not sure of the other person’s intentions, go ahead and set the tone and your expectations of the conversation up front. If you are respectful and honest then it will be no reason to turn your phone over while in the presence of your spouse, or turn the ringer off, or not friend your spouse on social media.

One of our live audience members asked what about couples talking about sex in these groups on Facebook to other people? Well we feel that this is an absolute violation to attempt to plan a meet up, make a hook up or make sexual advances at at another person while being married. Oh and it is very deceitful if you are in these group pretending not to be married. You must ask yourself, what are my intentions..can my actions lead to infidelity?

Keeping on the same topic, the question was asked what about married couples sharing the same social media account. Why do feel that is? Do you think there is some trust issues involved? Why would you not friend your spouse on social media if you have individual pages? Well we feel that for us it is not needed to only have a joi...

Are you setting realistic or fantasy goals in your relationship? There are some conversations that you should have before entering and while in a relationship before entering into a marriage so that you both can understand where each other is coming from and set some foundation. 

What do you expect from your significant other or spouse? Society has labeled women as being the one who is primarly responsible for cooking and cleaning, but what if your roles are reversed or those duties are shared? As the wife I can cook, but my husband does majority of the cooking since he likes it more than I do. In our house we work together as a team; whoever cooks then the other puts away the food and cleans up the kitchen. We do have two different styles of cooking, I am more a recipe type with instructions and measurements type of cooker. My husband can just cook with feelings and love ( I think this is enough).

Who should be in charge of the finances? Is it the one that is more organized or the one that brings home the most money? Do you all have joint bank accounts? The person in charge of the finances should still communicate who is coming in and going out  to the other party. As the wife, I am in charge of the finances in our household. I am very detail and make list and keep organization. With that being said there are times when I have gotten overwhelmed and forgot something and my husband has been right there to double check that everything has been accounted and paid for. 

Who’s job is it to take out the garbage? This seems to be another one of those things that society has painted the picture that it is the husband’s or man’s job to do so. Well I think men shouldn’t have to be told it’s their job to take out the garbage. They will just do it, however they get busy or may not be at home at the time the garbage needs to taken out. Do you wait or do you as a woman take the garbage out yourself if you don’t have older kids who can do it for you? As a wife, I don’t have a problem with taking the garbage out but I do have a problem with trash hanging outside of the garbage. However, I know there are women that will absolutely not take out the garbage.