Same Team with The Freemans

What is Love in a very practical sense? We hear people say "we fell in love" or "we fell out of love"... so what is causing this experience of love? Or why do couples start to feel more like roommates?

As the years pass, it can be easier to fall into what is called "empty love" or "friendship love" and miss the 3rd element of love that we all crave.

So dive into today's episode where you'll hear:

• The 3 components of love

• Variations of relationships that have one or 2 components but are missing the 3rd

• How to maintain "complete love" encompassing all 3 components

Also, utilize our resources to put this into practice:

1. Our "Prioritize Us" 30-Day Couples Challenge is open for just a couple more days.

2. The Family Meeting guide for weekly, quarterly, and yearly check-ins

3. Or see all of our resources are here (including in-person events & coaching)

The one thing that the beginning of a year allows you to do is draw a clear line in the sand. It's a psychological distinction to review your last 12 months and see how well you executed on your game plan. Some do this for work, for individual achievements, as sports teams, and it is very powerful to do for your marriage.

In this episode you will hear how to go through a Yearly Check-in to start off your new year. This will allow you to reestablish your core values, set your vision and goals, and remove any old distractions and barriers that didn't serve you from the previous year.

Resources For Your Relationship:

Join the "Prioritize Us" Couples Challenge starting Jan 1st, 2024 - the 30 day challenge for couples to simplify how to make positive changes in their marriage and prioritize loving actions and respectful communication. PLUS you get the Family Meeting Guide as a Bonus

FAMILY MEETING GUIDE: The step-by-step guide to having your family meeting, with templates for weekly, quarterly, and the yearly meetings. This is the Family Meeting Guide from the episode and it's only $19.

Parenting definitely shifts priorities, but that shouldn't mean we de-prioritize our marriage, right? This week was our daughter's 2nd birthday and we were reflecting on our own parenting journey up until this point.

We know from many couples that parenting really does shift many things in a marriage, even studies have shown that satisfaction goes down in the first 5 years of becoming parents. Though there are so many great positives that also come with being a parent, in this episode you will hear about the challenges that we have faced in the first 2 years, the common challenges other parents face, and the steps to take to better handle these challenges. All so that they do not negatively impact your marriage and you can focus more on all the benefits of being a parent and a great partner.

Resources For Your Relationship:

Join the "Prioritize Us" Couples Challenge starting Jan 1st, 2024 - the 30 day challenge for couples to simplify how to make positive changes in their marriage and prioritize loving actions and respectful communication.

STEPS TO REBUILD A MARRIAGE GUIDE: A step-by-step guide to the process of rebuilding a marriage after a hard and prolonged season of disconnect or hurt. It's the Rebuild a Marriage Guide and it's only $19.

If you have listened to the podcast at all you probably have thought "Yes, I get the importance of validating my partner but HOW exactly do I do that?" Even if this is your first time listening you likely have the same question about how to have your partner feel validated in their experience especially when you do not agree with their feelings or details of an event!

Validating a partner is a difficult thing to do because you will not always see (or experience) events the same way. You also might feel as if they are blaming you for how they feel, which makes it more difficult to validate because it seems you have to take the blame. In this episode you will hear 7 easy actions to take to have your partner feel validated but also understand the real importance of validation on positive influence!

Resources For Your Relationship:

Join the "Prioritize Us" Couples Challenge starting Jan 1st, 2024 - the 30 day challenge for couples to simplify how to make positive changes in their marriage and prioritize loving actions and respectful communication.

STEPS TO REBUILD A MARRIAGE GUIDE: A step-by-step guide to the process of rebuilding a marriage after a hard and prolonged season of disconnect or hurt. It's the Rebuild a Marriage Guide and it's only $19.

All Work & No Play Makes For A Dull Marriage. If you're like most of the couples we talk to, you've been working at overcoming patterns and challenges that have kept you stuck and in frustrating cycles. Many couples even say, "I'm so exhausted" or "When do we get back to more fun times?"

If you have ever seen the movie Moneyball, it's just clicking in a few key aspects so that you can get on a winning streak! In this episode you will hear a brief answer for why you might feel like you're on a losing streak, but how you can use the same ideas to turn it into a winning streak. Then we give you categories that you can take an action in to keep the positive momentum going.

Resources For Your Relationship:

1)Join the "Prioritize Us" Couples Challenge starting Jan 1st, 2023 - the 30 day challenge for couples to simplify how to make positive changes in their marriage and prioritize loving actions and respectful communication.

2)STEPS TO REBUILD A MARRIAGE GUIDE: A step-by-step guide to the process of rebuilding a marriage after a hard and prolonged season of disconnect or hurt. It's the Rebuild a Marriage Guide and it's only $19.

We were not going to leave the men out from last week's episode about what women need in a marriage. This episode is about what men need that is often overshadowed and not expressed. Just so you know, the answer is not going to be sex… we have our own issue with accounts that tote sex as men's only need in a marriage (but you will hear that in the episode)!

In this episode you will hear about the need of Harmony and how that is a key need for men, even if they would not have said it that way. You will hear 5 pathways to practically move into more harmony and how to have men's underlying needs in this area be met so that each of you can be more fulfilled in both the short and long term!

Relationship Resources:

STEPS TO REBUILD A MARRIAGE GUIDE: A step-by-step guide to the process of rebuilding a marriage after a hard and prolonged season of disconnect or hurt. It's the Rebuild a Marriage Guide and it's only $19.

In this insightful podcast episode, dive into the heart of successful marriages and discover a nuanced perspective on meeting the emotional needs of women, a crucial but often overlooked aspect. Women generally prioritize people and nurturing, while men care more about things and problem-solving. This difference poses a challenge to men in grasping the seemingly ever-changing emotional needs of their partners and introduces a vital skill: Emotional Attunement.

You will hear a vivid contrast between what it looks like to be unattuned versus the transformative qualities of attunement. Attunement is commonly absent in many male partners stemming from childhood experiences, unresolved conflicts, and a lack of self-validation. Ultimately, the episode empowers you with the profound understanding that emotional attunement is a cornerstone for creating a deeply connected and fulfilling marriage.

Resources For Your Relationship:

1)Join the "Prioritize Us" Couples Challenge starting Dec 1st, 2023 - the 30 day challenge for couples to simplify how to make positive changes in their marriage and prioritize loving actions and respectful communication.

2)STEPS TO REBUILD A MARRIAGE GUIDE: A step-by-step guide to the process of rebuilding a marriage after a hard and prolonged season of disconnect or hurt. It's the Rebuild a Marriage Guide and it's only $19.

If you plan to be married for a long time, you need to work through hard seasons, course-correct, and commit to make changes. These are the times that you need to take steps to rebuild the marriage and start a chapter. This is PART 2 of the "Steps to Rebuild a Marriage" episode #312 as we got so many messages about this topic.

In this episode we will briefly remind you of the steps to rebuild, which we have shortened from 8 to 6. Then we will dive further into 4 ways that you can easily get off track in these difficult conversations for rebuilding. These conversations are inherently going to be more vulnerable and potentially charged, so you will need to quickly adjust when you feel them getting off track.

Relationship Resources From This Episode:

The brand NEW Steps to Rebuild a Marriage Guide so you can end a hard season and create a new chapter together.

Meeting each other's needs is the basis for a great relationship. This can get complex especially when it comes to the need of intimacy in a marriage, a fundamental need that often takes different forms for men and women. While some men seek physical intimacy to feel connected, their female partners emphasize the need for emotional intimacy.

In this episode you will hear the significance of first establishing emotional safety (in its various forms) before either type of intimacy can be created. Then how each person's need can be accepted as valid and a roadmap for building emotional intimacy through 4 key elements: attunement, honesty, vulnerability, and initiation.

As for physical intimacy, you will hear the keys of emphasizing love deposits, injecting fun, and introducing intentional variety into the experience. You will understand that you can in fact meet both of your needs as they are independent of each other first. The meeting of those needs further raise both the emotional and physical aspects of your marriage.

Relationship Resources (mentioned in the episode):

1) Register for the next "Prioritize Us" 30 Day Couples Challenge and get the Family Meeting Guide as a part of it.

2) Get the Family Meeting Guide on it's own now.

It's not that difficult to show up as a great partner when everything is going smoothly in your life. Being an exceptional partner has much to do with how you show up in the face of challenges and things not going how you planned.

In this episode you will hear 5 ways to be an exceptional partner that will be demonstrated through aligning your words and actions, being responsible for the attitude you bring to the environment, how you show up in support, focusing on the satisfaction of your partner, and your mental and emotional resiliency.

Relationship Resources:

Check out the in-person couples workshop in Arizona Jan 28th. http://thecouplesworkshop.com/

Explore all the resources from simple guides to private coaching. https://www.meetthefreemans.com/links