Patrick and Maddie wrote eight rules, framed them, and hung them on the wall. This is the story of the Martinez family code, where it came from, and what actually changed in the house after they started living by it.

This is a special episode of The Tenacity Podcast, cut from Lesson 3 of the Survive & Thrive course.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Talk to your kids first

0:54 The morning that is already won by nine

2:43 The Martinez family code, all eight rules

5:25 Before the pills, check sleep food and movement

7:25 What actually changed in our house

8:44 My ten year old called the cookies poison

THE MARTINEZ FAMILY CODE

1. We listen to our consciences and serve the Lord

2. We respect each other

3. We control our emotions and don't speak in anger

4. We are thankful and don't complain

5. We exercise and care for our bodies and minds

6. We eat healthy foods

7. We protect each other

8. We do hard things

IN THIS EPISODE

Why safeguarding your family starts with talking to your kids rather than handing them rules. What a Martinez homeschool morning looks like, stretching and a short discussion based Bible study, and why by nine in the morning the important things are already done. Where the family code came from. What Patrick thinks parents should check before reaching for a prescription. What changed in their youngest daughter once the routine held. And what happened when she walked in, looked at a box of Girl Scout cookies on the counter, and asked her dad what it was.

The code came out of reading The Way of the Warrior Kid by Jocko Willink together as a family, a chapter a night, which is where the idea of writing your own code came from.

Patrick Martinez is a life coach and the host of The Tenacity Podcast. He and his wife Maddie work with couples in crisis.

Survive & Thrive is the full paid course this episode is cut from.

PatrickEMartinez.com

She found a divorce lawyer, told her husband she was done, and he finally started showing up. Now he packs the lunches, runs the school drop-offs, coaches the sports and volunteers to bring the snacks without being asked. Everybody in the comments called it a win.

In Part 2, Patrick and Maddie Martinez get into what that story actually shows. Whether a man who changes because he is terrified of losing custody has really changed. Whether she could have gotten the same result without ever saying the word divorce. What happened when they laid out a deck of cards and she ended up holding 73 of them and he held four. And why swapping the imbalance instead of solving it puts a couple right back in the same fight two years later with the names reversed.

The core of it: stop trying to make the list even. Divide it by who is faster, who is better at it, and who actually has the time this week. The goal is a household with less stress in it, not a scoreboard that comes out tied.

If you missed Part 1, watch that first.

More from Patrick and Maddie at PatrickEMartinez.com. Online courses are up now, and Patrick's book is out this summer.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

Patrick and Maddie Martinez react to the viral TikTok where a woman says threatening divorce saved her marriage. They break down why an ultimatum is manipulation instead of partnership, how it can backfire fast, and the honest way to fix an unfair workload at home. Part 1.

Chapters:0:00 The viral "divorce saved my marriage" video0:39 "I threatened divorce and it was the best thing I ever did"2:02 First reactions4:21 Why it's a dangerous play6:02 The honest way to ask for change8:36 Three days off, but half the time with your kids10:45 Patrick's 2015 divorce and the baby in the box14:07 What divorce really does to kids and adults

Free course: "Should We Stay Together?" at PatrickEMartinez.com

Subscribe for new episodes of The Tenacity Podcast.

Compatibility is not chemistry. Here are the five things you have to resolve before you marry someone.Patrick and Maddie walk through the issues that will not sink a relationship on their own, but will absolutely wreck a marriage if you ignore them going in. These are not the deal breakers. They are the things you have to understand, address, and reach a real working agreement on before you say yes.They cover knowing yourself well enough to know what you actually bring and what you actually need, finding someone whose values genuinely line up with yours, setting appropriate boundaries with family and friends, being honest about sexual attraction and where it fits, and handling a personality that clashes with yours instead of pretending it will sort itself out later.If you resolve these now, you save yourself the fight later. If you skip them, you inherit them.Take the course to go deeper: patrickemartinez.com/relationship-rescue/Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else you listen. Search The Tenacity Podcast.The Tenacity Podcast is hosted by Patrick and Maddie Martinez, helping couples move from crisis to a thriving relationship. New episodes weekly.#Marriage #RelationshipAdvice #TenacityPodcast #PremaritalCounseling #MarriageCoach #DatingAdvice #ChristianMarriage

Compatibility is not chemistry. Here are the five things you have to resolve before you marry someone.Patrick and Maddie walk through the issues that will not sink a relationship on their own, but will absolutely wreck a marriage if you ignore them going in. These are not the deal breakers. They are the things you have to understand, address, and reach a real working agreement on before you say yes.They cover knowing yourself well enough to know what you actually bring and what you actually need, finding someone whose values genuinely line up with yours, setting appropriate boundaries with family and friends, being honest about sexual attraction and where it fits, and handling a personality that clashes with yours instead of pretending it will sort itself out later.If you resolve these now, you save yourself the fight later. If you skip them, you inherit them.Take the course to go deeper: patrickemartinez.com/relationship-rescue/Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else you listen. Search The Tenacity Podcast.The Tenacity Podcast is hosted by Patrick and Maddie Martinez, helping couples move from crisis to a thriving relationship. New episodes weekly.#Marriage #RelationshipAdvice #TenacityPodcast #PremaritalCounseling #MarriageCoach #DatingAdvice #ChristianMarriage

Chemistry fades. These eight qualities are what actually hold a marriage together.In this episode, Patrick and Maddie break down the eight qualities that actually matter when you are evaluating someone as a spouse, not just a partner. They split them into two tiers. Tier one covers the non negotiables: honesty as the foundation everything else is built on, humility, respect, and knowing yourself well enough to know what you actually need in a partner. Tier two rounds out the list: compatible values, appropriate boundaries with family and friends, sexual attraction, and personality compatibility, including how to work through the clashes instead of ignoring them.Take the course to go deeper: patrickemartinez.com/relationship-rescue/Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else you listen. Search The Tenacity Podcast.The Tenacity Podcast is hosted by Patrick and Maddie Martinez, helping couples move from crisis to a thriving relationship. New episodes weekly.#Marriage #RelationshipAdvice #TenacityPodcast #PremaritalCounseling #MarriageCoach #DatingAdvice #ChristianMarriage

In this one, Maddie and I talk about something people ask us all the time. How did you two actually become best friends, not just husband and wife?

So we break it down. What it took to get there, why you have to choose your spouse's company over everyone else's, and why the differences didn't matter nearly as much as we thought they would. I even bring up watching our oldest daughter build that same kind of friendship with her best friend, and how much it looks exactly like what Maddie and I built over the years without even realizing we were doing it.

If you want that with your spouse, I don't think it happens by accident. You build it.

Everyone on your feed has relationship advice. Most of itsounds wise, gets repeated until it feels like fact, and quietly does damage to real marriages. In this episode, Patrick and his wife react to a licensed therapist who “de-influences” the viral takes people keep mistaking for truth, and break down why the most-shared advice is often the most harmful.

The trends we fact-check:

1. “If they wanted to, they would.”  Your partner is not a mind reader. Needs you never say out loud turn into resentment you both end up paying for.

2. “You shouldn’t have to change for anyone.”  Keep your core identity, yes. But calling your worst habits “just who I am” stops any relationship from growing.

3. “A healthy relationship is never hard.”  The closer you get, the more old wounds surface. Difficulty is not proof something is wrong. It is proof you are building something real.

4. “Never settle.”  Twisted into always chasing better. There is a difference between settling and accepting that two imperfect people will always come with flaws.

5. “They should be your everything.”  The codependency panic, and why the bigger problem for most couples is living two parallel lives that barely intersect.

6.“If it’s meant to be, it will be.”  Fate is not a strategy. Love byitself was never enough without work, communication, and the willingness to repair.

Patrick and Maddie Martinez get personal in this one. Whenthey were just dating, Maddie had a serious drinking problem, and Patrick had to decide whether to stay quiet or say something. What he did next, and how he said it, set the tone for their entire relationship.

This episode is about boundaries inside the marriage, not with toxic family members, but with your spouse. Patrick breaks down the real story, the exact words he used, and the framework behind why it worked. Maddie shares her side, why she was hiding it, where it came from, and what made her finally willing to change.

What you'll learn:   

• The three-step framework for setting a boundary withyour spouse the right way

•   Why how you say it matters as much as what you say
•  How to present a hard truth without attacking yourspouse's character
• Why attacking the problem and not the person is the keyto a productive conversation
• What a person's response to a hard truth tells youabout whether they're worth marrying
• Why humility is non-negotiable in a lifelong partner

Get the book: https://patrickemartinez.com/tenacity/

Free Relationship Rescue course: https://patrickemartinez.com/relationship-rescue/

Read the blog: https://patrickemartinez.com/blogs

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6cVGSVvvnb0azUoiYy46ff?si=d4869624ce1d4974

Website: PatrickEMartinez.com

Email: [email protected]

Patrick and Maddie Martinez share the system they built out of one of the darkest seasons of their marriage. When they were navigating a criminal trial, a custody battle, and family members who were making things worse, they had to get ruthless about who deserved their limited time andenergy.

In this episode, Patrick and Maddie walk you through exactlyhow to build your own Family and Friends Tier List from scratch. They cover the 8 judgment factors, how to organize everyone in your life, and how to use it to make better relational decisions whether you are in a crisis or not.

What you'll learn:

• The 8 factors used to judge every relationship in yourlife: availability, capability, reliability, stability, support vs. dependance,authenticity, the fun factor, and where you rank on their list

• How to build your Tier 1 through Tier 4 and what eachtier means

• Why humility is the number one quality to look for in aspouse

• How to handle toxic people on your list without cuttingoff hope

• Why neglecting your highest tier relationships in favorof lower ones is quietly destroying your marriage

Get the book: https://patrickemartinez.com/tenacity/

Free Relationship Rescue course: https://patrickemartinez.com/relationship-rescue/

Read the blog: https://patrickemartinez.com/blogs

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6cVGSVvvnb0azUoiYy46ff?si=d4869624ce1d4974

Website: PatrickEMartinez.com

Email: [email protected]