The Modern Mormon

Love and Marriage

February 17, 2022 Kami Satterlee Season 1 Episode 26
The Modern Mormon
Love and Marriage
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode I talk about what love is. How we create it and apply it to our marriage. I show that your spouse's only job is to be there for you to love them. That a successful marriage is one where you don't need your spouse you choose them. 

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You're listening to the modern Mormon, Episode 26. Hey there, I'm kami Satterlee. And I'm the modern Mormon. I'm an Advanced Certified Life coach who's dropped the all or nothing approach to life, and religion. I can't wait to show you how. I've got you, girl. Let's go what's up guys how we do in today's topic is so good. It is so juicy, full of all the things love and all the things marriage. It's February, it's Valentine's week, I thought what a perfect time for this topic. So we just celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday, and my daughter Malia was chatting with me after school. And she brought up a topic she said something really bothered her that morning, something she noticed at our Valentine's breakfast. Apparently, I had made a cute Valentine's Day breakfast and I was in the kitchen finishing up kind of the last touches. And my husband Steve was sitting on the couch looking at his phone basically doing work like he always does. But for some reason this really bothered her today. So she was so annoyed that he wasn't helping me, which is hilarious. It is so funny to me, because I was all smiles for once while cooking, I despise cooking. But I didn't even notice what he was doing. I was so wrapped up in my own excitement, my own love for Valentine's Day. It didn't even cross my mind. And, you know, as she's telling me this, I'm kind of smiling. But I also held back from letting her know the secret to marriage. And that is that mom is behind every holiday, not just Valentine's Day, dad kind of just shows up, but whatever. Hence the reason that we call them Disneyland dads every time that we're venting with our girlfriends, you know, but I love this opportunity to show my girl that whether dad came and helped out or not, was not relevant to my experience. So I knew I was capable of making the entire breakfast and setting up Valentine's Day by myself. But I also knew that whether he was helping or not, I would still choose to do it. So I wasn't gonna let him you know whether he's there or not there ruined my experience. And I explained that to her and said that this is the beauty of marriage, you get to let the other person be 100% themselves. All you have to do is love them. Everything else is a bonus. Anything that they do, don't do whatever, it doesn't even matter to what you're trying to create and the relationship you're trying to create with them. And naturally, this was really hard for her to wrap her brain around. I think just, you know, when you're young and thinking about getting married, someday there's just this fairy tale in your head about this doting husband. But as you get older, you realize that the doting husband, or the lack of the doting husband, is really kind of what creates the problems, right? I mean, if you have a husband that doesn't dote on you, what does that cause for you, you have to be confident in yourself to be able to get all the things done, right. And that's kind of the way my marriage is, is my husband's not very hands on with me. He's not very like, Oh, let me help you with this. It's more of like, Yeah, you're good, you can do it, you're fully capable. That doesn't mean he doesn't help. It just means he has the mindset of like, I'm not a little princess and a dainty flower by any means. And I used to hate this, I used to get so mad and think that he was always trying to be my dad, or teach me or whatever. And what I realized is this is the greatest learning opportunity for me, because what it's done is it's established so much confidence in myself, that now I don't rely on him for anything I know, I'm fully capable of getting things done. So anytime that he actually does choose to help, it's just a bonus, it's just so much fun. Now, I didn't always believe this, or know this, or even live by it. Like the past Kami, I would have had a checklist of all the areas that Steve dropped the ball. And if it was Valentine's Day, and he didn't help you better believe that that would have gone into my mental checklist of all the areas, Steve dropped the ball. And then I would drop a bomb on him anytime that we would argue or anytime disagreement arose with like this entire list. And over time, I realized we would have the same arguments. And I would continue to have the same expectations, and then get let down again and again. So I thought in order for Steve and I to work, I either had to be what he needed me to be, or the only other option in my head was that he just truly didn't love me. Because if he's not doing the things that I want, then that must mean either there's something wrong with me, or he just really doesn't love me because that's what husbands do, or that's what they should do. Right? It never actually occurred to me that I could meet my own needs. I was always told no your love language is this and then it is your spouse's job to meet that love language. So for years and years, I would scream, I need quality time I need touch and then I would never get it. Coaching finally taught me the brilliant idea that love is meeting your own needs. And that one person when they meet their own needs has the power to completely change an entire marriage. So recently My husband met up with his college bestie. He came in town and they hung out for an entire day, doing whatever guys do eat, drink catch up, but his friend is single has been single forever. He's never been married. And he told Steve that he looks around and everyone that's married seems to be unhappy, unsatisfied, just sort of enduring it for the kids complaining about their wives all the time. All of that. He said, he Well, he basically asked Steve, how do you and Kami work so well. And I loved my husband's response, because I feel the exact same way that he does. He said, It's because we don't need each other, we choose each other. Simply put, now there was a time when I absolutely needed my husband, I thought, thoughts and expectations that my husband should bring me flowers, he should help with kids, he should make me a priority. Take me out on dates, he should tell me I'm beautiful, and support all of my decisions. And all of those shoulds Yeah, they sound wonderful in a fairytale life. But let's be honest, there is not a single guy out there that can ever do all of those things. And if he is, then he's the needy one. He's the one that's screaming for affection and screaming for approval. So all of those shoulds kept me relying on him to make my happiness and my confidence and to build me up. In doing so he never met those expectations, of course. And so because of that, I was always so miserable and insecure. So I would work and work trying to please Him and be what he needed me to be in hopes that he would kind of swing a compliment my direction, and I would magically feel secure. It's weird, that never actually happened. For sure, he would compliment me sometimes, but my brain never accepted it because it was never enough. Because I spent my time trying to be his perfectionist wife in authentic, I didn't truly know who I was. So not knowing meant not loving. You can't love yourself, if you aren't being yourself, your brain doesn't know which story is true or which one to believe. In our marriage, we choose love for ourselves. First, we take care of our own needs, then act from that love towards the other person. Love is staying in alignment with your soul. And I truly believe this, you really have to know who you are in order for this to happen. It's not people pleasing. It's not you know, oh, everything's so wonderful and butterflies and just kind of lying to make somebody feel good. Love is sometimes saying no. And it sounds like I love you. And no love is letting that other person be exactly who they are. There's always a choice in love and marriage. Just like with everything else I teach that you are a 100% in control of your experience that you create. And I know there's some of you out there that are like, no, this doesn't apply to me, if you only knew what my husband does, or the things that he doesn't do, then you wouldn't feel the same way you wouldn't be saying this. And I promise you that I 100% would aside from you know, physical, verbal abuse or any type of addiction that's going on within your marriage. Everything else can be fixable through just changing your mindset. So a lot of times we think that somebody else needs to take action, they need to do things for us so that we can feel love. And the thing about this is that you actually are not feeling that other person's love. You're not feeling love, like through their body into your body. That's not how it works. What you're feeling is, you're thinking thoughts, that oh, this is so wonderful, I'm so glad that they're doing this, I love them so much. And then it gives you the emotion of love. And when when you feel the emotion of love, the actions you take towards that other person are also out of love coming from that emotion. And then that therefore connects you to. And this is so good to know. Because if you can feel love, you know, just by your thinking, then you also have the option to feel love at any moment, no matter what your partner is doing or not doing. So knowing that love is an emotion that we are creating. It also shows that our relationships with another person are simply our thoughts about that person, that your relationship exists only in your mind. And this kind of tripped me out at first when I learned it because it almost feels a little like whoa, I can't believe that I don't want to believe that because in a way you kind of want to attach yourself to a different, you know, another person, especially your spouse, but it's also freeing, and you feel very in control knowing that you simply can have any relationship you want with anybody that you want, regardless of who they are, what they're doing doesn't matter. And that love is always an option. So love feels amazing. And it's so interesting. If we always have the option to feel love. Why don't we choose it? If given a choice, most of us would choose to feel love towards somebody else over any emotion, but yet we still consciously choose to not we choose to attire X affectations to their behaviors. And then we feel disappointment, we feel anger, we feel frustration. So in our marriage when our spouse doesn't meet our expectations, we use that as an excuse to feel bad. This doesn't make any sense. We create rules that set us up to feel negative emotion instead of something amazing. Now, it's not to say that we don't want to feel frustrated, angry, disappointed, sometimes we do. But when we realize that, that is a choice that we are making, that we are consciously choosing to think a certain thought about that other person or our spouse, it also puts in perspective of all the times that we are just kind of defaulting to those negative emotions and that negative thinking again, and again, when we get stuck in these patterns within our relationships. So when I finally was understanding and learning this stuff, I was using it in my marriage. And when these issues would arise, the first thing I would ask myself is, how do I want to feel about Steve right now? And I A lot of times would say, you know, my brain would say I want to be mad, and it's like, do you really want to be mad? Is that what you're after? And no, I'm not after that. Okay, then what is the thing that you want to feel I want to feel love? But I want him to do this, okay? Why do you want him to do this, because then I will feel a different emotion, right? The reason we want anyone to do something or not do something or why we do it, is because we're trying to feel a certain feeling. So the more that I did this in my relationship, and I just every time that there was an issue, I would constantly do this, I was training my brain to realize that it was a choice. And then also, you know, intentionally choose to feel love. Because the reality of it is, every single person on this planet, your spouse included, is unconditionally lovable, regardless of what they do, or what they don't do. So when I'll ask my clients this, and I'll say, you know, how do you want to feel, sometimes it's really hard for them to understand that they get to create anything that they want. And they'll say things like, Well, I don't love him, because he's not taking out the trash, or I'm not feeling love, because he's, you know, doing this or that. And the truth is, your choice not to love is only hurting you, it's not hurting your husband. A lot of us think that when we love somebody, it somehow benefits that person, but it does not because they don't feel our love. So we then get locked in the idea that we can't love that person because of what they did that they almost don't deserve that from us, I'm not going to give you love, because you're not doing X, Y and Z. Okay, so now that I've described a little bit about love, the emotion of love, I want to kind of go through the ebbs and flows of marriage. So my husband and I have been married for 16 years now. And in our marriage, in the past 16 years, I've noticed that there are some highs and lows. And I did a podcast on the seasons of life. And I actually believe that there are seasons in marriage as well. So just like in the seasons of life, you know, when you are in summer, everything's pleasant life is going good, you would describe your marriages, maybe an eight or a nine, because there's always room for improvement, but honestly can't get any better. Everything's just wonderful. And then in winter, it's like, gosh, we are so off, you notice yourself like saying, Oh, I just hate him at different times, you know, and you getting so frustrated, you notice the same pattern start to come up. Same arguments, okay, those are more of winter. And what I've really noticed about Steve and I is that when one of us is kind of personally going through something maybe winter, we start to see it in our marriage. And I love that quote that says marriage isn't hard life is hard, because I kind of agree with it. Like if everything in our life was just great, it would be so much easier to just love your spouse and have a wonderful relationship. But when things are happening, and you know whether that's like a changing body, or your job, something's happened with your job, it takes a toll on your self, it takes a toll on how you're loving yourself, taking care of yourself showing up for yourself. And basically, you know, whether you're feeling confident or insecure, and what I noticed for both of us is that anytime that we're feeling insecure, it's almost like we start to take it out on the other person. And that's where in our brain it starts to be, well, you should be meeting my needs because I'm feeling an emotion I don't like and so I need to go somewhere with this i I'm feeling rushed to get out of it. And so I'm going to point my finger at you and blame you for it. And I love just kind of the awareness of this in general because when you can understand that there are seasons in marriage, then you can understand that when you are in a winter season, that you understand that spring is coming. And it's going to get better that this is just you know, one of those times in your life that things might be a little disconnected and you got to figure it out. It's a growth opportunity. instead of saying like, Oh my gosh, this is the end or having thoughts of like, I would be happier with somebody else. I think it's really important to just kind of say out loud, Oh, I see what's happening here. We're in winter, this isn't a big deal. We've done it before we can get through winter. But I also like the idea that understanding the seasons of marriage, you can be in fall and think, you know, things are pretty good right now. But also have the awareness that, you know, winter is coming. I'm a big game of thrones person. So I'm gonna say that winter is coming. And knowing that it's not a time to like worry that something's going to happen. But just understand that the just this a wonderful part of life, to be present in the moment, enjoy where you're at, in your marriage, because he just like anything else in life, there's going to be hard times. So for years and years, I mostly came to my husband being like the insecure one, thinking, Oh, my gosh, we're doing terrible. And I noticed that when I'm insecure now, I think our marriage isn't good. But when I would ask Steve about it, he'd be like, Yeah, I think we're doing great, which would always blow my mind, I never understood that. And now I realized that because Steve and I are kind of in a place now where I have done all of these, you know, coaching and mindset stuff, and all of this, and he's done coaching before, it was just more in a business sense. So I'm learning all these tools. And as I'm doing that, I'm building my own confidence. And as I do that, obviously, you know, I don't need him, you know, to do those things for me. So he's seen a shift in who I am. And he's seen kind of it, you know, the changes on how that's affected our marriage. And I would say, for the most part, it has been awesome, right? I'm not relying on him. But then there's also this kind of adjustment period where when anything kind of changes, it's like the patterns that we have always been stuck in, in our marriage, the good ones, but also the bad ones. When even that starts to change, it's kind of like, wait a second, what's going on here? Right, I'm starting to change the story that we've always told. It's like a big plot twists all of a sudden kami can you know, fend for herself? What's going on here? But it has kind of shifted us a little bit. And we've had to have major discussions. And now kind of Steve's on the other end, looking at me, like, wait a second, this is not how, you know, our story's been going. And it's been super awesome. It's been amazing, you know, growth for both of us. And it's really brought us together. And because of that we can finally be at a place where it's like, no, we're good. We meet our own needs. Steve's only job is to love me, my job that I have is to love him. That's it. And when you can fully embrace your spouse that way, were you 100% allow them to do and be anything that they want no expectations whatsoever. It is so amazing how, like, your marriage just blossoms. It's so fun. And because we both own who we are, and we own our own stuff, and we know that we have each other's backs. But we also mostly have our own back, when we have discussions when we talk about like things that we would like to see. And we kind of implement like requests of things. It's very non confrontational. It's kind of just matter of fact, like, Hey, you want to do this? No, okay, cool. I know, I'm going to do it anyways. But it's fine. And you don't even tie your emotions to whether they're going to do it or not. You don't have to be mad, you don't have to choose frustration. You don't have to do any of that. It sounds kind of frustrating if you're stuck in it, and you really want your husband to perform in a certain way. But I promise you that when you let go of those expectations, allow him to be and do anything that he wants. And you just decide that you're going to show up for yourself, you're going to love him, you're going to love you. Everything changes in your marriage, you're happier. And I promise also, your husband will want to start stepping up and doing those things because he doesn't feel forced, or he doesn't feel that expectation. There is no greater feeling than taking responsibility for your own happiness. And when you figure out how to change how you feel, then you don't have to change your circumstance. You don't have to change your spouse. You can if you want to, you can always have the freedom to do that. But you don't have to in order to feel how you want to feel. You don't have to wait for them to do something to feel love, or to feel confident or to feel like your marriage is amazing. So unconditional love. It doesn't mean unconditionally approving of somebody's behavior. It just means that you don't tie your emotions to that behavior, that you're choosing to love them regardless of that behavior. Because the truth of the matter is your spouse is doing or not doing something and thinking that they should do it is just basically fighting against the reality because they are doing it or they are not doing it. And if you do want to be married to them, you will be doing this and having the same fight and doing the same dance for the rest of your life. When you can just drop the expectations and you just add it and requests, when you can stop tying your emotion to them. And what they're doing or not doing is when you can fully just have the most incredible relationship, and not just for them. But for you, all of those requests that you want them to do for you, is because you want to feel a certain way, but you also have the power to feel that way. By doing those things for yourself, you can build that confidence, and you can build that security and that love for you. And it doesn't need to be for somebody else. And this is what makes relationships amazing when you can just let that person be and just love them. Now, some of you are like, well, I don't want to be married to a husband, that doesn't help. I don't want to be married to a husband that just sits on the couch all day. And the question that I would then have is, okay, then don't. But the fact is that you are choosing to be with them, because you haven't divorced them and you haven't left them, right. So it's still that same arguing against the reality, I want them to be different. And I'm telling you, when you can just drop it, clean the house yourself, take care of the kids yourself, if that's the issue, and you just keep doing that, then you will get to a place for love for you and love for them when you accept them. And then from that place, you really can decide if I want to be married to a person that doesn't do this. And maybe the answer's no. But then if you leave, you're not leaving from frustration and hate and disappointment. You're leaving with love for them. Like you're totally good 100% of the way that you are, and I love you and no. Okay, that's the simplicity of this. Because if we're blaming our spouse, for our own emotions, and saying like they didn't do X, Y, and Z, which is why I feel this way, then what happens when you leave or you divorce is you take those exact same emotions into your next marriage. And they might look different, the circumstance might change, or the husband might do, you know, he might clean the house and not you know, sit on the couch or whatever, but maybe he does video games now and that frustrates you or maybe he does something else. It's all the same. And so you just want to you know, lead with love and you want to leave with love if that's the case. Love is a choice. your spouse's only job is for you to love them. That's it. They don't have to do anything. They're just there for you to love them. Choose love First, choose love for you first, and then your spouse. If you're ready to drop the all or nothing in your life, than I would be honored to be your life coach, head over to the modern mormon.com To start your journey and becoming the confident authentic and best version of you