The 3 Relationship Habits Every Couple Should Steal

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Commertsbank, the bank and their side. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Parkcast. They, my guests, are Olympic gold medalist, Sean Johnson and X and Afel Pro, Andrew East, a husband and wife couple that are not only a power couple, obviously. They're just some of the nicest, most talented earth people I've ever met. And so she's a true pleasure.

We get to talk all things, relationships, and my marriage, their marriage, and the things that they do, to set themselves up for success. If you want to have the courage to commit, which is the name of their latest book, if you want to have strategies for building a better life and a better marriage, then some things you need to have in place. We talk all about the structure, how do you create cadences to check in with each other?

How do you set goals, all of that, and more, I'll be enjoying it. What I have enjoyed a lot since moving up here and then hearing about, y'all, is that you're just good people.

Like you're just all to the earth, good people.

So I'm going to put that out there. Even though, even though I know, y'all are human, and you're married, and know that you have just as much problems as anybody else. We're all figuring it out. It's like, when somebody says, "Well, you just know all the communication stuff."

And I'm like, "If you only, if you only knew, I can't wait for Sierra sometimes.

“If she was here, she'd be like, "Okay, you remember that time?”

You've been in that argument, and then she's like, "Okay, communication guy." So you can come back to about you, but I'm curious about, so you have Olympian, the Proeth NFL, Proeth Athlete. There has to be this aspect of, like, your whole life has been perfection, and knowing and controlling all the variables.

So I see, like, control being a pretty big thing. If you go, control in my, for my diet, to my practice, to my routine, and then you marry somebody who you can't control at all. And then you make other humans that you definitely can't control. Can't control them.

So how is that, how is that played out in your marriage? Because I think you'll come up on what it's in years. In years, there's a couple of weeks. It's been a journey, for sure. And I feel like there's been an arc to it from the beginning.

Yeah, where we both came out of our professional careers, expecting to control everything, and going to the complete opposite, where I think both of us coming out of gymnastics and football, had a really hard time with the transition,

“because your entire life is basically controlled for you.”

And then all your people leave, your coaches, your dietitians, your psychiatrists, like anything with the professional world. And so you're left to all on your own. And you don't know what you're doing. And we benefited from going through those transitions at different times,

so we could kind of support each other. But it's kind of been building from the ground up from there, with our marriage and babies learning how to build an infrastructure to feel like we have control again, but very loosely, 'cause we can't control each other.

So we're looking and talking to a year 10 couple. Let's go back to like year 2 couple. How was that in terms of control for you, Andrew? I want to do what I want to do, and I'm used to this kind of routine, but there's a lot of this given take that you're living with somebody.

“Yeah, I think people will say that marriage goes in phases,”

and one of the phases is like the power struggle phase, which is super interesting, because we got married pretty young, and I'm really grateful for that. 24. 24.

Okay, we were, we were 22 and 21. Oh my gosh. I'm grateful to have been married down there, because the whole teaching and old dog new tricks. It's a little easier when you're younger to say,

"Okay, what is my rhythm of life?" And we're just transitioning out of the college years, so we're kind of establishing our rhythms together. But there was a lot of conflict and it is confusing. You're like, "Okay, what's the right way to progress here?"

I want to be a good husband. I don't know what that means though. I want to share my perspective while also respecting hers, and that the marriage of the two styles and perspectives is a really difficult process.

We're still in the midst of it, by the way.

Every new child, there's always something changing,

"Hey, actually none of us need to be in control. We're a team, and you have some beautiful things that you bring to the table and beautiful styles that we should incorporate. And so do I, and then let's just like,

“we'll just do a little dance with it all, you know?”

We'll figure it out. I think Shawn was right. It's a journey. It's been a journey. So I'm curious for each of you.

What was a communication pattern that you almost had to unlearn? Once you all feel like you just, I feel like Andrew's looked at me like you dog. [laughter]

There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot. We decided to take on a lot when we got married. And it sounds like that's in Yles' nature.

We went into business together. We became like 50, 50 business partners, newlyweds. Andrew was bouncing around the country with the NFL. It was bouncing around the country on a tour,

which I'm not saying. There was like we did everything. Probably wrong. But communication that we had to unlearn were both very ambitious.

Very driven and we're very stubborn. And learning that we both can't be in the driver seat at the same time. I think was really hard.

We came into our marriage, basically running my own company.

And Andrew came in with all of the ideas and all of the ambition to lead. And for us, our communication skills had to work. And we had to really unlearn how to both take a step back and kind of start something new.

And instead of saying this is mine or this is my idea and we're going to do it. And it was very difficult. I mean, we're still, we're still unlearning that. Yeah.

I first of all, if you're listening to this, and you have not read Jefferson's book called the Next Conversation, it is so good. Thanks, man. And I'm so grateful to have read it.

I learned so much in that. One of the things a concept in there, that a mentor of ours shared years ago, was anytime they'd get in an argument. They'd almost remind each other that we know how this ends.

And that's with us still married. Yeah.

“And so that's, I think that's been a helpful kind of”

North Star guiding concept of like, hey, we are like, we're on the same team. And this is going to be to our benefit. We just have to figure out how to get there. One communication pattern that I had to unlearn was my dad

was a, like, would he love, he was a dreamer. And he loved doing any opportunity that you can get his hands on. But he wouldn't necessarily communicate at all to my mom.

So he would just like, he would go do his thing. And then it would be like, ask for forgiveness, not permission situation, which, you know, Sean reminded me that I need to do a better job at that even last week.

So it's more of the considering on the front end and like saying, hey, what do you think about this? Was just not something that I had too many reps at when we were younger. So I think the, I like the steering wheel analogy like who's going to be in the driver's seat

because there are people listening to this. And I mean, look at us right now. You have different, we're all different individuals. Yeah. And we'll have individual ambitions.

Mm-hmm. How do you also have the collective ambition? Mm-hmm. So do you all do anything collectively to say, this is kind of the goal setting we want?

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Now let's hear it. This is my favorite. Mm-hmm.

When was the first year we did the goal setting?

2018. Okay. Do you know the goal setting? Uh, yes. Annual, yeah, goal setting.

Well, we need a cool learning that we had. We called it like vision casting at one point. Nice. We did try to come up with that name. You see this is not good for the podcast.

Yeah. You thought it. There was a mine map, and I don't know. There was many names. It was a goal setting, but in 2018 we were living in Washington.

He was playing for the Washington football team. Life was beautiful. Like it was wonderful. And we were having a blast. But we sat down and decided to do this goal setting,

which we came up kind of out of nowhere. Andrew's dad, the year before had kind of given us this layout of goal setting. Um, or it had all these sort of categories with philanthropy and faith and family.

And we basically took that, which we didn't do the year prior.

And said, let's actually do this this year. Kind of for fun.

“And I remember we sat down at a coffee shop for five hours and wrote down everything we wanted our life to look like.”

And we thought it was fascinating that both of us at the end of it looked down and it was completely different than the life we had.

We weren't upset and we weren't sad and we weren't, you know, unhappy, but it's not what we wanted. And so that kind of sparked the start of every year. We do these big goal settings where we write our individual goals, our goals together. And then we put them all together to make sure that I know how to support Andrew. He knows how to support me.

We know how to make time for everything that feels important to each of us. And then we do check-ins every week, every month, every quarter to make sure we're kind of headed in the right direction. So what do check-ins look like week? The week.

“So this has been huge for me because I think I get really, I take things personal and like, she got her my feelings.”

If she gives me some type of feedback or is trying to hold me accountable to one of these goals. But what we've done and what the goal setting system has helped us do is like,

we almost have having a third party in the room that's like this neutral third party.

Yeah. And so when Sean gives me feedback, it's more referring to this third party and not referring directly to me. It's like, hey, remember when we did this and you, it's here on the paper that we wanted to go on 52 date nights a year. And we haven't gone on one in like the last three weeks and it's like, and it's supposed to me getting defensive and saying, well, it's because of whatever excuse.

Exactly. It's more like, oh yeah, you're right, that like, we are dropping the ball on that. But the check-ins also help with not taking things personal because it's in the future. You talk about this in your book, like even if it's a 30 minute break, like having something that's on the calendar. I know might be an uncomfortable conversation that maybe she'll give some personal feedback to me on.

I can kind of prepare it for that and I know that I can come in with my guard down and she can come in having thought about the criticism and likewise. And it's like way more of a healthy conversation. It's way less emotional. It's more of like, hey, I've noticed this pattern over the last couple days of us not living up to what we said we wanted to. And what are some ways we could change that?

And it's been so, it has been so helpful and actually inspiring change because instead of me just feeling offended. We're like, oh, yeah, actually you're right. And I'm sorry. And it's a humbling process to have to like take it off the chin and say, okay, you're right. I dropped the ball, but let's change some things.

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100 nights. Cozy earth.com/geverson. Use the gogeverson for up to 20% off. Let's get going. The check-ins, I want to visualize them is it just y'all sitting.

“And at the kitchen, is it in bed? Is it five minutes? Is it two minutes?”

And I know they all look different.

We have different cadences for each thing. Okay. And that sounds strange. Annual golf setting is anywhere from four to six hours. And it can't be in our house.

Yeah. So it has to be like intentional. We have to go somewhere. We block off time. There's no phones. And we do it for like four to six hours. Weekly.

What would it call the weekly? Sunday night. Yeah. Every Sunday night. Before we go to bed after the kids it go down. We talk about the entire next week.

And that's like logistical planning. Right. So that's at home. Obviously just at the kitchen table talking through. Does the week look good?

“Does it look like there's enough time for you to feel like your cup is filled?”

Didn't mean does it look balanced? And does it do we feel like we're on the same page? And then every month we do monthly check-ins. Monthly check-in can't be at home. It has to be at some neutral ground.

So it's usually coffee shop. Yeah. And that's where for lack of a better way to say it. We can bring our grievances to the table. And we're both prepared for it.

So it's kind of like what are your three check-ins or three things I can work on this month that have been either bothering you or Things you've noticed. And I say that to say we still bring stuff up on a daily basis or weekly basis.

But that's where we can both come around the table and say,

I don't think this is feeling good.

“I don't think the rhythm of this habit that we've implemented.”

I like how we talk about the kids with everything. It's kind of an unloading. And that's usually half hour hour. Yeah, it's not. I mean, it depends on the season of life.

Sometimes we're like, I got nothing. But there are people who might listen to this and go, that sounds nuts. It's not nuts. I think what we're about to talk about.

That is committing the same, this is my North Star. This is my goal. And that's what didn't that's exactly what it takes. For me, it's here. We have morning check-ins and evening check-ins.

And what I have learned really helps her in the day is when we talk logistics of that day. She, we like to talk about how we're feeling, which is harder for me than in this for her. Because I can kind of play out stuff. She goes, okay, you're just telling what you're doing.

You didn't tell me how you feel about it. You told me what you did. You didn't tell me how you felt about it. Okay. For the self-awareness of putting a word to your emotions.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But I prefer just say to you of your feelings. And he's a fact.

“And I think that's just, you have to appreciate some aspect of that.”

In some sense.

And then it third is, we both like to hear count what's got to do in your life.

Right now. What did you notice about the day that you're kind of looking on? So we haven't done the monthlies. I think the monthlies is a good one. They're going to add.

My grandparents do this thing. Are they doing annual contract? So they write it out of like what they're agreeing to. And they'll like amend it from year to year. If like actually you're going to be doing this.

I'm going to be doing this. And it's like, do you want to go another round? Like that's. Yep. And so they're able to like point to the contract.

But yeah, they have like a little contract retreat. Yeah. That they do. And it's like, well, you might be thinking this sounds a lot. But if you want your marriage to be a good marriage,

it's hard to do these these little things. Yeah. We, I love the morning and night check in.

We, when we had our second child,

we realized that there's so many tasks to do that. Yeah. That you just kind of get overwhelmed in the next thing you do. You're like, you know, we're just ships in the night as people say. And you're not actually stopping and looking each other in the eye and connecting.

And that, I mean, it can really make you feel lonely. And so we started what we call "bath time" where it's like, we'll put the kids down. And the first thing we do,

it was because we were drinking wine back back then in the day. But we used to put the kids down and then like jump on our phones. And then it's like, yeah. There was this feeling of, Wow, I really wanted to connect.

Yes. My goal here with this marriage, if I zoom out, is like to be fully known and fully loved. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

And we're not really doing that on a day-to-day basis. It doesn't feel like. So we started this time where it's like kids go down. And we have anywhere from five minutes to 45 minutes every night. Where we're just like talking, debriefing, like,

telling me about all the things that happen. Because that is a beautiful part about marriage. We're like, you're a witness as someone else's life. And like, all the little highs and lows in the day. It's beautiful. You're front row seat, man.

You don't want to hear. I used to be when I was younger. Like, so obsessed with like getting things down. Being productive, being efficient. And so those kind of conversations just felt like,

forgive me. But like, a necessary, because I don't know. I didn't see the bigger picture, but now I see how beautiful and colorful that makes life. And I would just love, we get somewhat criticized

because people will say, well, then that come across as two structures and you're losing the spot in the 80s in life. And like the whimsical romance. When you have all these structures and check-ins and these systems and goals.

And in my mind, I would like to be as strategic with my family life, my marriage as I am in business. Yeah. Because I know like everyone talks about, hey, what's our five-year plan and business and what are our values?

And what are our 30-day goals or 90-day goals? Right. At the very least, I want to do that same thing for my marriage because it's like a display of effort to some capacity. And I know that if I don't have those structures or systems in place,

I resort to being immature and irresponsible for my time. I'll jump in my phone, I'll turn on Netflix, I'm scrolling. And then you're like, you know, fast forward five years. You're like, wait, I missed the whole point. Right.

I missed it all. Yeah. Life has lived well when it's built well. Yeah.

“And I think that's the same thing for marriage.”

Yeah. It can be rigid, but like a good piece of furniture. Like you've got to have good bones on it. It can be hard to sit in, I think so.

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Now, milk has been in our kitchen. Now, it looks like a trash can. It is not. All right.

“It's the thing that changes the way your kitchen is going to run.”

We've had it now for probably eight months. Now, only does a whole thing to love it. My kids love it. What is milk? The milk is the odorless effortless, fully automated food or

Cycler that handles the cleanup after dinner is over. So, what does that mean? When you have a plate that's, you're kind of leftovers and you have scraps. You just scrape it down into the milk and overnight the milk turns it into grounds, shelf stable grounds.

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We thought it was going to smell.

It doesn't. We thought it was going to be loud. It was not. Yeah. It's totally covered.

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And now, let's keep going. And I want to make sure, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you all to my community and audience is because of the book that you'll have coming out, which the fact that you'll have written this together.

If I can give you all the props for that first off, it's called The Courage to commit and brace the radical power of sticking with something. And I thought, how incredible because so many times when we

kind of absorb marriage advice, relationship advice, we're always

looking for, I think you said before, like the hack. Like we're looking for that, what's that one little nugget that's just kind of magically changing everything?

“When the truth is the hack is the commitment.”

It is choosing to commit regardless of in spite of knowing full well that, that's what's going to make all the difference. To tell me when you think of the courage to commit, how have y'all made that in your own. I've made that happening in your own life.

By everything we just talked about. Yeah. Truly, like, working through it and working through all the problems. And I feel like it, I feel like everybody knows it, right?

Everybody knows that, to be an elite athlete, you have to commit to a sport. You have to work through the hard days and the grind. And that's a very stereotypical story you hear and people know about it.

We had gone through that and we had lived through that. And yet we still found ourselves with certain things. Saying, we just need to go find, you know, the next thing to make us happy and it's going to fix the problem. The next thing.

Instead of saying, you know what? Let's just work through the really uncomfortable valley. And if we can get through it, let's see what's on the other side. And there are so many times in our life with business and with our kids and even with our marriage.

And they're still well-beat. We haven't mastered anything by any means.

“But we've, I think we're starting to see the through line.”

But it seemed like every time we did that, we kind of hunkered down and said, let's figure it out. Let's get through this roadblock. It just became better and more fruitful and more joyful. And more joyful, more purposeful on the other side.

And I think even in our marriage whenever it starts to get hard, it's like, okay, I'm not going to avoid it. We're actually going to confront it. And we're going to figure out how to work through it. We're going to find, um, I don't know.

Just, we're just going to keep chugging along. There. There's a point of my life after our finished playing football. It's hard to transition out of athletics because it's so intense. And there's, there's such an infrastructure like Sean was saying of coaches and nutritionist

and your workout plan, your diet, your friend group. All of it is in this like really intense or a bit of athletics. And you leave it. And you're like, I don't have anybody hang out with. I don't know what to do with my time.

And in that weird phase after I was done playing. I realized that I was, I was really struggling. Not because I, I had chosen anything wrong. It was just because I wasn't making a choice at all.

I needed to take the next step.

“But I was so paralyzed by trying to analyze which choices the best.”

When really there was a ton of good choices. And it was up to me to like make one good choice. The great choice. And all I needed to do was like. Go with one and walk down that path.

And so we're definitely not writing this book as experts like Sean said. It's more of a, you know, where we're students along with the readers. And it was really fun to kind of revisit some of the stories in our life, where we had done this well and done it poorly. But I, it's so easy.

Especially, you know, in any life transition to get excited by the new thing or the better thing. And I, I would love for the takeaway from this book to be that like, Hey, the maintenance costs are probably going to be lower than the startup costs.

So like, don't, don't be always jumping looking for the next new thing.

Just like, what if you just stuck to this thing, put your head down and understood that there's, there's valleys, there's peaks. And when you, when you accumulate all those, you build this deep meaning at the end of this. When you're like, you've committed to one thing, whether it be a career, a relationship, a hobby, whatever. It's like really beautiful.

“And it leads to this journey that I think has brought so much fruit to our life.”

Sears has something once we were in an argument. Really? Yeah, I don't know. Y'all know about that. And I was, had gotten kind of down about it.

You know, just the old bad scripts of like just hard to see the positive side. And what she said, well, she said, well, either way, it's good. Like, can we get to a place where it's either way, it's good. And then that really just hit me, just to check where in the face. And I feel like this book, The Courage to commit really touches on that type of mentality.

Of, when it takes courage, second of all, it's committing to the goal to the marriage to relationship, knowing that there will be failures.

Knowing that there is going to be the low valleys. And you're going to see the raw, the ugly, the, I can't believe this. But at the same time, you get to learn so much more about this person. Was that feel like sometimes the mistake I made early on? Oh, my loss is is thinking selfishly of the impact to myself, rather than trying to appreciate the difference in the personality of how she interprets it and how she handles it.

Like, what can I learn about this personality and this human and this person that I love, rather than the. Thinking in a zero, some like grabbing the steering wheel back, because you can really do that in conflict too. And for two people that are used to high pressure and, like you said, stubborn. And because I'm sure only one of you all is, you know, it's, it's. You can, you can get in the habit of grabbing the steering wheel in conflict too.

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How do you handle it with this mindset of having the courage to commit?

and the purpose and the fruit of all the hard work we've put in so far.

And then backtracking and explaining how we got here.

“And so I think to answer your question, we over the course of ten years have had such a privilege of failing miserably at arguments and indecisiveness and business failures.”

But we've had such a privilege of every time that's happened, we've tried to go find what we're used to, which is like a really good coach, a really good mentor, a really good therapist. And we've tried to equip ourselves with all of these tools and this knowledge to be able to attack arguments and values better in any phase or category of life. So the hardest part in my favorite part, and I think the answer to the question is, try to take all of that wisdom that we've learned from other people, not that we've come up with ourselves and put it into like a how to and why in the book.

And we've actually dissected how we go about it, how we go about implementing a new commitment and then sticking with it and when it gets really hard and we start fighting about it.

What rhythms and routines we can put into place, kind of protect that and make that argument easier to get through.

And I mean, we've kind of gone down to the smallest example of, we didn't like that our family was watching a lot of TV, but we wanted to commit to not watching as much TV. And then how do we actually make that happen? And we even talked about how we took out a TV, we took out the main TV in our living room, like in our hosting space. And we thought it was crazy and it caused an argument, but then we looked back three weeks later and we're like, you know what our kids aren't asking for it, we're actually connecting more.

“And there's like all of these little examples, but I think within our arguments in our marriage.”

We've implemented an infrastructure of, you know what, this argument has gotten so heated. Over something so silly, let's go back to kind of the tools that we've learned and start there and work our way to. The agreement, I guess, does that make sense? Your question makes me think like that the idea of grabbing the steering wheel back.

For me is always coming out of a place of like this desperation or maybe this urgency of like, oh no, but I can't let you do this this to me right now.

And it makes me think of Sean talks about how she had to do something like 16,000 reps to stick this certain movement on a balance beam, which I think is the craziest. I think that's a craziest event in any sport where you're trying to do backflips on a foreign squad beam. But just this concept that she's not going to get it right the first time and it's going to actually see done I'm going to do it on the balance beam the first time. It's like this growing process and like there's this tri-fail, tri-fail, tri-fail that's not, that's not urgent.

It's over the course of years that you learn this. And when I started applying that concept to how we had conversations, it made me a little more curious to like view it from a third party audience member kind of perspective, like, oh, okay, well, this is just a rep. We're having this conversation. We've had the same argument about one specific topic, which are, which are our dogs. Probably like the same conversation, 200 times. How many dogs do you have? Two now. Yeah.

And where are the names of these dogs? How do we have the same dogs?

“Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm concerned about.”

Okay, we don't go into this. Two go into your is nationally. That's cool. But it's funny. You're like, okay, I'm frustrated. At one point frustrated because it's like, why are we still talking about this?

We've talked about this so many times. And then when you zoom out, you're like, okay, this is just a rep. Like, this is just a practice rep. How can I learn from this? What am I? What am I getting in flame by and what am I saying that she gets in flame by? And then let's next time when we have this conversation, let's just like keep that in mind and we'll maybe tweak that one next time.

Just like she does with her back flip on a balance with me. Oh, let's tweak this and we'll move our, our foot placement here and we'll maybe, you know, rotate a little harder. Let's just make little tweaks and when you when you compound that over time and you give it a runway to do that by committing to something for an extended period of time and not just like, Yeah, one day or whatever, one rep trying to do a back flip. It really allows you to to like see the change happen. So we are you better now.

We are you still often now. But it's like it's with a different mentality of like, it takes the edge off.

Yeah, it's like you you have to sometimes celebrate the commitment.

“Like yes, to be in the moment where you're flooded and you're just you're thinking of all the things that you want to say and then you have to realize like”

And we did not handle this well, we can at least like celebrate the commitment, you know, we can at least have some grace to the fact that we're we're still committed to this and can we at least celebrate that like give us a little bit of kudos that we're still still doing this. Yeah, because I think a lot of people just they hit that eject button really really early when it really just takes. And I'm talking about some deep you better dig deep if you're going to be doing this because you're going to have some stuff that you go.

I know I was not prepared for the way this is feeling.

Also, I have like a liar note of a darker that's why we wrote the book. Yeah, culture is very hard right now where I feel like culture is trying to teach everybody that that's not normal committing. Committing and hardship people I feel like in today's culture keep preaching this idea of if you commit to something then it shouldn't be hard. And if it's not hard, you know you have the right you chose the right thing and it's so off the set of that.

“I think no matter what you choose, it's going to be very difficult.”

But the longer you stay committed to it, the more joyful and the more fruitful it will be. I mean, I fell in love with gymnastics at the age of three and it was so hard. And I even tried quitting multiple times and I would quit for a week and I was like, you know what, I really like it and I really want to go back. But every time I would push through something, you would be more joyful and I just think culture has got it wrong and it's it's frustrating to witness. I think that is so well said, John, to be that we, I do think you're right where if it doesn't come easy, then you shouldn't just really do it, but it's it's not that at all, it's that exact contrast that makes it worse.

Yeah, doing is if everything was easy, then it wouldn't be fun. Yeah, then there wouldn't be, I don't think the fruit that you're way out of it.

And I think if people just keep believing that, then they'll never find anything.

Tell me more. In the sense of like, if someone is searching in business and life and a hobby and a marriage or relationship for the perfect, the perfect easy commitment of whatever it is, you will never find it because you will find yourself in a relationship or a business where you're like, this is so easy, it's meant to be. And you're going to hit your first roadblock and start doubting that you made the right choice instead of saying.

“Break it on. Let me get through it and prove to you that I still love this. And I think that's why people quit stuff so much anymore.”

Some of those parallels between what y'all know to be to have the mindset of an Olympian or pro athlete or whatever, and then now applying those things kind of principles to marriage because it's another thing of like gymnastics. You said gymnastics as hard as you're not doing marriage. Marriage is harder. I remember once somebody I was on the trampoline and I was going to try and do a backflip and you just got to commit. But I can I can have to believe that hearing from y'all that yeah being the top of my my world was hard marriage is harder.

Yeah, marriage is a lot harder. You're taking two different human beings and trying to figure out life together and we change a lot every year every day with every kid with every business. You're taking a lot of things. And you know they're talking about it's important to be uncomfortable it's like do if you want to be uncomfortable and be your best self marriage. That is like every day you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you got someone else.

This is uncomfortable and I feel like this is the guy saying that or guys that are not that man says like hey you get married and have some kids and then come back to me.

And then come back to me. But it makes better. The courage to commit.

“I'm really proud of y'all putting this message out. I think it's a message that needs to be said and I think it's a book.”

You know they talk about books that come at the right time. And the right way and I think this is this is spot on this is a book that people need to hear myself included.

Lots of couples and you know, it really is. It's not just the commitment. There's also the courage part.

That is not easy and you took a lot of courage to write this book and put this up is y'all could have written about all kinds of different things. But y'all, y'all wrote this. I'm excited to share this with my community and thank you also much for sitting down and talking with me. Thanks for having us. Do you mind if I close this out and share one last visual here. Yes. I know I know I'm sorry.

“One big I don't take us over time here. I'll never forget watching Indiana Jones and there's this scene where Indiana Jones is on on this cliff and he's trying to get to the other side.”

And to get there he has to take this leap of faith. Yes, I have a courage like step in to what he's been told is this invisible bridge to the other side. And to me that's what I hope this book inspires is like, hey, you know like you don't know you can't tell for sure until you jump in and you like come on in the water's fine. You know it's like you have to take this step you have to take the leap of faith in order to get to that other thing to get to the other side where that's relationship like the meaningful business built build that thing.

It's like you have to take the leap of faith and you have to have the courage and then you have to put your full weight down on that thing. And and anyway, I appreciate you you have an a song. Yeah, communication guru saw this been a real trap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep that guru thing out there. I do want to make sure and ask this question, who when you think of who you wrote this book for or the people that come to mind. I was going to tell you can look at me and see her for one is you.

I mean I'm a mom the very first thing I came to mind is like my kids in their future.

But anybody stuck wanting to feel probably just more purpose in life which sounds crazy but we have so many friends who are. Shopping for the perfect person and there's I know a friend who's probably brought three different potential partners to us over the past eight years.

“Who all could have been so wonderful. But people are so afraid of making the wrong choice and I think you need to start being obsessed with.”

Making a choice and figuring it out and that's just not what culture wants us to do right now. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.