Hi, I’m Sean McGuire and I wanna to welcome you to the New Vision counseling.live podcast, episode number 14. Now, recently we’ve been going over a lot of John Gottman’s research work and I’ve been helping you make it relevant in your life. John Gottman and his marriage lab on OKC Christian marriage counseling and marriage therapy and all that he brings has really discovered a lot of the key ingredients over the years. 30 plus years of what makes marriages successful and what are the things that make marriage destructive. And I want to go over, I’ve already gone over four of them in previous podcasts. So if you haven’t gone through those podcasts, listen to those podcasts, maybe you should stop, or at least after you listen to this podcast, go back and listen because they’re really helpful to create habits that will, uh, make an amazing marriage and then continued to sustain an amazing marriage and the process.
So I’m going to go over the first four and then jump into number five. The first one is parties. How, what key ingredient into this to make an amazing marriage? Well, number one, how we say goodbye matters, kiss a hug, find out something about your spouse’s day. Number two is reunions. How do we say hello? How do we greet? Do we make our house a place that our spouse or a personal relationship with wants to come home too? Are we bringing the life with us or we bring in the stress of the day, the drama, the problems into our home? Really go over that in that podcast about how to say hello after being gone all day. The third is appreciation. How do we show appreciation for the person that we say we love our we affectionate? Do we use our words? This is a really big deal and an antidote for part of what destroy his marriage was his contempt and criticism.
The fourth key ingredient to creating an amazing marriage, and we use this a lot in OKC Christian marriage counseling, is affection. How do you show affection? Do you consistently show affection? Are you blocked off from showing affection? We dive in deep and that episode and then with no further ado, the fifth key to creating an amazing marriage. The fifth key, and by the way, all these keys taken about six hours a week. Now he said that’s too much time. Well, since the average American watches five plus hours of TV, and I’m not sure if that includes a social media, but five plus hours of at least screentime in front of the TV. Man, you can for sure take not even two full days of what you would do in front of a screen and invest that into a spouse. All right? Key number five is date night, date, night, date night.
Wait, did you get that date night? Date night is crucial for what you’re going to create and sustain in marriage easily. What are you talking about? I don’t have time to date night for date night and I would ask, why did you get married? Did you get married and have a roommate? Did you get married because you wanted to figure out how to argue about why you didn’t put the toilet seat down or the cap on the toothpaste, or maybe you just wanted a roommate to spend or to share bills with. Well, maybe that’s sad, but maybe that’s what you started with. But I don’t know anybody who started there. I know that people started in marriage because they thought they could create an amazing life together and they can have his reign and they wanted to say yes to forever on earth together through marriage.
So that’s what I think will impact your life. If you remember the dream of why you got married, then you’ll start to align your priorities and make it possible. Now, for those of you have littles, little babies, little kids, and maybe no family or people you trust around, you adjust this to doing some of these activities in your home because you know this will apply to all rhythms and seasons of life. You just have to be creative depending on your season. So I love this because I know I got married because I wanted a date, this beautiful five, nine athletic who would help my kids be able to dunk, which you can laugh. But that was part of the funny thing is I wanted a son that can dunk a daughter. It wasn’t so important for her to be able to dunk a basketball. But um, and she was funny.
She was loving. She loved God. She was incredibly, incredibly, did I say this incredibly intelligent. Oh, and by the way, she was a knockout. So, so that’s who I married. That’s why I got married. I didn’t marry the one I thought I could live with. I married the one I thought I could not live without. It’s a good rule of thumb. Don’t settle guys and women and I want to date her. I wanted to date her man when we first stated I would write her notes, buy her flowers and oh, this came so naturally. So naturally all the feelings and emotions I had were great. Loved it. Unlike any period of time we’ve had since we’ve been moments, but naturally when we were dating, we had all these endorphins flooding our systems. She’s going to meet all my needs. He’s going to meet all my needs and my dreams will finally come true through the covenant of marriage.
Those of you who are married, no, that is called the honeymoon period. Then reality sets in and date night is an amazing time to reconnect, to dream and to start bringing back these feelings, bringing back these thoughts, bringing back the romance because on date nights it’s like going on a Disney cruise or going to Disney world. You say, what does Mickey Mouse have to do with my marriage? Goofy maybe, but not Mickey mouse. Well, great question. Disney brings magic. It brings a magic and wonder of childhood to anyone willing to surrender themselves to what they have to offer to the magic, to the characters and the step into that likes space again. Now I want to usher in through dating a time in your relationship when you guys did flirt, when you guys did kiss long passionate kisses, when you guys did pinch and resole and go on dates and be creative and take adventures.
Have I said enough to warrant marrying somebody for life? Come on. I mean your date in dating for most of you were spectacular is something about it you thought you could live with that. There’s always the people that are outside that swing and maybe you got pregnant or something like that. But for most of us, we married out of choice. We married because we wanted to be with that person. This only takes two hours a week. So you can start this by redesigning your schedule to fit this in. First, structuring your schedule to fit date night in as a big rocks. I mean you put in first and you go on dates. What do you do? Well, great question. Imagine you’re young and free again, 19 it doesn’t hurt to get out of bed in the morning by dating. You can create this reconnection to the past and healthy way, but not stay there but, but, but start there and then build on it today as mature people are more mature people and a lot of ways, but maybe kids today with resources you didn’t have when he started out thinking about it.
No one told you what to think about each other. No one forced you to spend time. No one made you have fun. You did these all naturally at the beginning. So we’re going to open up spaces to naturally do that again. So when you schedule a time, you go on these dates, you start to create the fairy tale again, but you’re doing it diligently through your steps, through taking actions to prepare. And we already have the four keys that we’re implementing and they only take minutes a day to get you to enjoy these date nights cause you do those mean date nights will be so much better. Longterm. Some rules for date nights laid out. No hot topics on date nights. What did I say? No hot topics Sunday nights. This is not a time to deal with the worst part of your life. This is a time to create romance, to create spectacular, to dream.
Also be curious about your spouse. Ask about their day. Ask about what’s going on in their job or career and dream in your future with your kid’s dream and your future with the house. What color do you want to paint the bathroom? Do you want to go fire engine red? Do you want to go bananas and Wallpaper it you? What do you want to do to the backyard? Do you want to have a paradise backyard? And then first and foremost, make your goal to have fun and connect deeply. How do you do this? You say, Shawn, we don’t even talk throughout the week. How are you expecting us to do deeply? Now granted, some of you, again, OKC Christian marriage counseling is your next step. For sure. If you are way down the tubes and you’re on life support or you’re just struggling and need help, go to newer version, counseling.live.
We have a team of therapists that meet Mary Biblical principles with cutting edge counseling techniques that would love to join you in there. Your story today, wherever you may be, OKC Christian marriage counseling and Oklahoma City marriage counseling and Edmond marriage counseling around the world. We can consult any way we can serve you. Please give us that opportunity to reach out to us today. If that is you or maybe you have a friend, share this with them. It will be impactful if you do so. Have Fun. Go to dinners. You know, before we got married, we went fishing all around. We went fishing a lot. I had a boat. It was my dream. We had fishing and my wife love fishing. Turns out guys, she loved me and fishing was just part of that. Remove the honeymoon phase of our life. Guess who doesn’t ever let me spell.
If you ever, now that we’re married, go fishing with me anymore. My wife, she doesn’t go fishing worm in Florida. She hasn’t go fishing lumber in Edmond, Oklahoma City, Yukon Mustang, nowhere does she go fishing anymore. She used to go to our neighborhood pond and watch where our kids were. Little but, but sadly, no longer does she do that, but, but go to lunch, go to lunch in the park printout, date, night questions. You know, some of them might not be appropriate, but most of them are. They give you a list of date night questions to ask and don’t make it your goal to get through all the questions. Make it your goal to have fun without it’s hard line expectations of how your spouse needs to act and how you need to feel, but just to get to know them on a different level. Again will be profoundly important.
Guys, do I really have to pressure youth through OKC Christian marriage counseling, but another podcast to date your spouse? Do I really have to pressure you to have fun? Seriously, I’m not telling you to talk about hot topics telling you not to. I’m not telling you to go talk about your finances. I’m telling you not to. I’m simply saying, create margin in, make the dates happen. Why did you get married? Dream about this. Let your spouse listen to this. Share this with your spouse. This is a loving move that will affect your marriage. Look, and in all transparency, this has not been my strong suit because man, I love my kids. I love my wife, but my wife will not age out she was. She’s been my wife forever, which is why I need to take care of my marriage now, but my kids are so snuggly and loving and amazing.
Then I’ve allowed them. Oftentimes she has to, but I take ownership because I’m called to lead in in these ways of allowing them and dating them and doing things with them as a family to take precedent. Over the one on one time. And I will just tell you, it makes a profound difference when you don’t have somebody else talking over with in the conversation and having to consider what they’re thinking and what you’re saying. It just does. It’s the difference between, it’s really the difference between going on a date with a group of friends and that experience and then going on a date with your spouse and being able to have sex. Not to be graphic, but the reality is you cannot have sex around your friends. That’s an intimate part that is only reserved for your, you and your spouse. So I say that to say you can’t have certain intimacy with your kids around with others around only through date nights to pull this occur.
Guys, I hope this is amazingly helpful. Uh, we’ve gone over the six five of the six keys to creating an amazing, amazing marriage. John Gottman, marriage lab, marriage counseling, it’s guys a stead. His research has really helped inform a lot of what I do, not all, but a lot of, some of the key ingredients that I use and he’s at profound, profound as Advi success or, and I’ve been doing this over 25 years and I’ve seen so many couples really flourish when they include these in their daily rituals and habits. So remember, if you need more than this, please go to nuvision counseling.live. Reach out to us. If a friend needs this, a family member, you’re probably thinking, my spouse needs this. Share it with them and invite them to start the process in whatever way they need, whether it’s counseling friends, or just talking with you about it today.
Also, it’d be a great favor to us if you would share this podcast if you would share our new vision OKC Christian marriage counseling, Okc, Facebook, Instagram, because we want to really broadcast the word that God can change your life today. We want to broadcast that you don’t have to stay stuck because our vision is our mission@nuvisioncounseling.live is we hope you discover what better looks like for you and then equip you with the tools and resources to create it. So do that. And also Google reviews if you can review our website as well. That really helps if we’re serving you as, as in this capacity really helps if you guys can go there and review because that helps people to know they can trust us and that what we do works, what we do impacts their lives. And really this is just us following the great commission of making disciples and setting people free to live loved and to love what they live. God bless and I look forward to seeing you guys are talking to you again really soon. Create an amazing day.