Marriage Mindset During Motherhood

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my lovely friends. How we doing today? I’m so glad and happy to be here with you. It’s just crazy how different this pregnancy has been. There have been of course, similarities like, the first half being, uh, full of nausea. But in terms of my focus and my purpose, everything just feels different and I feel so incredibly energized and aligned and dedicated to both my family and at the same time my clients and my business. It is wild because prior to having kids, I don’t think I would have seen this as even a possibility.

As my capacity continues to grow, I’m just so grateful, to my past self and to these tools that I continue to use that have really, really helped me. And so it’s just been a lot of fun. I’m in the middle of my first round of the Mastermind, and I have to say I absolutely love working with women in this new container. It has been just amazing. We go so much deeper because there is just a more high touch, environment that we’re a part of. And seeing transformation after transformation in this space has been so impactful for me as a teacher and coach. So all of these things, combined, even though it is, um, nearing what will be the end of my pregnancy before I know it, don’t blink, right? I, I feel, feel just grateful and appreciative and excited for this next entire year from a family perspective and from a business perspective.

So that’s what’s going on over here. How are you? I hope that, you’re doing well. I hope that transitioning into, you know, the school year or this next season is going okay for you. I know that transitions bring about all sorts of things and, you know, that’s just, that’s just part of it. It’s just another opportunity to utilize these tools. As I like to say, if you’re not following along on Instagram over at mom.onpurpose, I did give a life update, a couple weeks ago now. It was like the beginning of August, around August 10th, I think. Think if you’re looking for the post. So if you want to follow along with more personal stuff, I’m going to try to, post more regularly over there. You can catch up with more details about what’s going on with me and, and my life and, how these tools have really been helpful and all of the other things going on that, that you find on social media.

But today I want to talk with you about marriage mindset during motherhood, and I’m going to answer a caller’s question. Just a reminder, make sure that you are on my email list. This is where you can get tips and tools to improve your life and help you thrive in motherhood and beyond. And you can reply to any of those emails that you get from me with anything you’re struggling with, and it’s just a really easy way to get some free help. You can go on over to momonpurpose.com/subscribe, and all you have to do is type in your name and email and you will be signed up. You also can leave a message on the podcast hotline at 8 3 3 3. Ask Nat. That’s 8 3 3 3 2 7 5 6 2 8. I have been loving listening to and reading all of the questions that have come in, and it’s been just a really kind of fun transformation of the podcast to be able to answer questions here. So, with that, let’s dive in to today’s question, which says:

Hi Natalie. I’m wondering if you can help me with my marriage. We’ve been married for 10 years and have three kids together, ages three, five, and seven. Our marriage is going okay, but there are a few challenges. First, we parent in a completely different way. He’s harsher and more authoritative compared to me. I follow most of your parenting advice. So it’s more of a connected approach, but also with holding boundaries. The second thing is it often feels like we’re just roommates. He doesn’t take me out anymore. It just doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of romance. And third, there are many moments where I find myself just irritated and annoyed with him. It seems like it shouldn’t be this hard. I’d love for my marriage to feel more connected, romantic and intimate. How can I create this given the busyness of life? Thanks so much.

All right, let’s dive in. Marriage is one of my favorite topics to teach and coach on because I like to think of it similar to motherhood insofar as it’s a container to apply the tools to work on yourself. I think almost like for a greater good, it’s like having a goal, it’s having a purpose. It’s having something outside of yourself that is just such an amazing opportunity to, work on yourself. And I, I think there are other things, other containers you can do this through like setting a goal to lose weight or, you know, building a business or, you know, any of the other kind of, traditional goal setting or career opportunities we think of. But I think it’s worth mentioning here that motherhood and marriage are, you know, two of I think, the best and most fulfilling and also sometimes most challenging containers to do this work in.

So I commend you for writing in and I definitely have some tools that can help. The first suggestion that I have is to tell yourself what you want. It’s really easy to ignore wanting what we already have. It’s easy to want things we don’t have. But when you want what you already have, it puts you into a much more abundant place where there’s momentum forward. So in this case, tell yourself, I want to be married. Wanting your current spouse will shift the way that you’re thinking and feeling about him, regardless of what’s going on in your circumstances. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve coached who say I’m married to this great guy, but it’s sort of like the marriage is just a fact and it’s not an active choice in the way that we tend to talk about it. And I think when you talk about it in the sense of what you want in the future, it creates such more connection in a really helpful way. So instead of, I’m married to this great guy, but tell yourself I want to be married to him. So I like to say I want to be married to Steve, I am married to Steve, and I want to be married to Steve. This is just a great way to feel connected in the moment without doing anything else.

The next question that I pose to you is to ask yourself, what do you want to change about your marriage focusing on you? That’s sort of the caveat here. It’s easy to want to focus on changing your spouse and there’s nothing wrong with you for wanting to do this. It’s natural, but it’s ineffective and it can kind of make you a little bit crazy because you can’t change your spouse. So if you’re focusing on yourself and focusing on what you bring to the table and how you show up, what do you want to change? What do you like that you’re doing? What do you think you can improve upon? What do you want to do differently? These are all variations of the same question, but they really help you create solutions to some of the challenges that you are facing. If you think about every challenge that exists, every problem that exists, there is a solution for including the challenges that you are having in your marriage. And so what are some of those solutions? Focusing on the things that you can control, it’s a really empowering way to take ownership of the marriage that you are a part of and that you are creating.

I think it’s helpful to shift out of the mindset that it feels like we’re just roommates, because you will look for that to be true and you will create more of it. And even if it is true, it’s not what you want to create more of. So instead of focusing on that thought again, even if it’s true, your thoughts are always valid shift to a more empowering thought like how can I increase emotional connection with my spouse? Like, what am I doing to feel more connected to my spouse? That is going to put you in a different way of thinking about your spouse so that you feel more romantically connected to him regardless of what he does or doesn’t do with it. This will help you tremendously.

Now let’s talk specifically about parenting in different ways. Why is it a problem if your husband parents in a different way than you parent? And oftentimes when I ask my clients a question like this, they think what I’m implying is that it shouldn’t be a problem. And that’s actually not what I’m implying at all. I simply want you to answer the question for yourself, why it feels like such a problem for you, because this will help you become more aware of what’s going on for you, like what your mindset is, what your, thinking about with respect to, you know, how husbands should be, how your husband should be, how he should parent. You probably have a lot of unintentional thoughts that your primitive brain is coming up with that haven’t been identified, that are really getting in the way of creating what you want in your marriage, which is more connection and intimacy. And so answering this question could be really helpful to kind of peel back the layers. And the question is, why is it a problem? Why is it a problem that your spouse parents different from you? And just see what your brain comes up with. And then ask yourself if you’re willing to be married to someone who parents differently then from how you parent.

I am not coaching you obviously. So this is just my thoughts, but I do want to offer how I think about this based on my experience because it is so freeing. Instead of thinking that my spouse and I should be on the same page IE, that my spouse should have the exact same views as I have. I think that we are supposed to parent in different ways. I think that my kids are supposed to have the exact mom and dad that they have me and Steve and we bring different amazing qualities and we each bring shortcomings and what a gift it is to them for them to be able to see and witness all of it. So I just tell myself that my kids are supposed to have a dad who parents this way, and I’m supposed to bring the different way of parenting. So in your case, it’s my kids are supposed to have a dad who parents in a little bit more of an authoritative way compared to me.

And they’re supposed to have a mom who parents from a more connected approach who’s, you know, really good at holding boundaries. This puts you into accepting and respecting your husband. This is so important for marriage. Now, out of the moment, if you want to talk about parenting with your spouse, go for it. Make requests all day long. I’m here for that. But you gotta clean up the way that you’re thinking about your spouse first because how you make a request and how you talk with your spouse will be very different if you haven’t cleaned up your thinking. So if you are judging your spouse thinking that your way is better and his way is wrong, then when you make a request for him to parent differently, it’s going to come off disrespectfully. It’s going to come off very judgmentally, it’s not going to be received well.

No one likes to be told, Hey, you’re doing it wrong, do it my way. But if you respect your spouse, if you truly believe your kids are supposed to have the exact dad that they have, including all of his amazing qualities and all of his shortcomings just like you as a mom, then from respect out of the moment, you can talk with your spouse about parenting. If you want to. Kind of like you would talk about it with a friend, you wouldn’t be judging your friend. You might be offering your friend some ideas that you’ve used that you’ve really liked and talking about it in a really respectful conversational sort of way. This also comes up a lot in coaching with other caregivers. So I’ve coached a lot around either nannies or grandparents or other people who take care of kids and parent in a really different way.

And one of the thoughts and mindsets that really help me is to believe that my kids being exposed to different types of parenting is okay. And my job is to focus on being the best parent that I can be and not trying to control their experience of other people because it turns me into a crazy person if I’m trying to make sure everyone else is parenting in the way that I’m parenting. And most of the time the the biggest influence will be from, you know, who’s taking care of the kids right at home. And if that’s you and your spouse in this case, then that’s amazing. Then half the time or more potentially, I don’t know what your childcare is like, but if you are the primary caregiver half the time or more, they are getting to see the impact of you being the type of parent that you are.

And I would just focus on that. I know a lot of times, we get really kinda scared and anxious about our kids’ future challenges based on any examples that they see as a young child. And I just want to offer to you that, you know, my dad was an alcoholic and by no means would I put him in the category of like a good dad, right? And yet I didn’t grow up to be an alcoholic. In fact, I don’t drink and I have a very healthy relationship with alcohol if I ever wanted to start drinking again. And seeing, you know, a lot of the impact of alcoholism on my family of origin really helped me become who I am. Now, I’m not suggesting that we do not try to prevent, you know, hardships for our kids to the extent that that’s possible, but to the extent that it’s not possible, like in this case, it’s not possible for you to change your husband. So to the extent that it’s not possible for you to remove the challenge that they may face of experiencing a more authoritative dad, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s for sure bad and going to lead to problems and challenges later. I like to think, of course my kids are going to have challenges. I don’t know what they are. They’re probably going to be very different than I’m anticipating. And my role as mom is not trying to prevent them from ever having challenges, but instead to help hopefully prepare them for those challenges.

So allow your spouse to be a different type of parent. And out of the moment if you want to talk with your spouse about parenting from a really respectful attitude, I think that can go a long way. The next kind of mindset that is closely related to this is to have the mindset that we’re on the same team. And this goes to both your first and third point. So not just with parenting different ways, but also with respect to feeling irritated or annoyed. If you are sharing head of household with your spouse in the way that you know, my spouse and I are partners, I like to think of it as we are, you know, the managing partners of the law firm. We are the two owners of the company, we are the leaders. And a lot of times, you know, you’re just looking to that other leader in a place of opposition instead of in a place of collaboration.

And that’s where we can get into trouble. And I think little irritations and annoyances can grow bigger for no reason. And it just takes managing your mind a little bit more carefully. So what do I mean by this? In a very practical sense, throughout the day, just remind yourself, my spouse and I are on the same team. And whatever the challenge is, is the challenge in front of us. Instead of, you know, it’s me against my spouse. This will give you a completely different perspective. You will feel so much more connected and have this like team oriented mentality and feeling that will impact you, right? This is what that’s about, but also it will have a really positive impact on the rest of your family as well. So just remind yourself, we’re on the same team. It’s me and my spouse on the same team, navigating whatever challenge is in front of us.

Whenever you do feel annoyed or irritated as the default brain will create those emotions from time to time, even after doing this work and having that same team mentality, what you can really do is make sure that you are taking ownership of your feelings. So I’m feeling irritated, I’m feeling annoyed, and that’s okay. It’s just part of being a human. It’s not my husband’s fault, it’s not my fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just the feeling that I’m feeling. This is really important because it’ll help you separate out your identity from your feelings. So instead of identifying as an irritated wife or as an annoyed wife, you identify as a connected, respectful, happy, loving wife, who from time to time feels annoyed or feels irritated. So name the emotion, attribute it to a feeling, and take ownership of that. When you delegate your emotions to your spouse and blame your spouse for creating them, you disempower yourself.

I mean, it’s hard enough for us to keep ourselves happy, putting that onus on our spouse isn’t fair and it doesn’t work and you, you already know this intuitively. And yet I think just out of habit and the way that we were raised to believe erroneously that other people create our feelings, this habit perpetuates itself over and over and creates a lot of problems in marriages. So take responsibility for how you’re feeling. Don’t blame yourself, but also don’t blame your spouse. I’m feeling irritated. Alright, let’s do some irritation. This is a lot of what we do in the membership is learning how to just feel the feeling instead of changing our thoughts, trying to not be a human, trying to be a robot. It’s okay, I’m just going to feel irritated. You separate yourself from the feeling and it’s not so bad. It’s like after a hard workout where your muscles are sore, it’s uncomfortable, but you know it’s going to pass.

It’s not a big deal. You sort of massage it, you will allow it. You might take a break. Same exact thing for your emotional discomfort. You can just get really good at practicing feeling irritated, practicing feeling annoyed, knowing that it’s something that you are creating with your brain. And that’s okay because that’s just part of being human. I can’t tell you how helpful this has been for me because I used to blame, you know, whoever it was on my negative emotions that I thought was causing it. And then when I learned this work, I would then blame myself. And instead of blaming either myself, which leads to shame, or the other person, which leads to judgment and disconnection, I just allow it. There’s no blame, it’s just a feeling. I’m feeling irritated, I’m feeling annoyed. That’s just part of being human. And I allow it.

And through this process, I then take better action so you can feel irritated or feel annoyed, and you don’t have to take action from those emotions that probably aren’t going to lead to you as your best self or you as the wife who you want to be. Esther Perel is one of my favorite relationship experts to learn from and follow, and I definitely recommend her work. And she talks about the difference between two polarities within a marriage. And on the one side there’s the feeling of home. There’s the feeling of security, there’s the feeling of safety. And on the other side there’s the feeling of mystery and seduction and they’re opposites. And this can be a really helpful spectrum to think about because you know, if you’re anything like me, you probably want that feeling of home and safety and security, and it sounds like that’s what you have, but it also sounds like it might be weighted too far that way where you’re talking about how the romance doesn’t feel like it’s there as much.

And so what you want to bring back in is some of that mystery, some of that seduction, some of that, you know, sexiness, for lack of a better word, and thinking about it as a spectrum. And you can see where you’re at on that spectrum can really be helpful for, long-term healthy marriages. I think back to when I was single and dating and most of my dating relationships were way too far on the side of like mystery and seduction and unavailable men. And I picked up on that because of the way that my, you know, parents’ marriage was. And that was the example that I saw. And so that was quote unquote normal to me. And so you hear this a lot from people who have experienced, you know, unhealthy or toxic relationships, particularly growing up, that the feeling of home and safety feels kind of boring.

And that was something that I did on my own journey and really overcame. And now it’s like the most amazing thing. And at the same time, I too like to have romance. And so there is this spectrum that I think about and I kind of learned that tool a long time ago from Esther Perel sort of made it my own and the way that I’m talking about it here. But the gist of it is to just think about kind of those two aspects in a healthy marriage. And if you’re too far weighted on one side, you know, you might want to lean into creating a little bit more of the other side. That can be really, really helpful. The last tool that I want to leave you with is something I suggest writing about. Write about the kind of wife that you want to be.

I want to be a wife who a lot of times we focus our thoughts, our visualizations, right? Like what we’re imagining our spouse will be like in the future. That’s a visualization. Our prayers on changing another person. And I just don’t think it’s helpful because it sort of implies that we know what is best for them. But I believe that everyone has their own God-given agency and I have no idea what is best for them and what is best for them is different than what is best for me. And it’s based on our own agency and our own, you know, soul’s journey. And it’s really none of my business trying to control that. And so instead of spending time in your mind, we’re in prayer or in journaling, thinking about how you want the other person to change, even if it sounds like a lovely thought.

And oftentimes they do sound like lovely thoughts. For example, you might think a thought like, oh, I hope he gets better at, not yelling, oh, I hope that he learns how to be a more connected parent. Oh, I hope that he starts to take me out on dates. These sound lovely, but the way that it’s articulated comes out disempowering because it’s focusing on something you can’t control. So instead of hoping the other person is different than they are, it’s accepting your husband exactly how he is. This is the Steve that I married. I want him to be the most Steve, Steve, he can be. I want to be married to him. And what kind of wife do I want to be? I want to be a wife who, and it creates space for you to get really intentional about how you want to respond to the spouse that you have instead of reacting in the moment.

So instead of reacting to your spouse’s parenting in the moment, how do you want to respond? The difference between responding and reacting is everything. It’s not that with responding, you’re ignoring it, but you’re also not trying to control it and you’re also not, you know, blaming it or getting mad at it, right? A lot of that reactiveness comes from that primitive brain, the activated nervous system. And so journaling out of the moment, doing this work out of the moment, getting coached out of the moment inside the membership, all of that helps you respond and show up as the person who you want to be. It’s such an empowering way to experience, uh, your marriage. And I do want to give just a little shout out to the marriage and relationship toolkit inside the membership. You get immediate access to it when you join. It is a complete game changer.

I’m telling you, if you want to work on your marriage, if you want to work on boundaries, if you want to work on communication, this toolkit has tons of lessons in there and journal prompts and ways for you to really increase intimacy and connection. There is also a class called Connection and Marriage that I taught that is a member favorite and it will really kind of blow your mind in what is possible with you just doing the work on your marriage without your spouse ever needing to do it. I tend out of 10 recommend it. You can go on over to mompurpose.com/coaching to sign up and get immediate access to both of those. Alright, my friends, so amazing being with you here this week and I’ll talk with you next week. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to mom on purpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.