The Steve Nam Podcast

All right, we are back at it. Tonight we're going to be talking about preventing marital drift. What do you have to say about that, honey? One way is to do a podcast together, actually.

That'll keep the bond alive, or you can just air out your grievances in front of everyone else. I've been reading this book, and the intro chapter is about how to course correct. Because if you're not intentionally moving toward each other, there's going to be a drift.

And it just can't be helped. It's not like you can have the best intentions, and you can want to have a strong marriage, and you can love each other deeply, but life happens. And so, there's just a natural drift that occurs unless you're course correcting.

Yeah. Do you think that people just drift because time passes, and you get complacent, and you get busy, and you just forget to do the things you once did? Is that generally how it happens? I think so. I think it's all of it.

It's not one thing that causes it. But yeah, complacency, comfortability, maybe taking for granted of, and then just life. Things get busy, and life gets hectic, and your priorities change and shift.

Yeah. I think sometimes there's also, in communication, there can be conflict. What once used to be fun to connect is not as fun, or becomes, you realize you start developing these maybe dysfunctional patterns of relating with one another where it's, okay, if we connect tonight, or at least try to connect tonight, it's not going to be as fun.

And so, I'd rather go, whatever, watch TV, watch a movie, play some video games, just get my mind somewhere else other than connecting with my spouse. And maybe there's a bit of a dread that happens with that, because I can feel like connecting with my spouse means we have to talk about our finances, and I don't want to do that. Yeah.

That's not fun for me. There might be a sense of dread about that. And because you know that conversation is like a recurring thing that you have to talk about, you don't want to get into it, and maybe you want to avoid it.

Do we have an example from our own life where there's been drift because of this thing, or- Where there's been drift? Putting you on the spot a little bit. Great question. I honestly am pressed to find one, but we enjoy the time that we spend together after the kids are asleep.

In fact, it's probably the only adult connection that we need to talk to someone who's not a kid. But I'm sure that during seasons where work has gotten in the way, or just deadlines, or different- Newborns? Working on, yeah. Yeah, newborns, exactly.

Everyone has, you just have a job to do that doesn't necessarily include your spouse, and so maybe that takes you away from spending time together. Can you think of a time for us? Yeah, I would say probably newborn life, and even just busy seasons of life when kids needed to be dropped off, and there was work, and there was- But yeah, I think the reason I feel confident to talk about this subject is because I would say that we are pretty good about preventing a marital drift in the sense that we do spend a lot of time together. I think that's the secret.

That's my hack for tonight. Spend a lot of time together, and by definition, you will not have a marital drift. Simple enough.

No promises. Yeah. Spend enough time together, and then guarantee marital drift because you run into conflict, and- Drifting happens when you lose touch, right? You don't know each other as well.

You don't talk as often. You don't reconnect as much, and that's probably when the drift happens. Yeah, that's true.

I think we've laid out enough just how drift can start. How are we supposed to find our way back? There's been a gap in the communication or the bonding. One of the interesting things I was reading is it was saying in the book that 1% of your day is about 15 minutes.

It recommends in the book that you spend 15 minutes a day with your spouse, which I don't know. Is that a matter of little people? I'm not sure. It sounds doable, I think.

Doable, right? 15 minutes. I think the important thing about that, though, is it's 15 minutes of enjoying being together, not 15 minutes of here's- We've gone through our entire days, and now it's time that we have to be together for 15 minutes, and so we have to go through all the things that we need to get through tonight. Who's going to pick up who tomorrow? Where are we going to be? What appointments do we have tomorrow? What are you going to take? What am I going to take? It's 15 minutes of enjoying each other.

I don't know. Whatever that means. It's not just a 15-minute check-in at the end of the day to say what's tomorrow going to look like, and this is what you need to do, and this is what I got to do, and this is what I got to add to my calendar, and this is who we got to see, and this is what kid one, two, three, four needs.

Nothing like that. You're saying nothing that has to do with furthering some kind of agenda other than just the agenda of spending time together. Yeah.

Okay. I don't know. In my head, I just thought, what would I enjoy doing in that 15 minutes, and to be honest, I'd probably like to watch some TV.

You're saying you had 15 minutes at the end of the day? Yeah, what I would enjoy doing, but I think that's not what I'm talking about. It's 15 minutes to actually connect. You're saying not to connect over watching TV together.

You're saying just one-on-one talking. Yeah. Communicating.

There's a lot of ways to communicate. Sure. It doesn't have to be all verbal.

I'll let you run with that, but 15 minutes of one-on-one bonding, of relating, so to speak. Oh, my goodness. What? Yes.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I think that, yes, 15 minutes sounds doable.

I'm not wrapping it up here, but would that be the practical action step if you have drifted or having trouble finding time to connect? Yeah, I think so. See, this is hard because 15 minutes for me would definitely not be enough. Currently, we spend, let's say, okay, count of three.

Say how much time we spend together on average a night. What's your feeling of how much that is? Ready? One, two, three. Two hours.

Okay, good. That's good. Okay.

Yeah, okay. Which is why we don't sleep, but yes. That also affects our sleep, and we're working on that.

In terms of the time that we have together, just us talking or sharing a meal and just- Catching up on the day. All that stuff. Yeah.

We're at two hours, but I do think that, and it's not every day. Again, that's an average. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less.

For someone who is just finding it hard to find time together to meaningfully connect, start with 15 minutes a day. In that 15 minutes, how do you do that? Because sometimes it might feel so foreign if you haven't done it for a while. Well, I was just about to say, I think that sometimes there might have to be an awkward conversation like, hey, I'm missing you.

I think it would be good for us to spend some time together. Can we carve out 15 minutes a day? What would that look like? Are you interested in doing that? Yeah. Yeah.

Versus just saying, you need to talk now. Here's our 15 minutes. Yeah.

We haven't talked for a long time. Sit down with me for 15 minutes. You could, depending on how desperate and hopefully your spouse recognizes the need, if that was a plea of yours.

On the flip side, I think on the one hand, you can start a conversation with, I've been missing you. Let's spend some time together. On the flip side of that, I can also imagine some scenarios where you're like, I've got stuff to do.

I've got a life to do. I've got some sleep to get. I'm not actually missing you.

I've gotten into a rhythm of my life without spending time with you. It's worked for me. I've been doing my thing.

Adding you into that 15 minutes may not be super high on my priority list. Yeah. Yeah.

And as maybe real as that sounds, at the same time, if you're in that place, I think it's, so you're saying that you don't even have 15 minutes to spend with your spouse at the end of the day. What do you have? Where's the relationship there? You're in a marriage together. And of course, if you're in that place where 15 minutes doesn't even sound appealing to you, a meaningful 15 minutes of bonding, which again, I think is doable.

But at the same time, I also understand if the desire is not there, there's likely some deeper issues there. But at the same time, what we're talking about here is how do you just start that again? How do you get going again? And so the practical step is to just tell your spouse, hey, I'd love to connect again. I'd love to bond.

I'd love to talk to you again. I'd love to spend some time together again. And that may feel unnatural I think at first, right? If you've gotten out of the habit of doing things that connect you to each other.

But yeah, it's a practice in feeling a little uncomfortable and seeing how that may change things. Yeah. Yeah.

It's okay. So you come up to your spouse and you say, okay, let's do this 15 minutes. So that's set.

They're like, all right, let's do it. And again, if you haven't been doing it regularly, it's going to be like, what do we do now? So where do you go from there? It's a good question. Are you asking me because you're thinking of something or because you don't have an idea? Oh, there's plenty of things you can do, right? Yeah.

No, I know. I just didn't know if you were thinking of something. But so one of the things that we do with our kids at night is we ask them rosebud thorn and- And we do that with each other as well.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's a good conversation starter.

Rosebud thorn meaning? Rose is what was a good thing that happened in your day. And a thorn was something that was not a great thing that happened in your day. And a bud is something that you're looking forward to, something that's on the horizon.

You don't always have to have thorns necessarily, but I think we do try to find some kind of rose, even if it's a small one, just to practice gratitude together or thankfulness. Yeah. Yeah.

We're just getting a conversation going. Conversation starter. I've seen if you're really hard-pressed to find some ideas of how to talk to each other, there's plenty of these conversation starter packs for couples or for marriages, just little flashcards that you can just have handy and just pull a random one and ask each other the question.

And then that's then the following day in your next 15 minutes, you can say, how did that thorn work out? Or that bud that you're looking forward to, did it go the way that you planned? Or it allows you to continue the conversation the next day too, if you were listening. Yeah. Yeah.

Now let's say that maybe you're like, okay, I don't really want to talk for 15 minutes. Is there anything else that you can do for 15 minutes? One thing I'm thinking of is really you can just say, hey, can we just sit together? And maybe it feels awkward to, I would definitely recommend being off your phone, turn off the laptop, just all devices should be gone. And just even if you have to sit in silence, get used to being together again, get used to having that physical presence there and looking at each other or even not looking each other, holding each other's hands, just doing what you probably used to do when you were first dating.

And when you were first, when you were once in love and believing that you can get to that place again. Yeah. So what are the benefits of this 15 minutes? Like at the end of the day, you do this for, I don't know, two months.

I think that if you are willing to get into that uncomfortable space where currently maybe you're not really spending a meaningful 15 minutes a day together. And all of a sudden you just start getting back on the bike, so to speak, getting back to the gym and just putting in those reps, putting in those minutes. It's not going to take long if you have a positive experience of 15 minutes a day where that's going to start to grow and where you're going to start to say, hey, this isn't bad.

This was productive. This was, this felt good. This felt like what I used to know.

I think the other thing too, is that kind of connection allows you to give each other grace in a lot more areas of your life. I feel like the conflicts that seemed insurmountable or the things that you really didn't see eye to eye on, or just the times where you miss each other are going to be less and less because you've had that time to connect, get reacquainted with each other, enjoy being together again. It gives you maybe a more positive outlook on your relationship in general.

Yeah, totally. I think once you start doing this, you will, again, let's focus on making it a positive experience where it's not about agenda. It's not about even just your own, your feelings of hurt or anything like that.

That's not even the time necessarily to talk about that at first. You'll get there. But in the beginning, just have it be a time where either it's just neutral, where you're just together and that's what the focus is on, or it's positive and where it's just saying something like, hey, I really miss being together.

I really want, I really believe that we can get back to that place. If you have nothing else to say that would be productive, it's okay. I'd just love to spend some time with you right now.

Can we just be together? Yeah. I think remembering that 15 minutes might be a lot or a little to somebody. For me, that two hours works for me.

He probably needs to get some other things done in life, but I'm like, I need you for two hours. I love that time. You might say 15 minutes is still in your love tank already.

I love having that two hours. Maybe finding a happy medium at some point of what works for you, because very likely there will be one person that desires or craves more time and maybe the other person maybe doesn't need as much. Finding what that balance is for you to feel connected and to be together and reconnecting, maybe even unwind together.

Yeah. To your point earlier that you were just saying, I think once you do this and you start seeing yourself, let's just say after one, two, three, four, you're like, wow, for the past few days or for five times this week, three times this week, we connected where we literally never did it before. I really liked it.

I think our marriage is actually resurrecting, is actually getting to a better place. It won't take much. If you are in a space right now where you really have rarely connected and you're finding it hard to have some good, positive, meaningful connections, once you start doing it, you're going to say, why didn't we do this before? You're going to say, wow, this made all the difference.

This was the highlight of my day. I can't wait to do this again tomorrow. You're going to want to start connecting again.

I think even as I say that, I'm picturing someone who's not in that space and just saying, okay, that sounds nice. It sounds doable to do 15 minutes, but how do I make sure that this is really going to be a positive? Because if I had 15 minutes of positive connection with my spouse for five times this week, I know that would make all the difference, but how do I make sure that it doesn't go back to, why do you not take out the trash? Why are you always on your phone? Why are you watching football all the time? Why are you whatever? I can't help myself. What do you say to encourage someone who feels like they want that, they know that could make a difference, but they just really can't believe that they can get there? They both can get there.

It starts with an attitude of humility in a sense, or even just a sense that you're not going to take this time. We've said it before, but not having an agenda. We're not taking this time to change the other person.

We've even said a good question to ask would be, what can I do for you? What would you like for me to do for you? How could I serve you? Approaching it with an attitude of wanting to serve the other person versus what can I get out of this? At the end of the day, if I put in my 15 minutes, what am I going to get out of it? As you're saying that, I'm just thinking of, I know I laughed earlier when you said, how can I serve you? I think a great way to serve the person and actually at the same time connect is to just, let's start off, let's set the stage here. Honey, can we spend 15 minutes together today? Say yes. All right.

Great. We're holding hands now. Physically, it's a signal to both of you to say, we're going to try being in love right now.

Then the way to serve each other, I think a great way is to just ask the other person, how are you doing? Then quiet, listen, lend an ear, have nothing to say back. No judgment, just allowing them to talk and share and speak what's on their heart and express themselves. I think the other person's job too is to not have it be about themselves.

For example, for you to not go and try to tell me about all the stuff you wish I was doing again. Then when that person is sharing, not trying to fix that, not trying to tell them what they should be doing, but literally just listening. Sometimes listening is the greatest act of service that you can give to that other person.

I think especially if you haven't talked for a long time together, when you come with the other person, the first thing you want to do is listen. Take turns in that, listen to the other person, say nothing. Hopefully they'll ask you back.

Hopefully they'll say, how are you? How are you? If not, which I often forget to do, then you'll just have to keep listening. Yeah. Hopefully you guys just both agree.

Hey, I'd love to just share this and just let you know what's been going on with me. I'd love to let you know how many day went, whatever. If you're hearing this right now and you're saying, but I'd want to say something.

How can I make sure I don't say something? What do you think are some phrases that could say that to let the person know they were listening without saying too much, without going into a whole, okay, what you should do? Can you think of something there? I'm imagining a conversation where maybe I would be doing a lot of talking and you'd see your eyes glaze over. Yeah. I'm trying to communicate that you're listening, but because it is maybe unnatural in some ways, like you just have to fight this feeling, the uncomfortability of it, but also that it might not totally come naturally to you.

And so just giving each other some grace for that. Are you looking through me right now? Are you even listening or processing what I'm saying? And it'd be combative for me to just trying to listen and he's trying to be supportive and I'm talking and then I go, are you even listening to me? Do you even hear the words that are coming out of my mouth? What did I just say? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. But so what would be something after you had told me your whole soliloquy of everything that happened in the day? What would you like to hear from me after I said it? I have some suggestions, but you like to hear. You could start with, thanks for sharing with me.

That's great. That'd probably be good enough. That'd probably be sufficient.

You're like, that's all I wanted to hear. Yeah. Thanks for sharing with me.

Honey, thanks for sharing that with me. I'm glad we got to talk. I'm glad I got to hear about it.

Yeah. Glad I got to listen. Thanks for confiding in me or thanks for sharing with me.

And so now what do you do where, okay, we've got the action steps. Spend 15 minutes doable. Make sure that it's not about some kind of agenda that you want to get done or some kind of logistical thing that you guys need to catch up on and figure out together that it's really in talking about a meaningful, positive 15 minutes of connection a day, really what it can come down to is just whether it's verbal and just talking, catching up on the day, asking, how are you listening and not trying to fix anything, listening and just trying to learn and understand or just physically getting used to being close again, holding hands, sitting next to each other, just getting used to that again.

For the person who is hearing all that and says, that sounds so like it would be so good. I really want that. But it's so hard to believe that's possible for me.

What would you tell them? How could you encourage them right now? It's funny because this is my thing like all the time, which is just try it. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Got nothing to lose. Just try. And I think too, we're coming at it from a, if you've really felt and drift and you feel like there's this great divide between you, but at the same time, if you feel like things are right on track and life is going really well and you feel really connected, it's still something to remember, right? Like marital drift happens.

It's a slow process and you don't just this wide gap place. It's a drift. And so it can happen slowly and it can creep up on you when you don't expect it.

And so just being really intentional about spending that time together, making spending time together a priority, not letting life get in the way of that and just holding on to that sacred time that you have together because you know that you want a strong marriage and a connected marriage and a united bond. Yeah. I was going to say that the encouragement here is that these steps that we just talked about are not just if your marriage is on a fast decline or on the rocks or in a danger zone.

It's for anybody at any stage. It will help you. It will make you guys feel connected again and it will improve your connection if you haven't done this.

Maybe you do feel connected, but these are certain things that you guys haven't really done. You haven't just sat together in silence and held hands. You haven't just let each other talk without interruption and without judging and without trying to fix things.

If you can try these things, it can help you at any stage of your marriage. And I think too, sometimes there's one person that feels like, we're fine, we're good. And there might be another person that thinks, no, I totally feel disconnected.

I don't feel like we're seeing eye to eye on a lot of things. Or I just want more. And so I think it's important for both of you to just say, this is important.

And whether or not I feel adrift, the other person may feel adrift that I don't even know about. And so just keeping that as a priority and knowing that it's a non-negotiable for you, we are going to spend time together. It's going to strengthen your marriage.

Yeah, definitely. So with that, try this out. You can do this.

Your marriage is worth it. And we'd love to hear how it goes. Talk to you guys next time.

Bye.