Old Friends, Hard Truths, and the Way Marriage Changes Us

I. I'm actually kind of, a little bit ambivalent because to me, you're, like, the best kept secret on the planet. Like, I'm like, oh, I don't want to share you broadly because I want to keep you all to myself. So,

But but I have a I have a choice in that.

Okay.

You will keep me all to yourself. When somebody the best keep secret, they have. They have a choice in that.

Okay. Deal. Yeah. Have you ever been on a podcast before?

Never.

Yeah. How you feeling?

Right. Like, this is what it is. Knowing that you can edit it.

Yeah. Yeah, I can edit. So. All right. Good times. Well, I have so many things that I want to talk about just in general, because mostly to me, I'm sort of thinking like, this is like, like Boat Night 2.0. We're just going to, like, have boat night. And but also there's.

Like, speaking of last night, did you feel like you hurt people's feelings when you said that you had some, some people that, tried to substitute and didn't make it?

Oh, I don't think so. Okay. Number one, I don't think anybody listens to. I don't think any of those people were.

Like, boat night was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty fun.

I was so proud of you guys. Yeah.

We might do it again. We were thinking about asking Kirk to come back and do it because he would be a trip, but. No.

No, because my fear is that you guys, you guys have so much. I was happy to hear how much Greg, like, input it. And I feel like if Kirk is there.

Yeah. Okay.

That's a lot of people at boat night.

Yeah. Well, we haven't figured out.

We know that he has a good laugh.

We know that Sean and I will definitely be there. And, we're wondering about Greg. Greg is, I was glad for him to. That he participated as much as he did. I agree, though, if we have four people there, it's going to be me that late that sits back, right? I'll sit back and watch.

That would be my.

And then at the end, I'll say something really clever that will tie it all together, and it'll be like mic drop moment and that'll be that. So. Okay. I was thinking about a few things that I wanted to go over because you I think you're the only person in my life still in my life who you were at my wedding, and I was at your wedding.

Yeah. I would have. You would have been in my wedding had I not already had five guys already on my wedding party. I could you didn't have.

I was too. I was too. I think I was too, like, mainstream to have a girl in my wedding. To have my own girl in my wedding. Like, I don't think I was far enough outside of the kind of the scene, but, You. Okay, so part of this is like, I'm telling you things you already know, but I'm also telling the whole world, right? So we met in 1992, at summer camp, and this is one of my favorite stories. I have two of two stories about that day, that time that I think are apocryphal for me. One's from the first day and once from the last day. Do you know them both?

I remember the last day. I don't remember the first day.

The last day was. We had just spent a whole month there, and you were functionally my boss for a month. And at the end I was like, okay, now that you've been my boss for a month, could we just be friends? And you're and you said, yeah, let's be friends. So then we became friends and, but the first day I told Madison this story, I don't remember if you remember, but I was 22. Who know, I was 19. I was 19. So that makes you what, about 22 at that time? I don't remember how much older you are than me, but, so I get there, and I am, just kind of getting into the scene, and I get, I meet you and we're out in front of the office, and I'm like, let's play basketball. And,

Oh, how are you?

Were like, let's play basketball. And I, at 19, was absolutely convinced that I was going to destroy you in basketball. Because I was a boy, I 100%. I had never played basketball. I didn't play.

And that's so funny.

Soccer my whole life. And I was like, oh, let's play basketball. I'll play with you. And you cleaned my clock? Absolutely. Just like, cleaned my clock.

And do you remember that?

I've never forgotten that because it's the first time I think I ever realized, like, kind of, that I had no idea how the world worked and that I thought it should work like this, where boys were better than girls. And didn't even matter what the sport was or what the thing was. And here you just kind of just kind of came up in you whatever you got going on your ponytail. And, and I was I don't think I was, I don't think I was humiliated at all. I think I was just.

So.

Odd.

I remember you being a little stunned. Like, not like surprised, but in a good way.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's one of my favorite. It's sort of my favorite origin story of our time, because at that point, I was sort of hooked. I was like, okay, I'm just going to learn as much as I can from this lady and this lady. 22. Same age as Abby is now. How old are your twins? They're older.

That same year, you know, they're 22.

All the same. It.

Yeah.

Anyway, so then we became friends, and then I,

Wait, what? I remember about meeting you that month.

Yeah, 100%. I'm just trying to warm us up.

I remember your shoes. And you liked my shoes. We both were, like, function over form, but form kind of mattered secretly. But we didn't let that on. Would you agree with that?

I don't remember what shoes I had at. They're probably Adidas. They were.

Well no they were like some you end up buying my shoes. I had these shoes that were like trail running shoes and trail running shoes weren't a thing back then. Yeah. And they're economical. And they worked and they were kind of quirky. Yeah, they weren't ugly. Yeah, they were like quirky. You know, like, I love their shoes. I mean, to wear those shoes, but I left, like, so surprised that you couldn't see. And you, when I saw you or that you had said that nobody really sees what I see in you. And to me it's so obvious.

I get that that's been true for 35 years like that. You have always seen in me things that I didn't necessarily see. So anyway like I said, best kept secret. Glad to share you with the world and I'm glad that we, I'm glad you said yes, that we could be friends.

Yes. Me too.

And then somehow I ended up on your floor or your couch a couple times. Like just driving through town. Just being there. And I always had some girl in tow. Or some story about a girl in tow because I was dating this person or that person, or trying to figure out how to make it work. And you know, there.

Is always just a relationship, though it wasn't like like I can remember like 5 or 5 years.

Yeah. Until Rebecca.

Right.

And then this is the other apocryphal story that my kids know, which is you were the person that told me I was going to marry her. How did you know? You knew before I did.

I don't know, I think that for some reason I did see like it was who you were when you were with her. You were different like in a good way. And watching you with her was different than watching you with other girls.

Yeah.

Because it was more listening to you talk about her. It was very different.

Yeah, because you hadn't even met her. I just rolled into town one day and start telling you about her, and you were like, you you're trying really hard. I think you said something like, you're trying real hard to convince me that you're that you that you're not in love with her. And I was like, I anyway.

Do you remember what happened after that? No. The frame. The frame.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to tell this story for sure until it.

Well, I had that little picture framing business in our third bedroom apartment, and I. You gave me. No. Rebecca gave me a journal entry that she wrote the first day she met you.

Yep.

It was two.

Pages. Summer camp?

Yes.

So I met Annie at that summer camp. I met Rebecca at the same summer camp.

Okay. And she wanted me to frame them for you for a, a wedding gift. You gave me a gift or something. And they were. They were on my floor, and I just started dating my now husband, Matt. And he caught he got himself caught in a dilemma which is actually takes us in the marriage. Right. Like yeah he read those pages. Yeah. And he thought they were my journal pages that were written about you.

Yeah.

And what she, she named, what she was attracted to in you, which were like your obvious giftings. And they were not obvious non giftings. Like, he has gifts, but they weren't them. Yeah. And so he panicked and he was in a dilemma of like shoot like the girl on days in love with this guy named Zach for all these attributes. And maybe it's an old.

That I don't have.

Right. But I definitely don't have these. And he chased his tail for about a day and a half of not knowing how to tell me, because then he had to like, admit that he read something he wasn't kind of supposed to read. Right. Snooped.

Yeah.

I'm glad it. Only he was tortured for a day and a half.

And then what happened?

He chuckled. I was like, oh, yeah, no, that's Rebecca first. Zach.

Yeah. Yeah.

He was so relieved.

Right on. And so, So here we are at marriage, and then you come to my wedding. Do you remember anything about my wedding? I barely remember things about my wedding.

I remember I drank a lot.

Okay. We had one of those, fancy, expensive weddings because Rebecca tweeted out all the stops. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It was in Connecticut, right?

It was in Connecticut. Yeah.

And a country club. Was it?

I think it was on a golf course. The reception was on a golf course. I'm not sure if it's exactly if it was a country club, but it was definitely.

Well, to me, at the time, like. Yeah, country club, equal golf course because I hadn't been there either. Like. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I came to your wedding, which was when did you get married? When you got married in August of 97 8997.

We got married.

In.

June of 1998.

So a year later, not quite a year later. Yep. Because Matt came to our wedding, too. I remember that.

Yeah I did. Oh, yeah. We took a really good picture at your wedding. We still have that.

I. Okay, so then then I come to your wedding. The thing I remember at your wedding is one thing I had never seen before, which was this thing that, People give you money to dance with you. I was like, why didn't I think of that? That. Didn't people give you money to dance with me?

You just brought up my most. The only thing I was ashamed of at my wedding for this. 2.4 million people that are listening to you.

Yeah. Was this to see if it could never get bigger as you go? Wait, why is that?

Oh, well, because about it. It's about like, we didn't know this at the time, but both Matt and I, our relationships for money with money were fear based. And so his solution.

Is why I was like, this is an amazing idea. I know.

So his solution was to make a lot of money and spend it all. And my solution was don't make very much and don't like spend anything because I got so he's going to live big and pay for it. And I'm going to live small and pay for it because I'm not going to make it worth spending. And so I was so nervous that that was a clash of two worlds. Like those two people got married.

Yeah.

And I was panicked that we weren't going to have enough money. So somebody gave me that idea and I was like, yes, because we're not going to have enough money. I was mad at him when we got engaged for not saving for his unborn children's college fund.

Not only we.

Weren't even dating.

But you weren't like, he didn't.

Even know we weren't. Future.

Yeah. Speculative children.

So my fear definitely, convinced me of really bad things about him.

Well, I thought it was amazing and I wish I had stolen it a year earlier because I also similarly had money problems and money challenges and issues. The other thing I remember about your wedding is we left early. I was so bummed because we had to drive back to Connecticut from North Carolina, and I made a decision to leave early, like before it was over, and I probably regretted it halfway through Pennsylvania. And I was like, I cannot believe I didn't stay until the end. That was that was the thing that I that's the main thing I remember about your wedding, but. And then I moved to oh, then you moved to Seattle.

Again six weeks later. I already knew I was going to at Seattle when I got married. Yeah. So six weeks after we got married, we drove across country and fought the entire time.

What was that about?

Oh, I was not ready to be married. I mean, we could just. I could talk to you. Let's get through into 12 podcasts, and that's okay.

Well, I sort of The Ballad of Zach and Annie. I'm into it. I totally forgot about this chapter, but, gosh, I was.

So I married outside my threshold of tolerance.

Okay, what does that mean?

What can I get? Can I get clinical?

Sure.

And Matt knows this, and I. And this is part of our story. And this is where I'm going to go. Clinical and theoretical. If our it's been proven in the last two decades that our interpret interpersonal neurobiology is connected to our life experiences. Meaning what we go through is going to affect things like snapshots and memories and all that, right? When I met my now husband, what I, I was confused because I had to I had my experience in my 20s is I had a lot of friends that were guys I can now look back at knowing that I was terrified. So I'm going to make them my friend. I'm going to take the sexuality piece out of it. And then I had a really unhealthy relationship with mad chemistry right before I met my husband. And I was.

Chemistry. Yeah, right. I don't know if I've heard you say that before.

So if I had five guys in my wedding, that just shows you that I am very comfortable making guy friendships.

Sure.

I hadn't experienced chemistry with another man or woman, Since when I was 16. So I had a mad type of chemistry. I'm not going to name his name, but you know who he was?

Gotcha. Gotcha. Got it.

And it was a terrible relationship. It was awful. But I stayed in it because I finally had chemistry with somebody. And what I say is, I dated him. We dated for six months, and it took two and a half years to break up because I was so afraid I wasn't going to feel chemistry with somebody again. And through a series of circumstances, we broke up and I met Matt. We were both in the same wedding, and I had two categories. Either I'm going to make you my friend, so I'm going to feel chemistry is not even an option, or I'm going to have chemistry with a really dark, because our stories backstories kind of match. I have a shit ton of trauma and when I met Matt, what I couldn't recover from this, I love to I was in his presence. He actually believed to where I was and treated me like who he saw me as, and, that was infectious. What was confusing is I didn't have chemistry with him.

And that's part of our marriage story, because my my body didn't. I had to create chemistry with them for years. I had to create good experiences with chemistry because I only had dark experiences attached, attached to all those pheromones and hormones. But he was a third category. The layman's terms is like the friends that I made. I would never kiss them. Right. It just what was not when I kissed them, it was really nice and I wanted to keep doing it and confuse me because in my previous relationship it was, oh shit, let's stop doing what we're not supposed to do before. Right? And it was hard. So I actually married him. It was a decision to marry him. So I don't know how he got there. Oh about that I don't know how I married him. I went all the way back to ice because I wasn't, I was not equipped to be married.

Okay.

I've also said that marriage happened to me. Because it was not of my choosing. Like I didn't want to get married, but I didn't.

That's the opposite of what you just said. Did you say the opposite of yourself? Just twice. On purpose. Well, it was a decision to marry him. And I didn't choose to get married. Yeah.

No meaning before I met him. I didn't want to get married. I did not want to get married. There just wasn't. I had my whole 20s. My whole adult 20s, actually. My 20s started when I was 17. I just try I protected my vulnerability and my wants. And so you said want anything? And then when I'm 25, I need a guy that taps into my backstory in a way. So basically when I have chemistry, that means there's something about my story that connects with your story. Because our interpersonal neurobiology has informed that. Right. So it makes sense that like I married outside my threshold of tolerance, met as a normally dysfunctional, functional family.

I have a family that I don't need to write the book because the books have been written and they're memoirs and they're awful. So we thought when we got there you said, why did you fight a dog? I'm like, I was not. It's so clear. I was not equipped and had the tools to be married. And also.

Probably nothing. Probably fight about nothing.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

I was functioning from a place of fight or flight with him, until I learned that I could escape it by drinking a bottle of wine.

Okay. Well, that's a fast forward a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So which we can do? We can fast forward. But in terms of the Ballard, you come out to Seattle, you start school. My story is you called me up one day and say, hey, I'm in school and I think you belong here. And I'm a newlywed in Connecticut. I'm living the life. I'm a high school teacher. Rebecca and I are making it work. Literally, I take that phone call from anybody else on the planet and I'm like, cool. Thanks for saying so. See you later. And, but instead I say, okay, I'll check it out. So I come out and then, it was.

So clear to me that you matched that program. Yeah. Even though you never thought about being a counselor.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I had no I had no concept of it at all. So I come out, we hang out, I go to classes with you. I agree with you. I belong in this program. So I apply and come out and I'm thrilled because you and I are finally going to live in the same city. We're finally going to be like neighbors and hang out all the time, and we're going to get to and what we would we hang out.

Yeah.

You guys twice.

Maybe you guys moved in our same apartment complex.

Yep. Yeah.

So we had been I've been married a year and I'd been there a year. And then you guys come the next year. Yeah. And I don't think we hung out more than twice.

No, it was not. It was hard at all, which was weird to me. I don't think I was offended by that or even hurt. I just think it was strange. It was almost like we had cultivated this need to be apart, so that when we were together, it was like, what's the right word? Special? Sacred. Something like different. So being neighbors was super duper weird.

It was weird.

How are we supposed to pull this off? And then how quickly did you leave? Did you graduate and leave?

I graduated and stayed. I think we graduated early May. I just stayed, like, two months. But I was part of the transition. So staff members that involved some kind of complicated dynamics and that was being called back to work.

Yeah, but your time in Seattle was like a total of two years. Yeah. Yeah. So you came, you came, got your degree, went straight home or went straight back east. And then we never left. You make a cameo in the, Boat Night episode because we we were coming home periodically to visit from time to time. Oh, right. Always on the East coast. You we, you know, swing by your place and hang out. You start having kids, we start having kids. That's when Greg falls. And we. Because you knew him before or he was in your class. Or did you know him from back east?

I knew him. We had, like, one degree of separation. Yeah. So I knew of him a lot more than I knew him. But I knew him as much to say hi to him. When I saw.

Yeah, out.

Here. And then we went. Yeah. Same class.

Yeah. And then he falls and we hang out. So we did this thing where you and I are like, boomerangs for a while. Although it's typically me back east and not you out here. There wasn't a lot to draw you back out here, but I'm coming home a couple times a year and making that work, and.

Well, and that's that's also the assumption. There's a lot to drama there. I was drowning, I wasn't equipped to be married. I definitely didn't have pools to have first time twins.

Yeah, yeah. So say more about that, because what.

I just did, what I did, like. Okay, this is really hard, and I'm just going to power through it, so my head's going to be down. I saw a TikTok a year ago that said, I'm not ignoring you. I'm just raising my kids. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that was me on crack. I didn't know what I was doing. I couldn't ask for help. And so I just had my head down and worked.

Yeah.

So I don't think there could have been anything to draw me back anywhere, because I'd have to bring my head up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what point do you become aware of the, the the role that a bottle of wine plays for you?

Drinking was brewing for me seven years before I really became aware because I, I was, you know, I was a counselor in North Carolina, and I was listening to a client of mine talk about attending AA because she drank wine every night. And so for the next three sessions, she paid me money to assess my drinking habits because it got my attention. Oh my God, I drink every night, manufactured in here. And then she sat on the third session she told me was three bottles. So I thought, okay, mine is just a bottle.

Yeah.

And then seven years later it was I had three. I have three daughters. One of them, thank God, isn't compliant because I think if she were, I would have thought I was a really good mom. And I kept trying to get in front of her, to be patient because I thought, oh, well, I want to be a good mom. And good wines are patient, so I'm going to be patient, And for about a year, I'm like, patient patient patient patient snap patient patient facing patient snap. So now I'm like, okay what's the difference between. Being patient and shoving anger. And I thought about that like that I'm like I don't feel like I'm seven. So the anger is my threshold of tolerance of patients was very strong. It was very a lot and one day I crossed my own line with her.

That.

We were trying to get out the door, and I threw a pair of pants at her with the energy of, like, I was hitting her, even I wasn't. And so I, I do not pass go do not like $200 go to AA. I had been circling AA for a year, but part of my story, part of my survival trauma stopped is don't ask for help and make it happen yourself. So going to AA was so hard because I had to ask for help. So I would drive by like because I knew I tried to not drink wine. There's a marriage piece in there to where I would try every now and again to not drink wine, and I feel the chasm between that and me. And I'm like, I don't want to get divorced.

Okay, then drink wine. You don't want to get divorced? So between those two events, I went very begrudgingly, but definitely. Knew I like I court appointed myself to go there because my daughter wouldn't let me be the mom that I wanted to be. And one of the great things that I learned is that I actually can't I don't think for me, and this is just for me, what helps me is that actually I can't be patient because patience is a fruit of the spirit. So if I took my energy off of trying to be patient, then actually patience wasn't required. But really, what was happening is I would get frustrated and I thought, if I'm frustrated by my if I'm angry, that means I'm a bad mom and I don't want to be a bad mom.

So work really hard to find a way, basically to not parent like I literally when they're 14 years old. I remember learning and this is all too long ago. Yeah. Oh wait, when they're mad at me, it might mean I'm doing something right. Not that I'm a bad mom. So that's what it. That's how it transitioned.

Have you changed your definition of what it means to be a good mom? Like, how would you describe that? Now?

It's changing. And I'm recognizing, because there's a five and a half year gap between my twins and Madison. And because I stopped drinking when she was so young and the twins were like she's definitely growing up with a different mom. I would get panicked anytime they had a problem and.

Anytime they had a problem.

Yeah. I would literally take one of my twins to be upset about a girl problem on text drama. And I, I look at it and I join her in the panic and I oh, you shouldn't have said that. Here, give me your phone. I'll text for you. And I literally had to like teach myself not a tune and comfort. She's wanting comfort. She's coming at you like her hair's on fire. So. But like. It's not necessarily always on fire. But you keep praying the fire extinguisher. So like and I, I learned that and I had to go okay any hug first like literally had to like okay. Just wait an hour to come with a text to just like it. But it felt so I my blended with the urgency and believed her do and that wasn't helpful to her. Yeah I mean they want me to be she's coming to me for comfort and I was giving her solution because I believe she was in danger, but she wasn't.

Yeah. So in Madison, like, it's so much easier to let her have feelings and work those through because she gets to have them.

Yeah. Spoiler alert Madison is one of my favorite people on the planet, so.

That person, Uncle Zach.

Yeah, that's that's fun.

You're as fun about it? She calls right on her. Because I have no siblings like. Like they have an Uncle Shane, or they have an Aunt Stafford, and we refer to them we've never referred to as Uncle Zach. Yeah, I even told her about the podcast. She goes, oh, we don't go back.

You know this, but I'm telling the world, Madison and I, we regularly text each other a category of song. So I think she owes me a song right now. And the categories she's working on is a storytelling song. So then she has to, like, go find a storytelling song, and she sends it to me. And then we have a playlist that we, that has all of our songs on it that we just kind of listen to.

But such as Zach Thing.

It's called Maddie songs.

Yes.

All of it.

Yeah. Yeah. She told me that. By the way, when I told her about this, I. It's my turn. I own the song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's our turn. So I have this other question now, which is you've been married, let's say, a little less than me. So that's what, 27 years or so, 2017.

On it? Yep.

Coming on. Are you ready to be married now?

I'm just about ready to be married. And my husband would agree. Like he. It's so cool to hear him, like, hear him affirm it. That's why I had him listen to, the boat night. Yeah, he could definitely like. And you people in recovery will know this. It's very dangerous when one person goes into recovering the other, doesn't it? Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah, I sorry. Recovery. When our marriage was 15 years old. And so essentially I changed up the marriage contract. Because he married me as an active drinker. So part of his role was, oh. I get to be the answer to her chaos. And then he he lost his job when I got sober because I became less chaotic. It was a hard transition.

Yeah. I want to ask you this, but it's about my own experience of sobriety. And maybe you've had it. Maybe you haven't. But I found that, like, when I put down the bottle. It created a kind of gravity in our house that people then had to kind of organize around a kind of a gravity of health. Right then, like all of the chaos that had been spinning around me and my addiction, once that kind of became more predictable and solid and then manageable, the rest of the household oriented around it, like Rebecca, started to get healthy. Abby started to get healthy. Mary started to get healthy. They all went through their own like exacerbated chaos beforehand. But do you? I think lately I'm keen on this idea that like, our job is to be healthy.

Right?

And then to create gravity that pulls people into that so that so that it's not harder for them to be healthy. And I wonder if that's been your experience with Matt and the twins and Madison like that. Can you see that also?

Yeah, I would say it was a harder, like, I married a man who liked the chaos. And he would have been it because that allowed him to hide. So if he's always tending to my chaos, even though he was so proud of me and so, like, he bent over backwards and still would for me to attend meetings and do what I need to do, it was very. It was disruptive. First, and I think I first saw it with the daughter who I threw pants the pants at because I recognize before I start shrinking. She has a kind soul, but I part of my hypervigilance is I can see like I recognize in real time what's happening. And I would see her. I'm like, oh, she's tolerating me. I'm talking to her and she's tolerating me, and I don't know why she's tolerating me because she's so kind. She wouldn't yell at me or tell me to get lost or whatever.

So she would just hold her breath and wait till I was done and then pull up and do whatever. Right?

Yeah.

I'm like, I think I have an invisible hammer that I'm hitting her with and I can't see it. Yeah. Because I was seeing the effect and I was so grateful that I was married to a great man who was a good father, because by the Young Life Ministry earned the right to be heard. I recognize I lost the right to be heard with her. And I would say to a good year and it was a mother's day and Matt, Matt knew it. So I, I just backed up, I concentrate on my recovery and I let her. It was a while I think until she started feeling safe. And it was a mother's day and she came up from behind me and she gave me a hug.

I sat down and she hadn't touched me in a couple of years. And then she it got traction to the point where I'd come home and she really, like, snuggle. I'm like, yeah, I don't I can't do that. Yeah, yeah, I think I can do that if that's what you want to do. But my other twin, it happened pretty, but hers was because she was compliant. We knew our house was getting more healthy because she started to get in trouble.

That's so funny. Like, I mean, just knowing them both. And, Yeah, that's pretty funny.

Because that bowling ball metaphor of, like, where the where the, the parenting spring and where the gutter thing so they don't.

Yeah.

She, she would just keep the ball straight down the gutter. Yeah. Because her twin was slamming into them and she didn't want that interaction. So yeah she we were just happy. We're happy that she was getting in trouble.

Yeah. We get to visit a few times and I know exactly what I'm talking about next time. But what I want to finish with today is if you think about whatever you thought marriage was in 1998 and whatever you think it is in 2025, like, how do you do you have you formed a theory, a philosophy, concept that, that, I mean, either that guides your work with people or that guides your way. You wake up and move through the day or like, how do you think about it now? Vis-A-Vis when you were, you know, younger and dumber.

I remember we took a before we got married. We took this kind of, premarital counseling course where 50% of the people would break up and 50% would get married. Right. And I remember we had to describe what we thought marriage was or and what we were wanting it to be simple. And that they gave us like five lines. So it was a big paragraph. And he filled up the five lines and went onto a piece of paper. And I distinctly remember at 26 it was 27. You know, I wrote three words, work. I it was like work. Commitment. And something else. But literally just three words.

Yeah.

Current day, because we're always, like, changing. There's this concept. It's a, it's a title of a book that I'm willing to give away because I don't know.

That you that you're going to write one day or that.

Know that it's the book that you'll write. And here's the title. It's called The Divine Setup. Okay. Like what guides my work today is that we marry somebody who allows us to relate how we've always related, because it's the only way we know how to relate. Right. And we have to because I think by design and by nature, we're evolutionary. We always want something different and better and more. So I remember going, okay, if I married that first guy I couldn't break out with, it would be a repetition of a very bad story, that we would have a lot of chemistry with Matt. Like it was the opportunity to see if I could live a different life. And there's no, there's no reason I should have, like, really? That's why I feel like marriage kind of happened to me.

Because I don't think I would need a higher power if I wasn't married. My life is fine as long as I saw friends every couple of months. My closest friends, you being one of them, I have five of them. I see them like when I say see, I talk to her on the phone maybe three times a year.

Yeah.

Yeah, but if I'm wanting something more and different, I'm moving towards her. I first have to do a rewind. So I don't know if I can use the word redemption on here, but for in order for redemption or healing to happen, there has to be a rewind. Like there has to be a place where her. Okay, we married somebody who we know how to relate with. Now. And then we start getting mad at them once we get married for being who they are, right? I see clearly that God wants or our higher power wants more for us. Not right from us. So we have to. Okay, like I'll have a map. I'm going to be given a map when I leave home of how to navigate the world, and I have to take that map and find a world that that map works on.

Right. Yeah. And so then in marriage, we the opportunity and the clearest example I have is like, oh gosh, in some ways, Matt married the woman who, like a lot of girls, were interested in my husband. They thought he was great, but he went after the girl that said, okay, so you have that car. So what? The keys. He be blind after me? Yeah. And which suggests he's used to not being believed in or having to prove his worth. So he acts in a way that set me up to not believe in him. And it was the day where it came clear. So don't let it. Oh, wait, here's a setup. He's he's not doing things like there's something that's happening that we can't get out of. What would happen if I started to believe in him? But in the context of a relationship where he's in and he gets to do something different. So make any sense?

I don't know, I know I'll think about it a lot.

You can help.

Yeah.

Maybe it works to it.

Part that I'm into it. I'm into thinking about like, what's the what is the set up and how does it play? And is there a way out like can you get if it's if it's a setup which is, you know, designed and trap or snare kind of in the way that I hear that phrase, like, what's the way out of the setup?

Or to recognize the setup and to do something different.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Can you tell one quick story, please?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought I was the only person who didn't marry their dad until we're married for seven, eight years. And I'm with a colleague and and. I found myself wanting to quit my job and give up my family to be around. I had, like, a three day, thriving affair in my head. There was some. But he wasn't a threat because he wasn't attractive. He was older. And so we looked at that. Matt said to me, like, what attracted you to him? I'm like, I don't know. He lights up when I walk in the room and that's like, don't, don't you let go. And I'm like, I'm like, actually, you do. Actually, my dad did. I couldn't see him for years. And I'd walk into his watch shop and you'd light up, right.

What was different about this colleague is I was his favorite. And we went out for lunch and I got up to leave, and he sat back like this is like I could stay all day. I'm like, that's an option, Matt. When I walk into your room, used to greet me and come over and be really attentive and then do the three pats and we go to our separate ways.

Yeah.

So I was the setup is I'm used to it's not what I was missing in marriage. It's what I've been missing my whole life. Like I can touch down in goodness, but only a little bit. And then when there was a replication that gave me the option that I could have a lot more of it, I couldn't. It was so hard to shut that off.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've heard you tell me that story before.

Now. I just wanted to 7.7 maybe with. All right.