Episode 377: Things Left Unsaid

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

Happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

I apologize for being late. I was picking up my daughter and it took a little longer than anticipated and it's still going. The game is still going and she didn't want to leave.

Oh, she said they won. She said it was over.

They do a 5th quarter where they let all the kids play.

Oh boy.

So the 4th quarter was over, right? And they were doing a 5th quarter. So she wanted to stay and watch and I let her stay and watch for a little too long. And then when we left, she was like, I didn't wanna leave. And I was like, if I didn't have somewhere to be with you, then I would've let her stay.

Right.

So they're still going strong and they all have school in the morning and they all need to go home and get some rest. Ah, it is the second week of school. Is that correct? It feels like we've been back to school forever. And I am pretty tired. What about you?

Doing great.

How are you doing with the mornings and me getting up so early?

I'm adjusting.

As are y'all.

Yep. I would prefer to sleep later, but that's okay.

Okay. Well, you do what you gotta do. Well, I'll try to be more quiet.

It's okay. You gotta get the kids to the places. You gotta help them get ready.

So this topic this week is called Things Left Unsaid, and it is inspired by several things from recently. Thing number 1 is I read the book After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and it was so good, and it was about marriage. And if you don't know this about me, marriage is my favorite topic. I will talk to you about your marriage anytime It is my favorite topic. And as I wrote this, you can find the blog at winniepalooza.com. As I was writing it, it was just flowing out of me and I was having the best time. And I was like, God, do I love this topic.

You do indeed. And I'm super excited for tonight's episode because when you showed me what you wrote, I said, I absolutely love this. This is like one of your top 10 ever. So I'm super excited.

Well, sometimes Seth says, It's fine.

Yeah, good enough.

Okay, like, just be done. It's fine. And this time he was like, wow, I loved it. Like, I couldn't wait to show him. And so it was inspired by the book. So go read the book and feel more inspired about your marriage. And it was also inspired by things that have happened in our marriage recently.

Yes.

And I find that Are you ever reading a book? You guys all know that I love to read. And are you ever reading a book and you're like, just freaking tell each other?

And it's like talking to the character.

Yes, we're always listening, reading them thinking to themselves, and I get so frustrated and I'm like, stop thinking things, stop telling your friends and tell your husband.

Yes.

That it gets so frustrating to me, but I'm the same way. I leave things left unsaid. And the biggest thing that they pointed out in this book is that when we don't say things, it builds resentment, and our resentment builds and builds and builds. But it's not our— it's not our partner's fault if we're not telling them. They don't know that there's any problem. I told my friend the other day, there's her marriage and his marriage.

Yes, and somewhere between there's the truth.

And there are so many times, and I'm just using this as an example, where the husband is like, doo doo doo doo, I think my marriage is great, everything is great, and the woman is like telling me everything that's wrong. And I'm like, did you tell him? Did you talk to him? And I get frustrated as a therapist because I'm like, you You can't fix anything if you don't communicate.

And it's not fair to convict someone of a crime they did not even know they committed.

Absolutely.

Can you define what a game is?

I'm going to that right now.

Awesome.

Okay, I think that women play games, and I'm talking about women. I'm not talking about men. Men do things wrong too. I'm just going after us right now.

Fair.

So men do things wrong, women do things wrong, and sometimes I'm going to tell you that women do things and you're going to say, no, no, my husband does that. So just go with me.

We're sharing our own experience.

Okay, so I think from my experience talking to tons of women is that women play games, and I want to tell you some of the games that women play, okay? These are examples from my life, from my friends, from books that I read, okay? Wanting him to put his phone down and look at me, but I'm not going to tell him. I'm going to see if he does it.

Yes, and then there's the time that you don't put your phone down but get mad at me for not putting my phone down.

Absolutely.

I think we should add double standards to that list.

You talk to me about double standards all the time and it makes me laugh. And it also makes me— thanks— it also makes me aware of the fact that I do have double standards.

Yes.

Wanting him to take the garbage out but not asking. I'm gonna see if he notices and I'm gonna see if he takes it out.

Or change the toilet paper, or any— I'm gonna— not gonna change it, I'm gonna wait till it gets to the end of the roll and see if anybody decides to put a roll up, and I'm gonna see how long we all hold out.

I don't play that game.

I know, thank God. I would lose again.

Wanting him, him to step in with Lily and handle her in the way that I want him to handle her. I'm not sure what I want, so he needs to go figure it out and make me happy. I know how— I know how absurd this sounds, I wrote.

Glad in the calm, rational light of day.

Wanting him to drive when I don't want to drive, but I never want to drive. Wanting him to wait for me, wanting him to clean something up so that I don't have to, wanting him to come home from work, wanting him to handle dinner. This is all stuff that I might be thinking but not telling him.

Yes, I want you to decide what I want for dinner, get all the kids to place their order, order it for me, and get it delivered to go pick it up. But I don't know what I want, so good luck.

Yeah, exactly. He understands. 19 years of marriage. Yeah, lots of women. Wanting him to surprise me with the perfect gift, but I'm not going to tell him what I want and I'm going to see what he picks. Wanting him to plan a special birthday for me, but I have no clue what I want to do and he needs to figure it out.

You used to do that. You've gotten much better at that. Like, now you actually tell me I want lobster at this place, I want to go on a nature walk, and the kids are going to go, and I'm bring the dog and they're not gonna complain and we're gonna do this thing and this thing and we're gonna have Paula's Donuts in the morning and coffee and this thing. And I'm like, thank God, give me a list, we will go do all of those things and make you happy. Because years ago it used to be, I don't know what I want, figure it out, it better special, it better be what I want. And I'm gonna tell you that 9 times out of 10, I did not guess what she didn't know she wanted. So you have come a long way and I really appreciate it.

Well, so the thing about me is that when I see— well, first of all, I'm always learning and growing and doing continuing education and etc.

I'm working on yourself.

I'm working on myself. However, I also hear women do things that I know I'm doing, and when I hear other women doing it, then it makes me more aware of the fact that I'm doing it wrong. So a perfect example is my birthday. Like, I think that I was probably inspired by somebody who planned out their birthday and was like, this is the cake that I want. I remember some woman in my life saying, I'm going to pick up my cake, and I was like, what a brilliant woman. Just order it and go get it.

Grab yourself my Wegmans and you wouldn't have not liked it.

Like, just order it and go get it, and don't wait for him to do it, and go after what you want.

Or tell me exactly where the cake is and where you want it from.

One of the things that I have noticed with Seth, and I'm talking about the fact that not only do we leave things unsaid, but we say things in general and we don't say it specific enough. So like Seth said to me the other day, I am a computer. Yes. I want to know exactly what you want me to do. And then I'll go do it. And I'm happy to make you happy, but I don't want to guess and I don't want to play guessing games, and I just want to know exactly what you want. So I want a chocolate cake from this bakery. I ordered it, go pick it up.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

I do do that stuff. Yes, I've learned.

Yes.

Okay, so I'm gonna give him dates and he's gonna figure out where we're gonna go. Give us vacation Suggestions. So, and it's for December. If you want to know dates, it's for December. Okay, so why do women do this? So I want us to talk about why we do this. What is preventing us from speaking our mind? And I want to tell you what I brainstormed, and I want your feedback.

All right, I'm ready. Okay, fellas, help me out here.

You, you are afraid of being rejected.

This is you, you're afraid of being rejected. If you tell me the plan—

I'm brainstorming why women don't ask. Okay, so if you're a woman watching this Or if you're a man watching this, tell us what you think. Why do women not say what they want?

And the fear of rejection is on my list for sure.

You are afraid of them saying no.

Yeah.

You don't think you deserve what you want.

I don't, I don't think I have that issue.

You feel guilty spending money. So like, I may want to go to Hawaii, but if I price it out, I won't pull the trigger because I'll have sticker shock.

Yeah, you had the same issue with Taylor Swift.

So I know I want to take Ella to go see Taylor Swift, and I've looked up tickets many, many times. When we started out, I had tickets in my cart for $1,500 each, and I said yes, and Seth said yes, and I said, oh my God, I can't spend $3,000 on Taylor Swift tickets, and he was like, go ahead. Well, now they're $2,500 each, and now Seth is like, I don't know about that.

I said you could do— I said go ahead.

Oh my God, we're gonna spend $5,000. This is exactly what Okay, so I might know what I want, so this is perfect for me. I want to go to Taylor Swift, I want to go to Hawaii. I will give you examples of things that I want, but I don't go after it and I don't communicate it because I don't want to spend the money, right?

Okay, I try not to spend too much money on myself for fun. Most— 99% of the money I spend on myself is for work. So I ask you, I'm like, can I spend $50 on this thing? And you're like, why are you asking? Don't be ridiculous.

You don't need to ask me about $50.

Corey says some women want to see their partner put in the effort and plan an event rather than having to tell them what to do.

True, Corey, that is exactly what women tell me. They don't want to tell their partner because they want their partner to, to make the effort.

I'm happy to make the effort, it's just, you know, it gets old when you keep making the effort and it's a moving target and you don't know when I get it wrong. And after a couple times, remember the birthday presents, a couple times I— that's not the jewelry I wanted. That's not the thing I want. I'd be like, well, then just tell me, as opposed to setting me up to be— for you to be disappointed.

Okay, there, like, I want your taste.

Your colors have changed. It used to be I want this, and now it's it better be big, and it better— you know, pink isn't my favorite color every day anymore. Other colors.

You have said so many things. I want to preface this: Seth surprises me with wonderful presents. I'm wearing one right now, this diamond necklace that you bought me. Yes, Seth surprises me with beautiful gifts all the time and gets it right. He's being very dramatic.

The painful times it was not right leave significant lasting memories.

Corey is right, women want their partners to make an effort and be creative and come up with things.

Well, then you got to positively reinforce it. We've had this conversation. It can't be make an effort and then, oh, I don't like that. You take that, but you bought me that perfume. No, you got— that's a teeny bopper. Oh my God, you got to take that back.

Tell them which perfume you bought.

So I took—

she—

they— this is Rebecca's fault. Rebecca said, take Ella and Lily with you and have them pick out a new perfume with you for me. So we went to the perfume, whatever the store it was, and I found a Coach one for women. I'm like, oh, this smells good, I like this one. The girl said, no, Dad, get this one. And I believe it was Ariana Grande. And they're like, get this one. So I'm like, okay, she told me to involve the girls, they picked one, I'll buy that. I buy that, we get to wrap it up, we give it to Rebecca all excited, the girls are excited, I'm excited because the girls picked it. And she says, this is like a perfume for 12-year-olds, I will not wear this, the girls can wear this, go buy me the right one, go buy me another one. I'm like, no, this was not— the girls get a free present out of this because we got it wrong. You should have worn the darn Ariana Grande perfume until you got rid of it all and used it all, but We ended up getting a second one. So I followed directions. You said have the girls go pick.

I thought it would be cute to have the girls shop with me, and then she rejected both of my presents with the girls' presents. But I want to tell you, Seth was right. Buying me a Coach perfume would have been perfect, and I probably would have loved it. And the girls got what they wanted, which was an Ariana Grande, which she gave to them and wasted the money. I did give it to one of them.

Yes.

Did I give you the Ariana Grande perfume?

Well, at least it was for Ellen.

Okay, so why else the girls— women don't tell men what they want because they think that their men don't care. And I hear that all—

really? Okay, so yeah, I totally care. I want to know what she wants. I can make it happen.

Well, I know that you care, but women tell me that they don't tell their husbands.

Got it. That one isn't a you one.

They don't think their husband cares.

Well, of course they care. That's why we got married, is because we care.

You haven't been taught to express yourself. Like, you didn't see your parents express themselves to each other, so you didn't learn the behavior.

You didn't watch Mom say, "I want this, go get it," and then he gets it and he's a hero. You haven't gotten positive feedback when you have expressed yourself, or when you tried to surprise her with the thing and she didn't like the thing.

Okay, so I want you to have what you want. So how are you going to have what you want? We're going to start with Step 1. And Step 1 is really true. We have to first know what we want. When I was reading After I Do, she was like, I don't know what I want. I can't tell him what I want because I don't know what I want. And I so related to that. I think sometimes I don't know what I want. Like, I want to have a nice dinner with him and go out with him, but I can't tell him where I want to go. I'm like, I don't— he'll be like, where do you want to go? I have no idea.

Or, well, I'll run down the list of what you might like for dinner tonight and you can reject them all. And then I'll get, okay, those are the 12 suggestions I had from DoorDash or restaurants to go out to. If you veto all those, I guess you really do have to figure it— you know what you don't want.

It was just, honey, it was just an example. I don't always know what I want, right? I don't always know, but as you come up with It helps you eliminate things.

I'm like, do you really want choices, or you just want me to give you a bunch of things you can reject so you know what you don't want?

Okay, so step 1 is figure out what you want so that you can actually tell your partner what you want.

That would be helpful.

Step 2, I want you to be— communicate it and be specific. So me saying I want a chocolate cake It's not gonna give me the chocolate cake that I want because I want it from a certain bakery. And I'm just giving you an example.

A certain kind of frosting, a chocolate frosting. You want a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting?

Oh, I don't know, I'm making it up.

I know, I don't really know. I remember the one time you told me, go— yeah, I don't know, you weren't feeling well, you're like, go to Wegmans, get me chicken soup. And I'm standing in the soup aisle FaceTiming. There are 327 kinds of chicken soup. What chicken soup do you want? Just chicken soup. And then finally it was like, no, no, go to the prepared food section and get the hot soup and bring that home. And I bring home the big tub of hot soup and she's like, there's not enough chicken in it. You didn't get me— you didn't scoop out enough chicken, or this was the bottom and you needed to get them to bring you the fresh chicken soup.

Like, what the hell? You're trying to be funny.

It's working. It's all true. This all happened. I'm not making this up.

I totally forgot about that.

Yes, see, you forget the next day and I will have the emotional scars forever.

You know what, he just wants positive reinforcement.

We all— all men.

He just wants me to tell him how wonderful he is.

Just eat the damn soup and be happy.

You're like, just shut up and eat it. Okay, I'm gonna give you an example of how I should have been specific the other night. Are you ready for this?

I'm ready.

Can you please help me with Lily? Can you go tell her that she can go to the sleepover if she changes her attitude and comes down and apologizes to me and shows me that she is going to be kind to me?

That is incredibly specific and very helpful and not at all what you said resulted in our conflict.

So I learned—

that's exactly what should have happened—

huge lesson the other night because I asked Seth to help me with Lily Lily was being disrespectful and I had had it with her and I was like, you know, like, tag, you're it. Like, this is what we do. I get tired and I tag him in. He's like, I'm ready, what do you need? I'm ready. And I'm like, just go handle her. But I wasn't specific. Did I know what I wanted? Was I specific? I just set him free to go handle it.

3 times I got it wrong.

So I didn't like anything he did. I didn't like anything he did, but it's all my fault because I just said, "Go handle her," and I didn't give him any direction. So if I had said, "Just go tell her she needs to apologize to me and she needs to be nice and then she can go to her sleepover," the whole night would have gone so much better than how it went.

No fight at all.

So see, if I'm specific and I ask for what I want and I don't leave things left unsaid, yeah, then things go smoothly. Okay, so what is step 3? So we've identified what we want, we've communicated specifically what we want, and then we're going to assess the situation. I'm using husbands in this scenario. It could go the other way too. Did your husband— did you get what you wanted? Did your husband care? Did he try? Did he give you what he wanted— what you wanted? If You didn't. That's a whole nother situation that we can talk about.

Yeah, but usually you tell me what you want, like, reasonably high success rate of pulling it off.

You are not the issue.

I know I'm not— I wasn't being defensive. I'm just saying—

I'm just saying that you are not the issue. There are husbands out there where their wives don't want to ask them what they want because they don't think their husband is going to give it to them. And when they do ask for what they want their husband might not give it to them for various reasons. And one of the reasons that I explained to my friend is, how are you asking? Are you— do you have an edge to your voice? Are you angry? Are you being aggressive? How are you coming off to your husband? Because if I come after Seth, yeah, he instantly is like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like, yes, I have told her many times that who you are being is speaking louder than the word. Like, the intensity, the way you're communicating makes it so my brain just shuts off in defense mode and I cannot hear what you're actually saying. I just know, "Alert, alert, alert, angry woman!" And I have no idea what she's actually saying.

I mean, if I'm angry, it's super ineffective.

Yes.

I'm not saying I can't be angry, I'm just saying I'm not going to get what I want from my kids or my husband when I'm angry because they're not listening to me.

We shut down and just try and defend ourselves. They run away.

They're like, "Mom is mad!" Get away from her. Yeah, so we're gonna assess the situation, and if you're not getting what you want from your husband— and I'm using this as an example because it goes both ways— then we got to get to the bottom of the puzzle of why you're not getting what you want. I mean, it's a case-by-case basis. Yes, and this is where marital counseling is awesome. A good counselor can help you with that. So I would say you only have control over yourself, so have control over how you're asking, being specific, making it achievable. Like, don't give them this huge ginormous thing that you want. Like, don't come up to your husband and be like, by the way, I want to go to Hawaii in December for 2 weeks, make it happen. Is that realistic? It might be in your mouth. I will tell you that's not realistic for us. First of all, I don't want to go away for 2 weeks, and neither does he. We tend to be a 5-day type of family, and I would say I don't even know that the kids like being away for 5 days. They're like ready to come home, right? So I don't want to end this without talking about getting to what's underneath the ask, and I'm going to use us as an example because we have the perfect example. Okay, I would say to Seth I want you to wait for me. I want you to drive with me to the game, and I want you to wait for me and not take off to the stands. And Seth would be like, whatever. Like, not in a bad thing, but not in an understanding way, right?

You know that— would you like an actual answer to that, as to why I might not, why I might feel that way?

Sure.

Okay, so in the example that we're talking about Max plays both defense and special teams, which means he is playing the first play of every game because it's a kickoff or a return.

You better not miss it. Exactly.

And you're dawdling with Lily, getting her ready to get picked up for cheer or whatever. And I'm like, how late are you gonna get there? Like, that could be— he could accidentally get the— get the ball and run back for 97 yards for a touchdown, and it would have— we would have missed it.

Oh my God. I mean, that's not gonna happen, but still, are hysterical. I do understand.

Notice the other day when we— Lily, you want to get there late to watching her cheer for the JV? I don't care if you're half an hour late, it doesn't matter because halftime is their big time anyway.

So you're telling me when we went to Lily's game the other day, you didn't act the same as you act when we're going to Max's?

Oh, completely different. You did not notice this? I was— no, walking slow. No, you wanted to talk to your friend. I wasn't going, hurry up, we got to get there. My doo-doo-doo, no problem.

I didn't notice.

Totally different experiences. I was purposely trying at Lily's.

I did not notice at all.

Damn it, all that effort was wasted.

So now I know. Now I know. But when we— I guess he's just so intense on being there on time. And what did I tell you about it? What did I tell you was underneath the ask?

Afraid you're not gonna get what you want? Afraid I don't care?

No. So I told Seth that when he—

well, first of all, oh, you wanted to feel it. Oh, oh, okay. You wanted to feel important.

Yes. I said to Seth, I feel unimportant to you when you're 50 yards ahead of me running and I'm way left. Oh, okay.

So you're missing another issue, which was I needed to go to the bathroom and I want to dump our stuff in the stands where we were sitting and then run to the bathroom. Okay. And you were taking your sweet old time and didn't know because I didn't say anything. I wasn't gonna dump the stuff on you and go, hey, carry two chairs and all this other stuff. I was trying to hurry up, figure out where we're sitting, dump the stuff so I could run to the bathroom and then make it back in time.

So what I did—

what communicate—

what Seth and I find is that with every single marital issue that we have, it always comes down to one of us is not communicating about something.

Effectively, or at all.

That is always the issue. And as it's titled, Things Left Unsaid— if you don't tell me, I don't know.

If I had told you, you wouldn't have been annoyed at me.

Okay, so I want to end with— I finished the book. I can't even believe it. I wanted to finish it so that I could add anything to it. Go read— what is it called? After I Do. Okay. So lessons learned from the book, few lessons about marriage. I told you keeping things inside makes us resentful. Not saying what we want or what we really think builds resentment. Say how you feel. Learn what you want so that you can tell your partner. Be specific. Marriage takes energy. We have to put energy into our marriage. We have to water our marriage. We have to to take care of our marriage. Never give up on your marriage. That was one of my favorite lines from the book. Never give up on your marriage. And you won't be happy every day of your marriage. That is a totally unrealistic expectation. Marriage takes commitment, so you just have to commit and ride the waves. And I am immensely happy. I'm not saying I'm not happy. I'm just saying that it is a commitment.

Perfect.

And you're not going to be happy every second of your marriage, right? So that is my topic of the week, and I love— and I always feel like when we talk about our marriage, we make progress.

I feel like I just had an amazing therapy session, and you could take almost every lesson that you just taught.

Yeah.

And apply it in the rest of your life as well.

I liked this topic. I like talking about relationships. We got to do that more often.

Amen.

So I want to tell them that this Friday Ella is on the podcast, my daughter, because we went to Inside Out 2. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Super therapeutic movie. Every single teenager child should see it. It actually helped me too.

Yes, I learned some stuff.

So Ella loved the movie so much, so I interviewed her about it, and you're gonna learn from her. You're gonna like this interview. I picked my winner to my September challenge, and if you come to the Winey Clues and Mom group on Facebook, it's a free supportive community for moms, and you don't have to be a mom to join. You can still get support even if you're not a mom, and I love it and I enjoy it. And come find us and bring a friend.

Please like, rate, review, share, and subscribe so that the algorithms of the social media platforms will share this with more awesome people just like you. And make sure you go to whinyblizzard.com, click the Linktree. You will find links to all of Rebecca's resources, including her incredibly popular and growing every single day, 3 times a week email newsletter that is crushing it. Like, dozens and dozens of moms are signing up every single day. So go check that out. It is totally free, even though you sent it out with a typo today. You gave it to me with a typo.

No, that was you.

You added a line at the bottom Okay, I apologize everybody who saw the email newsletter and I added a line or a space or I did some terrible thing, and I hope you all don't unsubscribe because of me.

Please don't unsubscribe if you see the content at all.

The quality was still awesome.

Oh my God, when I see a typo, I'm like, oh, it hurts me when I see a typo.

It's way too serious.

I definitely, um, the woman that I interviewed for my podcast She was saying today, she said that we take ourselves too seriously, we need to have more humor. And I was like, oh my God, I totally take everything too seriously. In general, yes, in general, in life. This has been a fun topic. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Go subscribe to the newsletter and go through the archive so you can see my typo and see if you even spot the difference.

I want you to go subscribe and find Seth's typo and report back to me.

Oh my God.

Okay, I will see you all next week. And if you have a topic request or a guest request, send them in. Let me know. Thanks everyone, have a good week. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time. This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.

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