Episode 385: We Should Have Put Ourselves in Time Out

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

Welcome to Winey Palooza: The Late Show.

I'm sorry that I'm late, I just got home from a football game.

That's a good reason to be late.

I'm trying to fix it.

Stop moving us, we're fine.

Um, yeah, I had a very— I was freezing. We have entered the cold zone. So before we talk about our topic, Tanner, please. He does this every time we go live.

He wants to be in it.

He wants to be in it. He wants me to talk to him. I've been talking to my friends about the hurricane, so I just want to say that I hope that everyone is safe in Florida. Lots of stressed out people who have loved ones in Florida. We're in Buffalo, New York, but we have friends in Florida. I don't know if we have any family in Florida. I'm not sure about that, but we definitely have friends in Florida, some of which I have been texting tonight, some of which have a daughter in Florida. So lots of stress about what's going on, and I think the hurricane is actually hitting as I'm talking. So hopefully you have power, hopefully you can tune in and talk to me and tell me Tell me if you are in Florida and you have power and you happen to be listening to us. Tell us how you're doing. Tell us what's going on. And prayers for everybody in Florida.

Amen.

Amen. So our topic this week is that we should have put ourselves in timeout because when Seth and I have a conflict, we tend to debrief and we tend to realize that, wow, we should really talk about this and process this. And what I want to say is that marriage is wonderful, and it's also not all roses and sunshine. You're gonna have conflict. I told Seth when I met him, and we didn't have any fights for a long time— that's normal— and then we started having little things here and there, and he would get all upset, and I would be like, no, no, no, Conflict is good. You want to have conflict, but you want to work on doing better with your conflict every time. So I think Seth and I are doing some things right, we're doing some things wrong. We've worked on some things, we still have some things we need to work on. So let's talk about it, let's process this. And what I want to say to all of us is instead of ruminating over things— I should have done this, why did I say that, I can't believe we did that— instead of all the negative thoughts and the spiral, I want you to stop yourself and say, okay, let's evaluate this. So instead of ruminating, I want us to evaluate instead of ruminate. Does that make sense, Seth?

Yes.

Okay, so, so I was— so my thing is, is that I want to say yes to people. And sometimes we need to be able to say no. I could do a whole— I think that we're going to have to do a topic on no and boundaries because I think not only do people that I know need to hear it, I think that I need to hear it. So I am not perfect. I have things that I need to work on. I need to work on saying no. I need to, I need to be better with boundaries. I want to say yes to everyone and I especially want to say yes to my wonderful husband sitting behind me. And when he says, you know, he has this project, let's say he has this work thing, honey, can you do this? Yes, I want to say yes. I want to always say yes.

And I apologize for asking you in the first place because none of this would have—

we're gonna— we're good. Yeah, but come on, I should have known better. I hate that he's saying that. So I hate that people use the word busy as a badge of honor. I don't like that people like try to make themselves feel important, like, I'm so busy, I'm so important. Like, when Seth tells me he's so busy, sometimes I tease him and say, you're so important. He is so important.

Doing it to get significance from you— I apologize if it ever came across.

No, absolutely not. You're not trying to gain significance from it. I sometimes put the kibosh on it because I am also busy. So your busy isn't always more important than my busy.

Never said it was, right?

Let's not go off— we're on a channel that's on a tangent. Let's stay focused. So I'm a— I feel like I'm a very busy person. I feel like I have a lot going on right now in my life with the kids and the husband and the pets and the job and the volunteer work and the house and the errands, and I could go on and on and on. I feel like I'm a busy person. I don't work full-time though, and my husband works full-time plus, and Seth is running— I lost count.

6 and a half.

I can't even. Okay, we're gonna have to go over this when we get off of this. Seth is running multiple companies. He's working definitely more than 40 hours. We had a little play fight about how many hours Seth works. We have a little bit of a disagreement about that, but I'm just thankful. I'm just—

another tangent.

I'm just thankful that he works so hard for us. So my point is, the last thing that I wanted to do was to say, no, you do this. He has enough to do. It's, it's a Sunday. I want him to put his feet up. And maybe watch some football. Like, I want him to chill out because he works so hard. So I'm gonna go plow away at this project, and I think in my head, I'm gonna plow through this and get this done today.

So this is an unrealistic expectation.

So lesson, lesson number 1: I tend to have unrealistic expectations for myself, and I tend to think that I can do things like a whole project in one day. And I can't, and I couldn't. So I start complaining, and Seth takes it away from me.

Okay, no, first I said, can you please stop complaining? If you're going to complain all the way through this project, I shouldn't have asked you. I'm sorry. If you're gonna complain, I'll just do it. I'd rather do it and be annoyed that I'm doing it than listen to you complain about it. And she said okay and then proceeded to keep complaining about it.

I don't even remember him asking me not to complain. I was in the zone. I was in the zone. I was working.

I'm happy about it.

I was working. So Seth takes it away from me and I get really pissed off. And I like, you can't just take something out of my hand and declare—

I apologize for doing that.

Okay, so he takes it out of my hand, he walks away, he's standing in the hallway, he's trying to work on it. While we're fighting and I'm getting more and more angry. So, lesson number 2. At that point, there's a few things. Number 1, his intention was wonderful. I was not thinking about his good intentions. We both were coming from a really good place and acting like total brats, 2-year-old brats trying to protect each other. So, I'm trying to protect him.

No, you must let me do it.

Yes, I'm trying to protect him from hours of work. He's trying to protect me from hours of work.

And I was also trying to protect myself from listening to you complain about it.

And I hear I thought you were being altruistic.

I was being altruistic. I didn't want you to be annoyed by it. I would rather be annoyed by it than have you be annoyed by it.

Okay, so we're both trying to be nice to each other. But we're expressing it as 2-year-olds. I mean, I was like, "Give it back," and he was like, "No," and, and, and I was like trying to take it from him, and he was like, "You're not gonna take this," and I was like, "I'm getting really angry, and I'm gonna be really mad at you if you don't give it back," and we're fighting back and forth and back and forth, and like, how about some self-awareness? Lesson number 3: How about the two of us being like, listen, we need to stop right here. Like, we are being immature brats. You know, Seth was being— I was being, um, angry, bitchy, bratty. Seth was being abrasive, stubborn, bratty. I was being stubborn, colliding. Pause. Like, pause. Move away from each other and say, okay, "Let's take 5 minutes to calm down and then let's sit down on the couch and calmly discuss who is going to do this." I mean, why did we keep going at it? Why don't we just say, "Stop.

Time out." That is a great question. If I had said that, would you have listened?

Excellent question. Which was not a "of course, honey." So I think that this was the perfect moment to say timeout and to go to our corners and to take some deep breaths and then come back together, right?

That would have been better than what we did. Yes, I apologize, I didn't think of that.

Okay, so if you could do it over again, what would you have done differently?

I wouldn't have asked you in the first place. Um, I would have respected the fact that it was annoying you and that I was going to hear about it. I would have not physically taken it away from you and tried to run out of the room. I would have asked you nicely again. I would have tried to convince you to get you to let me do it so that you weren't annoyed. Um, and then ideally, if all of that failed, I would have put some AirPods in so that you could complain about it and I wouldn't be bothered by it.

Hmm.

Is any of that the right answer?

Yeah, no, I'm think— I'm thinking and processing and thinking, you know, it's hard because I don't know what the answer to this is I think that I should have just done it and shut up about it. So like, if I'm gonna do something, yes, whatever the thing is that I'm gonna do, whether it's for me or for you or for somebody else, you don't want to hear about it, right?

I don't want to hear negative about it, right? Right. If you say, honey, can you do the dishes for me? And I said, sure, and every dish I put away— I, I'm not saying this is a complete exaggeration. Yeah, but I was verbally out loud annoyed and swearing at every dish. You'd be like, "Oh my God, just shut up. I'll just do it so I don't have to listen to you." Totally.

That's a really good way to explain it to me.

Thank you. Alright.

That was very helpful. So, I think that what you're teaching me and what we all need to do is we need to turn it around and neither of us was understanding the other. I wasn't putting myself in your shoes. You don't want to sit next to me on the couch and listen to me complain all day.

Know, especially if you're— we're bound to determine that you thought you could binge the whole thing and be done in 8 hours straight, and I would have done half an hour a day for a couple weeks to get it done, and you were like, nope, I'm doing it all at once, which of course is going to make you more frustrated doing it all at once.

Yes, so take a lesson from Seth, not from me. So for some reason, I think that I need to get things done And Seth is like, what is going to be my plan for getting this done?

Yes, how many minutes a day am I doing for how long to complete the task?

So in college, when I was writing 20-page papers in one day, what were you doing?

I wrote— I had— I wrote a page a day for 20 days.

Seriously?

Yes, I— day of the semester, they gave us a syllabus. I plotted out when I was doing everything for the entire semester.

Okay, so can I Can I respond to that? Sure. I think that I would get in a writing zone and my flow would be going and I would pound it out and it would spill out of me. And I don't know that it would have been as good if I would have done a little bit each day.

Well, that is your belief to keep you doing what you're doing. You can schedule the flow and schedule it every day on purpose.

I could schedule the flow.

You can.

Okay, so can I schedule better arguments between us?

That is a great idea, and I will learn something from you. Okay, so when would you like to have our next one?

I, I don't want to have any.

But that conflict is good, remember?

Well, so why is conflict good? What has your wife taught you? Why do you think that I say that?

Um, because we learn to resolve our differences. Um, we learn to improve our communication. We learn to grow together. We are stronger because of the conflicts we have gone through together, right? The finest steel gets forged in the hottest furnace.

What are the problems if you're not having conflict? Do you know the answer to that?

I believe that you have taught me that that would be they don't care enough to fight, or there's not enough passion to fight, right? Not strong enough feelings.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you're not fighting with each other—

I'm not saying you should be fighting all the time, but—

well, well, the problem if you're not fighting is you're stuffing your feelings, which is not good. Or you just don't have any feelings, or you don't give a crap, and that's a problem. So either of those things is a problem. You don't want to stuff it, and you don't want to not give a crap, right?

That is a technical social work term.

My social work term.

I love it.

Oh my gosh. So, um, yeah.

So we ended with me caving and giving the project back to Rebecca and her taking a lot of time that day and a couple more days and getting it done. And she did. She's more anal and more detail-oriented than I am, which is one— some of her strengths. And she did do a better job than I would have done, and she did it faster than I would have done it. Well, I'll give you credit for that.

I appreciate it. I'm sorry for—

I'm so annoyed that you made me give it back to you and cave into your threat of emotional blackmail.

Okay, talk about the emotional blackmail. I'm gonna be mad.

I'm gonna be really mad. Oh, it wasn't just the mad, it was, uh, if you don't give it back to me, we're gonna have a big problem. Like, seriously, you're causing— this is gonna be a big marital conflict over this little thing? This is that important to you? And it turned out that it wasn't just the thing, it was I had taken it away from you and I was telling you you couldn't do it. And telling you you can't do something is a big button for you that really pisses you off.

No, I think it was just someone telling you what to do. I think the problem was that you had taken it out of my hands.

Why are you obsessed with the out of your hands thing? This seems to be very important to you.

Because you just like grabbed it from me. I wasn't okay with that.

Was this something that you and your brother have on issue with? I'm sure. I'm sure he—

I'm sure that he grabbed things out of my hands and took them from me. I'm sure he did.

Okay.

I'm sure I've blocked it out.

Apparently it's coming. I see you repressing it.

You were acting— That is probably the problem. You were acting like a little bratty brother.

I fully admit and apologize.

Okay, so Seth is a youngest child.

Yes.

And I am an oldest child. And it works— I don't know if you realize this, but it works really well if you marry someone who is not the same as you in the birth order. In the birth order. So our dynamics are really good and we balance each other out. But when he acts like a bratty youngest child Pushes her buttons. Yes, you see that it pushed my buttons.

I didn't mean to, I apologize.

So what are we both gonna do differently? What did you say you were gonna do differently?

You forgot already?

Yes, I'm tired.

Um, what did I say I was gonna do differently? I wasn't gonna ask you in the first place. I was going to ask you when I saw that it was annoying you. I was going to suggest that I do it so that it didn't annoy you. I was going to ask you nicely not to do it, not to complain about it and failing all of that, get some earplugs or AirPods and crank up some music or something so that I didn't have to listen to you complain about it.

Okay, and I wish I would have just done it and been quiet.

Or when I took it away, if you could have just said, okay, either you're right, I'm sorry, I won't complain.

Yeah.

Or, okay, you're right, I'm just gonna be annoyed, you go do it. We would have avoided a lot. That's a conflict. I— what I was—

what I was trying to explain to Seth is that it was important to me because I knew I would do a better job because I'm more anal.

Yes, which I appreciate.

Yeah, so part of it was I didn't want you to do it.

I know, and I cared less about it being as good a job than I did about you being annoyed and not wanting you to be annoyed the whole time you did it.

I understand.

Which I did still hear about for days.

What did you hear about?

You complaining about it. Even when I gave it back to you, you didn't stop.

I did.

You cut back, you didn't stop.

I did. I consciously tried not to say a word. I tried to be just—

I know you made an effort.

I made an effort to be— I made an effort to be silent while I was working on it.

Okay, so that must have been my other wife going, this fucking blah blah blah.

Dude, I was quiet.

You did it. You cut back a lot.

I worked on that for you.

I greatly appreciate it, and I tried to stop you, and I'm sorry. I'm the whole thing.

Me too. I hate, I hate when we fight. I mean, I think that the bottom line to this whole thing is that when we have heightened emotions, it's not going to be a good conversation.

Heightened negative emotions.

Yeah, I mean, even my heightened negativity with Lily today— Lily was being so disrespectful. Um, I was keeping it together really well for a while, and then I was pissed, and then I— then I got angry, and I think I needed a timeout. I gotta be more aware of putting myself in timeout, and I do a really good job of keeping myself calm, and then I don't. So it works until it works. It works and it works and it works.

Eventually you run out of tolerance.

So like, it's like, she's disrespectful, she's disrespectful, she's disrespectful. You're doing good, you're doing good, you're having good self-talk, you're getting through it. And then she says something else that's even ruder, and I was like red.

Yes.

And because you're not starting at zero anymore and like you just want to smack them. I mean, I didn't.

That's good.

I have very, very good self-control.

That's helpful. Um, and thank you for not smacking me either.

I mean, I told Lily that my mom would have smacked me back in the day if I talked to her like that. I mean, she wouldn't have put up with that. So, you know, I'm not saying that we should be hitting our children. I'm, I'm against that. I don't do that. Um, but I did have a— I did take her phone away, and, um, I did explain to her that her behavior was unacceptable and what was going to happen if she acted like that. Very upset.

Yes.

Off on a tangent. Going back to the marriage.

Yes.

So we got through it. I think we talked through it later that day.

We did.

And it's really good to You know, I was feeling really down on myself. Seth was feeling really down on himself. And I think that, you know, as I was grocery shopping the next day and just feeling so sad because, you know, sometimes I just feel really bad about how I acted. And I expect so much of myself, like, you know better, why did you act like that? So I was just feeling really down on myself. And I think with all the practice and all the self-talk that I work on every day, I got to a place quickly where I was like, you know, you're wasting time, you're wasting energy, you're, you're not doing anything good with these thoughts that you're having. So switch it to an evaluation place and just evaluate what you're going to do differently next time. So that's what we can do. That's what's productive.

Amen.

Okay, so feel free to share your marital stuff with us. We love that stuff. We will talk to you about your stuff. Feel free to request topics. Feel free to request podcast guests. I love when you guys request stuff. And this Friday on the podcast is Alessia Citro doing High Habits. We talked about habits and we talked about things that she has learned and work for her and It— she doesn't— it's not habits, it's not a boring habit, it's an enlightening— how she enlightens us. And it's not what you think it is.

Well, now I'm intrigued.

I think it's better than, than it sounds.

Okay.

Um, yeah, she is a very interesting lady. I loved talking to her. You'll love listening to her. And I did do an October challenge in my Winey Clues a Mom group. Please come find me on Facebook. It's a free supportive community and I forgot to pick a winner so I need to do that, but I will pick a winner from the challenge.

And Seth, please go to wineandblues.com, check out the Linktree for all of Rebecca's amazing resources including the 3 times a week free weekly email newsletter that is growing by leaps and bounds every single day. And make sure on whatever platform you're watching or listening to this on, like, share, rate, review, comment, and subscribe.

That was tiring listening to that. Wow, I don't know.

You should hang out with me all day.

Are you tired after you do this all day?

Nope.

So please share this with a friend that you think needs it. I think that, that will be amused by us. And I would love for you to bring your friends to the Whining Pools of Mom group. I would love for you to join the newsletter. Thank you for all the things. We appreciate you. We're sorry we were late today. It was for our children. Um, usually when we're late, we're at an event for our kids. So have a wonderful week, and we will be back next week with a new topic. 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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