Whinypaluza How To Stay Married

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday. Ella, bring us in, baby. No need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday. Have some wine and join us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green Family. Cha-cha chicken! Ella, can you smile? Okay girls, you're welcome to leave until the end. Go on, peace out. Thanks for bringing us in. We've got Suzanne watching. Hi Suzanne. Oh, he's got my hand. We're going to talk about marriage. Oh boy, how do I do the camera to get us both in is the question.

I just have to be really close.

No, don't do it. Okay, you have to get closer. Closer. Okay, we're gonna— we're trying, people.

I'm gonna buy some more equipment next week. The production value will be better.

So we appreciate you watching. I'll go back to you. Stop! Stop. We appreciate you watching every Wednesday. And I was totally blown away by last week. Last week I shared my yo-yo weight blog and vlog, and the response was more supportive and wonderful than probably any other topic I've chosen. So here I was afraid— not afraid, um, thoughtful, nervous about if I should talk about it, and I am so glad that I did because you are all wonderful and so supportive, and there will be more blogs and vlogs about that topic.

115,000 views and counting.

And I will share my journey with you as I hopefully go down and stay down. I am happily on a wonderful roll and, um, and in control and mindful and happy. So I hope that I started some of you along with me, and I hope that some of you are also doing well with me. So take the journey with me.

On your 21-day challenge, how you doing?

21-day challenge is complete, and I learned 20, um, 20 healthy new— not new— 20 healthy habits that I am pretty much maintaining them all. I need to go over them all again and keep refreshing my brain, um, so that I remember them all. But, um, we We had a very special event this past weekend, and we celebrated 50 years of marriage with my parents. My parents had their 50th wedding anniversary on Flag Day, and, um, I was so touched and moved by the day. My brother and his family flew in, and we gave them the greatest gift of having their family all together. And they loved it. And hello, Robert, good to see you. Tell my son to come downstairs and get on here with me. So, um, anyways, Robert threw me off.

Robert, 50th anniversary, beautiful gift of family together.

Yes, but there was something else I wanted to say. So in honor of my parents I wrote my topic this week is, um, how to stay married for 50 years. And I started with talking to them and learning about what they learned, what they had to say. But I am turning 44 this month, and I have been around for almost 44 years of their marriage and have learned so much about marriage and have taken marital classes and, and counsel— I have a master's degree in social work, and the social work and the psychology and the sociology and the and the counseling, counseled some people, counseled a bunch of families and couples and all of it, and have learned so much and have almost been married for 15 years. So Seth and I wanted to share with you some of the marital lessons that we have learned, and we were hoping that you would jump in and share some of the lessons, lessons that you have learned. And I'm gonna— why don't I start with my wonderful husband and share We— well, do we want to talk about the rocks or do we want to talk about the lessons?

I think we should talk about the rocks because in the rocks there are quite a few marriage lessons.

So my friend Jamie, my dear friend Jamie, watched the blog— the vlog last week and gave us some camera tips. And we totally understand that Facebook makes me have my phone like this, straight up and down vertically. Which makes it very challenging for Seth and I to both get in. So we will work on equipment so that we are not trying to squeeze in to talk to you. But in the meantime, of course I want to be next to you. So Seth and I wanted to— thought we would share with you our latest argument.

Saga of the rocks.

The saga of the rocks. So My wonderful husband hired a landscaper because last summer we got the bright idea to put rocks down over the rocks that already existed.

My wonderful wife decided those rocks that came with the house, those are boring. I need variety. I want new sparkly white rocks.

So we went to Home Depot many, many, many, many times and got many, many rocks in our bags.

Yes.

Our backs were not happy with us. So this summer Seth said, I'm not doing that, I'm not finishing the rocks, I'm hiring somebody. So he wrote a big check.

I'm getting— we— I'm getting all the weeds pulled up that I'm not gonna pull up. I'm getting all the rocks put down, and I'm getting the edging. I'm getting everything done so it's all pretty for my wife so she stops complaining about her yard.

So every summer we have tons of weeding to do. We have, you know, we need to— you, you know all the work that goes into landscaping. It's a lot of work, and, and our— and my back suffers from it. My back did not like it last year, and neither did Seth. So he wrote a big check.

I lifted a lot more of the rocks.

So we wrote— so, so we wrote a big check to the landscaper to come and do all the weeding and trimming and to, um, new rocks, put all new rocks down. And I said to Seth, you know what, I don't know that we were thrilled with the white. Let's do gray. I saw a bunch of houses with gray modern rocks. Let's get a modern feel. Let's do gray rocks. He orders— he orders the gray rocks. The landscaper emails him back with a picture. Seth shows me the picture. We both agree that the picture is gray rocks. We confirm that the gray rocks are good. The landscaper shows up with the rocks puts the rocks down, and Seth and I are like— and I, I'm upstairs going, Seth, he's putting brown rocks down! And I run outside and I'm like, are you putting brown rocks down? And the landscaper is like, no, they're dirty, they're gray. And I'm like, hmm, okay.

Now hang on a second, hang on a second, leaving out some parts that I screwed up. So when the landscaper emailed us the picture of what the rocks were going to look like He said in the email, "I think gray/brown would look good, a natural look." I'm gonna fall on my sword, throw myself under the bus, and I'm gonna admit I did not show my wife the email. I just showed her the picture. I didn't even read the email. I just looked at the picture, the pretty picture of the pretty rocks, and I was gonna make my wife happy with the pretty rocks. And she approved it, I approved it, the picture of the pretty rocks. We thought in the picture they looked all gray.

Okay, so, so I was gonna get to this. So then I cleaned the rocks. I literally—

first I washed a rock. I'm cutting you off. I washed a rock and it was gray. I said, oh, he's telling the truth, they're just dirty. Anyways, I didn't clean all the rocks. I cleaned one rock and got lucky and it was great.

So the landscaper tells me they're gray. I cleaned— he they put the rocks down. I clean the rocks. The rocks are not just gray and brown, they're multicolored rocks.

It's a rainbow. Not really, but.

So I was like.

Don't make that face again.

So I was like, what the heck? So Seth shows me the email and I'm like, why didn't you read the email? Why didn't you see that he didn't even, he wasn't even doing what we said. And why did he tell me that he was putting gray rocks down when they were multicolored.

Maybe he forgot to tell her that they were multicolored.

So I was so pissed.

Very pissed.

And what I realized through it is that there's always an underlying feeling, and the underlying feeling was Seth was not making me feel important. I asked for gray rocks, he didn't make sure that I got the gray rocks, and the underlying issue was I did not feel important.

Ah, yes.

So here we are. Still married, happily married.

What?

With—

not for those 3 days.

I was still happily married. I was just annoyed with my husband.

You didn't tell your face.

So Seth needs— so Seth needs me to be sweet and loving and to feel appreciated and to feel desired and to feel important. And when I'm mad at him, he's not feeling any of those things. So I'm—

when I was bad— that's my new t-shirt, mad is bad.

Okay, so any— so I I keep saying anyways.

Yeah, you're dismissing me.

I'm sorry that I'm dismissing you. So we still have crappy rocks out front.

You didn't finish the story though.

So Seth is like, what do you want me to do?

I offered to sit out there for hours a day every day and pick out everything.

You all know I'm not gonna have him do that. So during this argument of me feeling unimportant and Seth not having paid attention to detail.

I did not.

Seth kept saying, how can I fix it? Can I write another check? Can I write another check? Get more gray rocks. So now I cannot, after the check that we wrote, I cannot write another check for them to come put gray rocks down. So I do not know. I am going to complain to the landscaping company.

And the landscaping company's gonna say, what do you want us to do? And you're gonna say nothing. I just want to vent it to you even though I'm not married to you.

So what lessons did you learn in this argument? Do you see how silly marital arguments really are? We argue—

I heard you tell yourself that a week ago.

About rocks! Well, the rocks weren't cheap.

I was never arguing about the rocks. I never said you were wrong. I never fought with you.

So what did you learn?

You were just mad. That was not an argument. We did not disagree.

Okay, so what did you learn? And then I will share what I learned.

Okay, I learned that it is important— details matter when it comes to your wife. Very much. Um, you need me. I have systems and procedures and stuff at work to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and make sure things get done right. And I do not— I, I have this mistaken assumption that when I can come home, I turn it off and I'm not working anymore, even though I'm a dad and a husband and a doggy parent. I think, oh, I'm not at work anymore and it turns off, and you need me to use my skills for good at home so that you feel understood, important, and appreciated, even though I also make you feel those things in other ways. But when it comes to details around the house, like rocks or dishes or cleaning or whatever, I need to, um, make sure that the details are correct.

Yes, right? Yes, yes. So what I learned— so what I have learned is, first of all, when you have an argument It rocks. Sorry. When you have an argument, you should debrief and you should talk about—

publicly, yes—

you should talk about what you're going to do differently next time. So what I am learning through this discussion, through our multiple discussions, is that in the grand scheme of life, it is rocks, and I need to really not sweat the small stuff. And I also almost made Seth fall over in the street when I said I need to be more flexible, right?

I was very surprised by that.

So I am aware of the fact that I may get super detail-oriented about stuff and expect certain things.

Yes.

Hi, you want to come in? Sure. Okay, come sit.

Did Robert put you up to this? Yeah, they did. That was awesome. Robert, you're like awesome. You're my new friend, dude.

Look who we got here.

You got Max downstairs.

Um, wow, we got Max on Winey Palooza Wednesday. When does that happen?

Last time was his bar mitzvah, so it's been a few months.

So you are wonderful in an argument. When your mom and dad are arguing, he sometimes referees. Yes. What marital advice do you have to everybody after watching your parents? Uh, if you have any, and if you don't, you don't have to say anything. Stay. It's just nice to see you.

Um, maybe, uh, you can have any thoughts about the rock situation where you're aware that that happened.

You can throw—

Max lives upstairs, so he may have missed out on some of the rock drama.

I don't know what the rock drama is.

He doesn't know.

We're not gonna rehash the rock drama. Okay, so our topic this week is staying married in honor of Grammy and Grampy's 50th anniversary. So we were telling them ways to stay married. And if you have any pointers after watching your parents for 13 years, you might not have been paying too much attention when you were in diapers. Do you have anything?

Maybe if an argument isn't worth having, don't have it.

Okay, so how do we know an argument isn't worth having?

Uh, maybe like if you, uh, thing with, if the painting was straight or not, something like that. Yes, yes, from the mouths of babes. People. You heard it here first.

You have anything else? That's awesome.

No, I don't have anything.

I think that— I don't want to embarrass you, but I think you're going to be a wonderful husband one day.

Okay.

Okay, thank you for joining us.

You're welcome.

Robert is the best.

Yay Robert!

Yay Robert! Robert got him on. Okay, now I got to get us back. Okay. Um, wow, we never get Max on here. That's big. I would fight with Seth about hanging a picture wrong. I totally would. He's right. He knows his mother well, and I think that Seth and Max—

I don't know how many arguments in 15 years you've had that in hindsight were actually worth having, right? Maybe just a couple. So significant ones.

Okay, so my father's advice was to— I think what he's learned in his age and experience is to think before you speak, to count to 10 before you speak, and to remember who you are talking to when you talk to them. He said in his, in his advice to us when I asked him for it on his anniversary, he said to not yell at each other, not call each other names, make each other feel like they're the most important person in your life. He's learned a lot. And they've taught me a lot, and I've learned a lot watching my parents because they really did a good job showing me that marriage isn't perfect. There's good days, there's bad days, there's good times, there's bad times. They've been through tragedies together, they've been through super difficult times together, and I watched them overcome it. And they taught me that you stick in it and stay with it. And get through it with your spouse. And, um, what else have I learned? So much.

You should write a book.

I think that Seth— one of the concepts that Seth and I learned is that there's two marriages. There's the marriage that Seth is having, and there's the marriage that I'm having.

And then there's the marriage to each other.

And I think that we check in with each other, not regularly enough, but Seth, how's your marriage going? Rebecca, how's your marriage going? What could we improve on? What could we do different? I think that learning your spouse's love language, because ours, our love languages are so different. I think I told you Seth wants to feel important, appreciated, and desired, right?

Those are all true, but my love language is not just how I want to feel, it's how you make me feel those things. That is different than how I'm— you could have the same list and Yes. But need them expressed in totally different ways.

Absolutely. But I think that what we have discussed is that you look for more affection and I look for more help.

Yes.

So I look for more concrete things. I did the dishes. He was just doing the dishes because I had a very long day. Life is getting a little more normal and I'm not—

So you're getting a little busier.

Bored out of my mind. No, I've never—

You were never bored.

I was never bored.

Kids were born, you were not born. So we would love to hear from you about your marital lessons and share this with other couples that you know and love that would get a kick out of it, be amused by it, have maybe had similar arguments, or who might have words of wisdom. Please tell everybody.

So sweet, Seth. And what are you waiting for? The end?

Can you go get your sister?

What was I gonna say? I was gonna tell you something else. Thank you for watching, and I lost my thoughts. I learned something new about marriage every day. I learned something new about myself every day. We are all learning and growing, and we are going to have my beautiful daughters take us out. Ella, start. Thank you for watching Winey Blues on Wednesday with the Greens. Family. Cha-cha chicken!

Whoops! Thank you for watching.

I screwed up. Thank you for watching.