142. Marriage Has Seasons Too, Part 1
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your marriage. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
This is part 1 of me sharing the seasons we’ve been through in our marriage.Throughout this episode and the next one, I walk you through all 13 years of my marriage to show where we’ve been and how we got through it.
So many things try to tell us that marriages are supposed to be easy and beautiful 100% of the time. The reality is that marriage is beautiful, but it takes ugly work to get to the beauty.
I hope you find the seasons of our marriage relatable. I want you to see that you’re not crazy for feeling the way you do, no matter what season of marriage you’re in.
Click the link to listen, and let me know what you think - I’d love to hear from you!
If this episode hits home and you’re ready to work with me, book a call so we can chat. On the call, you’ll share what’s going on, what you’ve tried, and I’ll share how I can help. Can’t wait to connect!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina:
Amigos, como estan? Welcome back to the Relationship Reset with me, your host Karina F. Daves, marriage expert and host of this dope podcast. Today's episode is going to be called marriage has seasons too and we're to divide it into two parts. I'm literally going to take you through my marriage in the next 10 minutes, 13 years in 10 minutes, and the purpose of this is not just to provide context but to share a testimony of where we were in our marriage, how we got through it, and in some way, or form, not make you feel crazy anymore for going through what you're going through.
There are so many visuals, campaigns, ads, know, photo shoots, Photoshopped pictures, ⁓ Photoshopped stories that are out here telling you that marriages are supposed to be easy and beautiful 100 % of the time. And it's not like that. The reality is that marriage, yes, is beautiful, but it takes ugly work to get to that beautiful.
All right. I'm going to take you through the seasons that my marriage has gone through in the last 13 years. So let's start with the first season. The first season, let's call it Petrify. We were 24, 25 year olds getting married and not knowing anything but the fact that we loved each other and wanted to build a life together. We had no idea what a wife looked like. We had no idea what a husband looked like. We had only read about it in scripture and had watched other people be relatively okay. But at 24 or 25, we didn't have mentorship. We didn't have marriages that we could look up to and say, oh, we want to be just like Bobby and you know, Melanie, we didn't have that. And while we love our parents very much, we couldn't look to those marriages at a hundred percent for what we wanted. And so our first initial season was petrified. And when you are petrified, you're not nice all the time because you're on edge, right? You don't know what to do, how to do it.
And so then you enter a season of being spontaneous. You enter a season of trying to figure out who we are as a couple. And we went from being petrified to then being very spontaneous. And in this season, we did everything. We ice skated, snowboarded ⁓ we went skydiving, we went skiing. I mean, that was our definition of being spontaneous. We went to, ⁓ different events. We went to different concerts. went to underground basement concerts and we listened to music that neither one of us thought that we liked. Like I remember going to see this rock band in this basement and they were called, ⁓ something sweet. S U I T E. And they had this amazing just energy about them. And I had no idea what these guys were singing about, but I remember wearing my platform Nike sneakers and a Marvel white t-shirt with a green jacket. And my husband must've had some studs on his jeans. And we were just there hanging out, trying new things. Then I remember we went skiing and snowboarding and I got super pissed off because my husband is the kid in school that doesn't have to study for the test and overperforms everything he tries. He just automatically gets and I'm not like that. And I just felt like I was holding him back. It was less about me feeling left behind and more about the fact that I was holding this guy back. Like I just I was more pissed off at myself that I couldn't catch up in the midst of being spontaneous, right? We traveled, we did everything. And I think that most couples have this spontaneous period because they're trying to do things before the kids. That wasn't us. We had this very big idea that we were going to still continue to do a lot of these things through having our children. And so we took a lot of risks, even purchases. Like I remember, you know, just taking risks in the things that we bought for each other, learning each other, studying each other. There was just so many risks that we took during this period and trying to figure out who we were.
And then we entered, I would say in year three, we entered a very ⁓ being annoyed at each other stage. And that season, when you are pissed off at each other more than you are lovey-dovey with each other is difficult because you start asking yourself the question, did I marry the right person? And I remember feeling like grace ran out of it between us. And even though we were at the beginning stages of getting back into our church community and trying to be a part of a Bible study crew that was full of married couples with kids and really trying to find ourselves within that third knot with God It just felt like no matter what my husband did It just pissed me off. Like he couldn't get it right. I was annoyed at everything and We had made this commitment to one another that our marriage was private. And because I was one of the first individuals in my circle of friends to get married, I didn't really have anybody to talk to. Right. And so it kind of worked out where we made this commitment to each other that we would remain private and I had nobody to relate to. I had nobody to talk crap about my husband to. And then we made another commitment, which is as we learned. One of the values is that we have is that we don't talk crap about each other. You will very rarely. I mean, I'm talking slim to none. Find me talking crap about my husband. I may crack jokes on him. I may tell everybody he's like the worst, you know, partner to have in spades and taboo. But in no way, or form am I minimizing my husband's skillset, my husband's ⁓ memory, my husband's ability to be a father, be a husband, support me. Even if those things may have been true through the course of our marriage, we both decided very early on that it would be the case that we wouldn't talk crap about each other. And it's happened where I've been in circles with other wives and sometimes husbands too, trash talking their partners and I either get up and walk away. I don't entertain it. It's not, I don't like it and I don't value it. And it's one of the things just as much as other couples make other commitments in their marriage with each other. This is one of ours.
And so after getting through this sort of annoyed season, we then went into one of the most difficult seasons. like, I think for us, we thought that arguing was a difficult season. I think pruning was a more difficult season. And that, I believe, was around year five through seven, where we took a step back and looked at all of the commitments that we had made individually and as a couple. So we're talking friendships, we're talking daily habits, we're talking, you know, career choices, we're talking financial commitments, we're literally talking about commitments and covenants that we've made to individuals, organizations, daily habits that perhaps no longer really are aligned with the values that we have now. take a good look at our life and realize that there was a handful of areas that we needed to prune from. And there was also a handful of commitments that we needed to prune from. I personally made a decision during that period to get off of social media for two years. And… It was difficult. mean, I remember being pregnant with Levi and maybe only 10 people knew that I was pregnant. ⁓ That was a pruning season, but the blessings that came after that pruning season were very intense.
One of the most difficult things that we had to prune during that season were friendships. They were difficult because I am a very attached person in the sense that I'm very loyal. And we had friendships that we realized were not in favor of our marriage. And we also had friendships that we realized were not aligned with the things that we felt were
Appropriate right and so it was less about judging those individuals and more so about realizing like dang like I love you, but like we can't even hang out because the things that you do are wrong and We went from pruning straight into this confidence season. I'm telling you like during this pruning season I had a tube in my body. I had a persistent infection that lived with me for two years. Terrence had just gotten Lyme's disease. My son had almost died from a very normal ear to procedure. Three of our cars were totaled in front of our home and it just felt like we were hit nonstop. And it wasn't until we decided to prune in our marriage individually in our lives that the blessings came. I was healed health-wise. We were able to get the house that we have now. I mean, the floodgates financially opened up. I was promoted at work. My husband was given an opportunity. know, he also ⁓ was healed from his Lyme's disease. Like so many things happened and then I got pregnant.
And so like, we just entered this very big confidence season. And I...I look back at that season now and I realize how much hard work had to go into that. That was ugly. Like sometimes being married is really ugly because you wake up day after day in some of these seasons not wanting to be married. That's the God honest truth. Not because you don't love the person, but because the reality is that marriage is hard. There are so many days where you wake up and you don't like each other. You think back like, where did my partner go? Why are you so pissed off all the time? Why are you like this? How did you become like this? And it's like you're living in this twilight zone. And no matter the goals that you achieve, at the end of the day, if you can't see your best friend that you decided to say, do to, on the day that you got married, it doesn't feel good. Anything that you achieve doesn't feel good if you can't look at your husband or wife in the face and not see them as your best friend anymore.
That is the reality of marriage.
