Focus on the Family Marriage Podcast

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John Fuller: If you've ever left a conversation with your spouse thinking there has to be a better way, this show is for you. I'm John Fuller with Greg and Erin Smalley who lead the marriage team here at the ministry. And today, as we address teamwork, in fact, all month long, we're talking about teamwork.

We're going to be hearing from Bill and Pam Farrell. Now, they've been married for over 45 years. They've seen a thing or two, and they talk about something called a marriage meetup with Focus President Jim Daly.

Bill Farrell: So the first one, which I actually think is the most important one is affirmation. Because this meeting has to be different than every other meeting you have. Like when you go into a business meeting with business partners, you're not worried about the emotional climate of your relationship, you're not worried about when we're done with this meeting, are we going to like each other enough that we would like to make love to one another? Like those don't come up in in business, hopefully.

Pam Farrell: But in your marriage.

Bill Farrell: Yeah.

Pam Farrell: In your marriage, those things are vital.

Bill Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. Like I wanted. Like one of the things I learned early is I have to set a tone with Pam that says the only reason I'm having this meeting with you is because I love you enough to connect my whole life to you.

So the affirmation in this meeting starts with a prayer with one another and a compliment. So either something I love about you that I've seen this week or a reminder of why I married you. So it sets the tone that I, I'm glad to be here because of who you are.

John Fuller: That's really good.

Pam Farrell: And we also bring a verse that has crossed our path and we pray that verse over each other, like each one of us bring a verse. And on our website, Lovewise, we do have like 52 verses you can pray, you know, over your spouse. So if that's new to you.

But I love how God just brings what he wants me to pray for Bill. For example, we're caregiving Bill's parents at the time. They were probably 90 when this story happened. And I'm reading my friend Cynthia Ruckert's book as they age. So it's to help me take care of Bill's parents better.

And so there's verses with every chapter and one of the chapters, the verse was out of Luke 9:48, and it says, "Your care for others is the measure of your greatness."

John Fuller: Huh.

Pam Farrell: Now, as a woman feeling like all control was taken out of my life, you know, for seven years of caregiving, we're locked in, double locked in, you know, because we have the COVID lockdown and we have, you know, the lockdown of we have to be here 24/7. That changed my heart from, you know, where resentment could have got a grip. Instead, I'm like, oh, I'm like, married to a great man. Look at how he treats his parents, so kind, so gentle.

And so sometimes those verses are exactly what God knows that you need as a spouse to pray.

John Fuller: That's a beautiful example. That's affirmation. What's another, the other two?

Bill Farrell: So the H is habits.

Pam Farrell: Yeah.

Bill Farrell: Because if you're going to organize your life, you have to develop habits. Like doing your budget, it's not an inspirational activity in life. Coordinating your calendar for the week, it's not an inspirational kind of thing. Identifying what projects you have to finish this week as a couple. Those are just that's the work of marriage.

And if you can turn those into habits where it's not a it's not an insult that I asked you about your schedule this week. It's not an insult that we're talking about money. It's not a, hey, I hate the way you spend money and I want to tell you right now. It's how do we manage our money in a way that works? And if you develop those habits, it takes some of the emotional steam out of it.

John Fuller: Right.

Bill Farrell: Plus the other thing that I wish I'd known earlier in marriage is the general rule in life is that your emotions always follow your decisions.

John Fuller: Huh.

Bill Farrell: So if you can take the decisions of your marriage and turn them into habits where every week you're effective at making decisions together, it creates an emotional environment between the two of you that's satisfying. And if you're not good at making decisions, it builds resentment and it builds this kind of negative tone. So 20 years into marriage, now you're like, I don't, we don't like each other. I don't know why.

John Fuller: Yeah.

Bill Farrell: It's probably because you weren't good at making decisions along the way. And so the emotional atmosphere just eroded.

John Fuller: Yeah, that's good.

Pam Farrell: And a part of, you know, a lot of times people like, this takes a lot of time. Yeah, but it actually saves time because if you're always arguing about some of the things that you should be talking about in the marriage meetups, like who are we going to schedule, what does the calendar look like? How much money do we have? How about meal planning? Who's going to do that? The chores, the prep, the tasks. If you talk about those things, then you argue less, and that saves you time. I don't know about you, but not very far into marriage, I decided that spending all day on a Saturday arguing was not really very fun and satisfying. So it saves you emotional energy and it saves you time.

And also a part of the habits is you pull forward anything that was not finished. So an unfinished decision, an unfinished, you know, attitude or heartache, you you don't just like shove it under the rug. You just move it forward a week and say, okay, how are you feeling? Is this a good time to talk about it? And for Bill and I, the money thing, sometimes it's a longer discussion and sometimes it's like, okay, is this a week I can spend money or not? You know, it's real simple.

Bill Farrell: Yeah. And that's really helpful because there are some things in life you can't solve.

John Fuller: That's fair.

Bill Farrell: But if you if you have a special needs child, you don't solve that child. Pam mentioned we're we're in a tail end of caregiving. We couldn't solve my parents. They just their needs have gone higher than they used to be and we have to endure it, not solve it. And if you can bring it forward, you can say, we just need to keep praying about this because we don't have a solution.

John Fuller: Right. And you know it's got some time limit, but you don't know how much time.

Bill Farrell: Right. But together, like like one of the the hardest things to maintain, I think, in marriage is the notion, we're really better together.

John Fuller: Yeah, that's a great goal.

Bill Farrell: Yeah, because as you get more responsibility, it tends to make you more independent. So saying, we don't know what to do about this, but we're in it together. It's a good way to remind yourself.

Pam Farrell: And having a template, like the marriage meetup is like the actual template that we have used for 42 years. So these are the components that we've seen work for us. So we like to say, coffee plus conversation equals connection. That's really what I'm about.

John Fuller: I have green tea now.

Pam Farrell: Well, you could have, you know, a nice ice water, some lemonade. I have green tea now.

John Fuller: But so that's affirmation and habits. Affection is the third. Describe affection.

Pam Farrell: And so one of the best parts is, we decide what day we're going to have what we call Red Hot Monogamy. Like, you know, there's the payoff. This is a business meeting for married couples. We like this.

John Fuller: Yes.

Pam Farrell: And so that's a part of the marriage meetup, but also it's bookended that affection. Early on, you know, you give that prayer, that verse, that compliment and at the end, we pray over each other and we thank each other for something we saw during the marriage meetup. And so it's bookends of love surrounded by a whole lot of productive work.

John Fuller: Yeah, that's good. I like it.

Bill Farrell: Right. And the affectionate part of marriage, early on, it's easy to do. But the longer you're married, the more deliberate it needs to be. So if you're going to keep dating your spouse, it's because you decided to.

John Fuller: Right.

Bill Farrell: If you keep expressing affection to one another in private or public, it's because you chose to. And if you set a legacy for your kids and grandkids that they see that you're in love, it's because you chose to. Because again, over time, you tend to fall into a rut if you don't fight it. And so keeping affection on the forefront. Like we, we never end a meeting with, okay, we're done.

Pam Farrell: No, no.

Bill Farrell: We always end it with, thank you for spending this time. Thank you for being this person right here in my life. And then pray for each other.

Pam Farrell: Then usually kiss.

Bill Farrell: It sets a tone that, okay, we can have another one of these.

John Fuller: That's good.

Bill Farrell: Because the bench tense, you're like, I don't, I'm not going back there.

Pam Farrell: And we encourage couples to like do it in a place that's romantic to you. During the COVID years, we had a little bistro under a tree with cute little lights. And you know, that made it seem more romantic. Or it might be your favorite breakfast place. That's what ours started out being just our favorite breakfast place. Or it could be two cozy chairs, you know, in front of a fireplace. But make it some place to look forward to as well.

John Fuller: Oh, that's good. Aaron, some great thoughts, as always, from Bill and Pam. So couples that you work with, when you sit down with them, do you find there's a pattern in terms of those couples who do better in regular conversations?

Erin Smalley: It's interesting because Dr. John Gottman, of course, the country's greatest researcher in marriage, has found that couples who schedule time together report a higher marriage satisfaction. So, I think what happens is because we're so busy, and we get it, we're busy, unless you schedule it, it's like we'll get to it, we'll get to it, and then the conversation doesn't happen versus we're going to schedule and we're going to prioritize our marriage. And we're training the marriage to know that, hey, if you're an, you're an entity and you're important, we're both going to pay attention to you and attend to you. So that sends an important message to the marriage that you're a priority and you're worth taking care of. And so thus, Gottman reports that marriage satisfaction rises.

John Fuller: And you find this to be true both personally and then professionally, right? I mean, this is something that takes a while to get used to, but the benefits are significant.

Erin Smalley: And I even find that couples as they schedule counseling maybe, they've they're not in crisis, but they're coming in once a month for maintenance. They do that because they know that once a month they're going to solely focus on the marriage for the hour that they're in my office. And it's intentional. And couples who do that are closer. They have that that deeper level of connection, that emotional connection that we all long for.

John Fuller: Okay, so go back in time, 20 some years ago when you had a gaggle of kids at home. I mean, you're empty nesters now, so you can be more intentional. But there are plenty of people listening right now thinking, easy for you to say, but I have so many demands, so much unpredictability. I'm not master of my own schedule, so how can we possibly do this?

Bill Farrell: Yeah, it and that's the reality. And so part of it is just letting go of the expectation it's going to look like a certain way or if we're going to talk about scheduling these conversations. Maybe there's not a consistent way that you can do that. I tell you this, a couple things hit me, that if you're going to schedule it, make sure you follow through. The worst case is that we schedule something and we don't follow through because that means that, well, it really reinforces this message of it's just not that important. So you want to avoid that.

The other thing though that that I love about the idea of scheduling something like this is that as Christians, man, does this give me the opportunity to go before the Lord long before Erin and I then sit down. So if we've scheduled something, now I know we're going to have this conversation. Like yesterday, we a couple days prior, we'd we'd had a harder discussion. We we knew that we wanted to circle back and repair that. And so yesterday I'd said to Erin, hey, later on tonight, can we circle back? Can we repair this? We actually didn't get to because of some things, but, but,

Erin Smalley: We did not. Tonight.

Bill Farrell: Yes, but my point is this, just saying that, scheduling that, for me, then I remember going, okay, so God, I want to be so open. I want my heart open. I want to really lean in and hear her. Lord, help me to do that. Versus if it's spontaneous, if it's, you know, spur of the moment, you don't get that benefit. So that's why I would advocate is the the best reason to schedule these conversations. It allows you to go before the Lord and get right.

John Fuller: Well, I so appreciate that because the feeling I have sometimes is, hey, we need to talk. Oh, I am a little slow sometimes on these things, and I need some space. I need time to process and get ready. So I appreciate that.

Erin Smalley: I think some people get stuck at we need to talk. Uh oh, what did I do? What's wrong? Are we disconnected? But this is another thing I will add. Making sure that because like we, we said, hey, let's talk about this thing that needs to be repaired. And we I my hope would be, and typically we do, make sure there is a time scheduled or a goal time. I think that's important, but it's also making sure that it's not so rigid that if it doesn't happen, well, then it's your fault. And now you're on the hook and on and on because I have seen the punishment pieces that as well.

John Fuller: So you didn't go negative either one of you with the realization in real time right here that oops, we didn't do that, did we?

Erin Smalley: Right.

John Fuller: But I mean, stuff happened. Life seeped in. Don't let perfection be the goal. And I also hear you saying, give yourselves some grace because,

Erin Smalley: And give each other grace.

John Fuller: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look at this as an opportunity that we missed, but let's try again.

Erin Smalley: Yeah.

John Fuller: So good. And communication and this kind of intentional communication is all part of our free marriage assessment online. Over a million people have taken this. It's 15 minutes or so of your time. Go through this and you'll have talking points for hours and hours to come. It's really a helpful tool. The free marriage assessment, it's linked in the show notes.

Also, we do have a bundle of books from Bill and Pam Farrell. The marriage meetups bundle includes his and her editions of the book. And for a donation of any amount today to the ministry of Focus on the Family, we'll send you that bundle. Details are in the show notes as well, or give us a call, 800, A Family.

Next time, Chuck and Ann Bentley talk about financial choices and how you can respond better to poor financial decisions. For now, on behalf of Greg and Erin and the entire team, I'm John Fuller, and thanks for joining us for the Focus on the Family Marriage Podcast.

If you enjoy Focus on the Family content, you'll love Focus Live. It's a new station powered by Godcaster. Get the app today at focusonthefamily.com/podcasts.