Married With Benefits by FamilyLife

Shaunti Feldhahn: We started going, wait a minute. So if that's Jeff's temperament, and yet we're in a highly happy marriage because we weren't always, what changed for us? What got us there? And we realized it was something that Jeff had done without realizing it would radically change the course of our marriage.

Brian Goins: I confess, I'm a feeler. Have you ever heard that phrase like you can't control your feelings, you just feel your feelings? In this episode, we get to be joined by Shaunti's husband, Jeff, as they talk about what highly happy couples do with their feelings that the rest of us probably aren't doing.

What a treat for this episode. We get to be rejoined again by your co-pilot. Jeff Feldhahn is back in with us. Thanks so much for joining us, Jeff.

Jeff Feldhahn: Happy to be with you, Brian.

Brian Goins: Speaking of co-pilot, I had no idea when I read this book on the secrets of highly happy marriages that your wife had a fear of flying. And it actually caused some significant marriage issues for you at one point in time.

Jeff Feldhahn: It did because I would see her with this palpable fear as she's sitting next to me in the airplane, and I would think, you just really either need to suck it up or just take control over this particular emotion and fear and just get on with life.

Brian Goins: How does the "just suck it up" message go for you in marriage when you tend to use that speech? Does that go well?

Jeff Feldhahn: I've been working at it for about 30 years and it quite hasn't worked like I've wanted it to.

Brian Goins: Tell me a little bit, you fly all over the place now. You're going around, you guys are speaking together. Have you gotten over it, or is it still something that plagues you?

Shaunti Feldhahn: I have. I don't actually know when it started. I sort of felt like I had always had this fear of flying and it got worse and worse and worse to the point where I would be so scared I would make myself sick. I don't know if Jeff remembers this. I think he's probably tried to block it out of his mind, but there was literally a Christmas we were going to be flying home to Jeff's family in Michigan from New York where we were living at the time. I was so scared that we're sitting at LaGuardia Airport and I'm so sick that we have to cancel our flight and go home and spend Christmas Day alone.

Brian Goins: Jeff, do you remember that moment or did you really block it?

Jeff Feldhahn: I remember that. And perhaps it wasn't the most joy-filled Christmas. It was the night before Christmas and all through the house, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Shaunti Feldhahn: Remember the whole thing about setting aside the black cloud of doom and pulling yourself out of a funk? I was giving him many opportunities to practice that day. Let's just put it that way.

Brian Goins: There was some funky tension I would imagine going on. So, you're obviously over that now. What changed for you because I think that's going to lead into this whole secret that we're going to talk about today.

Shaunti Feldhahn: It started to not only affect our personal life, but there were business meetings that I was going to have to go to and I literally found myself saying to my boss, "I don't know if I can go." And I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. And I was praying about it and I really honestly felt like the Lord said, "You have to start saying when people say, 'Are you afraid of flying?' just say, 'Actually, I'm getting over a fear of flying.'"

Literally say that to yourself and to other people. And I'm thinking, power of positive thinking or whatever. But I really felt like that's what God was pushing me to do. And so I started doing that and I would start literally, I'd be in the airport, I could feel that tension and I'd be going, "No, I'm getting over my fear of flying. This is not what God wants for me."

Brian Goins: How long did it take?

Shaunti Feldhahn: It took several years. It wasn't like, "Okay, now I'm positively thinking about this and then bam, I'm done in a week." It was years of practice, practice, practice, practice. But now, literally on the way here to record this podcast, basically the first half of the flight was the airplane going into gyrations because of the weather. And I was working the whole time and hardly noticed. I mean, I noticed it, but I wasn't really bothered by it, which is astounding that truly my feelings changed.

Brian Goins: Jeff, wouldn't you say that's one of the big myths that you guys as you've gone down and spoken to so many different people and couples on this topic, just that myth that is prevailing that my feelings are my feelings, I can't change my feelings about my spouse.

Jeff Feldhahn: No, that's right. I mean, most folks take that position and they simply just think that there's nothing I can do about it and it is what it is. I wish it was different, but it's not.

Brian Goins: And so what have you guys discovered about this? Because this is the secret, right? The secret is that you can actually learn to boss your feelings around rather than just feel your feelings. But you guys are saying you've discovered, no, you can actually boss your feelings around.

Shaunti Feldhahn: We had a person that we were interviewing, a wife, who had, we had a study group as part of this research project where Jeff and I were talking to not just people who were the happiest couples, but within that group, there were people who had gone from being in a pretty desperate spot in their marriage. And now they were part of this highly happy group. I wanted to talk to them in particular.

What changed? And this one woman said, "I realized for our whole marriage, I was letting my feelings boss me around. And I decided, no, I'm going to boss my feelings around." And specifically about her husband. And so that was a great way of capturing it. And so when we tested it statistically, we kept seeing it in these happy couples and we kept seeing examples of doing something that literally changed their train of thought.

Brian Goins: Can't somebody just say, well, that's probably because the reason why you were testing, they were just, you were just testing people that naturally have a cup half full life or they're always either Tigger or they're just going to be, "I'm going to will myself into a better place." Are you telling me that this is across the board regardless of personality type, you can boss your feelings around? Do you have a story about where that happened or an example of how that worked out?

Shaunti Feldhahn: Well, actually, we do, and he's here on the phone with us.

Brian Goins: Wow, that's Jeff.

Shaunti Feldhahn: One of the things that we had been nervous about all the way through the research was this question of temperament, especially because we had done a DISC test, which is one of those instruments where you look at what your measurements are. One of the things that we had been told over and over and over by different people was, well, you know, if somebody is a High C, they're just never satisfied. They would never call themselves a highly happy couple, they would never put themselves at the top of the heap and so you're leaving out a whole temperament type.

And I was nervous because obviously that would pretty much sabotage the project. And so I kept going, gosh, is that true? And we were asking about this and then something happened. Because remember, we had discovered we were in this highly happy marriage where it hadn't always been that way and suddenly we're like, wow, we really are in this highly happy marriage. And we did a DISC test at a Christmas party with all of our team and guess who is a High C?

Brian Goins: Jeff. Jeff is a High C. Now, we're not going to go into break down what the D, I, S, and C mean, but C basically is somebody that you could say they're never satisfied.

Shaunti Feldhahn: Never satisfied. I keep thinking of the Hamilton song that's singing in my ear that I'm just never satisfied. They always see what could be improved. Is that a good way to put it, Jeff?

Jeff Feldhahn: I would say that's a good way to put it. Or that you're consistently negative, never satisfied. I can agree with that, Jeff. I'm not a High C, but I act like that quite a bit.

Shaunti Feldhahn: And so this is what we started going, wait a minute. So if that's Jeff's temperament, and yet we're in a highly happy marriage because we weren't always, what changed for us? What got us there? And we realized it was something that Jeff had done without realizing it would radically change the course of our marriage.

Brian Goins: Okay, so Jeff, tell us what radically changed the course of your marriage for this High C to actually become a guy that is satisfied.

Jeff Feldhahn: I wish there was a strategy or a plan that I had to do this and accomplish this task. But really what it came from was when Shaunti turned 39. Just a couple of years ago. Exactly. I got into my head that her 40th birthday, that's a pretty big milestone. She's the type of person that loves getting gifts. She loves thought and care put into that. So in my mind, I really needed to step it up to make sure that her 39th or 40th birthday was going to be something special.

So I decided that I would write her a book essentially, which would be a year in the life of Shaunti. And I would diligently record every single day of her 39th year and what transpired in our life, what transpired in her life with our kids, between us, all of those things. And I would then, the day before her birthday, I would go and get it bound and compiled into a book and hand it to her.

Brian Goins: Oh my gosh. I'm really glad that my 40th and Jen's 40th has passed now, but now I could imagine my wife going if she were here, "Okay, well, our next big birthday you're going to write a book for me, right?" Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Feldhahn: I can hear the men on the other end of this thinking, I hate this guy. Well, let me just disabuse you and all of the men listening about my ability to give good gifts to my wife.

Shaunti Feldhahn: This was a good gift. Let me just say this was an amazing gift.

Brian Goins: Is this what he would naturally have done?

Shaunti Feldhahn: No.

Jeff Feldhahn: For example, when Shaunti was pregnant with our daughter, our first child, she was pregnant over Christmas. For Christmas, I gave her a pregnancy workout video. That's the type of gift giver I had been and have reverted to from time to time.

Brian Goins: Boy, what does that communicate? So what did you learn in this process, Jeff? You write this book and then what happens?

Jeff Feldhahn: So here's what happened. What I would do is I would make little notes throughout the day and then at the end of the day, I would go down to my home office and sit in front of my computer and type it all out into a Word document.

Shaunti Feldhahn: And I should say I had no idea he was doing this. He would often run down to his home office anyway. I had no idea. He'd be down there for five minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, I didn't know that this was happening.

Jeff Feldhahn: I wanted to be very accurate of the particular day. And there were days when Shaunti and I weren't on the same page. And there was a lot of emotions flying around and I would get down to my home office in quite a mood, feeling pretty chapped about something. And I would just be sitting there hammering away at the keys and going, "And then you said this and it made me feel this way." Because I wanted to be, I wanted to capture a day in her life. It wasn't the Instagram version of her year.

So as I was doing this for a week or two, I got this thought that maybe our kids will read this in 25 or 30 years and they'll go, "Dad, dang, you were kind of a jerk at some of these moments." So I wanted to kind of be honest about what had transpired, but I also wanted in each entry say something positive. And so I began to, before I would end any entry, I would say, "You know, we may have been at odds with each other today, but I just want you to know I am so grateful for you about this" and I would begin to put a list down.

The oddest thing happened. By the time I went upstairs from my office, all of that heat and emotion that I'd been feeling on the way down somehow left. And I didn't really recognize it. All I knew is that I felt better. I didn't connect the dots.

Brian Goins: When did you connect those dots? That's a pretty big statement that you went down the stairs feeling one way about your wife, you came back up the stairs, the only thing that changed is that you wrote down a few words. So when did you connect the dots that that's exactly what I was doing, I was telling my feelings where to go?

Jeff Feldhahn: When we were hearing other couples talk about their relationship in this research. And it was like, that's what it was, Shaunti. That's what we did. She didn't do it, I did.

Shaunti Feldhahn: The thing that was astounding was this had been probably five years, at least six, seven maybe years ago. But because it had been quite a few years back, it just hadn't occurred to me. And yet when we started hearing these other couples, we both went, "Oh my gosh, this is what we're hearing and that is what you did." It was so powerful to realize that what he was basically doing was literally changing his mind. He was literally changing the course of his thoughts and it changed the course of his feelings.

Jeff Feldhahn: And if I can jump in for a second, I wasn't changing my thoughts with wishful thinking about Shaunti. I was remembering the truth about Shaunti, about the things that she does so well that I often just take for granted. We all have them, every marriage has them, every husband has those thoughts about his wife, every wife has those thoughts about her husband, but we forget to look at them. We need to remind ourselves.

Brian Goins: Well, and that's biblical thinking too. When you think about that, it's like you see the psalmist over and over again actually talking to his soul. "Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" So he's not denying the fact that he went down the stairs feeling one way about himself, his life, God, whatever it may be. Then he says, "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me, therefore I will remember You."

Exactly what you were just saying, "I'm downcast, what do I do? I could just dwell on that, or I could remember where God has been faithful, where God has been great, where God has come through as He has in the past." You're saying do the same thing with your spouse.

Shaunti Feldhahn: It is actually a purposeful thing, okay? It's something that a lot of people don't know matters, but it really matters. And so if you think how simple that was of what Jeff did, I mean, that really was just a very simple thing. And yet what came out of that we eventually realized it wasn't just that, okay, he went downstairs feeling bad, he came back upstairs feeling a different way. That's how it started.

But within a few weeks, he said one of the things that changed is while we're actually in the middle of our disagreement or our argument and he's feeling bad, he's thinking about what he's going to write later. And in the process of thinking about what he's going to write later, he was thinking, "And what am I going to capture that's positive?"

And so while we're having the argument and he's upset, he starts going, "Ah, it's okay." It literally changed how we interacted in the moment as well. And one of the things that we found statistically once we actually ended up doing the actual survey and all of that is that really truly what is happening in the happiest couples is they've learned essentially to talk themselves out of being mad. They've learned to change their feelings.

Brian Goins: Quick interruption right now. I've always said that if you want to go fast in life, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And I want to go the distance in my marriage, I'm sure you do as well. And so that's why I'm so excited to talk to you about the Art of Marriage. The Art of Marriage has literally helped millions of couples around the world and we've just reimagined it here at FamilyLife.

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And so with my audience, I want to make sure that you guys get the benefit of being a part of this audience and so with the code word BENEFITS, you can use that at artofmarriage.com. Just type in the word BENEFITS, you're going to get 20% off. So go to artofmarriage.com, grab a copy, and watch God help your marriage go the distance. Now, let's dive back into the conversation.

Is this just willpower or are there things that you could actually do to become like this? Because Jeff, you had said you weren't like that naturally. You hadn't been like that. If it wasn't for this activity, well, for those of us that aren't going to write a book anytime soon for our spouse, what can we do to enter into that process and start to refocus?

Shaunti Feldhahn: There's actually two things that really, really matter. And the first one is that you have to basically refocus your thoughts, okay? So this is what Jeff was just talking about. There's a neuroscience principle that is so clear all the way through neurobiology, neuroscience, it's also all the way through scripture. Study of our brains, study of how our brains are wired, it's basically how did God create us?

And one of the principles in neuroscience is that what you focus on is what you will see. And that concept is once you actually start realizing this, it changes everything because so many of us, what we've been focusing on is the stuff that drives us nuts, right? It's the stuff that drives us absolutely crazy. And thankfully, there's always something else. There's always something else on the other side of that. And so that principle, let me just give you an example.

So there was an experiment that was done at Harvard probably maybe 20, 25 years ago. You can actually find it on YouTube, it's called the Invisible Gorilla Experiment. It's fascinating. You got to go check it out. It's very short and you basically see a video of a number of students in sort of a small little lobby area passing basketballs back and forth. And the video asks you, "Count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the basketball," okay?

Jeff Feldhahn: And Shaunti, there were people in black shirts.

Shaunti Feldhahn: Yes, black and white, exactly. And it was a swirl, right? Like several basketballs, moving around, exactly. A lot of frenetic activity. And so you're looking at all this activity like the activity in our day, in our marriage, in our life, right? But you're looking at all of this swirl of the stuff going on and counting what you're supposed to count.

And then at the end, the video comes up and says, "Did you see the gorilla?" Did I see the gorilla? It turns out that a person in a full-body gorilla suit walks into the middle of the swirl of the players, stands there, faces the camera, thumps its chest, and keeps walking off camera. And more than half of the people who watch this video completely missed it because what you focus on is what you'll see.

And the issue for us is so often in the middle of the swirl of the day and everything going on in our marriage, there's all this good stuff that's going, "Hello, I'm here too," right? Like, "Look at me," and we aren't because we're so focusing on sometimes, unfortunately, the negative stuff, the stuff that drives us crazy. And the great stuff, the stuff to appreciate, the stuff to be grateful for, that's there. Bossing your feelings around is about refocusing on that stuff.

Brian Goins: Well, and if you don't want to set up a whole gorilla experiment, I do know one that any couple could go out and do that's a similar principle. You can take a quarter, go outside on a sunny day, close one eye, and then if you put that quarter up, now don't look directly in the sun, but if you put that quarter up in front of the sun, that quarter will block out the sun.

And it just goes to show you I can focus on something so small and miss out on the bigness of the sun if I'm just focusing on that. And that's what I do with Jen, that's what she does with me, is that we go through our day and we remember the one thing they did bad or the thing that irritated us or the fact that they didn't clean up the kitchen the way we wanted them to clean it up or they didn't pick up the kids when they were going to say they were going to pick them up or whatever it might be. We focus on that and we forget everything else.

Shaunti Feldhahn: And we forget this concept that we can actually change our feelings. So that's the first thing that we have to do of the two, refocus your thoughts. If you think about it, this is basically Philippians 4:8 in action, right? Like how do you rejoice when everything is crashing down around you? You think on whatever is lovely. You think on whatever is excellent and pure and worthy of praise rather than what's worthy of driving you crazy.

Brian Goins: And Jeff, that's what you did when you were writing, right? I mean, you forced yourself, it wasn't like you didn't want to, if it wasn't for this book, you would not have forced yourself to do it.

Jeff Feldhahn: I would not have. And it's just the grace of God that He trained me in something that I didn't know I was being trained in.

Shaunti Feldhahn: And it was one-sided, right? I wasn't doing this at all. This was entirely what he did.

Brian Goins: Yeah, and so that's interesting too because we've talked about how a lot of these secrets that we're sharing, if one spouse starts them, it can actually change the trajectory of the whole marriage. And so that did it for you, right Jeff? I mean, you went from doing that for a book to then in heated arguments later, did you apply it after the book? Like once the book was done, would you be like, "Okay, I'm not going to do that anymore"? Or did it really change you after the book?

Jeff Feldhahn: I'm sure that there were some reverting back to the mean, but really, it changed me. And I didn't know that it changed me. I mean, that's the way that was so remarkable about it, was it just changed me.

Shaunti Feldhahn: This was why we ended up going, "Wait a minute, we're doing this research project and we are a highly happy couple. When did that happen?" and realized thinking back, that's when it changed.

The next thing, the second one, is to change your actual actions. Change your actions. And this is basically write down the phrase "act as if." Okay? So fear of flying. So what changed is that I was acting as if I wasn't afraid of flying. I was going and doing things and saying, "No, I'm getting over my fear of flying." And it starts to actually change you without you realizing it.

Like little silly example, but if you for example, say you don't really trust your husband to actually keep things from falling apart with the kids while you're away on a business trip, okay? So act as if you do trust him. Without trying to super control everything, act as if you do trust him to keep everything together. And then A, you'll probably see that oh wow, okay, he's a capable adult, he can handle this.

It may not have been done the way you wanted it to and the kids may not have been bathed most of the time, but it's alright, they're alright, they're alive. They're alive, they're having fun with Camp Dad. It's not lower the expectations, it's just change. But you're acting as if and your feelings are going to follow. You're doing something that you change.

One of the best examples of this came from ongoing research and we were talking to a woman in Michigan a couple of years ago. And she was telling us about that her marriage had been pretty badly impacted by the fact that her husband's mom, so her mother-in-law, was a very, very difficult personality. And unfortunately, it had caused for years issues in their marriage, just very challenging.

And she finally there was one day where it was particularly bad and she had continually felt like God told her, "You have to love her. You have to love her." And this one bad day she was like, "Forget it. Like I can't love this woman." And she felt like God was like, "I don't expect you to love her. You have to let Me love her through you." Okay, great, how do I do that?

And she said she felt the Lord ask her a question, "What would you do if you loved her?" Well, if I loved her, I would actually call her more often than just because I had to check and see if she could handle the grandkids or if I loved her, I would call her and ask for her cinnamon roll recipe, which she was really proud of. If I loved her, I would do this and that and she felt like God said, "Great, go do those things." And she said it was astounding. She was still the same challenging person, completely changed her feelings about it.

Brian Goins: I just think about how many times Jesus said that, right? When He said love your enemies, it wasn't just about this contemplative thought of love. No, it was if they want this, give them something more. Give them your cloak. If they're cold, give them your cloak. If they hit you on one side of the cheek, give them the other side of the cheek. It was always about one-upping from a thought to an action, a very deliberate and it would be a sacrificial action.

And that's often what these are, right Jeff? Is that when I'm actually changing my thoughts about my spouse and bossing my feelings around, I'm going to intentionally do something that I wouldn't normally do. You happened to write down your thoughts in those moments about Shaunti, but it changed your feelings in the process.

Jeff Feldhahn: That's exactly right. But what I can say is that it's really not a leap of faith to do this. There is enough research on this particular topic to show that if you do this, there is going to be a positive outcome either in your spouse's response to it or just in the way you feel about your spouse. We all want peace and joy in our lives, so why not practice the things that increase the likelihood that you're going to have those?

Shaunti Feldhahn: And we can't get away from the fact, the unfortunate fact, that there are going to be some marriages where there are things that you shouldn't just set aside, right? Like you shouldn't just go, "Well, yes, they're abusive to me, but look at all these good things." Or they were unfaithful or they're dealing with some addictions in their life, those kind of things. Yes, those things exist.

The issue is, and again, as we've said all the way through, the issue is though for the vast, vast majority of couples where there's just heartache sometimes, and sometimes more than sometimes, where there just is that heartache. The reality in the vast majority of those cases is, yeah, but there's also great things too. And so once you actually train your feelings so that you're bossing them around rather than letting them boss you around, it usually, not always, but usually has a pretty extraordinary marriage impact.

Brian Goins: So it starts with that first step you said, we got to refocus your thoughts. You got to actually focus on something different from that small thing that you're looking at. Then you actually follow through and go, "What would I do if I felt better about this person and if I loved this person?" Act as if.

Bruce, our producer on this season of Married With Benefits, he gave me a great quote by Martin Lloyd-Jones, who was a great preacher back in the day. And he said this: "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts or feelings that come to you the moment you wake up. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you. They bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Yourself is talking to you."

And so he basically goes on to say that listen, you have an option to either listen to yourself or talk to yourself. And I love how somebody said it one time, it's going to be easier to act your way into a new kind of feeling than to feel your way into a new kind of acting. And so let's act on those thoughts that we go, "Well, if I was loving my spouse, this is what I'd do." And watch the feelings actually can follow. They don't just have to be and exist.

So that's good. So that's a great secret, another one of highly happy marriages, which is what I want and I think that's what all of us long for. It's just are we willing to say, you know what, scripture talks about this, science backs it up, maybe I should actually start listening to that rather than the feelings that I have in the moment and just watch what happens.

Thanks for joining us for this episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please hit like or subscribe. And please leave a review or a comment. It just helps get the word out to more couples so that they can find hope for their own marriage. And listen, if you haven't picked up Shaunti's book that we're talking about all this season long, The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, you're going to want to get that and maybe grab one to give away because that's really what we're about here at FamilyLife.

We want to help you experience oneness so that you could impact your corner of the world. And listen, we've got a lot more help and hope for your marriage and family at familylife.com. You can find other articles, you can find podcasts, you can find shows, small group resources. You'll want to check that out at familylife.com.