101. Marriage 101 Pt 3: Why My Marriage Started Working
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 relationship and responsibilities teaching you how to stop arguing and have more sex. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
Welcome to our new podcast series - Marriage 101. In this 4 part series, I break down the history of my marriage, from my perspective.
In Part 3, I share all the things that we changed in order for our marriage to start working.
I break down the 5 S’s to a successful marriage so you can understand what you need to do for your marriage to work.
In this episode, I reference Episode 71, Partners with Potential vs. Patterns.
Click the link to listen below and email me back with your thoughts, I want to hear from you!
If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to work with me during this season of your life, then I invite you to book a call for us to connect and chat.
During this call, you will share what is going on in your life, what you have tried so far, and I will share how I can help. I can't wait to meet you.
P.S. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp®. Get professional support when you need it, at a fraction of the cost of in-person therapy. Sign up today and receive 10% off your first month! Click the link to get started!
BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/karinafdaves
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karinafdaves/
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@karinafdaves
Personal Website: https://www.karinafdaves.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqlt...
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/karinafdaves
Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos, como están? Welcome back to Relationships. You understand? with your host me, Karina F. Daves, relationship expert, speaker and podcast host of this dope podcast. Today we're going to continue our series Marriage 101 part 3, Why My Marriage Started Working. So if this is your first time listening to this episode, know that we've had a wonderful series called Marriage 101 that started with why my marriage wasn't working, which was such an amazing episode where I break down for you all the things that made it difficult for my marriage to work. And then our hundredth episode was mainly focused on how my marriage changed me and I couldn't help but get emotional on this episode.
And today I want to share with you all the things that we changed in order for our marriage to start working. Now, as I've shared before, these are from my personal perspective and my sort of the things that I did. Even the mistakes that I made, I'm very open with sharing them. I think that, you know, I've, over the last four years that I've had this, this podcast, I've been extremely respectful of my husband's, sort of like point of view and the things that he has felt and all those things. think I've, I've shared very surface level things that he shelled, but I'm shared and felt, but I'm very respectful of the deeper things because that's his story to tell. Right.
And so as I always promise, these episodes are short because I do drop my kids off at camp in school. All right, here we go.
Marriage 101 episode 101, part three and why my marriage started working. And so last episode, I broke down for you the story of how we met, why we got married and what my marriage did to me. And one of the biggest revelations that you should know about your relationship is that it puts a mirror to your face. Your marriage is your mirror and your marriage will bring out the very best and also the very ugly. It's the reality. And sometimes the very ugly are things that are very much pushed down to the surface of you and don't necessarily become triggered or don't necessarily come to light until you're in a relationship, which is plenty of times why many of my clients say, my partner triggered me, my partner triggered me over and over again because it's the person that you spend the most time with.
And so I shared in the last episode how my marriage changed me and it helped me to see in ways that I was controlling, in ways that I felt like I was the only person that was right and in the ways that I showed up even hyper independent. And there were a lot of things that needed to change in our marriage and I think in year three, fast forward, what ended up happening was the beginning of our marriage was not the best. I'll be honest with you. think plenty of couples have an amazing couple of years in the beginning and then it goes downhill. Whereas mine was very, you know, we got married and I felt this intense pressure for it to be perfect and I felt this intense pressure to not get divorced like all of the people in my family. Both sides, mom and dad. I mean, everybody's divorced. I can count on one hand, everybody that is together. And then I don't know if I have any hands left for anybody that maybe just one or two, but that is together and is happy, right? That's the difference.
And so what I want you to understand is that when we got married, those first couple of years were very difficult because of the intense pressure that we had put, that I had put on the relationship, I'll just speak for me. And so we'd spend those first, I wanna say two, three years in a very hard cycle of arguing and misunderstandings and trying to learn each other and also butt heads about what methodologies would be great for our marriage and what methodologies won't be great for our marriage.
And in about the third year, my husband said to me, know, I think it's time that we do something drastically different. And I said, well, whatever we do, it has to be different than what everybody else has done because nobody else is working. And so I said, I would love to go to therapy. And my husband said, well, I'm only gonna go to therapy if you find me a therapist that looks like me.
And for anybody listening that is from New Jersey, it is difficult to find a black male therapist in New Jersey. And this is before virtual therapy or on the phone therapy, right? This is when you would go into the office. And so I found Dr. Carr and he clicked. He was a 70 year old black male therapist who was obsessed with Stevie Wonder.
And we got into that session and I felt like Dr. Carr betrayed me because we were both social workers. And so I felt like we would go into that session and he would tell my husband everything that I was saying was wrong with him. And he would validate me. But instead he highlighted how much our past traumas were very much showing up in our marriage.
Right. He it got to the point where, and mind you, we had like a four or five month old. So our son, TJ, was like playing around the floor. And I'll never forget it. He like looked at both of us and he said, You're still hung up on your parents divorce and you have daddy issues, separate sessions immediately. And I was like, what? And he's like, you guys are forgetting the very fundamental thing, which is that the number one, you love each other and number two, you love each other. He always used to say that. And I used to be like, what?
And he said, you're allowing your past to overcome, to over consume, excuse me, so much of your relationship rather than figuring out how to fix those things or how to find healing in the past. And I was like, this is so interesting. I've heard before of baggage and bringing baggage into your relationship, but never to this point, right? And so,
I share that story because I want to share with you the S's as a relationship coach, the S's of how to make a marriage work. Number one, it's going to take surrender. And what I mean by surrender are a couple of things. It's going to take in order for your marriage to work, it's going to take surrendering the normalcy of ideas of things that you feel like work, of things that you feel are a pattern to create success. You're going to have to surrender your thoughts about what works and try something new. You're going to have to get out of your comfort zone and surrender the very nice sort of life that you've built or the very nice environment that you build and work outside of that comfort zone. There is no way that you can continue to be married in a successful marriage without surrendering that.
The second thing you're going to have to surrender is your partner. Your partner can't be who you want them to be. Your partner needs to be who they want to be. And if you married your partner thinking that you can change them, you're in for a ride. I want you to be with somebody that you love based on how they show up, not for potential. And I have an amazing episode. I'll link it here in the notes. It's the episode is called Potential verse patterns. OK, and listen to that episode because I break down how many of us marry potential and we don't marry patterns. And this is why I feel so strongly, especially with my clients that are in the dating phase.
I feel so strongly about telling them to date outside of their comfort zone, date outside of the box, date outside of what they normally would date because you never know what patterns you're going to find. You never know what you're going to discover about somebody's heart posture that may necessarily not have been on your, have your ideal list. So surrender is big.
Number two, one of the biggest ways, and this should have been number one, of how your marriage is gonna work is your spirituality, your faith, right? And I'm not promoting here that you only believe in God. You know, I'm very big on telling you that my job is not to judge you, but is to love you and show you God's love. But whatever it is that you believe in, I'm super respectful of that, but you need a spirituality, you need a faith to ground you. Your faith is going to be the very thing that your marriage needs to look to when you're making a decision about something, right? How ethical something is, how aligned something is, how much something that you want should be wanted, right? This is how you figured out things like idealization and obsession and addiction. Like you go back to your spirituality that regrounds you, okay?
The next S in order to make your marriage work is going to be support. Right? And here I talked about our support when it came to choosing therapy. And here's what I'll say about therapy. I personally love therapy. Okay? I love individual therapy. I love couples therapy. And as a former social worker, I can tell you that therapy works. I mean, it's difficult to find a good therapist. I'll be honest with you about that. But therapy helped to bring me to the present, to regulate things to the present, to unpack things to the present. And I think the work that I do with my clients, and I would say 90 % of my clients actually have therapists, the work that I do with my clients is we take the present and we might spend a little bit of time unpacking the past, but we're going forward, baby. Like we gotta, there's so many things to fix. There's the resentment, there's the cheating, there's the dating, there's the job, there's so many things that I'm trying to get you through when we coach together my private one on one coaching program to get you the results that you are looking for. Right. For example, I have a client right now that is working with me because her partner stepped out on her for a second time. And the first time they went to therapy, there was this big focus on reconciliation. And I said, that's amazing. But did you guys ever stop to think about what the infidelity did to you and where you were at at the moment that it happened, she said, no. And I said, because what I'm seeing is that you put everybody before you. And so there was never a focus on the individual itself, the individual impact, right? And that's part of life coaching is we're not only concerned about, I'm not only just concerned about your relationship, I'm concerned about what it is that you want. You understand? Okay, so support, therapy, coaching with me, whatever it is.
The other way that we seeked out support is through our church. We had life groups and there was a specific group called Married with Children. And it was such a beautiful group, not only because we co -hosted together for about five years, but you ever hear the saying like there's a purpose for somebody being in your life? Those couples, those three amazing couples who we're still very close with now changed us.
They were about eight to 10 years ahead of us in marriage. They had bought their first homes, maybe onto their second homes. They had their kids were older. Like it was just so God sent the fact that they were ahead of the game in our eyes. And we looked up to them. And to be honest with you, I loved how open they were about their conflicts. And I loved how open they were just about even finance, like they would tell us how they move their money, investments that they made, how they would pay their mortgage, things of that nature. And I know it sounds crazy to want that, but you should want that because there are people out there, there are married people, people, there are also people in relationships, there are married people with children out there that you can trust and that you can build these relationships with to use as a cornerstone when you're struggling or as a cornerstone to go to when you don't know the next step. And that is exactly what Terrence and I used it for. And obviously relationship as well. But it's so interesting to me because Terrence and I always say that we wouldn't have the home that we have if it wasn't for them. Like they literally coached and mentored us through that. And so for you, whether that support looks like therapy, whether that support looks like a group, whether that support looks like church or mentorship, whatever the case is, you're going to need support. In order for your marriage to work, you're going to need to be okay with people helping you. And it needs to be the right people. It needs to be wise counsel. You can't seek support from somebody that doesn't like your partner. You cannot seek support from somebody that is jealous of your relationship. You cannot seek support from somebody about your marriage that doesn't know a thing about marriage.
Sometimes the reason why you lack support in your relationship today is because you're not looking in the right places and because you don't have the discernment to know what's good for you and what's not. These people that don't like your partner and that talk crap about your partner behind your back isn't good support. These people that are jealous of your relationship aren't good support either. You gotta understand that. That's what discernment is, is having the discernment to realize what's wise counsel and what's not? You understand? Okay.
The next S, which actually was supposed to be my last S is I put sexual and non -sexual intimacy. And what I mean by that is your marriage needs sex. It's the reality of it. Your marriage needs sex. It's the way that y 'all connect. And I think what happens and what's happened to me is that you're waiting to be in the mood or you're waiting to be turned on to have sex when you are not always going to be in the mood and you are not always going to be turned on to have sex. What you need to remember about having sex with your partner is that sometimes just the very knowledge of knowing that having sex with your partner is making a connection between you and them and is building the foundation for y 'all to be closer with one another. Once you get there, right? Just having that knowledge, you'll be in the mood sometimes after or sometimes during you're waiting to and this is insane to think but like you're waiting for things to be perfect to have sex in your marriage. And that is not the right route to take. Your marriage is not always going to be perfect. Y 'all are not always going to like each other. There are plenty of times where I don't like my husband. There are plenty of times where my husband don't like me and I know it, but because there is this knowledge and there is this insane amount of dedication and belief and faith that being intimate, especially sexually intimate is so important in your connection, that knowledge alone is what drives the desire. You're waiting to have the desire before you initiate sex. And I'm asking you to just have the knowledge and it be enough, be intimate and understand that the desire builds up from there. You understand?
And I'm gonna address something that I know is on your mind right now, which is like, they don't pay attention to me until it's time to have sex. Okay, I hear you on that. And when we work together, we're gonna come up with the exact communication strategies it's going to take for y 'all to be on the same page. Cause I've been there myself before. There is a way to have that conversation. There is a way to say, honey, listen, after OK, honey, listen, like I had such a great time. I want you to know that sometimes I kind of feel not paid attention to or I kind of feel not desired unless it's intimacy. Is that the case? Become curious instead of offended. The reason why you say no is your weapon. You're utilizing no as a weapon against your partner because you are feeling a certain way about something that you think that they do. Have you gone and asked for clarification or did you just immediately make a judgment.
Okay, we tend to make assumptions and judgments about our partners when we don't even ask questions about the things that we're judging them for. Instead, I need you to become curious instead of offended, because you will remain in this cycle arguing about this one thing because you have these ideas and you tell yourself, I know them so well, I know that they're doing this, I know that they don't think about me, yada, yada, yada. These assumptions about your partner is what's keeping you in that hamster wheel. You understand? I don't want that for you. Okay?
And the last S that I want to share that I wasn't going to share, but I thought about this morning is slow the heck down. I don't know who this is for, but I wish somebody had told me this a long time ago. In order for your marriage to work, you need to slow down. It's not that serious. It's not that detrimental. You are categorizing every single issue in your relationship as devastating, as threatening. In my private one -on -one coaching program, I teach my couples the three levels of arguing and issues. And the first level is a small offense. Small offense, what do you do? Quick to forgive. You don't need to be talking about it for a long time.
Second level, you said something that hurt me, you did something that hurt me, so I wanna talk about it and we'll forgive each other in the end. And then level three is that devastating part like stepping out on you, things of that nature, right? Y 'all are treating everything as a level three and it's really not. And if you slow down, you would realize that y 'all can work through this if you take your time.
Life is not a race. And this is something that I've had to learn. And even recently, I've had to learn how important it is to slow down. I get it. I was built to go fast. My husband only goes fast down the racetrack. Everything else, he just takes his time. And being married to him made me realize that I'm not enjoying life as much as I should. And neither are you. I need you to slow down. You understand me?
In order for your marriage to be successful, these are the S's to a successful marriage. Number one, surrendering yourself and surrendering your partner. Number two, your spirituality and your faith. Number three, getting support, whatever that means to you, wise counsel, your church group, therapy. Number four, sexual and non -sexual intimacy. And number five, slowing down.
If right now you are finding yourself either in your relationship or outside of your relationship, like you're ready to do this work, you're ready to figure this out, I wanna work with you because you can listen to all of these podcast episodes and get all of these tips. But if you don't have me, you're not gonna get the results that you want. I wanna help you over the next couple of months figure out the exact communication strategies it's going to take to get you and your partner back on the same page. Or even in some cases, you and your partner closer to a decision of whether or not you should be together. I've worked with plenty of couples and plenty of clients that come to me just to figure it out. You don't understand the benefit in just figuring it out. You need that. You understand me? Let me pray for you.
Father God, again, I thank you so much for this day. And as I was vulnerable enough to share this morning. I didn't wake up with the highest amount of energy. I woke up with thoughts of feeling not enough and feeling not worthy. And I know that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. And it's not just the physical, but he comes to steal, kill and destroy the mental. And so for anybody right now that is not feeling at capacity, that is not feeling worthy, I want to use this prayer to instill confidence in them, power in them and remind them that they are sons and daughters of the Most High and that even on our lowest days, Lord, you are here to lift us up. That even on the days where we feel the lowest and just the emptiest and the torn and just we feel all of the things that have traumatized us, I ask that even on those days you come to save us because you are Jehovah Jireh. You are the Prince of Peace. You are the very person that has come that has come to change us as much as being in this world is so hard, Lord, I just ask that you save us over and over again. Would you save us? Would you save our children? Would you save our marriages? Would you save us out of relationships that we're not supposed to be in? Would you allow boundaries to be created around the people that are not full of wise counsel? Would you allow us to see better ways to utilize our money? Would you allow us to see friends that we may have been holding on to for the last 20 years and perhaps that is not the friend that you want for us anymore. Would you help us see the very things that are keeping us in this place of deficit so that we may live in abundance with you? Would you open up the floodgates today, Would you open up the floodgates today, Lord?
Would you please open up the floodgates of heaven today and rain down on us? Would you rain down on us, Lord?
Would you rain down on us wherever you are listening to this in your car, in your house, at work, while you're bathing the kids, wherever you are? Would you be open to receiving the rain that God wants to pour down on us. Would you visualize it? Would you feel it? And know that He's with you. He cares so much about you. I promise you that through everything that's happened, or even everything that you've wanted to happen that hasn't happened, His hand is on it.
And I know you're frustrated, but it's his time. It's his timing, not yours. He invented time. So it's his timing, not yours, okay? I know you want it. Whatever you're thinking about, I know you want it to happen now. But if it happens now, it won't be fruitful if it happens now.
You'll miss the lessons that he wants to teach you to get you to the next level. So you have to surrender. You have to.
I love you so much, God. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
Okay, well, I didn't expect to get emotional. Listen, my name's Karina F. Daves, I'm a relationship expert and I help you solve the number one conflict in your relationship. If right now you wanna work together, go to the link in my bio and book a sales call and be serious about it. If you're ready to do this work, let's be serious about this work. You understand me, this work is essential.
I don't take on clients that I don't feel like I can help. And I'm not here to be salesy and take your money. I'm here to tell you that there is something inside of you that is knocking on your door to make this work. And it's time to invest your time in that. You understand me? Okay, if you love this podcast episode, send me a DM today and tell me that you enjoyed it.
Make sure to share it with all of your amigos, subscribe to the podcast. And I can't tell you how much I love you and how much I just want to say thank you for always coming back. Okay. Hi, y 'all. my God, I'm just seeing the notes. Hi, JulesBK67. Hey, what's up, brother? Custom, Taylor. What's going on? Hey, sis. Amazing, incredible me. Hey, Papi Shampoo. You guys are so good. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
Okay, I love you. Gracias. And I gotta take my kids to school. All right, bye y'all.
