118. Through Thick & Thin Pt 1: When Life Throws a Curveball

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 - Through Thick & Thin. This is a 3 part series and the 3 parts are going to be the 3 different instances that I believe hit every relationship at some point.

Part 1 is about when life throws you a curveball. And by this I mean when something outside of your relationship happens that you were not expecting.

I explain how you can use the acronym ACE (acknowledge the challenge, create a plan, and emotionally support each other) to make your relationship stronger when you deal with unexpected curveballs.

I also share a few examples of curveballs in my own marriage and how we dealt with it.

Click the link below 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 welcome back to the Relationships. You Understand? podcast with me your host Karina F. Daves, relationship expert speaker and podcast host of this dope podcast. Happy New Year to everybody. Thank you for coming back to another episode as we start our series called through thick and thin I'm sure if you're in a relationship you've watched a relationship or you are married You know the term through thick and thin ride or die.

And so I'm going to start a series called through thick and thin, and we're going to split it up into three parts. And the three parts are going to be the three different instances that I believe hit every single relationship at some point, right? And how I'm going to coach you through how to navigate through those, because the three instances that will hit your relationship will either crumble it and crush it, or will make you both grow stronger together. All right?

And so those three that I have in mind are part one, which is today we're doing the curve ball when life throws you a curve ball. Part two is gonna be when the spark fades, right? Like this is when y'all are roommates and you're not really in love anymore or you feel like you're not in love. And then third, we'll focus on when trust is broken. So this is a big one for a lot of people. This is the cheating. This is the, you know, dishonesty, unmet expectations, all of that.

But for today, we're just gonna focus on when life throws you a curve ball. So when I'm talking about a curve ball, I'm talking about somebody loses their job, a financial loss. I'm talking about one of you or a family member gets sick or a close family member unfortunately passes away or...something just like really unexpected that has absolutely nothing to do with dishonesty. Okay, we're not talking about cheating or dishonest things with each other. That is reserved for part three of this series. We're just talking about life changing things that can happen in your relationship that you never expected. This is what I call the curveball, okay? And I'll chime in and give a couple examples, quick examples of my own marriage when life threw us a curveball and how we dealt with it.

So when you and your partner are faced with a curveball, I simply just want you to remember ACE, okay? ACE, that's it. Which stands for, and I'm gonna walk you through this, acknowledge the challenge, okay? Create a plan and then E,

Emotionally support each other and I know what you're thinking Karina. This is a lot. Don't worry ace is the way to go Okay, it's very simple a very simple strategy a acknowledge it C create a plan E emotionally support each other. So the way that a works is Acknowledge the problem and I know what you're thinking like I already know there's a problem Yeah, but here's the thing plenty of times the problem gets swept under the rug. So what I mean when I say really acknowledge the problem is like, accept all of the emotions that come with it. So if one of y'all lost your job, hey, you obviously lost your job. It's okay. I'm scared too. We're gonna figure this out, right? Like acknowledge the fact that something has occurred, right?

I remember this was probably...maybe like year two or year three, where I wouldn't say we had a financial loss, but we were very much struggling financially. So what's interesting is that I didn't grow up well off and not that my husband grew up well off, but his family, you know, they, he, he saw a lot of support within his family. Whereas like my family, we were like in basements and stuff.

And so my husband had a really good, would say, insight as to financially how our lives should look. And I didn't, I lived in apartments all my life. I lived in basements all my life. I was very much a paycheck to paycheck. You you ever heard the term you borrow from Luke to pay John or whatever. Like I had family members that were very much tied to sharks, money sharks, and always paying them and getting loans. And, you know, so like I was very much coming from a family that was in a deficit and had gone bankrupt multiple times, had a loss. And so around the second year of our marriage, my husband had a lot of insight financially on what our life would look like if we didn't start saving and change a lot of our habits. And for me, like I thought we were rich. Like I thought we were okay living in our apartment, not paying that, you know, that high of a rent at the time. I think our rent was like $950. It ended up going up later, but I thought we were okay. I was making at the time, maybe like $45, $50,000. We were young by the way, we're in our early twenties.

My husband was making more than me at the time. And so he had this idea that we needed side hustles. And he was like, listen, if we want to catch up, purchase a home and change our circumstance, we have to eliminate a lot of things and to catch up, get side jobs. And I was like, dang. So I ended up actually getting a adjunct professor job in the evening, working, teaching women's global leadership. I also got a job cleaning houses on the weekends and I worked at Pottery Barn at the mall on the weekends and in the evenings. And then he ended up getting also a job at Williams Sonoma. And it was so interesting because Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma showed us a different world.

We worked at a mall, it's called Short Hills Mall in New Jersey. It's a very bougie mall. Rolex is there, all these like bougie stores that I, the only bougie store at that point that I had ever gone into that I thought was bougie was Nordstrom, right? Which I still think is bougie. But working at Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma showed us a different world. Like we came from the world where like you buy shoes and belts and bags and like, bands of money and cars and then you get to Pottery Barn and William Sonoma and you see a different population of people and the way that they move their money. Like you're watching people that have a lot of money even be sort of like stingy with their money, right? With this like $300 pot. It was very interesting. So anyways, during that period we had to acknowledge the elephant in the room, acknowledge the challenge and the challenge was that we financially weren't at a place where we should be, right? Like my husband really felt like we were behind. And so what we did was see, which is we created a plan and that plan was to get this side hustle job. for you, for example, let's say, you know, unfortunately one of you guys are ill or a family member is ill.

Acknowledge the fact that that's happening. I have an example for that too where I was ill for two years. had 12 surgeries Another example is my sister had blood cancer a couple years ago. That was a wrench and I'll never forget like Acknowledging first the fact that I was sick or the fact that she had blood cancer was super important Like it's you have to talk about the elephant in the room, right so that you can talk about the plan. And when my sister got cancer or she shared that she had cancer, the plan was that she would move in with us and we had to create a plan for what that would look like. I hired my next door neighbor to redo our floors on our in-law suite. I made sure that everything was ready for my sister to move in. We looked at our finances at the time. I spoke with my job. Like we actually created a plan.

This is super simple. When your marriage or your relationship gets thrown a curve ball, ACE is the way to go. Okay. A, acknowledge the problem. C, create a plan together. Okay. And a practical plan. Don't go crazy. Let me just stop and say this. Don't go crazy with your plan. Don't come up with like 50 million things to do. Right? Two things at a time. Two, three things max at a time for y'all to focus on, okay? And then E, emotionally support each other, okay? Now, here's where I think obviously there are more, there's different nuances with, you know, husband and wife, where like I have seen my male clients be a little bit more reserved during curve balls and crises where,

You know, the wife really, really is emotional and wants to talk about things. And what you need to understand is that when life throws your marriage a curve ball, the best gift that you can give your marriage is to be vulnerable. This is not the time to shut down. This is not the time to not talk about your emotions. This is not the time to turn off and exit any and mentally be out of it. Like this is the time to be vulnerable so that you can celebrate the small wins so that you can emotionally be there for each other.

For example, when we were hustling in the evening and on the weekends, like y'all I have this TikTok video. If you're listening to this podcast episode, I need you to DM me on Instagram at Karina F. Daves, okay? If you want this. I have a TikTok video. It's a two part, I almost got murdered story where I literally tell you the story of how I almost got murdered cleaning this guy's house. He had five cats. I walked into a house, okay, where I for sure believe that there were cameras in that house. He stayed on the other side of the house. I forgot my phone charger. We lived like 30 minutes away and he had cat poop everywhere. Piles and piles and piles of cat poop, poop everywhere in the house. And I spent about seven hours cleaning that house. It was horrible. And I remember he asked me to come back and I was like, maybe in like a week, but like, this was a lot of work. And during that period, I had to, I had to really, you know, we created a plan, but really, have a safe space to dish out my emotions. And that was with my husband, right? Or during that period when Terrence worked at Williams Sonoma, the freaking mall had a shooting. No lie, it had a shooting. Like he was at the mall working. I didn't work that day. And he texted me parking, mall shooting in the parking lot, shutting down the mall. I'll text you later. I'm like, what is happening? I almost get murdered. Now there's a shooting at this bougie ass mall. Like this is insane to me. It was just such a crazy time, but it helped us build so much grit, so much work ethic. Like, listen, I'm a daughter of immigrants, so my work ethic is strong, but that period helped me elevate my work ethic to the max.

Working in retail if you've ever worked in retail right now and you're watching this live Please comment like your craziest story or your just say amen Working in retail helps you build such a strong like thick skin and the ability to just quickly be able to assess people's personalities because I could have easily Worked in retail and let anybody else handle it. But I was like, you know what? I'ma handle this difficult personality and see how it goes. I'll never forget. I was at Pottery Barn and my scanner broke and I had to manually insert the Christmas ornaments into the register right by hand. couldn't barcode scan them. And a woman came up to me and she said, can you throw out my coffee for me? And I said, no, you know, we don't have a big garbage or whatever, but the garbage is right outside. She left. She came back and she slammed the coffee on my counter. And she said, I can't find the garbage, you throw it out. And I was just like, ew. So I just told the lady that I was serving, excuse me for a second. I grabbed the coffee and I said, hold up ma'am. And I walked her to the garbage. Now y'all could just think that that was an attitude part of me, but that was me trying to number one, regulate my emotions. I could have easily cursed her out, but I didn't. But two also show her that like, I don't care if you're a millionaire. Like I'm, you need to throw out your own coffee.

But anyways, ACE is the way to go, okay? When life throws your relationship a curve ball, I need you to acknowledge what is happening, acknowledge the elephant in the room, C, create a plan, remember, one or two different things, like don't go crazy for three to five, and then E, emotionally be there to support each other. At the end of the day, when life throws your relationship a curve ball, this is the exact moment where you go in and you play the game with each other. You are teammates at like, this is the moment that y'all have been waiting for to test your relationship. And either you're going to fail and rumble and tumble or that, or you will be successful and your relationship will get to build another layer of resistance, another layer of resilience, another layer of love, another layer of proof of concept that we were meant to be together because we're the best freaking teammates ever alive You need curveballs God will continue to throw your relationship curveballs over and over again to test your relationship like you think is the enemy most of the time but I kid you not I got is laughing. Okay, and I don't mean like crazy curveball. Okay, you know what I mean? Okay, you know when it's from God and you know when it's from the enemy, but sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that everything is the enemy and everything isn't the enemy. Okay, God will throw things in your relationships way or in your relationships cup to see if you'll be able to drink and hold it tight. If you'll be able to manage, if you'll be able to regulate each other, be there for one another and keep going back to one another for, just for like

For companionship for love for the assertion that like we're meant to do this that that's life. That's marriage marriage is more than a four-hour wedding y'all marriage is more than date nights marriage is more than vacations and honeymoons marriage is more than paying bills and having kids and paying the mortgage marriage is way more than that marriage is about creating resilience through the curve balls that life will throw you can I get an amen?

Okay, so Let me pray for you. But if any of this resonated with you I want you to know that it's time for us to work together if right now you feel like your relationship Has been thrown the biggest freaking curveball and you're like Karina We cannot handle this like it has become extremely difficult for us You need to work with me go to link in my bio on Instagram or tik-tok or in the show notes Okay, if you're listening to this in your car and book a consultation call so we can talk about everything that's happened so far, what you tried, and I'll share how I can help, okay? And if you're like, no, Karina, I need answers today, text me. Yeah, I said text me. I want you to text the word relationship to 208-943-5363, okay? 208-943-5363. I want you to text the word relationship. It goes straight to my phone.

We'll start talking about your relationship problem. We'll get you subscribed to the hotline, all right, which is 9.99 a month. I'll give you even a 50 % discount. you DM me, I'll give you a discount. And from there, we'll just talk about everything. Either way, let's solve this number one issue, okay? All right, before I go, let me pray for you.

Father God, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you so much for the blessings of the ability to be able to have relationships with one another, whether that's the relationships with our parents, with our loved ones, with the people that we romantically fall in love with and decide to spend the rest of our lives with Father God, I thank you for the ability that you created for us to have relationships. And I know that you anointed all of us to do that here, to build and to grow with one another. And so Lord, right now, would you put your hand over the many relationships that feel scorned, the many relationships that don't feel good right now, that feel like this ain't gonna work out for me, Lord?

Would you put your hand over them father God and allow them to see your light allow them to see your the discernment that you want for them and allow them to be able to get like At least a little bit of a cheat code father God on what they should do next because I can feel how many people right now listening to this Are in this place of like I don't know what to do So would you give them insights on a little bit of what to do next father? God, I pray all of this in your name and please continue to keep our kids safe. If you're in the tri-state area. I hope that you are safe, your children are safe, the schools are safe, the bus drivers are safe, Father God, and that people out on the road today remain safe, Jesus. In your name we pray, amen.

Okay, my name is Karina F. Daves. I'm a relationship expert, speaker, and podcast host of This Dope Podcast, Relationships. You Understand? If you haven't subscribed to the hotline yet, text me at 208-943-5363. Text the word relationship there, and we can start talking about solving your number one issue, okay?

Head over to my socials. primarily live on Instagram and TikTok at KarinaFDays. If you do find yourself on TikTok, just please be careful with the comments. It's super crazy over there. All right? I love you so much. And next week we'll continue our series through thick and thin. This today was focused on life hits you a curve ball. Okay. I love you so much. Bye.