Relationships connect us with those around us. Every relationship is different but one thing in common is that relationships are valuable but they are also hard. Chuck and Ashley, two individuals with coaching and relationship therapy experience are here to help us gain knowledge on how to strengthen our relationships.
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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to our podcast today, we are excited to have you guys here and you are in for a treat because we have not one but two special guests with us today. We have Chuck and Ashley Elliott. Both Jen and myself have had the opportunity to see them live and in person, and they are fantastic at what they do. So, we are excited to have them share their knowledge and expertise with you. So, with that being said, I'm going to turn it over to you two, and we'll let you guys share a little bit about who you are and what you do. Go ahead.
Ashley: Yeah. Hey, I'm Ashley.
Chuck: Hey, I'm Chuck,
Ashley: And we're thrilled to be here. We are relationship and grief specialists, so we love to help people with the relationship side of all the struggles that we face in life. And so, we want to help people leave a legacy in their relationships. But relationships are hard.
Chuck: They are. They're all hard, whether that be in a marriage or parenting or business relationships, work relationships, even if you love them most of the time, they're hard. But we find that relationships are super important, and we don't have a happy and fulfilled life unless we invest in them and try to make them better. So that's what we're passionate about.
Ashley: Yeah, so relationships are hard, but they are super super valuable. So, in my training as a counselor, I work with individuals helping them on a one-on-one situation, but also as an educator. I've been overseeing a program at the university for 11 years and I just resigned to do more of the writing and speaking that we're doing. And so, I'm helping people in different settings, from counseling to coaching to consulting. And all of these thing’s kind of. We're using a lot of the same principles to really help strengthen people's relationships. And yeah, Chuck’s a pastor.
Chuck: Yeah, I'm a pastor. I've been there for how long I've been there 12 years, 11 years, something like that. Help me out, once a decade. I can just say I've been there a while, right at that age. I can just say that. So, before that, I worked as a counselor working with families involved with the Department of Child Services for neglect and abuse and also juveniles on probation. So, I have that background before I worked at the church and I do counseling and lots of various different things at the church. So, Ashley and I through our experience and education, graduate education, lots of that stuff, but we just found that from what we've seen from the education that we had, how could we put something together to help people have more effective relationships? Because so much heartache happens when relationships end. And we thought, what if all these relationships didn't have to end? What if we could do a better job of having conversations beforehand?
Hilary: Yes, right? It's I love that you say that because I think so often we get this, we get this idea in our head that relationships should be easy. Right? Dating is easy. Dating is fun. We refer to it as the “dating game”. And then we just assume that once we find that special someone that life is all roses and it's not. Absolutely. Yeah. I think we're doing a disservice oftentimes when we don't talk enough about both the good and the bad in relationships for helping individuals to recognize that we love relationships, we love the couples and the partnerships and the friendships that we have. But it comes with hard work and devotion and commitment and all of the things that we tend to forget to discuss from time to time. So, I appreciate you saying that.
Chuck: Well, and we see that a lot and what we talk about with our content and a lot of times people that get into a relationship. And as soon as something goes wrong, they think that the relationship is wrong and they made a bad choice and they go on to the next relationship. That could be with a dating relationship or an employment or a friendship. Because we have tons of options nowadays. With social media and whatever it is, we can go from relationship to relationship, and lots of people are hiring in this current workforce. You can go from job to job too if you want to.
Ashley: But we don't need to right? Because that's a problematic cycle that we began to say, oh, I'm taking myself in each relationship. So, if we don't work to shave off the rough edges or round off the rough edges on ourselves, then we'll find ourselves struggling.
Hilary: Yeah. So, I'm curious how you two, I'm making the assumption Chuck, that that working as a pastor that you probably saw a lot of couples, and you work with couples that were struggling. But what led you guys to where you're at today? Did you have that moment in your life where you thought, this is what I need to be doing, this is my call, my mission in life?
Chuck: Well, ever since Ashley and I had even started dating, we knew that we wanted to work together in some kind of a sense, and we had only been married about a year or so and we started becoming we became marriage educators for a local organization that's called community marriage builders. It was a federal grant and we got to go and speak and lead workshops, and we did that for probably eight years or so. And that was some great experience, and we both had our full-time jobs apart from that and it just kept I kept on developing. And through different things and the experiences we had in life, it was in 2019 that we started to develop what it is that we're doing now. We had things we've been doing for a while, but officially setting out and saying, All right, what does it look like for Chuck and Ashley to write and speak and become content creators and all the rest of it?
Ashley: And one of the situations that happened for us, unfortunately, was recurrent miscarriage. So, we had our two boys and then we had several miscarriages. And through that journey, we realized just a lot of people don't talk about loss and people don't talk about the struggles in their relationships. And we just want to help people create space for themselves to talk about the struggles and find hope and not just talk about the struggles, but talk about the good emotions that are vulnerable, that we kind of keep inside as well. And so, we decided, Hey, we're both busy, but we can donate a little bit of time. And so, we hired a friend of ours and kind of put together this curriculum and we're like, OK, let's just turn our living room into a film studio. And so, we made a grief program, and it's very relational in format because we want people not to just isolate and see that with any type of struggle as we have, we can kind of pull back relationally. And so, helping people to understand how they can struggle in their relationships so they can, maybe they don't leave physically, they leave emotionally. And so, as people are grieving, sometimes they pull back and that can cause a higher chance of divorce. And so, as we're just kind of diving into it, seeing our own struggles, seeing other people's struggles, we're like, we want more content to be out there to give people a space, to think about it, to process. And as a counselor and a pastoral counselor with the counseling background, we want it to be therapeutic in nature. So, we're helping people, you know, they can do it on their own, they can do it in their pajamas. If they've got a stigma about having their car seen at a counseling office or anything like they can do it at home. And so, we found that that was helpful. And then we created another program once that one was successful, get that up and running like, OK, we're going to do a program called Why People Leave. And so that was our second program. And so, we've just kind of grown what we've done on top of the full-time work. And then just in May, I resigned so that I have more time for it. And so, we're kind of, yeah, just figuring out how to create that space, to fit people in, coaching, doing podcasts and writing and all of that. And so, it's been exciting as we've seen people benefit from the content, for sure.
Chuck: But you asked, how did we decide to do this? Pretty much we just decided not to take any breaks or sleep. So, I mean, we just figured we'd just throw as much in there as possible.
Ashley: Well, we started right before COVID. So, it was wild, it was in November 2019 and then one of our second volume of Why People Leave was May 2020. And so, we got it set to be recorded and we're like, we're just going to plow through. Oh, I didn't know it was going to be a mom and a teacher at home and doing my full-time job and trying to do this. So, it was wild as we were preparing because we had a babysitter and we were like hiding from our little one, like we were home. But we had like the door locked was like we were at the garage metal makeshift office. So, all kinds of things have happened. Like, we've had to be resilient with it, but we've also just you kind of made some sacrifices. So, we try to stay balanced with the sleep, but there definitely have been sometimes where it lacks for sure.
Hilary: Oh gosh, yeah, just a little bit on your plate, it sounds like, right?
Chuck: Yeah, yeah. But it's all good stuff. It's all things that we love to do.
Hilary: That's awesome. Well, Ashley, you brought up the topic that we want to focus on today. And quite honestly, we need you guys to come back so that I can hear more about that grief program because that sounds incredible. But let's focus a little bit on that program you have, Why People Leave, because I think there are a lot of individuals that have had that thought in their head. Should I or should I not leave? You know, when we talk about relationships, we talk about being committed to someone and for better or worse and all of the things that often are passing through our mind as we're dealing with that tough situation. So, let's start with this. Working in this field, what do you notice, statistically speaking, when it comes to couples and divorce rates, do we notice, where are we at right now with relationships in general?
Ashley: Well, one of the things that I see whenever people do leave is that oftentimes, like the husband in the wife, they both kind of blame the other person, like they give them more weight of the responsibility. Saying that, hey, for me as a wife, I would say that Chuck and I were divorced, which hopefully that will never happen, right?
Chuck: Yeah, I don't like this case study. What are you doing? This is a bad environment for that. What are you crazy?
Ashley: OK, stick with me. But if I were to say in the situation like, Oh, I think that it was Chuck's fault, and then it would be more likely that Chuck would say, Oh, well, it was her fault . She didn't do these things. So, if we both have that sentiment, then there's a problem, right? We're just blaming and not taking responsibility. And so, one of the things that we saw was exactly what you said was like the whole thinking happens before the behavior. So, a thought happens. We're like, Oh, I said, till death, do us part. But I did not expect you to blank. I thought that you were going to love me unconditionally and you didn’t. You didn't give me grace, or I didn't know you were going to dump everything on me, or you changed; all those things. And so, what it comes down to is these unmet expectations. But at the same time, we end up struggling about how we communicate about it. And so, this is one of the things that we focus on is helping people first understand their own thinking and communication patterns and then working to try to implement healthier communication patterns. So that's one of one of the big things that we see is like 60 to 70 percent between the man and the woman, like, we're going to blame the other person. So that's one of the things that we've noticed that kind of sparks our interest as we're just being curious in the research and what we see. OK. We know that people are leaving. We know that people don't want to be divorced. No one sets out to get married, hoping to get divorced. So, some things happen. There's a breakdown here.
Chuck: And that's really where it came to the unmet expectations. And like Ashley was saying, they're blaming each other, but they don't often have conversations about it. You have an unmet expectation, but was it a communicated expectation? Was it something underlying? Did you communicate about it once and it was actually a complaint as you were walking out of the room. And that builds and that builds, and then it turns into something else. And then all of a sudden you feel like you don't have any options and you end the relationship.
Ashley: Yeah. So, one of our goals is to help people to see that they have more options. So, in every relationship, we tend to start off in a positive space with positive thoughts, feelings and emotions. But then with those unmet expectations and time, we can move over to this negative space of negative thoughts, feelings of behavior. And so, it's natural to go back and forth between a positive and negative space, we can't perfectly stay in this positive space all the time. But how do we help people to really see? We think that we've communicated, and we think we've asked for what we want, but sometimes we kind of create a lose-lose. So, if I want Chuck to do the dishes and I'm like, Hey, you said you’d do the dishes and you're doing it. Like, Oh, well, I think that I've communicated it clearly, but it might create a lose-lose because if he jumps up and does the dishes in that moment, he might feel emasculated. But if he doesn't do the dishes, then now he's a jerk and he's selfish. And so, my communication, even though I didn't mean to kind of create a lose-lose, I waited and I waited. I start off in this positive space, didn't say anything, didn't say anything, and then I drift this negative space. Don't say anything, don't say anything, and then I explode. And so, for us to help people see their own patterns to raise the awareness of what's going on inside of themselves and then help them think about what can I do differently and what can I ask for in the relationship is really, really powerful.
Chuck: And sometimes people feel like they asked for it once, asked for it, but it was really just complaining about it. And then they don't try it again because that one situation of complaining about the dishes didn't help it. And it's like, how do you recognize it could be completely right? Maybe I said I was going to do the dishes and I didn’t. And she's completely valid to be frustrated, but we haven't had the conversation leading up to that point. And then you have communication from a negative space that often has negative results.
Jen: And I was loving how you were saying that. Sometimes we think we've communicated it. And I think that's what happens a lot is we think we've communicated. It is not a great way of communicating. And so, then that frustration builds and builds and builds and then you explode. It's really coming and being able to when you first have those first thoughts of negativity or he's not doing the dishes, he's being a jerk whatever, of being able to stop yourself and vocalize it right then because then you're going to take away a lot of grief and pain that you're building up to. And no one wants to carry that around. I found that’s the trick with me, when you have the first thought, let's communicate it right away.
Chuck: Yeah, and that's a really good point, and you kind of made a connection there too, it's in the same vein as self-care. Like the way that you prevented grief and anxiety and anger for yourself by communicating when you're on a level two instead of a level nine of anger, that really helps with it. And it's a gift to the relationship whenever you communicate early instead of later. And something that you said, Ashley and I talked just a lot about how complaining is not the same thing as asking for what you want, but we often feel like we've asked for what we wanted when we complain, but we haven't.
Hilary: Right, right. Can you guys talk a little bit more about this positive to negative space? Because I love this idea for couples. Now you may mention that, I mean, sometimes we're in positive space, sometimes we're in negative space and it's OK to be in that negative space. But when do you when do you know when, I guess, you're dwelling in that negative space? When it's become too much and maybe how to get away from that?
Ashley: Yeah. So, one thing that we like to share is that just because we know this doesn't make it stop, right? We don't get a special pass now that we know, oh, OK, so we can never go into a negative space. Like we're real people and, as you all know, are learning this. It doesn't magically make us never get into a negative space. It doesn't make us just easily get into positive space because there's a lot of emotions and triggers and all kinds of things that are beneath the surface. But we all want to be in a positive space, like a hundred percent of us. So, our positive space might look different. For some of us that's being outside or really communicating a whole lot or staring into each other's eyes, but also talking about anger can be done in a positive space. So, if I am upset with him, I can be in a positive space and say I felt hurt whenever you didn't ask me how I was when I told you yesterday that I was having a hard day and then you didn't ask me all day, right? If there's something there, that's communicating from a positive space, it's not just like rainbows and butterflies and the best days and your birthdays and the gifts. It’s not only compliments. No, it's learning to have this constructive, helpful eye-to-eye kind of conversation, telling what you need, asking for what you want and creating space for those feelings to be safely shared. Because a lot of times we can kind of mask with anger, because anger makes us feel powerful. And if we feel rejected or lonely or sad, we feel weak and we don't want to share that. And so, we can kind of say nothing, say nothing, say nothing, and then we start getting angry. And then we're like, I could tell you what I feel now that I'm angry because we've got all this energy. You feel powerful. Yeah. So, we can go back and forth between a positive space. But we also see that there's some natural resets that happen as well. So, have you ever been hangry? We've all been a little hangry and so we feel better whenever we eat something. And so, we see that people like they naturally want to be in a positive space. But there's also some natural reset. So, when we wake up, we might feel a little bit better whenever we've gotten some food or if we ever just get some fun or relaxation in our day, if we get a shower. Just the basic things. If the basic things happen, we feel a little bit better and so will be brought more to a positive space. And so, I think this is why sometimes people are like, Oh, I'll give it some time, right? Because if I wait until after we've been together for a while, maybe it'll go better. But for us to realize it's hard for most of us and we can kind of just keep pushing it off and go OK, now that things are better, right? We all got some sleep. I don't really want a bad day right now, so I'm not going to say anything. And then the other person gets hurt or mad because you didn't say anything, and then you kind of go back to the cycle like, when do I bring it up? When you're mad? I don't want to make you more mad. When do I bring it up? When you're happy? I just want to stay happy on a day, right? And so, helping people to see, Jen, like you said, to talk about it early so that we can fix it, and stay current is a term that we've heard in the marriage space or one of the workshops we did, but we're staying current with our issues, so we're going to try not to have any unresolved issues behind us. That doesn't mean you perfectly resolve it, but that we're trying to bring it up. So, if I'm upset that he came home late, I'm not just keeping that inside and never expressing it, so we might not have a perfect solution if he has a meeting from a boss that goes late. It still might trip us up and hurt my feelings, but we're at least talking about it. We're not carrying it alone.
Hilary: OK, perfect. I love that. So, you brought up a few of these points earlier, but I want to kind of continue with this conversation to essentially answer that question. Why? Why do people leave? You talked about some of those unmet expectations. Maybe this lack of communication. Any other reasons why you see that happen in a marriage relationship?
Chuck People sometimes feel trapped, and they feel like they don't have any options because they've tried a couple of times to talk about it, they've tried to maybe get help from one person. They've tried a couple of videos that they see about relationships on Instagram or TikTok, and it didn't work. So, they feel like they're kind of they're going to quit, and we want to help people to be creative and realize they are not out of options. Like what about the ways that you've tried it? And like, let's keep on trying. Because like Ashley said, before we don't get into marriage, we don't get into this relationship thinking that we want it to end. We want to keep on going. So, just giving people the hope to know that we haven't tried everything and we're going to keep on trying. And you get underneath some of those unmet expectations and you realize, OK, I can communicate about these things. I can do that.
Ashley: And some of the research shows that you couple of the reasons people list for getting divorce as someone was unfaithful. They grew apart. They don't have any shared values. And so, if you just kind of go through those three, if someone has an affair, they're unfaithful, it started in their mind, right? And I've heard people say like, Oh, I was thinking about having an affair, I didn't end up having one . But as we start being more aware, like people think about having affairs sometimes for years before they do. And so, if we can help people to say you got to get that under control, you've got to say, I don't want to let myself think like that. And if I'm having those thoughts, that means I have some unmet expectations that I have got to raise. If they don't know, like if Chuck doesn't know that I'm having these thoughts and then all of a sudden, I leave like how unfair to him that I let that roof for years. Because if I would have talked about on day one, he could have maybe done something about it. But if I wait even till day 30, he can say sorry. And I'm kind of like, I have 30 days’ worth of bricks that I've been building that just can't come down as easily. So, if you add years to it, it can be really weird because someone can do all the right things and it still doesn't fix it because the person has been building a house in this negative space for so long that it just doesn't feel like even going through the motions, sometimes people say, is actually fixing it. So, helping people to intervene early is super important because again, those thoughts happen before the behavior. And if we go to like shared values and growing apart well, people usually feel pretty connected with their values at the beginning of their relationship, and they feel pretty connected to each other. And so, there is a distancing process. So we spent a bit of time really just helping people think and just using the hands like put your hands together, like, do you want to get closer together or further apart because we are moving and so helping people to see that we are moving and we need to be intentional about trying to move closer together. And we feel that distancing happen, though we try to talk about it, talk about it as early as we can, get a counselor, get a coach, get a friend, a pastor, someone to help us have those conversations if we don't feel skilled to do it. But we can get better, we can get more skilled for sure.
Chuck: I wanted to go back to something that Ashley said and connected to the question you had before about recognizing when you're in a negative space and how to talk about that. I find that well, for our situation. I think Ashley is a little bit faster, emotionally processing things than I am and being able to communicate about it. Sometimes I know that I'm feeling distant and I don't even know what it is. Maybe she said something, and it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit. And I don’t, I don't know, just telling her. I don't know if that hurt my feelings or I'm upset about something, but I'm just trying to figure it out because she knows pretty quick. I think that she can't tell that I'm upset, obviously, but she can. And if I just tell her, I don't know, I'm just, I'm trying to figure it out. I find that telling guys, it's OK to tell your spouse that you don't know what you're feeling and you're trying to figure it out just shows that I'm thinking about it, but I have no idea what to do, or what I'm thinking about it. Just saying that can be helpful because it lets you know, I'm in this with you and I want to be close to you too, but I have no clue what to do. And I don't know if I'm going to feel like this in ten minutes or something else ticked me off at work or you hurt my feelings or I'm being overly sensitive. I don’t, I don't know.
Ashley: But sometimes I literally him saying that. Then I start to reflect and I go, I did say something. Or he'll say, when you said this, that hurt my feelings or I didn't like it. And then I start thinking, like, you know, you're right, I'm sorry. And I've occasionally been like, Why does he seem mad? Something's going on? And I might wrack my brain a little bit like, what did I say? And I can't think of it. So, when we say rude things personally, we don't always catch it. We don't notice it. And if the person like, if he doesn't tell me that I hurt his feelings, then I keep with the bad habit of saying the things and not knowing. So that makes it worse in the future. But I also can't apologize and can't make it better. And so, it's important that we both are working at it and trying to make it better and talk about it.
Chuck: And the thing is, it can be difficult whenever somebody hurts you to feel like it's their responsibility to fix it. But the thing is like Ashley can hurt my feelings, but my feelings and my choices are still my responsibility. Even if even if she hurt me and I didn't do anything wrong and it wasn't my fault or whatever you want to say, it is still my responsibility to be mentally healthy, emotionally healthy, relationally healthy. It's still on me. She can't do it for me, even if she comes back and apologizes because she was rude. I can still choose to accept it, be mad, be bitter. Like, talk bad about her in my head or whatever you want to say. It's still my job.
Hilary: Yeah, which I think so often we forget about, because we're just putting that blame solely on that person and forgetting that there's a part of this that requires us and our cooperation and our mindset and moving forward. That's good. Yeah. So, what about this? What about in a relationship where you have one individual that is ready and willing to make these changes that are necessary, but the other person is not? What advice can you give to those couples?
Ashley: Well, certainly we don't want to minimize that it's easy or anything. So, we'll go ahead and say that these are really, really hard situations , so super hard. But like you're saying a second ago Chuck, that when we make changes, it makes a difference. And so, there's certain things that we can do, but we can only control ourselves anyway. So, I would work pretty similarly with a person who is willing, even if you have one person who's willing and one who isn't. So, I would start with them and be like, tell me about your positive and negative space, and I do an exercise where I help people thinking about the positive and negative space and I can share what it is and y'all are welcome to do it. If you have paper, use your phone, but you just have this list of positive and negative thoughts that you have. So, your positive space thoughts on one side of the paper, your negative space thoughts on one side of the paper and then underneath that you do your positive space behavior and then your negative space behavior. So, the first process is to help them personally become aware of their thoughts and their behaviors, how they're connected, if there's themes and what's problematic in their own mind. And then I want them to think about their needs so you can do, you know, like what are my needs that are being met, sometimes met, my unmet needs. Process that and then how much are you asking for? So, if we kind of look at this positive space, negative space, like, are you communicating in a positive space or negative space? Or are you just staying quiet all the time? Well, if you're staying quiet all the time, what are you doing because the behavior oozes out of us if we don't talk, right? You slam doors, have sarcasm, you don't respond to text. Yeah, there's some behavior that's showing how we feel. And so, we're helping that person really be super aware of themselves. And then they're working to correct anything that they can and to communicate really well. And then I would coach them to really continue to ask for that person to help say, Do you want to be married? You're being assertive and bold. Do you want to be married? I really want to be married, and I'm really sorry for the ways that I failed because in one hundred percent of marriages, we've all failed. We are imperfect, relationships are hard. So there is something we can apologize and that usually brings down the person's walls because oftentimes people don't wanna go to counseling because they don't wanna be told that they're horrible and they don't go to counseling because they want a fight. And so, it's not that they don't want to have a happy marriage, it's just that it seems like it's going to be too hard.
Chuck: They want to feel good.
Ashley: Yeah, they want to feel good because it goes back to them wanting to be in a positive space. It's like, dude, I can drink, and I can have fun. I can play sports, I can play video games, I can go for a walk. That's positive space. Going to counseling, that does not feel like a positive space, right? But we have to face the negative emotions or the negative experiences and deal with them in order to be able to get back to this positive space where we can stay there. Otherwise, we're going to be triggered when we don't want to, to this negative space. So, helping people see that that's a long-term benefit. And so, if you're working with a person who isn’t, you know, they have an unresponsive spouse, you’re working through that with themselves first and then hopefully walking through them with the process of how to nudge their partner along the way.
Hilary: OK, perfect. I love that. So, for any listeners out there that are thinking, there's definitely room for me to improve, things for me to do. Can you offer us maybe just a few, I'll say the word simple, because I want to make it simple for our listeners, but just a very, very small things that they can implement today that would help in this process of having that positive space? Any practical tips that you could offer someone that they could utilize and implement in their relationship today.
Chuck: Yeah, I think starting with the good, I mean, recognizing the things that are going good and the relationship is such a big thing. Something that I Ashley and I talk about is if the only thing that you're focusing on is negative, that's all you're talking about, that's all that you're doing. Because there are some good things that are going on and that is a big help. And then talking about some of those unmet expectations, going there and being patient with yourself and being patient with the relationship. I think realizing if something's been something a certain way for seven years and that's been building up this way, you're not going to fix it in seven minutes or even seven hours oftentimes. You can start to take down that wall that Ashley talked about, but remember that you have the same goal. You want to be in the relationship, you want things to be better, be patient and continue to share what is good about it. And that's going to help you a lot more than you think that it will. A lot of times when Ashley and I work with couples or individuals, they come in with a presenting problem and they want to talk about the problem and talk about the problem. And they think the only way to make the relationship better is to reduce what the problem is doing. And it can be difficult in a kind of a sales process to tell them, we need to talk about increasing the good. And when we increase the good, we see that a lot of things get better.
Hilary: OK. I mean, doesn't that go? Honestly, that that concept can go with anything in life, parenting, work, I mean, every relationship, right? If we can focus on the positive, it totally changes the way that we see things and see that person.
Ashley: Oh, I love that and you mentioning the family side of it like this, the theory like positive, a negative space that goes into all areas of our life and to work and all that. But you mentioned parenting. We use this with our kids, and it is successful. It's highly successful. And that's why we keep going back to it because we all get a negative space. We never seem to kids, siblings like, what do they do? They're going to fight at some point, right? And so, we'll use this language to help them and to try to help them to understand like, Oh, I'm feeling triggered. And so, if you have someone as a parent, they're going to feel triggered by their kid. I feel triggered when my kids fight sometimes. And I will feel like, Oh, we can't handle this or we can't tell people how to do relationships because we can't even do it right. And it's like, we're fallible people. We are all going to have a hard time. But what really does it look like to have a good family? And so that's the whole piece of, you know, fixing something that's been broken for seven years. If we want to be in a positive space and will kind of lie to ourselves and we'll avoid the conflict, that seems avoidable and my OK, I think everything's good. And then you have a blow up a week later, you're like, Oh, no, it wasn't good, but then we don't want to talk about it because it's hard. And then two days later, it's like it's good. So, it's a yearlong, two years, five years that someone will kind of put it off. And so, if someone wants a quick tip, it's like, get help, be curious about it. Don't let yourself just accept a mediocre life, a mediocre marriage or a crappy life. So many people just really don't even want to get up out of bed because they feel stuck. And so, the earlier we get help, then the better it's going to be. So, if you didn't get help, know year one or year five get help today because today is going to be your next best bet.
Chuck: Yeah. Well, and we see people that they start help later on, but still get help. Who cares if it's been 10 years, 20 years, 30 years that you've been married and you feel like it hasn't been the way that you want it to be or, you know, is right and you've never talked to anybody about it. Like, we see that, people have been three decades into a relationship and they've never told anybody else about how rough it's been. Still get help because it can be better because nobody gets any of this for average relationships, we want you to have better than average relationships.
Hilary: So, I know that obviously this is a case-by-case scenario. It's hard to give kind of a blanket answer, but I'm thinking of maybe extreme cases where maybe one of the individuals isn't safe and the relationships, are there are appropriate times where it would be the best decision to leave? How long you continue this working process if you are in a situation like that?
Chuck: Absolutely. If something's abusive and there's been affairs and these breaks and trust that the individual is not doing it and it's not safe, we're not telling the people that they need to stay in that forever. That's not what we're telling people. But going back to what Ashley said about working on you as an individual, I for work and lots of other relationships, even if it is time for something to end. And that's not what our goal is. You can leave from a positive space like if Ashley and I our current and like, say it hasn't gone the way that I expect it to is like, I can communicate that and still me in a positive space and give some hard news. And that's not what we go for, but we have seen in those situations before.
Ashley: So certainly our goal is for people to stay married. You know, we don't we are not for divorce, we don't want people to get divorced. But again, like we said, no one is for divorce, like no one wants a divorce. And so, but if someone is in an abusive situation where they're being especially physically harmed, threatened, manipulated extreme ways, that's damaging your self-esteem. We want people to get safe immediately and again we do see hope. And we do see couples, we work with couples who they have had really bad breaks of trust, and they are able to rebuild the trust and find hope in their marriage again. And that's something that we sometimes see people really struggle with. Like hope has become an f word, a worse than the f word . Like it's a bad, bad word like, don't say hope. And so, we don't want people to become so resentful toward even good things that they can't get help. We want them to try to say, Hey, how do we get toward this positive space?
Jen: I'm just thinking like, this is a this is a we issue, and so we need to work together to fix the issue. Yes, we may have our own individual things that we need to work on and strengthen. But if we're doing that and then trying to go over the next process all by ourselves, it's not going to work. It's a team effort for your marriage. I mean, there's many times to where my husband has said, You know what? I don't know why I'm mad, but you know, I can't talk about this right now, and I'm like, OK, now we can go into that next step up. Is there some way that I can support you while we're figuring this out? And that makes it a much healthier way of handling it. That's on my good day.
Chuck: No, and that's really good. I mean, that's a really good example of how to handle something if it could be difficult and something that Ashley and I see as people are often more receptive to getting help at different times in the couple. And our advice would be as soon as one of you wants help, get help, get help. Who cares if you don't think that you need to? If your partner thinks that you need help and they want to have a conversation with somebody, do it because I can tell you too many cases where a wife asked for counseling, asked for counseling, the husband said no, said no, said no. And then as soon as she files the paperwork for divorce, all sense of crisis, and he needs counseling. What if he would have said yes when she asked for help the first time, so as soon as one of you wants help, listen to them and get help. I don't care if you don't think you need it right now and you guys can figure it out and you don't have any problems and you're not the problem. Whatever. Go and talk to somebody.
Ashley: And don't let money stand between you and in that. So, it's like, OK, you can't afford it. Well go to two sessions and see if it worked. And then if it did, then say, OK, we won't go out to eat for two months, which would be better for your life, that you don't go out to eat for two months and you stay married, or that you spend a whole lot of money on divorce and then you're really, really sad about not having your family together on the holidays? You have to switch holidays with your kids or whatever. So, we sometimes think, Oh, I can', I can't do that . I can't afford it. And there's really something else that's real at block there because we will go to Disney, we will go and do things. But sometimes it's just it's that I just want to be in a positive space and Disney gives me a positive space and talking about my problems just makes it worse. Well, if you haven't ever gone to counseling, you actually don't know that. And we have a remarkable number of people at the end of each session that they say, especially the first session that was so much less scary. Like, I want to do that, right? Who doesn't want to sit in a room and talk about themselves, right? That’s not too bad, I could talk for a little bit. It's true, but it's true. It's not as bad. And if it does help you to live in that positive space like you want, it is really something worth investing in.
Hilary: Yeah, I think so often it's just the idea of making it a priority, and unfortunately a lot of times with our relationships, other things take priority over bettering our relationships. So, I love that reminder. You too have given us a lot of information and honestly, a lot of hope, and I love that you have that ongoing theme with what you teach there. So, as we kind of wrap up our time together, any final thoughts that you would want our listeners to take and remember moving forward?
Ashley : I think just knowing that you're not out of options, so when I'm in a negative space, I will have certain things that I say. One of them is, you make me tired. That's to my kids.
Chuck: I think you said that to me once or twice,
Ashley: But I need to be more specific and ask for what I want like. Can you talk a little softer? Because when you talk really fast, my heart rate increases and it makes me anxious, right? Be more specific. And so, if we're in a negative space and we're like, I'm just going to have a divorce, I got to get out of here. I can't. We have those hopeless thoughts. If we see a pattern of those, to say, I'm going to be curious about it, I'm not going to just let myself deny it or push it away, but I'm going to pull myself into a place of curiosity, trying not to judge myself too much, but to say, wonder why that's there, wonder why and give ourselves space to think about it. Because then if we don't have to like hide behind shame and frustration and the busyness, then we can create a place of safety for ourselves to express what we feel. Understand, like those emotions are triggers right they’re triggering something, they're alerting us to something. The problem needs attention. And so, if we give ourselves space to do that, then we can hopefully get back to that positive space where we all want to be. And so, we are for you and so be for yourself and give yourself that space to look at yourself, to look at your relationships in your life because there is hope there.
Chuck: Yeah, you won't regret working on it.
Hilary: Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. If you guys don't mind, we would love, you obviously being this wealth of knowledge. I know that there are a lot of people out there that are like, I would love to start. I would love to start by talking to someone. How can we best get in touch with you? Do you guys have a website, social media? Different ways that our listeners can find out more information.
Chuck: Yeah, there's lots of ways to connect with us. Just chuckandashley.com is a great place to start. We're on all kinds of social media from Instagram and YouTube channels and all of those things. And we have a lot of free content on there. Some of the exercises that Ashley just talked about how to layout your positive and negative space thinking and behavior. I mean, she teaches people how to do that on just free content through Instagram. So, we'd love to stay connected with people and have a conversation if there's something else that we can do. You can find our online programs and all those things on there as well.
Ashley: And if you want to subscribe to our email list, that's where we do give a little bit more exclusive opportunities and such . And so that's chuckandashley.com\subscribe. And so, we try to just send out an email once or twice in the month and give them again free resources. But then we connect to our paid resources as well. So, we do have an online program called Why People Leave and people can do this in the privacy of their own home. But it's therapeutic in nature. You can do it as a couple or as an individual. It has reflection questions and such as well. And so, it helps people to really hone in on those pieces in their relationship that they want to stay. It's not just if you're considering leaving, but it's just so that you don't leave because you understand like how that mental process occurs.
Chuck: Yeah, that's a great deep dive into some more of this.
Hilary: Perfect, and we will make sure that we include all of that information in our show notes so that that you, as our listeners can get those links in that information because that's a lot of great, a lot of great resources, many of which are offered for free. So, we appreciate that. Thank you guys so much.
Jen: Yeah. Well, I want to thank you, you guys have given us so many little nuggets to be able to take and choose from where we can start and what we want to do better within our own relationships. And that's what I encourage you as our listeners, is to take one of those suggestions. Take out that little golden nugget that you found and really try something different. Just talking to your spouse daily and working as a team. I want to thank you all for coming and listening with us. We hope that you have a good week and we will see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at parents@thefamilyplaceutah or you can reach Jen on Facebook, Jen Daly-The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is thefamilyplaceutah.org if you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes. We'd love to see you there.
Subject Resources:
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https://www.instagram.com/chuckandashleycoaching/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9vzRS0OA3Kim5wYxhn5KQ
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