Carrie: Happy fifth anniversary early.
Steve: Yes, you too. My goodness. We made it.
Carrie: We made it. Yes. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, does it? To you?
Steve: It doesn’t. But then when I look at, like when I first met you, I’d only been in Nashville and Tennessee for four years, and now I’ve been in Tennessee for like. 10 years. So that kind of puts things into perspective a little bit. But no, it feels like somebody hit the fast forward button on the time. How are we here?
Carrie: Well, I mean, we’ve been a little busy.
Steve: Well, that’s true. That’s true. No.
Carrie: We had got married, had a kid life change of diagnosis. Lost my parents business stuff going crazy. Podcast stuff like just so much has happened. Yes. in five years.
Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bach. I’m a Christ follower. Wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.
When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.
So let’s dive right into today’s episode.
We’ve gone over a lot of that other fun stuff in past anniversary episodes, if y’all wanna catch some of those and catch up on our life and kinda what we’ve been going through. So I thought for this year, since mid to five years, that we could do something a little bit different and you and I came up with five things that we learned in the first five years of marriage.
Steve: Yes.
Carrie: So let’s get into ’em for the people. Hopefully this helps you if you’ve been married a little bit of time, a long time. Maybe it’s just some good reminders or key takeaways for y’all to hold onto.
Number one, keep dating your spouse.
Steve: Yes, that was good advice. That’s been fun. And as one of my doctors put it, that doesn’t include your medical appointments. Like when you go to the doctor, that’s not a date.
Carrie: Yes.
Steve: You had the date afterwards, but that’s Or before, but that’s not a date.
Carrie: She used to say, well, you don’t have your child around. That makes it a date. And I was like, no, not quite. Try try again, but. Obviously people have all kinds of challenges to being able to date their spouse, especially once you have children and we only have one, but some people have multiple children. There’s financial pressures that people face, and so I think it’s easy for them to fall out of the dating and just say, it’s too much effort to go out. I’ve gotta find somebody to watch the kid. I’ve gotta plan something and gets into this level of complacency that you don’t wanna get into your relationship and.
We’ve kind of this year have done some creative dating.
Steve: Yes.
Carrie: In terms of childcare and we’ve done some after the child goes to bed type dates.
Steve: Yes. Doing like, what was it? Mad Libs. Together. Hey, that’s a date you got time together. It’s a date, right?
Carrie:.
Steve: But doing the different things together, it’s kind of fun.
Carrie: Yes. You can get your little sweet snack after the child. Goes to bed. And we’ve read a little bit of a book together. We’re not very far into it, but we started reading. Yes. Uh, grace Based Parenting. And that seems to have some good tidbits so far. Like I said, we’re not super far into it, but just something to kind of strengthen our relationship, our parenting. Sometimes we’re working on like planning our anniversary trip together. So we’ve kind of talked about some of those things.
I think the important thing for us that we realized was, for me, there’s work, there’s dinner, there’s our daughter, there’s dinner, there’s bedtime, and then sometimes you just get super exhausted right afterwards, and there’s this tendency to just collapse in front of the TV. Watch a little TV and then go to bed, and so we had fallen into that rut and decided, you know what? We need to get a little bit more intentional about our quality time together. That’s one of my love languages that I feel like Is important.
Do you feel like that’s one of yours too?
Steve: Yes. it is. I enjoy time together both with us and as a family, and I have to make time for the dating too, though. That’s important.
Carrie: We are going for an anniversary trip for the first time without our daughter. Without.
Steve: Our daughter. Yes. Yes. Which is, that’s fun and scary in a way. It’s so outside of the norm. Wait. We’re taking a big trip without her and it’s good for her.
Carrie: When we went through Grace Marriage, they were talking about getting away once every quarter, at least one or two nights, like at least for the weekend. And we just saw it. That’s really great for y’all. Yes. That is very impractical for us. I.
Steve: Remember us looking at the book going, do these people have children? Because how does this work? But it’s, you get creative and you make it work.
Carrie: We also have one set of grandparents that’s passed away and one set of grandparents is older, and so their capacity to keep our daughter overnight, Yes. It would be harder for them. It’s not the same as somebody else. Whose parents are maybe in their fifties or sixties. Right.
And I think that’s the biggest thing I would say about keep dating your spouse. You have to work with what you’ve got. Like if y’all have no money, you can go side on the porch. If you’ve got a porch, if you don’t have a porch, go to the park and bring some coffee from home.
Like I think it’s not about spending a bunch of money. I think when people think about date night, they think, oh, well now next thing you know, it’s like. $200. You’re paying for the sitter or the dinner, the movie, the, this, that, that. And obviously that adds up. So I would say fine. The inexpensive dates.
We did some things right where we picked out something for each other at the thrift store one time too. That was actually fun. Yes. Had a.
Steve: Trinket, which she liked. Uhhuh.
Carrie: Ooh.
Steve: Toilet paper half off. Oh, that’s not a good one.
Carrie: That’s not store.
Steve: It’s trippy. No, I’m kidding, of course. But it’s fun to find something when you’re looking through at the thrift store, just being creative and being unique and make a good challenge for one another to do. As long as it’s together and you’re enjoying it, that’s what matters. And you don’t have to go broke doing it.
If you want to just occasionally go on an expensive trip, hey, have at it, but you don’t have to do that every time. Then you’re going have other arguments about your finances or something. So don’t do that.
Carrie: Right. I mean, I think what you said, just being intentional about it. So we have to look at our calendar and say, Hey, what’s going on this week that we have? When is the best time for us? Yes. To kind of do a little bit of a date thing and Yes.
Steve: And we did a good thing too, in that we made, it was tentative. But it’s always. It’s easy to change it. Some weeks are easier than others, but to say, Hey, this particular night we’ll try to always make that our date night, and if we have to change it, fine, maybe we have, but that kind of is a way for me to, I don’t have to go look at the calendar every single time. I can say, oh Yes. that’s the day I can’t do anything that night. I might, well, let me check, but You can kind of in your head, you know, that’s date night and that’s good. It’s healthy.
Carrie: Number two is keep doing the little things, the little things that Steve does for me, and when I say the little things, it’s like the stuff that you did when you were dating to just connect with your loved one that became your spouse. And your thing has always been like writing you little notes. And you’ll leave them different places and they might be in the bathroom or in the car. Or in the lunchbox, or have to be.
Steve: Sneaky.
Carrie: You do, you’re sneaky about it. We’ve left notes for each other in our clothes pockets before. That’s the best one. But then that’s like.
Steve: Have they put their hand in their pocket today? You know? Oh Yes. I got it this morning. I forgot to tell you Thanks. Because I was sitting here wondering.
Carrie: Yes. those.
Steve: Are fun.
Carrie: It’s not anything super profound necessarily. No. Just like I enjoyed our weekend together and I love you and Yes. things like that. Yes. Oh, I appreciate that. It’s sure about bringing the sense of being thoughtful into your relationship.
Steve: And whatever your thing is. Like, I like to be silly and funny, and so I put that in the note. You know, I make that part of my thing so that it’s a, I don’t know, something you can laugh about through your day. Yes. I think it helps. Perfect.
Carrie: And what little things do I do for you?
Steve: You a lot of times one of my favorite things that you’ll do is you’ll make breakfast. Sometimes for me, I’ll wake up, Hey, I got an extra egg in here, and boy, I don’t shave fast. People with shaky hands should not shave fast. You’ll look like Van Gogh with no ear, but.
Carrie: Oh no.
Steve: You’ll say, Hey, I got eggs in here. And boy, I never shave so fast is when I hear that. I don’t care if I’m half shaven, I’ll get out there. Nobody wants a cold egg. That’s one of my favorite things that you do for sure. And then sometimes you’ll bring me back, like of course food is the way Mom used to always say, if you wanna get to Steve’s heart, you gotta go through food. And that’s true.
Carrie: They bring me back. Little snacks.
Steve: Yes. You bring me snacks or little drinks. Coffee or something. Yes. coffee something. And I enjoy that. I enjoy treats and little knickknacks and foods mostly. But when I say knickknacks, I mean. Desserts with a capital D in Yum.
Carrie: Yes. I think that’s important. It’s just my way of saying like, Hey, I was out and I thought about you and I saw this. And wanted to get you that. And sometimes faith and I’ll go places and you’ll hang out at the house. Like we’ll be doing our girl time or something and we’ll bring you back something. So Yes. it’s nice to be able to, to do that. It makes you feel a little warm and fuzzy inside on both ends.
Steve: You have to get out of the routine mentality. You know, I’m just comfortable just sitting on the couch, watching TV, doing nothing. And the last thing you want is for your spouse to start feeling like there’s no fire in our relationship. Do they even love me anymore? When you do, you just don’t express it. So you gotta express it. Yes. that’s always tough.
Carrie: Three is communicate, but be intentional about how you do it. So what is it you always say.
Steve: It’s not what you say, but how you say it…
This is already quite long — would you like me to continue formatting the rest (from “It’s not what you say…” through to the ending about the trees and Shade Wars)? It’s about another two-thirds of the transcript.
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Here’s the rest of your transcript with only spacing between paragraphs (no changes to words, punctuation, or capitalization):
Carrie: Three is communicate, but be intentional about how you do it. So what is it you always say.
Steve: It’s not what you say, but how you say it. That’s true. A lot of times when we’ve said this before, we’re on the same page and if we have little arguments or what have you, we don’t really have big arguments, but little tiffs, we’re actually both debating the same side. Not always, but a lot of times it’s maybe how it was said. Yes. You know, maybe you sense anger in my voice. In reality, I’m just tired, or I’m annoyed that you’re not understanding me or whatever. But we’re both trying to say the same stinking thing, which ends up being kind of comical in the end. But you can’t laugh about it then until you’re both not annoyed, but Right. It’s not what you’re saying. It’s how you’re saying. I remember hearing that when I was younger. I had a teacher always saying that. She always said, you’re so sarcastic. What you’re saying is not bad, it’s just how you’re saying it.
Carrie: And depending on how you grew up and how you heard your parents communicate. I think that there’s a lot of unhealthy patterns then that we can subconsciously, sure. We don’t even intend to do it, but we can subconsciously take that into our next relationship. And so if there was like disrespect in the way that your parents spoke to each other or. There was condescension or belittling or attacking or any of that stuff that you know, like is unhealthy. Yes. And you’ve found it creep in there, then definitely you want to first become aware of it and then next really seek to change that. And sometimes that means us. Going through counseling or things of that nature, whether it’s individually so that you can learn to manage anger. Whether it’s together as a couple to learn how to communicate and how to speak to each other. I mean, I think that there’s a variety of ways that you can intervene, but just knowing that. You want to be respectful and loving as you’re communicating. Obviously we’re Christians and we want to be loving each other in a Christ-like way, and we don’t want to have that level of negative or toxic communication patterns, the bringing up the past or the, well, you’re always this way, or you do this or you do that. A lot of finger pointing.
Steve: Sure. And I think too, just the way that you say things, you meaning in general, not you personally, but. For me, I think an example would be, and I feel like I brought this up before, but hey, why not? Again, I used to always say, you so should do that. You did do that. You should do this, you should do that. And I didn’t mean it as a direct order. I just meant like, oh, what a wonderful idea. I like that idea. But it came across as, do this, you’re a loser if you don’t. That’s so not what I was saying, but I can now see how it comes across. In thinking about it, I don’t even think I use the word should very often, except for in this case, like I have totally eradicated that word from my vocabulary. But those are the things you have to be intentional about it. That’s something that is a whatever for your spouse, if that’s something that makes, or anybody for that matter, if it makes somebody uncomfortable to say it a certain way, especially your spouse.
Carrie: Yes. say it.
Steve: Differently or, or don’t say it. You know, I think.
Carrie: It was kinda a trigger word for me. I’m not really sure necessarily why, but Yes. I was like, man, this guy’s coming in. He’s just like telling me what to do all the time. And you were like, no, this is like a suggestion. And I was like, well, you should. So that’s something that we had to learn about each other. You have your growing pains as you’re learning to communicate and learning how the other person communicates. We have a very open relationship and we talk about all kinds of things. I don’t feel like we hold back on What we’re thinking or feeling or what’s going on in our lives or how we’re feeling about a relationship. But I find a lot of couples don’t do that. They don’t share with each other. They hold back a lot. I’m like, that’s supposed to be your person, like that you are becoming one with, and you’ve gotta be able to share and open up. So that’s another thing like. If you’re having challenges being vulnerable in your relationship, maybe you don’t feel like that other person is safe to open up to, or you feel like they’ve been too critical, or whatever the situation is causing you guys to keep from being able to open up and connect emotionally and spiritually, that needs to be able to be resolved because once you start having secrets in marriage, then you have this whole other host of problems. Right, right. Yes. And then you, there’s never find someone else to tell your secrets to, and that’s not good. Right.
Steve: There’s never one secret. You know? It’s like the kid that told the little white lie. It’s a lie, but they told the little lie. And then you have to have 10 more lies to defend that. And then before you know it, you’re lying to your spouse right and left. And who wants that? Like you said, it’s your number one. If you’re growing together as one, you can’t put a wedge in between one. That’s not a good idea.
Carrie: Number four, don’t make assumptions.
Steve: Yes. that’s a hard one. That’s an easy one to do, I should say.
Carrie: Yes. It’s easy to make assumptions. And that’s where you get into these, like you said, communication breakdowns. You’re in an argument, but really you haven’t really heard each other because I’m saying, well, you’re saying this. You’re telling me this. Or the other one is, well, you think this about me, or you think this about the situation, and it’s like, no, I haven’t really taken the time to hear you. I jumped to a conclusion. Then you’re on the defense. Right? Well, that’s not what I said, Carrie. Or whatever.
Steve: Yes. And even if it’s something that you always do, there’s no guarantee you’re still doing it this time. You have to leave room for a person to change.
Carrie: Yes.
Steve: You can’t just assume that’s, or maybe that’s not what they’re actually always doing. You just have always accused them of that. I think that’s a slippery slope.
Carrie: And I think if we want to look at our relationship through the lens of grace. What does that look like in terms of these communication differences? Can we assume the best about our spouse, even though they may not always be acting the best towards us, or they may not always be having the best day or the best way of communication? Can we assume that they love us, like a positive assumption, that their heart’s in the right place, that they may not know how to say something? Sure.
Steve: And I think sometimes maybe they’re just having a bad day and it’s not you. How often do people get in arguments? Simply because somebody was already having a bad day at that. Oh Yes. Mood. Just, man, it just continued because the other person senses that. I think sometimes there has to be race there. You know, just say, you know what? You’re in a bad mood. Let’s talk about this later. Let’s just relax. Or how can I help you to just relax? Or just, maybe they’re the type that just need to be left alone for a little while. Kind of sulk in there, whatever, and get over it. Right?
Carrie: And I don’t think we need to argue till 11:00 PM and not go to bed because we’re trying not to go to bed angry. You know what I mean? Like you’re taking the spirit of the verse. You’re trying to make it super literal. There are some Christian couples that do that. They’re like, no, we can’t go to bed angry. And so therefore, it’s. It doesn’t matter. It’s 10:00 PM it’s 11:00 PM We have to come to some kind of resolution and I don’t know what you found. I’ve found from life experience, I can think a lot clearer when I’ve had to Sure. And my brain has had time to chew. Sure. Like process it a little bit and like, okay, maybe I can see more clearly the next day. I think obviously we don’t want to have things just like creating a wedge between us. We want to be able to resolve conflict, but if we can.
Steve: Be at peace. To say, Hey, we’re going table this topic for a minute, right? We’ll get back on it later when we’re both a little cooler headed or whatever. We need sleep. If I can go to bed knowing that I’m at peace about it, I don’t have a resolve yet, but at least I’m like, okay, they’re willing to work it out. That’s half the battle so I can go to sleep now. And that took me a long time to learn because I don’t like to argue. I wanna fix the problem, whatever it is. And I had to learn to just chill out, let it go a little bit, and oh Yes. you can’t fix everything. It’s not up to you to fix all the problems you have to work together.
Carrie: Right. And I mean, I think that goes back to like what we were talking about with communication, like being intentional. Taking, is it the right time to try to bring this up with the other person? What’s the timing? What kind of mood are they in? Where are we at? And they all really fit together because if you don’t have those times of intentional connection, then you don’t have those times to intentionally, right? Talk through things, everything, right, flow together. But the nice thing about it is you make that one change and it has this ripple effect on these other areas. You decide, I’m going to love and respect my spouse. I’m going to allow my communication to be cloaked in all of that. I’m going to take time to intentionally connect with them and do things together. Now we are down to the last point. Last but not least, number five is always give more than 50%. And I think we have a lot to say on this one. Yes.
Steve: I mean, it’s so important. To have a good attitude, but to say, Hey, you know, it’s not about how much weight do I pull and how much weight do you pull? It’s more about like, well, they’re not washing the dishes. I know we’ve spoken on this before. You gotta be willing to just do it. It’s a task that needs to be done, and you just do it. Hopefully your spouse isn’t so lazy that they do nothing. They’re just sitting on the couch laying there. You have to consider, again, maybe they are having a bad day, maybe they’re sick today. Don’t complain, just do it. Just be done with it. And that one took me a lot of practice. It really did. And I still work on it a lot to say, you know what, just be thankful in all you do. This is a task that you have. Do it as if Jesus is standing right there with you and your spouse at some point is going say, man, you’ve done a lot. Thank you. But even if they don’t It’s okay. Just do it anyways. Don’t count. Like, okay, I’m only going do this much and then that’s their half. I’m not touching that.
Carrie: I think you have to understand that you’re going have days where you’re down and they’re going have days where they’re down and it’s not often, but I can get a really bad headache or a migraine or something and sometimes it’s a neck thing or it’s a whatever it is, and I’m just like down in the bed with ice pack on my head and you’re having to solo parent out there and figure things out. I feel bad about it, but there’s nothing that I can do. But you shouldn’t.
Steve: I mean, one, it happens, Yes. to everyone. And two, how many times am I sick? My goodness. It’s part of it. I’ve even gotten to the point where I’ve thought, you know what? You’re not going get any better trying to help me out here. Just stay in the bed and feel better. That’s more important right now. And some of this stuff can wait, and I’ve had to tell myself that.
Carrie: Yes.
Steve: Honestly, if I’m being truthful, I’ve had to tell myself that more than you. ’cause I don’t sit very well. I don’t just stay still and get better.
Carrie: Yes. You know, I think too many couples are looking for their relationship to be fair. And I think that’s a wrong way of looking at it. We need to look at how can I serve my spouse? How can I give to them in a way that I can, and using your strengths. That relationship and abilities. It would be really unfair in our situation for me to be like, well Steve, you just don’t pull your weight around here because you can’t drive and Right. You can’t go pick up our daughter. You can’t go to grocery store and do this. I gotta do all these things, you know, whatever. But you do all the laundry and you do a lot of dishes because I did cooking. And so we’ve found ways to navigate in a way that works for us. And I think if you feel like. Frustrated that your spouse isn’t doing enough. Obviously that’s a point of conversation and they actually have these really great, they’re called like fair play cards if anybody’s heard of that, where you can, we’ve never done it, but you can kind of divide out the cards like, Hey, you have this and you do that. And looking at what your roles and responsibilities are and kind of. See how there’s a tendency for women, even if post spouses are working to carry more weight, and there are some things that you and I can’t necessarily get around, and it just is what it is. I have to drive everybody to the doctor’s appointments or otherwise we’re not getting there. Occasionally we’ll kind of throw in a Lyft Uber situation. For you in there. Can’t do that for our daughter. We can’t just throw her on the Lyft and be like, Hey, go to the dentist by yourself. Right. That’s not going work. But No, but sometimes we can do that for you. We’ve just had to learn how to navigate our life and make things work. Grocery delivery is our friend for sure. Yes. I still go into the grocery store some to pick out some produce and things here and there. That is, we eat milk, but.
Steve: Oh, if you have vision problems, a grocery store is not a good place.
Carrie: Yes.
Steve: So I’ll leave it at that. But it’s, I’m so thankful we don’t have to go to the grocery store often.
Carrie: I remember those days of when you used to venture in there and even trying to drive the little car thing. People will still walk out in front of you and, oh, like, lemme just.
Steve: Step here. Thank you Lord for breaks. I may not see you. What was that bump? I just ran over. Sorry ma’am. You know you’re sitting and stepped in front of me. What were you thinking?
Carrie: He’s never run anybody over just for record. No, no, he’s just joking.
Steve: I have them close.
Carrie: That’s funny.
Steve: I sit there and go, “Hmm, no, I don’t do that.”
Carrie: Hopefully, this has been a helpful list. For everyone to go through. If it’s okay if I share this, I want everyone to know that we have resolved one of our ongoing, I’m not going say conflicts, it’s not really conflict, but Oh, our biggest marital issue was our points of contention. Points of contention was our windows in our dining area. Yes. Because you wanted the natural light. Yes. And you wanted them up. We have no privacy in the backyard. We’re on a hill with this quote privacy fence that gives us no privacy because no, by the time you look out, they should have made the privacy fence about three feet higher or something. 20 foot fence. There’s no privacy. So we went to a nursery this weekend. We bought some trees. And we got a little bit of money from my grandmother passing away, and my grandmother loved flowers and garden and all this stuff. So I’m like, Yes. let’s get some trees and, which is nice.
Steve: Because Yes. we’ll have some oxygen now. Yes. Isn’t that lovely? And something nice to look at instead of just staring at the neighbor’s back window. Unintentionally.
Carrie: We had no trees in the backyard. One tree that we had to pay to take down insult to injury. Awful, because it was. Rotted or dying, whatever.
Steve: It’s a dead stick in the ground.
Carrie: So we had to pay to get rid of our dead stick, and now we are buying live and healthy trees, giving us some privacy, and we’re very excited about, those are going be installed in a couple weeks or so. That’s exciting, super fun. But yes, all things can be resolved. But there for a little while I was like. Pull the shades down, the neighbors can see us. You’re like, I want natural light. Yes, you’re pulling, like having the Shade Wars in our dining area now we won’t have the Shade Wars in the dining area. That’s nice. I mean, I.
Steve: Still don’t plan on leaving them open like at night or anything.
Carrie: No.
Steve: It’s nice to be able to come into the house. To sit down and have a window to look out of. I just enjoy that.
Carrie: Well, thanks so much for hanging out with us on our fifth anniversary episode and keep listening for more. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith and OCD is a production of by the well.Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
