The Daily Marriage Question...

Stu: Hey there, it's the Stupendous Marriage Podcast. I'm Stu Gray. Hey, I'm Lisa Gray. And it's

Lisa: dinner time. It is, and we are both starving. To be real honest, it has been a very interesting afternoon trying to record the show. We're trying to do video, and it's awesome and great, but man, it has some challenges.

And so now here we are, we're hungry, and we're coming up with the question we have every day for 23 years, which is, What's for

Stu: dinner, right? And we're not good at answering that question, you know, you would think we get better at it after 20 plus years, but it's just not something we're good at. Neither one of us are cooks.

Neither one of us do recipes. Well, neither one of us like cooking. And so it's been this constant over and over and over. day to day thing that you have to answer in your marriage and it frustrates both of us. I mean, the closest we get to planning it out is Lisa's alarm that goes off in her calendar at four o'clock every day.

What's for dinner. And we have to have that conversation every day. It just never stops. And that's a lot like marriage, right? You know, we think that Marriage is like the happily ever after, all the good feelings, wonderful, fabulous, the princess in the castle and all that sort of stuff. Really 95 percent of the time, marriage is just the day to day things that you deal with all the time together.

Lisa: Yeah. And how you deal with them is really significant. Like when it comes to dinner. For the most part, unless we're hangry, we've gotten really good at realizing this is not something we enjoy. It's a must do, you know, we got to eat. And so instead of being aggravated with each other, most times we're like, okay.

Let's figure out a plan. Are we going to eat out tonight? Are we going to try to run to the store and grab something to make? Like, what are we going to do? And it used to be many years ago when we first got married that I felt pressure as a wife that I had to be this great cook, right? Well, I don't like to cook, but I would try.

And what tended to happen is I would cook the same dishes. every week, several times a week. And at some point in time, he got kind of bored and was complaining and whining a little bit here and there. And I finally looked at him one day and said, dude, if this is important to you, you know how to cook. We didn't meet until we were in our late twenties.

So you are not a kid, you know, getting married to me, then maybe you can figure it out. And the funny thing that happened was...

Stu: Ramen noodles.

Lisa: It was not ramen noodles.

Stu: Well, ramen noodles happened all through college. True. But the experience was not good. You realize that it is tough to put food together and make meals happen.

And it's just something you just have to do,

right? Well, and understanding that that really is just an everyday thing and not expecting it to be something glamorous. I mean, like you said earlier,

Lisa: marriage was never meant to be about the happily ever after that we see in the movies. Now, I love those movies and thankfully he lets me watch them quite a bit, but I always know they're movies.

They're not real life. You know, in real life, you have to deal with what's for dinner. You have to deal with who's getting the kids, who's getting the groceries, who's feeding the dog and trying to do that from a perspective of, Hey, we're on the same team together and we're going to try to approach this together and find a positive solution instead of.

nagging each other or instead of having expectations for each other that the other person can't meet. That's where you've got to change the way you think about it. It's

Stu: really picking up the slack for the other person, right? There are times when I'm really busy and Lisa picks up the slack in the house.

There are times when she's super busy and I have to pick up the slack. I'm probably not so good at that. It really doesn't make any difference. Who's job it is and who does what in our house. I think society for a while had, Hey, the guys do this and the gals do that. Totally. Really? It doesn't matter anymore.

It's like, well, what can I do to serve my spouse right now? What can I do? What needs to be picked up in our house? What laundry needs to be done? Do I need to go get the mail today? All of those things. It doesn't have the stamp of wife's job. It doesn't have the stamp of husband's job. It's just. What needs to be done in our house and dinner is one of those tough things that neither one of us like to do

Lisa: Actually, yeah So today we just want to talk about pretty much giving grace to each other being on the same team together Going in the same direction of trying to accomplish the goals And the fact is is that it's really easy for these small everyday things To build up in a negative way in your marriage and so being proactive Setting expectations communicating when you're not hangry About how to solve whatever issue or whatever obstacle you have in front of you, then you don't let it build up and hold a fence against each other, which sometimes we just do

Stu: unconsciously, right?

Well, on the other side of that, being proactive, what are you good at doing? Are you good at making the bed? Are you good at folding laundry? What are the things you like to do in the house? Can your spouse do the other things? Lisa? Actually, both of us like to do. No, that's not true. I don't like to mow, but Lisa, if we actually mowed our yard, she wouldn't mind doing that.

She actually taught one of our neighbors how to mow her yard several years ago because it's something that she was good at. She liked to do. She didn't mind doing it. Right. So it's, what are the things that you like to do? What are the things that you're good at? What are the things that neither one of us like to do?

What do you not like to do? Figuring those things out and having those healthy conversations so you can navigate those together is a couple. And then in the things that you're weak in, Well, how do you get support there? How do you find a solution to that? If you have a solution, like recipes and stuff, send them our way.

Lisa: Or meal planning. Absolutely. We really need meal planning. That would be amazing. Well, for us, we really did figure out that taking care of the yard and the time that it would take to get it done was just not worth our time. And so we were able to find a great lawn guy, shout out Damien, thank you, who comes and takes care of that for us.

And we've been very fortunate to be able to do that. Thinking about things that maybe you can get. Out of your house have somebody else handle for you to make it be more peaceful environment so that you and your spouse are not arguing about who's going to do what now we have not figured out how to get a private chef.

So, that's right, we have not. That is our dream. It's a big dream right there, but until then, I guess we'll be going and getting food tonight before we starve

Stu: to death. Mexican sound good? It sounds good. Okay, good. So we would love to hear from you. Stupendous marriage. com slash voicemail. Let us know what you're thinking about the video portion of the show.

If you're just listening, if you've got a question about marriage again, stupendousmarriage.com /voicemail. We would love to hear from you and we'll talk to you next time. See ya.