Episode 70. From the Brink to Best Friends: Reinventing Your Marriage
Why Solving Every Problem Isn’t the Goal in Marriage
What if the thing that’s driving you crazy in your marriage—the parenting disagreement, the way they load the dishwasher, or that reoccurring fight about screen time—isn’t a problem you’re supposed to solve?
That might sound like a cop-out. But according to Dr. John Gottman’s research, nearly 70% of problems in marriage are perpetual. That means they’re ongoing. Unsatisfying. And—here’s the kicker—unsolvable.
Instead of chasing a final resolution that may never come, emotionally intelligent couples learn to manage these recurring issues with mutual respect, understanding, and flexibility. That small shift? It has saved marriages.
When “Same Fight, Different Day” Is Normal
Gottman found that couples he studied over decades were arguing about the exact same things—years later. The only thing that changed? More wrinkles, grayer hair, and maybe new clothes. Not the problem itself.
So what does that mean for us?
It means that when you chose your partner, you also chose a unique set of problems. And while you could trade partners, you’d just be trading for a different set. The real work isn’t in eliminating the conflict—but learning how to handle it together.
The Parenting Snow War
Take our recent guests, Robert and Sharla Snow, for example. For them, one ongoing source of conflict was parenting—specifically, whether or not their 8-year-old should shovel snow early in the morning.
Sharla, like many protective mothers, imagined the worst: frostbitten fingers, slipping on ice, concussions, ER visits, even a brain bleed. Robert, on the other hand, saw it as a chance to teach hard work, responsibility, and care for others.
They fought about it—many times.
But instead of getting stuck in blame and defensiveness, they did something crucial: they paused, calmed down, and talked about what values were underneath their positions.
Sharla valued protection and preparation. Robert valued discipline and life lessons. And once they understood each other, they created a win-win: the kid shovels later in the morning, with proper gear, and still learns responsibility.
Managing the Unsolvable with Wisdom
The key to navigating perpetual problems is regulation and curiosity.
When we're emotionally flooded, we can’t access the part of our brain that allows us to find creative solutions. Instead, we default to criticism, contempt, stonewalling, or defensiveness—the Four Horsemen Gottman warns us about.
But when we stay calm, curious, and connected, we can approach the conflict not as enemies, but as teammates trying to understand each other.
Ask:
What’s important to you about this?
What are you afraid might happen?
What value is this tied to?
That’s where real progress lives—not in solving every disagreement, but in learning to understand and honor each other’s perspective.
A Marriage of Two Strong Identities
Perpetual problems don’t mean your marriage is broken. In fact, they often reflect two people with strong values and identities who are learning to coexist.
And the goal isn’t to sacrifice those identities, but to merge your dreams into shared meaning. To build a relationship where your differences are a strength—not a constant battleground.
So the next time you’re fighting about chores, parenting, money, or that thing you’ve argued about a dozen times before—pause. Take a breath. And ask yourself:
Can we manage this together, even if we never fully solve it?
Because maybe, just maybe, that’s what a healthy marriage looks like.
Want more real, research-backed tools for navigating marriage?
🎧 Listen to the full episode with Robert and Sharla Snow on the Marriage IQ podcast.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another exciting episode of Marriage IQ where we are making marriage great again. All right, we, your humble and loyal hosts are here. We are very excited to introduce some guests. Today is Robert and Sharla Snow. They have their own podcast called Master your Marriage. And this is an exciting time because I've listened to them and they're really intellectual and I like intellectual conversations. I like the science behind the whole communication about relationships. I think we both do.[00:00:45 - 00:00:45]
We do.[00:00:45 - 00:00:52]
So this is going to be, I think, a kind of a power packed discussion today. And do you want to introduce them a little bit, Heidi?[00:00:52 - 00:01:36]
You bet. One thing we really were drawn to about Robert and Sharla is they have some things in common with us that are really fun. Robert is in the medical field, just like Scott is. He's a doctor of physical therapy. And Sharla is in the social science field like I am. Her background is in neuro linguistic programming, and she has been a coach seeing clients for several years, but specifically working with marriages for the last few years. And we are just really excited to learn from them, to see what things we have in common and how we can keep working together on marriages from different perspectives. And we know that some of the things that they'll share with you today will be really helpful.[00:01:38 - 00:01:40]
So welcome.[00:01:40 - 00:01:41]
Thank you, Both of you.[00:01:41 - 00:01:41]
Thank you.[00:01:41 - 00:01:43]
Thank you. It's good to be here.[00:01:43 - 00:01:43]
This is fun.[00:01:44 - 00:01:46]
It is fun. We love talking about relationships.[00:01:46 - 00:01:49]
And we do, too. It's our fun time.[00:01:49 - 00:02:14]
So on our podcast, we have these four cornerstones that we think are very important to a relationship. One of them is knowing who you are. Identity. And everyone has a story. And we'd just like you to take a few minutes to tell us your story, how you kind of got into this, and what are the things that help you, make you uniquely you.[00:02:17 - 00:02:19]
Well, do you want me to start, Robert, or do you want to start?[00:02:19 - 00:02:24]
You know, I was thinking that maybe we should just start from the humble beginnings.[00:02:24 - 00:02:26]
Yes, so very humble.[00:02:26 - 00:03:32]
We talk about this on our podcast and we're going to share some statistics because I know you like the science and I'm a bit of a science geek as well. So my mom was married four times. Sharla's parents were divorced, and I don't know if you know the statistics behind that, but coming into a relationship, if the woman is from a divorced family, then she is 69% more likely to get a divorce. If the husband is from a divorced family but not the wife, it's a little bit less than that. But when you put those two odds together, the likelihood of divorce is 189%. So to say that, and we talk about this at times, we never should have made it. And had we gotten married now when relationships are disposable, because I know that you guys are passionate about marriage and relationships as we are, if we'd have gotten married today, anytime in the 2000s, all of our friends and family would have said it didn't fit, it's not the right thing, you guys are done. And we'd end up divorced. But we're hard headed and we powered through. Boy, I wish we had the tools that you teach and I wish we had the tools that are available now for those early years. They were a little bit rugged for us.[00:03:33 - 00:06:00]
So I'm sure you've heard the quote by Esther Perel that in our adult lives that we will have three or four different relationships and for the lucky ones, we get to do that with the same person. And I love that too. I think it's just this idea that we need to reinvent. There's times in our relationships where we need to set that old relationship aside and say, we're not going to go back to that old relationship and we're going to create something new. And Robert and I talk about how we've had to go through three different, at least three different distinct marriages. Now we didn't get divorced and remarried again, but we've had to say, okay, that old relationship, that one is done, we're going to do something new. And you know, our first marriage, like Robert said, was you're never going to make it. And as Robert said so well, like we really should not have made it. We came into this relationship with, I know you love Gottman, we love Gottman. If you look at those predictors for divorce, we had every single one of them going for us. Criticism, contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, not accepting, influence, control. Like all of the things major flooding, all the things that you would look at us and Gottmans would have said, no way, they are never going to make it. And so I think that's what fuels our desire to help other couples is that 33 years we've been married now, four kids. And it's not the number that, I mean, it's nice to be able to say. I think I love saying we've been married for 33 years, but that there's a lot of relationships where people have been married that long and they can't stand each other, they don't want to be in the same room together. So the number itself isn't bragging rights. It's that I think we've created a relationship where he's my best friend and I want to spend as much time with him as I can. We love to travel. We just had our first grandbaby and I just love reinventing our life together over and over and over again. So that's why we do what we do. That's why we're passionate about helping couples, because we see how the trickle down effect, when your relationship feels secure and solid and you're really great friends, it impacts every other aspect of your life. It impacts your career, your spirituality, your health. Obviously we know all the statistics on health and relationships. And so if we can get this right, we know how it blesses all the other parts of our life.[00:06:00 - 00:07:01]
And the interesting part about this is as I reflect and it, and I do it with some. I don't know if sadness is the right word, but occasionally I look at her and I'm just like, man, how come I couldn't have had this for 33 years? I've had this relationship for 10, 11, maybe 12 years with just deep friendship, kindness, loving, acceptance, vulnerability, like all the things that we love to talk about. And I just look at her like, you know, like, man, I wish I could have had that type of relationship. And we know people who have those relationships and it's, it's sad that it took us this long to get there, but it's also an amazing piece to kind of be in this space. And I'm really, I really cherish the, the place where we are now. And that has springboarded us and not really because, because we felt like everyone needed it. It became the point where people were asking and we were starting to see our friends relationship start to just disintegrate. And we're like, okay, we need to help if we can.[00:07:02 - 00:07:52]
I love how you said that. Sometimes the difficulties are a springboard for creation of something totally new. In our case, I went through a divorce earlier in my 20s, and that is what springboarded me to say I'm never again. Divorce stinks. I hate it. And so Scott and I were able to change a lot of things just from the very beginning. And we do constantly have to make adjustments all the time. But for those of you out there who are really struggling either with your marriage or with something else, this is part of human development. Take those things that are really difficult and use them as a springboard for growth, for, for deeper connection, for making changes.[00:07:52 - 00:08:15]
And Going back to what Sharla said, she said, I don't want to brag or. But I. I think it might be okay to brag a little bit. I mean, not to. To rub it in people's faces, but to. And I'm sure you already do this. Well, no, I'm not sure of anything. I would imagine you do already.[00:08:15 - 00:08:16]
We're learning that.[00:08:16 - 00:08:46]
But just to be. To look back at your life and say, dang, this is pretty cool. And, you know, I think that's probably okay because the rest of the time we're spending asking ourselves, okay, am I. Am I doing this right? Is this enough? Am I wrong? I think it's okay for. For me, anyway. We've been married 29 years, so we are catching up to you guys.[00:08:46 - 00:08:49]
No grandchildren. We're a couple of steps behind, but.[00:08:49 - 00:09:26]
You'Re right there, so. But yeah, I. I think, too, getting back to your point, Esther Perel's Great, great quote. I love the meter sometime, but about this marriage, that two or three times, it's so hard to think about that killing off things that we love are the comfort, things that make us comfortable. Killing it off, totally restarting, rebuilding and making something greater. That's hard and it's scary. It's scary for a lot of people.[00:09:26 - 00:09:55]
It's scary for me because so many of our. I think so many of our patterns that make us who we are in those early stages of our relationship. You know, you guys talk about the Gottman research on your show all the time, and we know that contempt is the number one cause of divorce, that it's so corrosive. What does John Gottman call it? He calls it sulfuric acid for relationships, I think.[00:09:55 - 00:09:56]
Absolutely.[00:09:56 - 00:10:12]
And that I learned at the feet of the master. I learned contempt. It was just cursed through my blood. If I could say. There was one thing that I had to overcome the most, it was contempt. I was really, really good at it.[00:10:12 - 00:10:19]
And by contempt, you mean thinking, I'm good, you're bad, or give me a definition for contempt.[00:10:20 - 00:11:12]
So contempt is coming from a place of superiority. And so speaking to or treating your partner as though they are less than. And for me, it was not necessarily a conscious thing that I was completely aware that I was doing, because, again, it was just. I was birthed in it. And for me, it was a way of being able to control. So control being the really nasty pattern that was behind it. It was a way that I could keep the upper hand if I could talk down to Robert and make him feel less than even. Just through eye rolling and sneering and snickering and belittling. Then I could remain in that control position, that upper hand position, and get what I wanted out of the relationship.[00:11:12 - 00:11:15]
What do you think you needed to control subconsciously?[00:11:16 - 00:13:15]
Well, I mean, this was. I think there's a. Terry Real talks about, you know what, the way children learn these patterns as kids. And I think that on one hand we learn them because of modeling. Sometimes we learn them as a way of protection maybe to, you know, it's something we created in childhood to maybe get from out of a shame position. So we put ourselves into a superiority position. But sometimes I think children just learn because they're not taught boundaries. They're not taught this is not a good way to treat other people. And I know he gives this example of his own father, Terry Real does in one of his books, I think it's called. I think it's the book Us. And he says he comes home one day to his dad and he's always had really good grades his whole life. And he brings home a report card to his father, who for the first time now, this report card has Cs and Ds and things on it that he's afraid he's going to get in trouble. And he brings it to his dad and he says, here's my report card. And his dad looks at it and he laughs and he snickers and he goes, those idiots. They're just too dumb to realize how smart you are or something like that. And so immediately there's this sense of I'm training this child to think in terms of superiority, that I'm better than someone else. And I think Pia Melody says it best. She says it's one of the greatest lies that we can think that one person can be better than another person, that in reality we have to start to see each other all same as that. Robert and I are partners. We are same as no better, no less than anyone else. And that's true of the entire world. And so I think sometimes children are raised in families where they sit around the table at dinner and they go into a flight of superiority. And did you see what the neighbors were doing? Did you see what she was wearing? You know, and so I think that just becomes your normal way of being.[00:13:16 - 00:13:32]
So are you saying, Sharla, that acting this way, this superiority, that you're in a superior position? So that includes gossiping, I guess, right? Or is that what you're about, about other people?[00:13:33 - 00:14:51]
So it sure, in a family scenario, it could definitely be sitting around the table talking about, you know, those other people and what those other people do and how could such. And so. And so do such a thing. But I think within, as you become into an adulthood and you get into a relationship, it becomes a tool, a weapon that we can use against each other. When things get. When things get stressful, when the pressure gets put on in relationships, which it does, this becomes a way that we treat each other. And it's, as you know from Gottman research, it's the number one cause of divorce. So, like, how could you be so stupid to not remember to take the trash out? Like, what is wrong with you? Are you such a child? Do you need me to do this for you? Because you can't figure out how to do this yourself, right? These are the things we start to take into our marriage, into our relationships. And we know from the Gottmans that not only is it the number one cause of divorce, but it also predicts our health, that every time we experience contempt, the person who's experienced it, it's impacting their immune system. It's making them more likely to have illnesses that come up and more sicknesses. How did it feel for you, Robert, being on the receiving end of it?[00:14:51 - 00:17:29]
I don't know that I felt sick, but I think what it will start to do as the person who's on the other side of that, and you can imagine this in your relationship, that you just start to withdraw. And then that's where the stonewalling on my side begin. Like, oh, she's talking again. I can't spend any time listening to this because if I let it in, then it's going to impact me. So instead I just disregard everything that she had to say, and that puts up a wall in the relationship. And, you know, we often talk about. I've talked about just being, you know, and I understand that there's men's roles and women's roles and all those, but. But in the working world, and I was in construction for a while before, so that was my previous career before I went to PT school. And that's. That's a pretty abrasive environment. And there's a lot of. There's a lot of bad language and there's a lot of joking that. That if you took it serious, could be hard. And what we take into some of our calls and even our coaching is, look, look, your husband is out in the workforce all day. If this is a complaint about the husband and he has his armor on, so he's protecting himself. To deflect what the world is giving him. Right. There's a poor progress report. You didn't get this done. This didn't work appropriately. All those types of things, or just, you know, hard jokes. And when we come home, we want to take our armor off. Unless you're going to stab me with a knife when I get home with this. A sharp word. And then I leave my armor on and I tell the wife or I tell the other person. This relationship, if you say to me that my partner is distant, then I will say that your partner is wearing their armor. And when your partner says, I'm tired, then it's because your partner is carrying the armor to fight you off all day long 24 7. And then unfortunately, whatever it is, if that person finds someplace safe to take their armor off and that place safe is not at home, then that's where you have a really big problem. Because they're always looking for safety. Guys want safety. But so that's the criticism and the contempt. Like, you know, so I would just arm her up. She could say things to me. I'm like, well, whatever. She's, you know, being mean. Postpartum, pregnant. What? You know, you can add any of your excuses into that that you want, but that's the armor up part. And so what we really need to do in both sides of the relationship is I need to have enough faith and trust and vulnerability. Vulnerability. Taking my armor off to receive input from you and then, you know, learn how to fight. That's what we talk about. How do we disagree appropriately?[00:17:29 - 00:17:30]
How do we learn to fight? Well, yeah.[00:17:31 - 00:17:40]
So, Robert, so it sounds to me, out of these four horsemen that Gottman talks about that are just awful for marriages.[00:17:40 - 00:17:41]
Yeah.[00:17:41 - 00:17:54]
What I hear you saying is the stonewalling is if out of the four, that's kind of the one that you would have picked. Or is there another one that you.[00:17:54 - 00:18:02]
Oh, no, you're. You're absolutely right. I had stonewalling, defensiveness. She had criticism and contempt. Okay, so yeah, we split it down the middle. It was fine.[00:18:03 - 00:18:51]
It's pretty funny because I think, I think though, it helps us kind of understand when we're able to put labels on things. And yeah, I want to talk about labels probably in another podcast. It's a very sharp two edged sword, but I think kind of labels are good to a degree to help us understand. To help us understand what's going on. It's like a diagnosis. Right. Treat you with this treatment plan unless I have a diagnosis. And so definitely two A, two Edged sword, very sharp. And that's probably going to take a whole nother episode. But I think that for me, it became very clear to me that defensiveness when I went through those four. I thought, I'm just kind of like you. I had the armor on. Right. You want to defend yourself?[00:18:52 - 00:18:52]
No.[00:18:54 - 00:19:04]
Which makes me the. The criticizer and contempt. And although we. We may have, in different topics, different forms of contempt, to some degree, I think I definitely had more.[00:19:05 - 00:19:12]
But here's the problem, though, like you mentioned, Robert, that you wanted to be safe. But guess what?[00:19:13 - 00:19:13]
Women.[00:19:13 - 00:19:23]
Women want to be safe, too. In fact, women really love safety and security. So everyone loves this.[00:19:23 - 00:19:33]
So is it because of insecurity that we are using contempt? Is that why we want to control? I don't know. What are your thoughts?[00:19:34 - 00:19:35]
I think you said the word control.[00:19:35 - 00:23:55]
I love this framework and it has really helped me to understand. And even it relates back to our conversation earlier about the three marriages. So Terry Real talks about these three different phases of relationships. The first phase is love without knowing. And that's where we get into a relationship and we're just like in love. And it's hormones and it's attraction, but we're really not showing each other everything. We're showing each other this perfectly curated version of ourselves. I don't leave the dishes in the sink. I don't leave my socks on the floor. I don't show my bad habits. And, you know, so then at some point we start to get to know each other better and better. And then all of a sudden we start to see things about the other that we don't really like. We start to see things about ourself that we don't like. And that's where he says we enter into the opposite, where we have knowing without love. So it starts with love without knowing, and then it becomes knowing without love. Because now I see you so clearly and I see myself so clearly, and it's irritating. I don't like what I see. He talks about marital hatred. This is when your marriage really starts. I think this is when marriage begins because now we see each other so clearly, and I don't like what I see. So this is where one of a couple of things is going to happen. We're either going to try to do certain things to get our partner to yield to us, to my way of seeing things, my perspectives, my ideas. This is how we're going to load the dishwasher and this is how we're going to put our socks away, or we're going to the opposite, which neither Robert nor I were big fans of this one, but a lot of people are, and that's to just accommodate and to yield to the other person. So we're either yielding or we're asking our partner to yield to us. And so we get into this power dynamic. And only until we learn some of the skills that you guys teach and that we teach, you know, about having disagreement and fighting well and learning acceptance, do we get into that third phase of marriage where we can really cherish each other. And that is the love with knowledge phase where I know you and I see you. I accept a lot of these, you know, little. Little, I don't know, little irritants that maybe you have, but they're you. They're what make you. You. You know, Robert and I are very different when it comes to, let's say, planning. He is a planner. He is a boy Scout. He is like, he's got everything worked out. I'm very much go with the flow. I would prefer to meet somebody if we're going on a vacation on an airplane, and they'll tell me, hole in the Wall restaurant. And I get so excited because that's where I want to go. And if I already had dinner planned somewhere, then I would have never known about this. But it also gets us into trouble sometimes. You know, we planned this trip to Europe, and we were going to all these different countries, and we really wanted to go see the fjords in Norway. And I'm like, we'll just get a train when we get there. Well, of course we get there, and it's a holiday weekend, and there were no train passes left. And we never got to see the fjords because Charlie didn't plan that part. But Robert, if Robert had that planned, he would have had that all worked out. But the point is that, like, we can see these differences that we each have. And he can totally annoy me at times because he's such a planner. And I can, of course, annoy him at times because we didn't get a train ticket. And we can use those things as these reasons to hold resentment, or we can start to realize that there's just differences. Some things don't really impact the marriage that much. They're just differences that make us both great. And when we marry our differences together, we can be kind of fun together when we have a little bit of planning and a little bit of spontaneity as well. So, yeah, getting to that third stage of marriage is really just about accepting a lot of the things that we can't really change, but also feeling able to call on the other person, it's kind of a paradox to skill up in certain other aspects that do impact the marriage. So I think when we turn to these things like defensiveness and stonewalling and contempt, it's because we're really stuck in phase two. We're trying to get our perspective to.[00:23:55 - 00:23:59]
Win instead of seeing our differences as a superpower. Right?[00:23:59 - 00:24:00]
Correct.[00:24:00 - 00:25:26]
I love that. I love this seeing our differences as a superpower, because I think that takes. And it's hard for people to hear, I think it takes a little bit of maturity to be able to get to the point where. So in phase two, when, you know, I see you and I don't like it and I'm trying to either get you to yield to me, usually that's the case. That's a level of immaturity where you don't want to change anything about what's going on in your life. I want everything over on my side of the wall so that I'm comfortable. So that the immaturity part is I'm not comfortable moving outside of this small little box in which I've created these things for me. And based on all those experiences where we've had some spontaneity with Sharla has been some of the greatest experiences that we've ever had. They've been absolutely amazing. There's been some small annoyances in there waiting to see the fjords. But you know what? We got to explore Oslo, so we just stayed in the city instead, which we wouldn't have. We would just pass through and then back out. So I think it's. Again, you take your perspective and like, what is the good that I can get from this situation? How can I make the best of this? Instead of the negative sentiment override, which again, the Gottmans talk about a lot. Right. If we just look for the positive perspective about everything, then things get a little bit easier. But it's hard to have positive perspective related to your partner when you're constantly mad and irritated by something that they did. So there are some things to. To overcome to get to that part.[00:25:26 - 00:25:47]
What I guess what I hear you saying, Robert, is that we need to apply some emotion and emotional maturity, some emotional intelligence, taking on different perspectives of her spouse and not necessarily just reacting negatively. Now, is that correct?[00:25:48 - 00:25:49]
Absolutely.[00:25:49 - 00:26:18]
So what you're saying here, Robert, is something that, well, at least 66, probably more percent of the population doesn't know how to do, and the other 33% don't think they know either, but they're working on it. Right. Because they're always. Because the worst thing you could be in that unknown unknown category, that is you don't know what you're not doing.[00:26:18 - 00:26:23]
Correctly, which is category 2 according to that second stage.[00:26:23 - 00:26:49]
You know, if you at least know what you don't know and you're listening to podcasts and trying to get better, there's hope. But what I hear you saying is you, you have to be in this category of the known unknowns. Of course, it's great to be in the known knowns. It's like paradise, but the, the known unknowns. Thank you. Rumsfeld or Donald Rumsfeld, I think.[00:26:50 - 00:26:52]
Yeah, the known. These are the knowns unknowns.[00:26:52 - 00:26:52]
Yeah.[00:26:52 - 00:28:43]
Yeah. So it's what, what we don't know. That we don't know. And there's a lot of people who live in this space, in this country, in this world. We know this from research. But also you just look around, right? Look at the news, look at social media, look at everywhere. And it's people who have millions of views on YouTube episodes about how someone did something wrong or how something is wrong with your spouse or how it's always someone else who's screwed up. And that if somehow we can just fix the problem, we automatically have it set in our heads that everything's going to be perfect. All we need to do is fix this deficit and we automatically know, boom, everything works out. We don't need to learn how to become better and how to be strong, flexible people and learn to be emotionally intelligent with each other. It just automatically happens. Right? And so I think also what you're saying here is that it is more than just fixing a problem because that attracts viewers, that attracts people. It's very simple, it's very reactive. Fix this problem. Somebody's doing this problem. This is also why these, the true crime series on podcasts, that they're, they're so high because somebody screwed up and oh, I love, love listening to their screw up story. Not that I would ever do this, but we do and we don't admit it.[00:28:43 - 00:29:07]
A lot of times we want them to get caught. But I would, I'd be interested to hear how you, you call it fighting fair. Tell us a little bit about that and how rather than pitting against each other, we turn toward each other in a way that allows us to have emotionally intelligent conversations around things that we see differently. What is fighting fairly?[00:29:08 - 00:31:40]
Well. Okay, So I, I think we probably would describe that very much the Same way where we have to learn a lot of humility and we have to learn a lot of nonviolent communication. And that's not something, as you just spoke to, you know, the world kind of wants the other person. It's very seductive to say it's all Robert's fault. If Robert would just fix xyz, then I could be happy. So seductive. And there I'm stuck in that phase two of my relationship where I'm not giving his perspective any sort of credence. Right. Let me give you a story I think that probably illustrates this the best. So one of our perpetual problems. Because. And by the way, I'm sure you guys have talked about this, but this actually has saved a number of marriages. Just this one statistic alone that comes from Gottman's that I love so much, and that's that almost 70% of problems that happen in a relationship over and over and over again are perpetual. They're not even solvable. I love this. I just had a client this week, actually, and this one thing, I think I probably won't even need to see them again because this one fact, like, blew his mind. So I said, you know, sometimes there's these. These fights that we have that we're going to have over and over and over again. John Gottman would bring in these couples every three years. Every three years. And he would notice, wow, they're getting more wrinkles, their hair is getting grayer, their clothes are changing. But they're fighting about the same thing they were last time and the time before that. And so this idea that we don't have to solve problems, but we just need to learn to manage them is really mind blowing to people. And, you know, when you, like Robert says, when you choose your partner, you choose your problems. Yes, you could trade this person in. Robert could not yield to my perspectives. And I could go find somebody else who might, but guess what? I'm just gonna find somebody else with a different set of problems. So that's why we have to approach this with, okay, how are we gonna navigate these problems? How are we gonna manage them? How are we gonna work through them together? And I'm gonna accept influence from you, you're gonna accept influence from me, and we're gonna find just like the fjord situation, we're gonna find a vacation here that's gonna be a win win, where everybody gets to have their perspective included. And so when we first moved to Utah, which was eight years ago, we had.[00:31:41 - 00:31:41]
Oh, I love this.[00:31:42 - 00:31:49]
Our. Our perpetual problem in our relationship has Always been parenting. We have not. Go figure.[00:31:49 - 00:31:54]
Oh my gosh, this is like a yes.[00:31:55 - 00:33:45]
Yeah. I think anyone who has kids can probably say this is a perpetual problem because we're raised different. And how he was raised, how I was raised, very different. And there's some ideas in of our perspectives that are valid. And so we get to a place where it snows. Didn't snow in California. And Robert's like, I grew up in a place that snows, so I always shoveled the walkways. What? Even from the time I was eight years old, I had to shovel the walkways. And I'm saying, but our 8 year old, our 9 year old, I think he was when we moved here. He's so little. You can't put this 8 year old out there in freezing cold temperatures at 7 o' clock or 6 o' clock in the morning. Of course, Robert leased by 7 and so he wants it done first thing in the morning before he's gone. And, and we went to war over this. Who was going to plow the snow and shovel the walkways. So what was fun about that is when we sat down and applied the methods of, okay, what is important to you about shoveling the walkway and having our son do this? And when he asked me, what's important to you about being able to, you know, not have him shovel the walkways? And I'm like, well, it's not that I don't want him to shovel the walkways. It's that I want to show him appreciation. I want to make sure he's safe. I want to make sure that he's not going to get, you know, his fingers go numb and fall off. Like that would happen. I want to make sure he has protection, he has a jacket, he has a hoodie, you know, or whatever. And Robert's like, well, I can do all of that. And, and I don't know that it needs to be at 6 in the morning. It could be. We don't need to wake him up at 6, right. He's like, okay, I could give on that a little bit. And Robert says, well, I just want to te him that when he's older that he makes sure that that walkway is clear for his wife so she doesn't slip and fall. I want to make sure that he learns these principles, that he is respectful of others. That he is. I know, tell me some of the other things. He's a hard worker.[00:33:45 - 00:34:05]
He's a responsible, he's a hard worker. He understands that, that, that, that when you have a job to do at home, that that is the thing that's part of your responsibility and that, you know, that that was really what it is. It's just respectful responsibility. It's not a hard job. Takes 15 minutes for him, and you can do hard things, and he can do hard things.[00:34:05 - 00:34:59]
So when you really looked at the values and the dreams, right, the dreams within the conflict, when you really looked at the dreams that were behind that, I'm like, oh, we actually both want really good things. Neither of us have a bad perspective here. We both just have different things we want included in the solution. So we're going to still fight about. Guess what? We're still going to fight about parenting again sometime in this next year. I don't know when, I don't know what it's going to be about, but I guarantee you we're going to have a disagreement about parenting again. But we know that we can sit down and look at what values are important to each of us and find a win, win solution. And that's where that maturity, I think, has to come into play. And that's how you fight well, how you fight fair. It's by making sure you're not attacking each other's character that you're avoiding those four horsemen, but you're willing to listen to one another's values that are there and find solutions that work for both of you.[00:34:59 - 00:35:33]
So, Charlotte, what, what I hear you saying is that it. It may. It may not end up the way you want it. Like, you are concerned that he might freeze. In fact, you may even have thought about he might slip on the ice, fall and hit his head and have a concussion, go to the ER or even a brain bleed. And this is where mom's brain goes herniate and. And die. Right. I'm trying to. To think inside the mind of a mother.[00:35:33 - 00:35:34]
Yeah.[00:35:34 - 00:36:13]
And not that that happens very often, thank goodness. But if that happened, let's say the worst case scenario came to play in, in your mind, you would still be okay with, with that. I guess my point is it's important to not give up your ideas of what should happen. Right. That's part of your strong identity as a mother. Right. That from what I've learned, I've never been a mother. But these, these protective instincts are really, really strong.[00:36:13 - 00:36:13]
Core value.[00:36:13 - 00:36:15]
That's like DNA strong.[00:36:15 - 00:36:16]
There you go.[00:36:16 - 00:36:58]
Right. And I think it's important to kind of pull this apart a little bit and say, you know, it's important for the wife and mother to consider these things and consider the possibilities that might happen and be okay with that risk. And if it does happen, you know, heaven forbid, then she might be a little bit more emotionally prepared because she's considered these things. But at the same time, Robert is, yeah, that's a great. 99.9% of the time he's. This kid's gonna learn how to, to do hard things. It's that 0.1% that, that keeps the moms up at night.[00:36:59 - 00:37:13]
Well, and even in some couples we've worked with, it's flip flopped the other way around. It's. It's the mom that's really pushing them to, to be the hard worker. And so we can't necessarily pigeonhole that just for mothers. But it is.[00:37:13 - 00:37:18]
Well, yeah, we don't like to stereotype, but when you see a trend, we talk about it.[00:37:18 - 00:37:35]
And I love the way that you, you know, you took it all the way from, you know, I slipped and fell to, you know, anywhere from lumbar fracture to brain bleed to herniated. And then, and she told me all those things and I looked at her, I'm like, so that. But, but that outcome's okay for me because I am the one outside shoveling.[00:37:36 - 00:37:40]
Right? He did say that. So I can have a brain bleed, but he can't have a brain.[00:37:40 - 00:37:44]
The odds of you having a brain bleed are far greater than your grand.[00:37:44 - 00:37:49]
Yeah, yeah. The odds of a really negative outcome if I have a brain, significantly higher.[00:37:49 - 00:37:50]
But I think you can get.[00:37:50 - 00:37:55]
If you start listening, we invite you to join us on Friday for the rest and it's.[00:37:55 - 00:37:58]
And then really great. Nothing good is going to come join us.[00:37:58 - 00:37:59]
Make sure and tune in on one.[00:37:59 - 00:38:02]
Of you is flooded and you're probably.[00:38:02 - 00:38:02]
Going to disregard.[00:38:05 - 00:38:11]
Somebody shutting down scintillating marriage. But if you stay regulated and talk about those core values and we'll see.[00:38:11 - 00:38:13]
You next time on another exciting episode.[00:38:13 - 00:39:17]
Then you can go marriage iq. Now there's understanding. When there's understanding, then we can actually work towards a solution. Because now we've got two people who are operating more from their prefrontal cortex rather than their limbic system. So they're going to both be in a wise place to say, okay, what are you willing to compromise on and what are you not? You know, for me, I wasn't willing to compromise on the fact that I wanted him to wear some boots and a jacket and some gloves. And I wasn't really going to compromise on the 6am thing. I wanted it to be, you know, at 8am or something because it's a little bit warmer. And he wasn't going to compromise on the idea that he could just go sit and watch video games and play video games while Robert's out there doing it himself. And like, okay, that's okay. We can, we can still find a solution. So what if it's at 8am and he has a jacket done Easy, right? But you have to be able to stay regulated to be able to have those kinds of conversations once, once you are in your limbic system, you're both fighting like children. And I think that's the key to fighting well is you both have to be wise. You have to come from a place of wisdom.[00:39:17 - 00:39:20]
You won't, you won't find creative solutions if you're flooded.[00:39:20 - 00:39:20]
No.[00:39:20 - 00:39:22]
And that's prefrontal cortex again.[00:39:23 - 00:39:35]
Hey, everybody. That's a wrap for part one of our interview with Robert and Sharla Snow. We invite you to join us on Friday for the rest, and it's really great.[00:39:35 - 00:39:50]
And remember that the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves. And we'll see you next time on another exciting episode of Marriage iq.
