Episode 1. The Four Ways to Transform Your Marriage
In the premier episode of Marriage IQ, we (Dr. Heidi Hastings and Dr. Scott Hastings) vulnerably share some of our backstory - from Heidi’s painful divorce in her 20s to meeting Scott just a few years later, and creating an imperfect but amazing relationship.
We realized that many couples start out strong but over time grow apart into "roommates." To prevent this, we share four key foundations that have helped us prioritize each other and continually strengthen our marriage: identity, intentionality, insight and intimacy. We explain how discovering my identity apart from my spouse has been crucial when we have faced major crises. Scott talks about his theory that true intimacy is the culmination of doing those other three things consistently over time.
If you've ever felt your marriage growing cold or just wanted to keep improving an already good relationship, we think you'll love the practical wisdom in this episode. We can't wait for you to join us on this journey toward more scintillating marriages!
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Hello, and welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings with one purpose, to intelligently turn the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones. Hello, lovers.00:00:27
I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. I'm a marriage and sex researcher, an educator, a wife, a mom of four kids, and I'm the one who laughs responsibly in this relationship. I'm here with my goofy sidekick and husband, Dr. Heidi Hastings. He's a doctor, a researcher, a musician, and a dad. He's fun loving and laughs often, and yet he's very analytical together.00:00:52
Besides owning a medical practice, we've been marriage advocates and educators for about five years, speaking, writing curriculum, and working with couples to enhance their marriages. Well, hello, my love. Hello there. I'm so happy to be here with you today in this monumental experience. Isn't it awesome?00:01:12
It is. I'm so excited. I mean, how many couples out there intentionally plan on doing a project that's really hard, really intense, and really time consuming together? We do a lot of those, don't we? We must either be really crazy or really, really crazy to do this podcast together?00:01:32
Maybe. Maybe they're really, really crazy. So, because, you know, we're working full time, owning our own small business, I'm a full time physician, if that's not busy enough, you know that, raising kids, too, and being spouses. But for some crazy reason, we both feel extremely passionate about helping you, our listener, coaching you and cheering you on, you dear intelligent spouse listeners out there. We do that via scientific research through a lens of a medical doctor and through the lens of a PhD sex and marriage researcher.00:02:13
So, together, melding these together, we have a unique educational experience with over 20 years working at the front lines of the human condition, we've learned a few things that may just help your life. Pop, that sounds like a great way to handle working with marriages. I love it. We realize you might be asking yourself, why would I listen to a podcast about something so intimate as marriage from two total strangers who don't know me or my circumstance? So we're going to tell you a little bit about ourselves so you can get to know us better.00:02:53
Heidi, that sounds like a great idea. Thanks, dear. So, I grew up in a really small, rural town at the foot of a mountain, so I would consider myself to be a mountain girl. My family was really large, and my parents taught me the importance of faith, hard work, service, and family. One really unique thing about our family, do you know this, is that we had four pianos in our house at one time, so everyone could practice throughout the day.00:03:20
We sang together and we pulled weeds together. We didn't have much money. We worked hard together, and we had a good time together. We loved those summer evenings that we spent time outside. My growing up was pretty idyllic in a lot of ways, and my idyllic adolescence included things like playing kick the can around town at night, going to church on Sundays, camping for huge family reunions, and attending every small town high school.00:03:51
Sporting in a musical. Sporting a musical event that there was. So at the end of my freshman year of college, I got married, only to be rudely awakened to the reality of my innocence and naivete about several aspects of marriage, many of which we're going to talk about in other episodes of this podcast. Seven years and one child later, that marriage ended in a painful divorce. So if any of you out there might be facing real marital difficulties, I'm here to say this is a no shame zone.00:04:24
I've been there. We understand that. Love it, but we do want to keep people from having to go through the pain of divorce if possible. So Scott and I met three years after my divorce, and we have very intentionally created an imperfect but amazing marriage. When our kids were older, I went back to school to study marriage and family relationships and received my master's in doctoral degrees in family studies.00:04:49
That's a degree that's similar to marriage and family therapy, but it's focused on research and on prevention. So I love that prevention element of it, and that is a big part of what really is leading us to do this podcast. I've studied family stress and coping, adult development, sexuality, the impacts of pornography use on couples, and betrayal trauma. So how about you tell a little bit about yourself? Well, that's pretty heavy.00:05:16
What a life. I'm Scott. I am a man. I know that's we live in a day. Yes, I go by a man.00:05:26
So I grew up in Arizona. I have fourth out of eight children in a home with two parents who stayed together and are still together after over 50 years. I don't recall suffering from middle child syndrome, although I certainly had my chance to do so. Fourth out of eight. As far as I know.00:05:44
I have a good relationship with all of my siblings and with my parents. I didn't care for high school much. I won't say that I hated it, but I'm really grateful I don't have to live my life as a skinny, scrawny teenager with acne and really awkward school dances and dates. Isn't that true? I just cringe when I think about that.00:06:06
So college was amazingly better. I met my lovely wife in college at age 25. Oddly, the fact that she had been married previously and had a four year old child didn't seem to faze me. I can honestly say that the moment I met Heidi, it changed the entire trajectory of my life. I've never been the same since.00:06:30
I say Heidi is a thief. She stole my heart before I even had a chance to say, help that lady over there. She knocked me over and stole my heart. And after 27 years, I still can't believe she stills my heart. We graduated from medical school while starting a family together and raised four awesome children together.00:06:53
As a medical doctor, I'm literally on the front lines of all sorts of problems people face on a daily basis. I get to see and take part of people in various stages of marital unity or disunity. I get to see people with mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety, both of which are now so prevalent, it's actually endemic. And there's just not enough licensed professionals out there to see all these people. So I'm trying as much as I can in my position of a doctor to educate those with anxiety that there's a lot you can do yourself and with others without actually having a license to do so in order to help your mental health and well being.00:07:38
And that goes for marriage, too, quite frankly. There are many counselors and therapists who, charging 200 or more dollars an hour, aren't really actually good at helping their clients. They're also good ones, too. Don't get me wrong. Yes, I know a lot of good ones.00:07:55
There are a lot of good ones. It's just that we need to think of it maybe from a different viewpoint, because it is so endemic. Patients tell me things that they won't tell their therapists. And so from a medical doctor perspective, not a therapist perspective, I can provide therapy to my patients, and I do so often. And these affect marriages in a very impactful and meaningful way.00:08:23
That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, Scott, in the beginning, we talked about making people's marriages scintillating. Can you tell me what scintillating means? Well, you know, scintillating.00:08:39
Right. Conjures up excitement. Right. According to thesaurus.com comma, it also means brilliant, dazzling, lively, exciting, sparkling. I don't want just a good marriage or even a great marriage, my love.00:08:57
I only have one life to live. Only one. So, yeah, I want it to really count, like, really pop. I want a scintillating marriage. Who wouldn't?00:09:11
I can't think of anybody who wouldn't. And our marriage is often scintillating, so I'm a proponent of that. So here's my next question for you. What are some of the stinkiest things that you see in marriages now that you've had a frontline, front row seat? Well, a lot of your patience.00:09:31
Yeah. So I see a lot of things that we can get into in later episodes, but I think, do a flyby for me. Some of the biggest things that are stinky are complete, utter lack of self awareness. That probably is number one. That's the number one thing you see.00:09:52
Yeah. So, I mean, if. If we did nothing else but become self aware of who we are and what impact we create on our loved ones, that would probably fix a lot of marriages. But it persists and exists just by virtue of being human. Right.00:10:15
That we have these stinky parts of ourselves that we don't like to look at. What other kind of issues do you see? Well, it's stinky, I think. Okay, so let's say you buy some fresh fish and, you know, salmon, and you put it. You have great plans for this salmon.00:10:37
And, of course, salmon well done is really delicious, at least for me. Well done meaning not overcooked, but well done meaning done to cooked well. Yeah. And then you put it in your fridge, and you don't do anything with it. You know, after a few days, it starts.00:10:53
This really, really wonderful fillet of salmon is now stinky. That is right. And so, you know, other stinky areas of marriage, you know, we're just. We're not keeping it live. We're not keeping it fresh.00:11:10
Right. And that includes being intentional, doing routines that keep us from getting into a rut. And we'll talk a lot more about that in other episodes. But it's a really great analogy. I like the visual that that gives, because I also have seen.00:11:35
That's probably the number one thing that I see as well, is that couples, they start out great. They have great intentions. Everything's fresh and exciting. But over a few years, they don't keep the intention of keeping each other as a priority. And then they are caught in this roommate situation where I hear over and over again, my husband and I are just like roommates.00:12:02
We hardly even talk to each other. We don't do much together. There's not much connection at all. So we really want to focus on helping people change that part. Okay.00:12:13
Any other parts of things that you see? Well, you know, there's a lifetime of things we could talk about that, you know, as spouses. You know, they're folks with really solid marriages. They feel really comfortable, really confident. They want more.00:12:35
Yes, they. There are marriages that are on the rocks. They want help, you know? And so I think the things that we have identified together with our experience are, I think, really, really powerful foundations. And they'll help us attack both of those situations.00:13:00
Right. For the people who want, who already have great marriages but are constantly looking to elevate them, we'll have help for them. For those who are struggling. Struggling, perhaps we have some things for those people as well. So we've come up with four elements that we think are pretty powerful and foundational.00:13:25
Would you like to talk about those for a moment? So, yeah, I can. So when you're building. I'm not an architect. I'm not a, you know, do anything with construction.00:13:38
I know there are a lot of people who do. But one thing I do know is if you're going to build something, you need to build a foundation, a foundation that is solid. It's not going to crack. It's strong. And you have a cornerstone.00:13:56
Right. That foundation. There's typically in a square building four cornerstones. We have four foundational cornerstones for marriage, and it's taken a long time and many years of really thinking this through. And so what are these four foundational principles?00:14:22
Well, I will say first one is identity. There are four eyes. That makes it easy for you to remember four eyes, identity. Knowing who I am. Knowing who you are.00:14:38
And do you know who I am? The intelligent spouse. Knowing who they are. That's right. So I think knowing who I am first is going to precede knowing who you are.00:14:55
Although they are both. If we're going to make this a scintillating marriage. Knowing as much as I can who you are, and I don't stay the same. I'm constantly changing. So you have to keep learning about who I am.00:15:09
Wait, what? And I have to keep learning who you are. Right. You mean, I just don't, like, learn it. I get you figured out, and it's done.00:15:18
It's over. I finally figured it out. Only for me to change. Welcome to the life of a woman. Well, welcome to life.00:15:27
Right? Welcome to life. Men are constantly changing as well. Absolutely. So I like that you talked about identity as one of our foundations.00:15:37
So I spent two or three years researching women, and we'll talk about this in other podcasts as well, but who'd experienced a shared betrayal, a shared crisis moment in their lives that totally unwound them and shook their foundation. They said, I don't even know who I was anymore, because everything that I thought was true is now being questioned, and I don't know what I know. Part of the outcome in weaving through the analysis of that study was that their understanding of who they were was greatly tied to someone else. Their whole new identity, once they got married, changed to become a we identity, and they didn't hold on to that personal identity at the same time. And so when things in their marriage started going really rough, really stinky, it really unearthed their vulnerability, and they didn't know who they were anymore.00:16:48
They were later able to make some changes with that, but I think this is a really important thing to talk about. So I'm really happy that that's one of our foundational principles and that we will be moving forward with deep diving into some of that. Awesome. Our second foundational principle in this marriage course is intentionality. The second I.00:17:20
Yes. And tell me a little bit about. Well, I love all these because it's so easy to remember there's four eyes, four foundational principles, and so we got identity, intentionality. That means we are intentionally or making plans for life. We live from a proactive, point of view perspective and not a reactive one.00:17:53
Now, people out there saying, well, of course, of course I want to plan my life. I plan my life. I know what I want. But do they plan their marriage? Do you really?00:18:08
This is another thing. It's fascinating. I see with people every day what they say and what they actually do are very, very different. And to them, they do it. In their mind, they do it.00:18:25
But if you were to put a hidden camera on them, they don't. And so what we're trying to do with intentionality here is kind of put that, that third eye, that hidden camera on yourself, which feeds back into self awareness. Yeah. So that requires us to sit with ourselves and sit with our spouse, become intentional people, people who are planned. What do I want out of this life with you?00:19:03
I love that. That's really great. In my research and also in my training, I trained with the prep for marriage relationship education course by doctor Scott Stanley out of the University of Denver. And one of their main points that they teach very first off is decide, don't slide. And I think many of us get in.00:19:30
We just slide. We make our kids our priority, or we make our job our priority or our hobbies our priority, and let our marriage just slide. And if we do that, we're going to end up somewhere that we don't want to be. But if we decide all along the way the things that are important to us together and to our marriage together, and we're constantly talking about it, then we won't slide. We'll have that intentionality piece.00:19:59
I really like that. Okay, so can I announce the third one? Okay. Yeah. I'm excited.00:20:04
The third eye is insight. So insight. We both love this. We've been reading Tasha Yurick's book called insight together, and she has so many great things that have shed light. Brilliant.00:20:20
Yes. That shed light on relationships. Loved it. So why don't you tell us a little bit about a couple of the things from that that apply to marriages, and we'll, again, in other episodes, tackle a lot of them with more. Well, this is.00:20:36
Yeah, this the author of this book, Tasha Uric.00:20:41
She goes in and actually helps organizations with insight to see things that they're not seeing. And just a fabulous read. And she talks specifically about two types of insight, which up until literally a few months ago, I hadn't thought about before I read her book. She talked about the internal self awareness and external self awareness and how while it's important to be internally self aware, like, self reflective. Right.00:21:22
Where did I go wrong? What did I do incorrectly? What can I learn from this? How can I grow? What new things can make me into a more intelligent person?00:21:37
But she said it's equally important to know this external self awareness. And we can talk about people who are so internally self aware they have no clue that they're ignoring their family or not keeping up socially with their spouse, with their family, making comments that might be construed as rude to other people. So it's really being on top of both of that internal and external self. I think she talked about the ostrich, where we just have our head in the sands sometimes that we don't recognize how other people are viewing us. Yeah, right.00:22:19
So that's a great third part of our foundation. And the fourth one might be my favorite. The fourth eye is intimacy. And why is it the fourth one? Well, cause it's kind of like the frosting on top of the cake.00:22:34
I don't know. Why do you think it's the first? Well, do you think maybe it's actually built on all of the others? That's why. So, yeah.00:22:40
Is that kind of the final? The final? Well, intimacy is deep connection. Sometimes people use the word intimacy as a replacement for the word sex. And while sex is definitely one of the deepest kinds of intimacy and one of our favorite kinds of intimacy.00:23:00
And we're going to talk about it a lot. There are several other types of intimacy that impact the depth of the sexual relationship. So we have been really intentional and seeking insight and trying to understand our identity. But we also really plan things every single day that give us intimacy with each other. Physical intimacy through touch, emotional intimacy through sharing thoughts and feelings and talking about our day and maybe even our insecurities and insecurities, our goals and our dreams and our ambitions.00:23:38
What are some of the kinds of intimacy that you like? Well, I have a theory. It's my own theory. I think the word intimacy is far different than what we think it is. Okay, tell me.00:23:52
So it's unfortunate that when we say the word intimate or intimacy, we only think of what comes to your mind. Sex, right? Or just having an intimate dinner together. And it includes all that. But I think it's far deeper.00:24:13
I think intimacy, this is the theory, according to Scott Hastings, that intimacy is kind of like true intimacy is like the final reward of a lifetime of doing all these other things. I like that. And that is where you go to the. That's where that pop happens, right? There's the, you know, the ho hum life, the pretty good life, the excellent life, and then thriving, popping.00:24:50
Because, look, we all have one life. I do. You too. Everyone does. Listening to this, it's like, why not intentionally make it the best that we can, right?00:25:03
And so that's kind of what. Why we feel really passionate about what we're doing here. And. Yeah, so that's the. Those are the four foundations here that we want to kind of focus on in future episodes.00:25:19
To wrap up, we just want to talk about. We're seeking to take out the stinky parts of our marriage. We're seeking to really implement those scintillating parts of our marriage that can make it fresh and new and exciting and shiny and wonderful. And we're going to do that through four foundational ways. First of all, come to know our own identity.00:25:47
Come to know who we are. Second, by being very intentional. Third, by seeking for insight into higher order thinking and behavior. And each of these, we'll give more ideas about. And fourth, really building intimacy within our relationship.00:26:09
We don't wait to build the intimacy until we've done those other four things. But the more we do those four things, the deeper the intimacy will become. So someone might be thinking out there, hey, I thought this is a marriage podcast. This sounds a whole lot like you're doing personal stuff. And you're right.00:26:29
The thing is, though, we have to work on ourselves before we worry about our spouse. That's absolutely true. And we will talk about things like communication, like money, like sex. But when you're having problems with those kinds of parts of marriage, really looking at these four foundational principles will help stabilize problems with each of those. So we'll go into more common marriage types of things.00:27:04
But every time we do, we'll tie it to research and we'll tie it to these four foundational principles. We promise it's going to be good. We really are so grateful that you joined us today, and we look forward to having you join us next time on marriage. Marriage IQ.
