Episode 11. Couple’s Council Meetings: A Weekly Check-In for Better Communication
On this week's marriage IQ podcast, we tackle the touchy subject of making big decisions as a couple. We share one of our best tools for navigating these tricky discussions in a win-win way. Researchers say men tend to push for their ideas while women compromise to keep the peace. This can leave wives feeling unheard. So we explain how to identify each person's core needs first, find common ground, and make decisions based on shared values. This helps both partners feel understood and balances the share of power. We also detail our weekly "couples council" meetings and 5 steps to improve communication, set goals, boost intimacy. Even if your partner refuses, try it yourself first!
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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 researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:00:35
Thanks for being here with us, everybody. Wish you could see how handsome my husband is. Well, I didn't write that in the script, so. Okay, so we have a big question for all of you. Do you disagree when you're trying to make decisions together?00:00:54
Never. Never. Not us. We're perfect. Hardly.00:01:00
For some of you, that might be when your biggest fights occur. Those are really, for us, some difficult conversations surrounding money, parenting, sex, vacations, in laws. I think one that's a really big one is around roles or responsibilities in the home. Yeah. So today we're going to share with you one of our very best tools for navigating these discussions in a way that allows both of us to win in full transparency.00:01:31
I just want to say, when couples marry, we believe that they're forming an equal partnership in which they should really try to make decisions together, showing respect for each other, kindness, commitment, unity, and equal power. One partner does not rule over or trump the other one. Of course. Right. No one ever wakes up saying, I'm going to be an I, an unsavory, powerful tyrant to my spouse.00:02:04
Right, that's true. But I think a lot of it happens subconsciously. You're right. Yeah. We don't consciously do it, but that's easy.00:02:13
Right? It's like, oh, when we get married, we're going to do this, this and this. Right? And be so true to each other. Well, John Gottman, who we've talked about before on this show, is probably the world's foremost relationship researcher with 40 years of research on romantic couples, usually couples who are married.00:02:36
His research shows that men who are socially conditioned to win are a lot more focused on winning in conversations with their wives, in decision making processes with their wives, while women who are conditioned to nurture are a lot more likely to focus on their relationship. Do you know why that is? Tell me what your opinion is. Well, I don't know. I mean, that's true.00:03:02
Right, Gottman. But I don't know if he dived down on that. Like, generally speaking, guys tend to have that more competitiveness and the women have more nurturing. And I think a lot of it has to do with the certain levels of hormones. I've been studying this anyway, and we can talk about this later.00:03:24
But specifically, oxytocin. The levels of oxytocin make a difference between men and women. That's true. It could be biological. And I hadn't thought of that.00:03:37
I was thinking more, the social scripts in social sciences are kind of like the roles that we are taught that we should fulfill. I think that there is a lot of social roles to this, but also a lot of biological factors that lead to this. But go on. Okay. So these socially or biologically based gender differences result in men most often pushing for their ideas to win at the expense of the relationship without even realizing it.00:04:12
And on the other hand, women most often compromise or submit their ideas and opinions to support the relationship. This sometimes leaves women feeling really unheard, undervalued, and sometimes really frustrated in the best, most stable relationships. Doctor Gottman says that men become intentionally conscious of this fact and make great efforts to be more accepting of their wife's influence. What do you mean by that? So, if men are aware, oh, my inherent biological tendencies are that I'm gonna fight to win because I'm a man.00:04:50
Because I'm a man. But I stop. Am intentional in saying, okay, is my wife often giving in to let me win? Because genetically or because socially, that's how we're programmed. If you can stop and be intentional about it, think about it and say, okay, I'm going to actively listen, I'm going to actively ask about her needs.00:05:16
I'm going to show that I understand her and really be open to compromise. Those are the marriages that are far more likely to succeed. Okay, I could definitely go with that. So, one effective approach is for both partners to identify their core needs, like we talked about in our podcast on identity. Right.00:05:40
And then find areas where they align so they can make common ground together and base decision making on, for instance, if both you and I feel really strongly about hard work, or if both you and I feel really strongly about having adventure or implementing intimacy into our relationship, then if we can look at what those common ground core values are for us and make decisions coming from that viewpoint, that's what Doctor Gottman says, really helps. So, how do we do that? Like, how do we become intentional in that way? That's a really great question. And Doctor Gottman has come up with what he calls a state of the union meeting that he recommends couples should have every week.00:06:36
He and his therapist wife, Julie Gottman, say the purposes of these meetings is to help each partner feel that their ideas, their needs, and their feelings are heard, that their perspectives are understood and that they're able to make compromises with their decision making, that both partners take turns or have opportunities to have their suggestions be the ones that are chosen in the decision making process. So they have a really cool outline for five steps to how these meetings should go. First of all, they start with appreciation for each other. They, I believe, say five things that they appreciate about each other. So it's starting off on a positive note, which I think gets the oxytocin flowing for both.00:07:29
Oxytocin is the hormone that creates connection, right? Yeah. And appreciation, is that possibly part of the key to getting that mindset flowing and opening? I think so, yeah. Okay.00:07:43
So then the second step is that they talk about what's going right in the relationship, which means if they know this is happening every week, they're going to be looking for things within the week that went right that they can bring up. Then the third thing they do is bring up concerns from the last week. What did we have issues with last week? And perhaps they didn't fight about it at the time. They knew that these meetings are coming up every week.00:08:15
They save it till then. So some of the heat is taken away, some of the emotion is taken away, but they take turns as speaker and listener. So their recipe for this is, I feel about blank, and I need blank. So, for example, I feel frustrated about all of the housework that needed to be done last week to prepare for our trip. And I need more of your help at home with some of the duties at home with laundry with doctor Hastings.00:08:54
Are you saying I wasn't helpful last week? You were super helpful, actually. You did all of the laundry last week. But I didn't do the dishes right. And that's probably where I.00:09:04
It's okay. That was a hypothetical situation. You were really great last week. But there might be. I don't know.00:09:11
What's something from last week that you were frustrated with me about? I don't recall. That's part of the problem with that. What's so good with you is you don't remember the things that I like. You're supposed to save it up and until at the end of the week.00:09:25
And I'm like, well, by that point, I have forgotten anyway. So what I love about their fourth step in this state of the union process is, what can I do next week to make you feel more loved? And we actually did have one of these situations in the last week. We were doing some traveling with our kids, and a lot of our attention was focused on kids. So one thing I could have said is, I feel ignored, or I feel disconnected from you while we're on vacation with our family.00:09:57
And I need you to touch me more, or I need you to look in my eyes more, or I need you to have conversations with me, not just the kids more. So with that fourth point, what can I do next week to make you feel loved? Those would be some of the things like put your arm around me, give me hugs, look for opportunities to be intimate with me. Then we check in with each other the next week to see how we did with that. And then in our situation, you would take a turn.00:10:28
You would say something that was concerning for you about the last week, and we would go through the I feel, and I need statements to resolve that. What can I do to make you feel more loved? And then we would bring that up in the next week's meeting. So we have kind of made a twist on this. We love what the Gottmans have suggested, but we've done something a little bit differently called couples councils.00:10:57
And I wondered if you wanted to take a little bit of time to share about that. So, first of all, I just have to say, this is not something that happened overnight for us. I don't think it's fair to expect this to happen overnight for people who listen to this podcast, right? We've been doing this about twelve years. This is years of being intentional, really being intentional.00:11:22
And that's why intentionality is one of our cornerstones, right? Is it's sitting down, it's writing down who we are, what we are, what we do. You know, it's like a constitution, so to speak. And our couples councils have, over time, over the years, have evolved, varied and evolved to the point where we, we do it every week, but it took a long time getting there. We put couples counsel on our goal list that we reviewed every week.00:12:01
And because of that, it just in our heads more. We're thinking about it more. We put it on our calendar for every day. We put it on our calendars, we put it on our, you know, my day planner. We look at it, and that keeps us going every week.00:12:20
Would you say the Gottman's method is a little bit more focused at problem solving? So if you have very specific issues that you need to work with, perhaps their method is a little bit better. Our method is a little bit more intentional as far as goal setting and refinement of how we do things, our relationship with each other, our relationship with our kids. So we have binders every week. We write it out.00:12:53
We do old school here. I like old school sometimes, which is really fantastic. We've got several of these binders now over the last twelve years, and that's really our family's history, really. And so we have the date, we have couples council, we have character traits, part of what we do. We do marriage retreats every few months, which we'll do a podcast and we'll talk about that a little bit.00:13:16
That's our own goal setting multi day meetings that we have. So out of that, we come up with character traits that we want to develop. And I'll just tell you the character traits that we're working on right now. One is being refined, two, being intentional, three, penitent, which goes into just living a life of being curious about ourselves. Well, and it goes into our foundational principle of insight.00:13:53
Got the insight to see. Ooh, I need to be aware that I'm a little harsh with you when I'm hungry or that when you come home from work you need a few down minutes and if I'm immediately on you, then it's going to cause some issues. Penitence is just, it's not flogging ourself, it's just where do we need to make some adjustments? Yeah, make some changes. So then we talk about how we're doing with those three things.00:14:23
Are we really moving along? Then we have an annual theme, a yearly theme. We try to keep it simple. Every December we talk about a theme for that next year. And this year we've chosen think celestial.00:14:41
So if you ever look at the skies at night, the celestial glory of, I mean, endless. We're trying to look at things from a higher perspective this year. Less myopic, less hyper focused, more high level celestial. So think celestial. And then we say how we do last week with thinking celestial.00:15:09
How are we doing this week with thinking celestial? And we discuss it. What are some new things we can do this next week to think celestial? And I think the last few weeks it's been expressing love to people who we love more often. Be more expressive.00:15:30
Don't be afraid to say I love you or you are loved to people. And be comfortable with using that word love. We definitely can use more love in the world right now, and I think that is a great one that we've enjoyed implementing. So when you're talking about this every week, it starts to become really powerful. Next is calendaring.00:15:54
So we want to calendar things coming up in the week. That sounds kind of boring, but in reality, that's where the rubber meets the road. When you and I, especially when our kids were home and we had so many things on the calendar to do, I think that's where some of the conflict happened, was not being clear at the beginning of the week on who's going to be where, what we're going to be doing, how this is going to happen, navigating when we need help, shuttling kids or whatever as empty nesters. Now, we still have to do that a lot. Every night.00:16:29
We've got stuff going on. And if we're not clear with each other about what to plan for, the unmet expectations can cause conflict. Yeah, that's really important. We're all on the same page. I have my old school day planner.00:16:43
I've got to have it. And it's great. I look at it every day. And then the next, we review last week's notes. What did we talk about last week?00:16:52
Where are we going? Are we accomplishing the things that we talked about last week? We talk about our marriage goals, too. We review them. We have them typed up at the beginning of every year.00:17:07
I have in the, taped in the front of my day planner our marriage goals for this year. There's daily goals, there's weekly goals, monthly goals, and annual goals. And we go over them every week again. It just keeps, keep repeating it over and over and over and over. It becomes part of you, these goals.00:17:28
We also go over our marriage retreat action items. We have a marriage retreat every few months, and we make specific goals to that. We review them weekly during our couples council. The next item is we do new action items. What do we want to do based on all these things that we've talked about this week, what do we want to do to the rubber to hit the road this next week?00:17:54
And just some examples we talked about as a new action item this week was Scott to review all the travel plans before we leave. And I made sure and did that because it was on our list, because the trip that we'd taken before we got to the hotel, and there was no hotel reservation, even though he had made a hotel reservation. So then the next thing we talk about our relationships, spouse. Oh, and that reminds me, I forgot to talk about compliments and gratitude. I'm very sorry.00:18:29
We do that in the beginning, compliment and gratitude. One thing I like about you from this week, or at all, I'm really grateful. So I am grateful for you for this. And we write it down. We have a record of it.00:18:45
Relationships. That's the last item we talk to each other about. Okay. How are things going, how are you feeling in our relationship? Where are we at?00:18:54
And this is really where we pull in more of the Gottman method of their state of the union, where we can say, this week, I felt a little sad or disconnected or whatever it is, upset when this happened. And that's where we work through some of those conflicts, hurt feelings, negative circumstances. But we've spent quite a bit of time building positivity in our relationship through not only words of affirmation and plans together and goals together, but focusing on that. We want our relationship to be rock solid. So where do we need to make some adjustments with that?00:19:39
Yeah, I like it. And we talk about parenting, too. That's very last. Well, very, very last is hugs and kisses, which it's important, I think, to just have that physical connection as part of intimacy that we talked about, even if it's very brief. Foot rub.00:20:05
Yeah, it could be anything. Whatever sex, whatever makes you feel fulfilled is the way that hugs and kisses can go for you. Now, this is a pretty advanced format for couples counsels. There are a couple of things that I do want to point out that we do, and that is the Gottmans talk a lot about compromise, and we actually prefer consensus. So as we counsel together about our plans, about our goals, about our way that we parent, about proposals for vacations, or the way we spend our money, if we cannot agree, then we table it and put it on the next week's agenda and bring it up again.00:20:53
Because if we don't both feel good about it, then it doesn't happen. We've had a lot of opportunities where we've put things on the agenda for maybe several weeks or even months. One of those was we ended up with a little extra money in where we would put that. I wanted to pay off the house. Scott wanted to invest in our retirement.00:21:15
And we talked about it, talked about it, talked about it until we came up with a consensus on it. And then we both feel good about it and moved forward. And what was the consensus, my love? The consensus was that you listened to my influence, which really made me feel good. And we worked towards paying off the house.00:21:36
And I feel like, because we were together on that, and that was a goal that we both had our eyes set on, we actually were able to do it before our goal date. We just pushed hard, went at it with all of our might, and we're able to do that. You know, you must have been really brilliant, because during that whole time, the stock market tanked, so it ended up working out really well. It did. And thanks again to the Gottman's for their research on helping us understand the importance of both spouses being able to have say and talking through things in a peaceful manner until you can come to a consensus.00:22:20
Have our couples councils always been loving and peaceful? No, of course not. And I might add, they didn't always happen every week. It's taken a long time to get here. And I think, you know, for the intelligent spouse who wants to do this right away and start instituting this, please know that it's going to take some time and effort.00:22:46
And the real payoff comes when you consistently and persistently move through this. And don't just try it for two weeks or even a month, but have it change your mindset so that you make this an important, this is so crucial part of a relationship that's going to thrive and become truly intimate together. This is fundamental. I agree with that. I'm going to just start wrapping things up by giving a simplified version of our couples counsel.00:23:22
Is that okay? Yep. The Gottman's had five steps. I'm gonna go for five steps with us first. Actually, six steps if you count this.00:23:31
We always start with prayer. If that's something that is a couple you feel comfortable doing, we find that that helps our hearts towards each other, be softer, more loving, that our words are more gentle, more meek, and really helps us. And we always write our notes. We have an agenda, one written out that we just fill in every week. So the steps, once we say a prayer and we have our written agenda, are compliments and gratitude, again, telling our spouse what we appreciate about them.00:24:10
We may be celebrating any personal work or home accomplishments. We may just have noticed the simple things that they do that are part of their inherent traits. The second thing is calendaring. Include weekly plans and future plans in that. And we always make plans for our Friday night date in that.00:24:31
The third step is goals and action items. We can keep this simple if we need to, but we choose to look forward to things together and keep promises to develop trust and commitment. So if we plan things and we say we're going to do this, then that's what we do. And then we report on each of those action items. The next week, when you're ready, you may add discussions such as finances in this section to keep it still pretty simple.00:24:59
Then we do a spouse or relationship inventory where we talk about possible improvements that we can make. We don't complain, really about the past, but we can say, I felt this way and this is what I need. If either spouse gets defensive, then say, we're just going to write it down on next week's agenda and not tackle that right now, because it's really important to keep peace and to reach a consensus. And then lastly, hugs and kisses. Meaningful physical affection is a really powerful way to wrap up this meeting.00:25:34
And it'll help you feel like lovers, not just business partners. So this is one of our very favorite tools, and we credit this for a large part of the success and joy and progression and goal accomplishment in our relationship. Well, doctor Hastings, what if I have a spouse who doesn't, who's not interested in doing this with me? They have no interest. That's really hard.00:26:02
That is really, really hard. But it's a good question because it's probably the, I don't want to do this with you because I don't like you right now. Right. I don't want to do this with you because I think it's stupid or, you know, whatever reason, because we're just on two different pages on everything. Well, what do we do with that?00:26:22
I would say there are a couple of options. First, you can have this meeting with yourself and go through each of those steps, find compliments and gratitudes that you have about your spouse, and write them down on your agenda so you can totally do it on your own. I think it's less impactful in some ways, but still able to help you progress and move forward. Perhaps writing all of the calendaring things down that there are to do, writing your goals and action items down, doing a spouse inventory. You wouldn't really be able to do the hugs and kisses very well, obviously, but I.00:27:06
Perhaps if you do that on your own and then share it with your spouse and just say, okay, hey, here's what I learned today. I had a couples counsel with myself. My own couples counsel. Yeah. Who's gonna be upset about reading the things that their spouse appreciates about them?00:27:22
I think that's a great idea. I think, too, though. I think with children, that might get in the way too. Taking children to, you know, soccer or dance or whatever, homework, etcetera, that can really get in the way, too, of being intentional about our marriage. That's why having it as a calendar item is really important.00:27:46
So it's on the calendar, it's getting done because we have integrity, because we're saying we're doing this and then we do it. So we have to tell our kids, hey, sorry, we're doing this. Right? Friday night, Sunday afternoon, early in the morning, late at night is really rough because we're not quite as patient with each other, sometimes late at night. And if you miss a week, it's not the end of the world.00:28:11
If one of the spouses is out of town, you could do it through Zoom or through or any kind of a social media platform. But I think the important part is to do it as often as you can and if possible, join both people. In my opinion, if your husband or wife is not willing to counsel with you, that means talking things through, trying to find a consensus, trying to make plans, set goals, see eye to eye, understand, feel heard. Then make God part of that. Ask what can I do to help my spouse feel more loved?00:28:51
What can I do to bring our relationship to heal it to a point that we can set goals together and move forward together? So I think the other thing, too is if you do miss a week, it's very important not to get upset. Say, just say what happened, what happened, you know, this is what happened. We had the kids over, or we went on this trip or blah, blah blah, whatever it is, something unexpected. Let's get back up on the saddle and do this again without any feeling bad or hurt or, you know, upset and plan it again.00:29:29
And you keep planning it, and keep planning it, and keep planning it and you keep doing it. And the hugs and kisses is the fun part. And then someday, maybe you too can start your own podcast.00:29:44
We challenge you to set a goal this week to have a couples counsel and try it out for yourself. Agreed. Until next time. And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves. Thank you so much all for tuning in to marriage IQ.00:30:06
We hope today's episode has sparked some thoughts and brought you some valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here. Stay curious, keep exploring, and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of marriage IQ.
