Episode 53. Wins, Bloopers, and Real Talk: One Year of Marriage IQ
Authenticity in Action: How Vulnerability Shapes Marriage IQ
As we celebrate the first anniversary of Marriage IQ, I'm reflecting on the journey my husband Scott and I have embarked upon to help couples transform their marriages. This milestone has been a profound learning experience, filled with unexpected challenges, heartwarming successes, and valuable insights that have not only benefited our listeners but also strengthened our own relationship.
The Birth of Marriage IQ
Our podcast journey began with a simple desire to share research and help couples. However, we quickly realized that creating and maintaining a podcast requires far more time, effort, and resources than we initially anticipated. From spending hours on research and preparation to navigating the complexities of audio equipment and editing software, every step has been a learning curve.
We thought it would come easy. Yeah, we thought that we'd have a pretty large following pretty quickly. Our goal was 50,000 listens our first year and 10,000 subscribers.
While we fell short of these ambitious targets, the growth we've experienced - both in our audience and in our own relationship - has been immeasurable.
Lessons Learned
1. Vulnerability is Key
One of our core philosophies has been to maintain authenticity and vulnerability. We've learned that sharing our own struggles and imperfections resonates deeply with our audience. It's not about presenting a perfect marriage, but about demonstrating how to navigate challenges together.
2. Balance is Crucial
While episodes about intimacy tend to garner the most listens, we've consciously decided to maintain a balanced approach. We believe that a truly scintillating marriage encompasses much more than just physical intimacy, and our content reflects this holistic view.
3. Growth Through Challenges
The process of creating Marriage IQ has exposed weak points in our own relationship, pushing us to apply the very principles we discuss. This has led to significant personal and relational growth, reinforcing our belief in the power of intentional marriage work.
Behind the Scenes: Bloopers and Challenges
Our journey hasn't been without its share of mishaps. From technical difficulties like ruined laptops and audio issues to more personal challenges like navigating new roles in our relationship, we've faced numerous obstacles. These experiences have taught us resilience and the importance of maintaining a sense of humor.
Navigating New Dynamics
Taking on the role of CEO for this project was a new experience for me. It challenged our existing relationship dynamics and required us to communicate more effectively and redefine our roles within this new context. To be honest, this is still a big learning experience for both of us!
Looking Forward
As we enter our second year, we're excited about the potential to reach and help more couples. We hope you will help us with that! We've learned that a scintillating marriage isn't about perfection, but about continuous effort, understanding, and growth.
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Welcome to Marriage iQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.[00:00:08 - 00:00:10]
I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings.[00:00:10 - 00:00:12]
And I'm Dr. Scott Hastings.[00:00:13 - 00:00:31]
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.[00:00:34 - 00:00:54]
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Marriage iq, the podcast for the intelligent Spouse. We are so glad you're with us today because this is a special week, a special episode. We are celebrating our first anniversary of being live on Marriage iq.[00:00:56 - 00:00:57]
We made it.[00:00:59 - 00:01:14]
We'd like to share with you over the past year some of the. The hits and the misses, some of the things we've learned reflecting on the journey together. It's been a real journey, hasn't it? It's been a trip, hasn't it?[00:01:14 - 00:01:35]
It has. Marriage IQ has been stamped on our brains this year for sure. We've had lots of bloopers. We've had lots of wonderful times. It's done amazing things for our marriage. Hopefully it's done some good things for yours as well. We thought that we'd just start by telling you a little bit about our journey and what brought us here.[00:01:35 - 00:01:39]
Yeah, let's tell them a little bit about our history with this.[00:01:39 - 00:02:33]
When I finished my doctoral program almost two years ago now, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was teaching adjunct at the time. I'd been doing research and schoolwork for so long, and I kind of went through an identity crisis. I would say, okay, when we come to those life transition periods and we're not sure where to go next and what we want to do, sometimes it's a good idea to just take a little time and sit with it. And that's what I did for a year afterwards. And finally I just felt, start doing something. Doesn't matter what you do, just start doing something. I wanted to write a book on my research and found that in order to publish a book, you have to have a following. I mean, you got to put yourself out there and bring some cred to the table, really, when you're meeting with publishers. And I had little social media use at all, let alone followers.[00:02:33 - 00:02:33]
Yeah.[00:02:33 - 00:02:59]
And I thought maybe a podcast might be an opportunity for me to share some of my research. But I just felt really nervous about that. I reflected back over the last maybe three or four years, five years, you and I had been working with groups together on marriage courses. We created some curriculum together. We'd been working with couples, and it just seemed to go better. When the two of us were working.[00:03:00 - 00:03:05]
Together, I remember sitting there, thinking back, going, we could really do something with this.[00:03:05 - 00:03:09]
This is really powerful in the hills of Pennsylvania, right?[00:03:09 - 00:03:32]
Yeah. Just, like, talking about the perspectives that you have, that I have, how we come together, and it's like, wow, this is really powerful, and we can really do something with this. When you finally decided that you wanted to go down this route, I felt very excited, ecstatic. This is awesome. We get to do something together.[00:03:32 - 00:03:32]
Right?[00:03:32 - 00:03:56]
You know, there are several projects I could have done, but I figured, look, this is what I want to do. I want to do something meaningful that's going to be lasting. You know, money isn't everything, right? This is really meaningful to us. And I just was so excited when you decided that you wanted to do this with me.[00:03:57 - 00:04:30]
So we started in April, actually, I think, to be exact, April 12th of 2024. To record at Maker's Gym our first four episodes. We didn't have any idea what we were doing. Nathaniel and Andrew were so helpful at helping us get started. We had our little podcast booth there, and they had everything set up for us. Nathaniel would edit the podcasts, and Andrew.[00:04:30 - 00:04:34]
Would help us with problems we had in the podcast booth. Again, we were.[00:04:34 - 00:04:35]
It was so great.[00:04:35 - 00:04:38]
We'd never done podcasting before, Right.[00:04:38 - 00:04:39]
I don't know if you'd even listen.[00:04:39 - 00:04:46]
I'd listen to maybe a couple in the past. So, like, we were podcast virgins with this thing, so they really helped us out.[00:04:46 - 00:04:52]
One thing that we did know was the music, our intro music. When we heard it, we're like, yeah.[00:04:52 - 00:04:53]
That'S it, that's it.[00:04:53 - 00:05:20]
And making logos and all of that was so new and overwhelming in some ways. But we also had some pretty interesting expectations in hindsight. Just like a couple at the end of their one year of marriage looking back and realizing, oh, wow, it was a little different than what I had envisioned in my head. We had visions of sugar plums in our heads. I think we thought that.[00:05:20 - 00:05:22]
We thought it would come easy.[00:05:22 - 00:06:08]
Yeah, we thought that we'd have a pretty large following pretty quickly. Our goal was 50,000 listens our first year and 10,000 subscribers. Yes, we came up pretty short of that, didn't we? Yeah, I thought it would maybe take about five hours a week or so to do this, and I could keep writing my book and see a few clients. Well, it takes five or six hours a week just for the prep time on the Saturdays before we record, let alone nearly full time for me to take care of the Pre production, the editing that our son was doing for a while, post production content, all of that stuff is pretty much nearly full time.[00:06:08 - 00:06:34]
Yeah. And on Saturday mornings too, we'd get up, we go to the gym, come back and then spend five to six hours just doing research and then trying to put it together in a way that sounds cohesive and not spread all over the place. It's kind of brutal, to be honest, to put it together. But at the end of the day, I think really, really good and helpful. At least we enjoy it.[00:06:34 - 00:07:04]
Yeah. Another expectation that I had, and you told me you didn't even have any expectation about this. I thought it might cost a couple hundred dollars an episode to do, but I grossly underestimated the number of subscriptions to different kinds of programs. To help with editing, to help with music, social media, creating a website. All of the different subscriptions you have to have for the website. Like it? It will.[00:07:04 - 00:07:13]
Especially if you have no idea what you're doing. You gotta subscribe to these things, which is fine. Right. It's our labor of love.[00:07:13 - 00:07:23]
Yeah. And we just have loved the idea of working together and we, I think, have continued to love that. Although it's been pretty rough from time to time.[00:07:24 - 00:07:26]
Not going to lie, sometimes it's rough.[00:07:27 - 00:07:35]
When I was a kid growing up, I remember learning how to embroider. Do you know what embroidery is?[00:07:35 - 00:07:38]
I've read about it in the girl books.[00:07:39 - 00:07:47]
It's a form of sewing. And for some reason I could make the front part that everybody could see look pretty decent.[00:07:48 - 00:07:48]
Okay.[00:07:48 - 00:07:56]
I wasn't perfect at it and I did make a lot of mistakes. But you turned it over and there were crisscrosses everywhere. It was pretty.[00:07:56 - 00:08:00]
So they, they only see the nice part. Right. You turn it around and it's a total mess.[00:08:00 - 00:08:12]
Yeah. So today we're going to expose some of those really more difficult parts. We're going to be a little bit vulnerable with you. We're going to share some of our best successes and some of our biggest surprises.[00:08:13 - 00:08:17]
And if you know us by now, we are vulnerable. We do not hide stuff.[00:08:18 - 00:08:18]
Yeah.[00:08:18 - 00:08:21]
It doesn't do anyone any good. Right.[00:08:21 - 00:08:35]
So, Scott, you're the numbers guy. Just so our listeners know, every week we sit down together and go over all of the numbers of every possible outlet that we're on to see if we're growing.[00:08:35 - 00:08:41]
In addition to our five to six hour podcast prep time, we have our two hour marriage IQ meeting every week. Right.[00:08:42 - 00:08:45]
Right. To look where we are and where we're going. So.[00:08:45 - 00:08:46]
Well, let's look at the numbers.[00:08:46 - 00:08:48]
Heidi Scott's big into numbers tell us.[00:08:48 - 00:09:15]
So roughly 60% of our listeners are women, 40% men. By far the largest age group is between age 45 and 59. Interestingly followed next by those in the 23 to 27 year old age. Interestingly, teenagers under age of 17 are listening in higher numbers than those in the 18 to 22 year old age category.[00:09:15 - 00:09:20]
So very interesting. That's not an age group that I thought we would attract.[00:09:20 - 00:09:29]
91 of our listeners are from the United States, followed by Australia, New Zealand and Canada.[00:09:29 - 00:09:33]
We actually have a lot more than that, but those are our top three countries.[00:09:33 - 00:10:02]
And the top seven episodes by total listens. You may ask, why seven? Well, we thought five was too few and ten was too many. So seven sounds great. I like the number seven. These are our top seven most listened to episodes. Number seven, deciding versus sliding. That was episode number three and that talked about where we establishing our four cornerstones. And this was a cornerstone of intentionality.[00:10:02 - 00:10:02]
Right.[00:10:03 - 00:10:22]
Number six, why men want sex and women need love. That was episode seven. That's where we talked about oxytocin and the differences between in men and women and how oxytocin or the lack thereof produces need to feel loved or to want sex, depending on who you are.[00:10:23 - 00:10:25]
How much of that do you think was the title?[00:10:25 - 00:10:41]
I. I think that's it. Well, we'll get to that. Well, sex definitely plays a role here. Never five, the three most powerful words to improve your marriage. And those three words are Am I wrong?[00:10:41 - 00:10:43]
And that was episode four.[00:10:43 - 00:10:51]
That was episode four. So that was the fifth most listened to episode. A very, very good one. We talked about insight.[00:10:51 - 00:10:52]
Right.[00:10:52 - 00:11:04]
One of our four cornerstones. Am I wrong? Do I have that insight to know? Do I need to ask myself, am I wrong here? Number four. This is interesting.[00:11:04 - 00:11:04]
Yeah.[00:11:05 - 00:11:12]
Keeping it up with the Joneses. Love, loss and intimate connection. This was episode 42.[00:11:13 - 00:11:17]
So all the other ones so far are back at the beginning.[00:11:17 - 00:11:27]
42 means a whole lot of people listen to it because it beat out a lot of these other ones and made it up to number four. That was when we had the Joneses on.[00:11:27 - 00:11:34]
She was my dissertation chair and they shared the story about her becoming a widow, 30s.[00:11:34 - 00:11:55]
And then both her and her husband are PhDs. They research on sex. Yes. And then number three, it was libido Lab Unlocking the secrets of female Sexual capacity. Episode number 41, again, pretty late on, but that's number three. And the top most listened to episodes not too long ago.[00:11:55 - 00:11:56]
Right.[00:11:57 - 00:12:12]
Number two, knowing yourself, a cornerstone of an intelligent marriage. That was episode two, and that is where we talked about identity as one of our four cornerstones for a scintillating marriage.[00:12:12 - 00:12:16]
I see a pattern here. People are listening quite a bit to those.[00:12:16 - 00:12:17]
Yes.[00:12:17 - 00:12:19]
Foundational four or five episodes.[00:12:19 - 00:12:51]
Yeah. So people might come on to a later episode and then go back to the beginning and get the foundation set. And number one, what is the most listened to episode on marriage iq? Episode one, the four ways to transform your marriage. And those, my love, are our top seven episodes. That's really great by numbers. Now, let's talk a little bit about our philosophy.[00:12:51 - 00:12:59]
And this has emerged just so our listeners know over many, many, many nights of cutting up vegetables in the kitchen.[00:12:59 - 00:13:08]
While we're making dinner together, talking a lot. And on date nights, our philosophy on life and marriage evolving over time.[00:13:08 - 00:13:10]
End of marriage iq.[00:13:10 - 00:14:09]
Yes, because of marriage iq, because of you, our listeners. One insight is inside itself. It is a real rush. When we see other people gain insight into their marriage, into who they are. It is a rush. It is worth more than money. It's powerful to see people change in real time. Like, oh, wow, I was doing this wrong, and this is how I can learn and fix it and not shame myself and gain insight. Like, that's big. That is huge. Changing myself is really. It's harder than talking with people who agree with me about how terrible my spouse is. That's another thought. It would be easier to gain more audience to talk about how other people have done you wrong.[00:14:09 - 00:14:10]
Right.[00:14:10 - 00:14:23]
And how wrong other people are. Do you know how hard it is to get people to listen to you when they're telling you that it needs to start with you? Yeah, that's hard.[00:14:23 - 00:14:27]
It takes work, but ultimately it's the answer.[00:14:28 - 00:14:57]
Yeah, I mean, we're tempted to. To go that road. Heaven knows there's lots of people who do, and they just get out of the gate really fast. But ultimately, it's not making you a better person. We need to look at ourselves, and it really is talking about that insight and learning ourselves, not talking about someone else and how terrible they are. What do we learn about the episodes on sex, Heidi?[00:14:57 - 00:15:03]
Well, they by far have the most listens, so why don't we just do.[00:15:03 - 00:15:04]
A podcast on sex?[00:15:04 - 00:15:38]
We could do that, and that would be fixing one part of couples marriages. But there's so much more foundational work that needs to be done in order to have that really great intimacy. And after lots of conversations. Yeah, we'll throw episodes in. There on sex. I'm a sex researcher and Scott deals with this in his medical office. But ultimately we decided that, that the foundation, the other foundational steps are very, very important as well.[00:15:38 - 00:16:34]
There is so much that goes into a scintillating life, a scintillating marriage, before we even get to sex. And even when we get to sex, there's so much surrounding it that is really put sex as an important part of a scintillating marriage, but not the only part. And so we have intentionally decided to not make all of our episodes about sex. It's tempting to gain more listeners faster, but ultimately we want all of you to have the most scintillating experience, and that includes sex and a whole lot of other things. And my children say that I talk about sex too much anyway in these episodes. You're super embarrassed and they're embarrassed by me. So I guess we gotta keep family.[00:16:34 - 00:16:36]
Relationships pretty stable here.[00:16:36 - 00:16:45]
Yeah, even my son in law, he's like, yeah, I'm gonna have to agree. Yep, you're, you're just talking too much about it. I'm like, oh, okay, I will talk less about sex.[00:16:46 - 00:16:49]
It's a bit much for me too, sometimes. So.[00:16:51 - 00:17:52]
Another thing we have, okay, philosophy. What good does it do you if all we do is get in front of you and tell you how it is and imply in any way, shape or form that it's totally perfect with? We're the ones that got it together. You poor peons don't like. How is that going to help anyone? No, our philosophy here, we have a very scintillating marriage together 29 years. It's been freaking awesome. It's been fantastic. And, and there's been some real struggles. And if we don't illustrate that, if we don't show that we don't discuss that on this podcast, we are doing you a grave disservice by not doing so. And for those people who are worried or nervous, oh, my gosh, you don't have a great marriage because you have these things. Well, we invite you to reframe that thought.[00:17:52 - 00:18:02]
Remember, conflict is seeing things differently. Contention is thinking the other person is wrong or bad.[00:18:02 - 00:18:39]
We want to model what it is in real time, what conflict is. Sometimes we disagree with each other on this show and we do so so that you can see that there are ways to approach different perspectives in healthy ways. Just because you don't agree with me doesn't mean now we're gonna go into our separate rooms and be mad at each other. No, we're gonna work through this in real time, and they get to see it. So the sense lighting marriage is not perfect. And if you are striving for perfection in your marriage, you're probably gonna have a miserable one.[00:18:39 - 00:18:47]
All right, what if we spend a little time showing them the back side of behind the scenes bloopers and you.[00:18:47 - 00:18:52]
Want to go through some blue? All right, let's talk about bloopers.[00:18:52 - 00:19:26]
All right. Probably the biggest blooper that we had was the day that we threw our stuff in the back of the car, headed just up the street to Maker's Gym to record a podcast. I typically always put my laptop in a backpack or something, and that particular day I just threw it in the back of the car and also threw in the back of the car my water bottle and some other paraphernalia, some snacks and things. We got to the studio, went to open the door to the podcast recording.[00:19:26 - 00:19:30]
Room, and I saw water dripping out of your laptop.[00:19:31 - 00:19:31]
Yeah.[00:19:31 - 00:19:32]
Your brand new one.[00:19:32 - 00:19:33]
Yep.[00:19:33 - 00:19:34]
The new Apple.[00:19:34 - 00:19:35]
Yeah.[00:19:36 - 00:19:38]
Surprise. It didn't work.[00:19:39 - 00:19:53]
Yeah. That was devastating. And they told me that five minute drive with a water bottle that didn't have the lid screwed on appropriately had ruined the motherboard.[00:19:54 - 00:19:55]
That's true.[00:19:55 - 00:20:11]
I still have it. If any of our listeners are really fantastic at looking at computers that actually apples and seeing if they can be resurrected, let me know, because I really don't want to throw it away. But meantime, it's a big, huge paperweight next to my desk.[00:20:12 - 00:20:14]
What about the Pakistan guy?[00:20:14 - 00:20:36]
Yeah. So a couple of months, I don't know, two or three months ago, we decided we really wanted to put some efforts into growing our podcast. And so we hired a supposed expert to help us grow it organically. Is what they said that's really important to us. Not just have numbers, but to grow it organically. And sure enough, within an hour, an.[00:20:36 - 00:20:38]
Hour, we had hundreds.[00:20:39 - 00:20:50]
Our numbers just went way, way high. And then we started to notice on the analytics that it was all people that didn't have a gender.[00:20:51 - 00:20:54]
No age, no gender. We're like, no, this is a little.[00:20:54 - 00:21:12]
So we continued to watch for a couple of days, and the more we watched, the more we knew there were people probably starting to listen. They would listen for six seconds because they knew at six seconds it would log in as having listened. But then. What do they call those? I can't.[00:21:12 - 00:21:14]
I think like bot farmers or something like that. Bot farming.[00:21:14 - 00:21:15]
Yeah.[00:21:15 - 00:21:17]
Anyway, that didn't last very long.[00:21:17 - 00:21:47]
No. That was definitely a big blooper. We've had some very, very embarrassing bloopers for me, like accidentally putting out the wrong version of an episode. Like an earlier version that wasn't very edited, but the names were close enough that I grabbed the wrong one. And most of the time, we'll listen to our episode right after, and our kids will listen to it. But this particular week, I don't know why none of us listened to it for, I think, about three weeks.[00:21:47 - 00:22:00]
No, I listen every time it comes out, and I was like, wow, that is a lot of pausing. And I just thought to tell you about it, like, a few weeks ago, and you just. You. You changed it back.[00:22:00 - 00:22:30]
But, yeah, I died. And we've had episodes that we've put out that somehow at the last minute, the intro was left off, or there was a silent space of several seconds at the very, very beginning. So people probably would have listened for a few seconds and then turned it off. So we've had, I would say, three or four times, maybe two. I don't know. We've had to pull the whole episode down later and replace it with the current episode or with a corrected episode.[00:22:31 - 00:22:39]
I'd say not too bad for two podcast virgins in their first year. All right, well, it used to be virgins. We're not now.[00:22:39 - 00:22:44]
Yeah, we have had some camera mishaps.[00:22:44 - 00:22:48]
Yeah. Back at Makers, when I was trying to set up cameras there, that's when.[00:22:48 - 00:22:51]
We first started doing video podcasting.[00:22:51 - 00:22:57]
Yeah. We'd record entire episodes and there was nothing there. So video wise.[00:22:57 - 00:23:19]
Yeah. Anyway, I've messed up time zones with scheduled guests. I don't know why I have an issue with time zones. Somehow we made the agreement recently that I always tell guests now it's in central time and they can figure it out on their own. If they can't figure it out, then it's on them, but on them, it's been a little bit embarrassing.[00:23:19 - 00:23:21]
We are at the central time zone.[00:23:21 - 00:23:55]
Yep. Done that. More than one. So one of our biggest challenges in learning about podcasting is just the enormity of everything there is to learn. The social media, the editing, the photography, the content creation, all of that has been really a huge learning curve for me. But back in October or November, I decided that we were going to switch to video podcasting. That's kind of the new thing. And we knew that would be the way to keep moving forward.[00:23:55 - 00:23:57]
That was painful.[00:23:57 - 00:23:59]
That was painful for several months.[00:23:59 - 00:24:04]
That's when we decided to move away from Maker's Gym, who were so great.[00:24:04 - 00:24:05]
But not at video podcasting.[00:24:05 - 00:24:19]
But we couldn't. We just couldn't do the video there. And so we decided to make this room into our new podcast studio so we can do video. And that. That was. There were a lot of tears over that.[00:24:19 - 00:24:41]
Yeah. I spent many, many hours watching YouTube videos on cameras, on equipment, on lighting, all of the different things and trying to put our own touch to it as well. And it was sincerely overwhelming. And since that time, one of our very biggest difficulties has been audio. Visual.[00:24:41 - 00:24:43]
Well, specifically audio.[00:24:43 - 00:24:44]
Right.[00:24:44 - 00:24:55]
We've had some real. Some real doozies, but I think I fixed it. We'll see today. This should be a great episode today. Thanks to chat. GPT.[00:24:55 - 00:25:05]
Yeah, we've had a series of flops that we've had to call in the masses to help us get it to a point that it was at least somewhat acceptable.[00:25:05 - 00:25:07]
I think I fixed it.[00:25:07 - 00:25:17]
We were a little naive in setting up our own. We have the same one that they had at Maker's Gym, so we thought it was just plug and play and come to find out, it is not.[00:25:17 - 00:25:34]
Heidi, we've talked a lot about some of our problems and challenges with audio, visual and setting things up. What about in our own relationship? What challenges during this past year on marriage iq, like, have we had any? Has it been smooth sailing?[00:25:34 - 00:25:59]
No. Remember the back of my embroidery thing? Yeah. It's been pretty messy. First of all, we made the decision that I would be the one in the driver's seat on this. And that was a new role for me. I've been in the driver's seat in our home, but to run my own business, I was looking constantly to Scott to help make decisions or to make them.[00:25:59 - 00:26:09]
And for me to follow, I intentionally said, you're in charge. Yeah, well, you are the CEO. You are the chief bottle washer.[00:26:10 - 00:26:50]
But it was hard because I didn't know how to use that power. And first and even sometimes now, I didn't use it appropriately. And I recognize that. And appropriately meaning both sides of that. Either I wasn't kind in my telling him what to do, or I had difficulty using that power and making those decisions. So, yeah, that was one of the really big ones, especially in the beginning. I think it also exposed weak points in our own marriage as we dove into the research in lots of different areas.[00:26:50 - 00:26:52]
Yeah, some of it was really hard.[00:26:53 - 00:26:58]
We had to look at ourselves even more than we already have over the years of studying marriage.[00:26:59 - 00:26:59]
Indeed.[00:27:00 - 00:27:29]
One of the big issues for me and you talked about for our marriage, but on an individual level, I struggle with my voice. My voice is a little weak for whatever Reason compared to your big booming bass voice. I used to have an earth mama voice, but now it's kind of a little bit crackly sometimes.[00:27:29 - 00:27:31]
I think your voice is perfect.[00:27:32 - 00:28:16]
Yeah, but you don't listen to the same sentence 20 times to edit out one word. So it drives me crazy. And I also really lack confidence in myself. I don't know if any of you out there are like that where you're trying to jump all into something and you really have a lot of self doubt. But this has been huge for me and I am back there today. Sometimes I think I have a beat, but today was another day that I felt like, nope, I don't have a beat and I am burned out. And I'm not sure about this, but we had a good conversation and we're committed to keep going.[00:28:16 - 00:28:26]
We got together, we had a powwow. That's what you do when you love each other, right. And you move on.[00:28:27 - 00:28:40]
Right. I guess that's a little bit like the first anniversary slump in a marriage where they finally realized this is harder than I thought it would be. And yeah, I'm not sure if I've got.[00:28:40 - 00:28:44]
But it takes that first year can be kind of hard.[00:28:44 - 00:28:44]
So that's actually.[00:28:44 - 00:28:46]
The honeymoon's over.[00:28:46 - 00:29:12]
That's actually in part why we're doing this episode. Because when couples can do that and they can look at how far they've come, it actually gives them the willpower and just that ump. That they need to keep being committed and moving forward. So, Scott, why don't you tell us a little bit more about some specific lessons that we've learned during the last year that have been helpful for our own marriage.[00:29:12 - 00:29:29]
Well, I think getting back to part of our philosophy too, is that scintillating life can't be astroturfed like, you know, the astroturf on the football field. It's not the real deal. It's not the real grass has no.[00:29:29 - 00:29:31]
Weeds, doesn't need to be mowed.[00:29:31 - 00:29:33]
The real grass has to be mowed.[00:29:33 - 00:29:35]
And weeds take any care.[00:29:35 - 00:30:10]
So scintillating life, a scintillating marriage, it must be. It has to be filled with messiness, with mistakes, with trials and errors. And this has opened up the need for us to be more understanding with each other and just trying to understand each other at a whole new level because of the depth of what we've had to go through to get a lot of this data. There's been a lot of laughing, crying.[00:30:10 - 00:30:13]
Irritation, definitely not seeing eye to eye on things.[00:30:13 - 00:30:40]
Disagreement. There have been Times that we did the research and did and started talking about things, and we found that those were answers to the things that we were struggling with. I know the episode on biases was really helpful, and I think it was helpful to the rest of our audience because of that single episode of our airport experience.[00:30:40 - 00:30:44]
Yeah, we kept looking at it through different lenses. Different lenses.[00:30:44 - 00:30:49]
Different lenses. Yeah. Just keep looking, looking, looking at a different. Different point of view.[00:30:49 - 00:30:59]
Yeah. I think that autopsy episode really helped also. And we keep coming back to that over and over and over. When we don't see eye to eye over a struggle.[00:30:59 - 00:31:01]
Yeah, look at the autopsy.[00:31:01 - 00:31:06]
Do an autopsy. Go back and see Just the facts, man.[00:31:06 - 00:31:10]
The facts, ma'am. So, yeah, working together, as we said.[00:31:10 - 00:31:13]
It'S been hard, but also really awesome.[00:31:13 - 00:31:25]
It's been really awesome. Why does it have to happen that way? I don't know. Why can't we just have all the awesomeness and none of the bad? Why can't we just have the cherry with the whipped cream?[00:31:25 - 00:31:29]
Well, then all the time. Because we haven't put skin in the game.[00:31:30 - 00:32:05]
That's right. That's correct. Also, you know, I'm a full time physician. I run my own practice, and that's really busy. I'm on call 24 hours a day. I'm on call right now for my patients. I do this on my weekends. And I love it. I love doing it. I love working with Heidi. It is a passion project. This shared vision has really helped us to become so much closer to each other.[00:32:05 - 00:32:21]
And I think it's teaching me as a woman the importance of peacefully being able to express my ideas, my needs, my opinions, and to know what those are separate from yours, and at the same time, listen to yours and be respectful of our differences.[00:32:23 - 00:32:47]
Indeed. Okay, so we've learned a lot over the years of marriage, and we implement a lot of this now. I think learning how to just sharpen that saw this was in that book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We're sharpening that by doing this every week, teaching these principles regularly.[00:32:47 - 00:33:04]
Hey, Scott, why don't we take a minute here to just give a shout out to a couple of our listeners who have left comments on whatever podcast platform they listen to. Can we give them some kind of a prize if they're listening to this episode?[00:33:04 - 00:33:06]
Sure, why not?[00:33:06 - 00:33:39]
Okay, so, Dan with a plan. If you're listening to this episode of Marriage IQ, shoot an email to us@helloarrigiq.com and let us know that you heard this. But this is what Dan with a plan said and it just made our day. I am amazed that this much valuable information is being shared in one place and made so easily accessible. I love how passionate the Hastings are about improving marriage relationships and have benefited greatly by incorporating practical elements in my own marriage.[00:33:39 - 00:33:56]
Keep it up and doc JM thank says. Great podcast and great advice. You can tell this couple has things figured out. I love the interchange between the two. It's great getting the insight from their different training paths.[00:33:56 - 00:34:03]
So thanks to you who have left comments for us. That gives us that little boost to keep us going.[00:34:04 - 00:34:13]
That brings up another item, Heidi, that we are excited to talk about. Today we are having our Marriage IQ first Anniversary giveaway.[00:34:14 - 00:34:23]
Yeah, this is the second giveaway we're having. Our first one was during Valentine's, so if you missed that one, this is an easy one to join in.[00:34:23 - 00:35:08]
Help us celebrate our one year anniversary. We're having a drawing. We're giving away a hundred dollar gift card to your favorite restaurant. How do you enter? Simple. Just leave us a five star rating and review on either Spotify or Apple or anywhere else that you're getting your podcast. Another way you could do it is share a Marriage IQ episode by sending a link to someone who hasn't listened to us yet and have them listen to at least one episode. You send in an email@hellorriageiq.com with your name and what you did and we'll put you in that drawing where one person will be randomly drawn to receive this gift card. A date on us with their honey.[00:35:08 - 00:35:19]
And while you're at it, now that you know our email hellorriageiq.com if we've done anything to help your marriage, that would be a great anniversary gift for us.[00:35:19 - 00:35:20]
It would.[00:35:20 - 00:35:30]
We'd love to hear it. So we've shared some of our most vulnerable moments over the past year with you today. Now it's time to do that with your spouse.[00:35:30 - 00:35:31]
Good idea, Heidi.[00:35:32 - 00:36:04]
This week we invite you to review your past year together or even your past whole marriage together. Whether you've been married for 60 days or 60 years. What are some of the wins? What are some of the insights that you've gained? What are some of the lessons that you've learned? Discuss that, reminisce together. We think this will provide you the impetus that you need to keep going as well. Well, this wraps up this episode of.[00:36:04 - 00:36:08]
Marriage iq and with that, we love you everyone.[00:36:08 - 00:36:10]
We love you and everybody. Have a great week.[00:36:10 - 00:36:19]
And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves.[00:36:19 - 00:36:28]
We hope today's episode has sparked some real insights and that you've been able to take away things that you can use to make your own marriage more scintillating.[00:36:28 - 00:36:38]
Head on over to MarriageIQ.com to grab your free ebook on building a scintillating marriage and subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive tips, updates, and resources.[00:36:38 - 00:36:52]
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more great content on this topic, and invite your family and friends to join the Marriage IQ community. Keep exploring and we'll catch you next time on Marriage iq.
