I like, I know there's a lot of great guys out there and you're
doing an awesome job, but I know there's a lot of guys that are
struggling with this. And what I want to do is not
shame you. I want to encourage you.
And again, I'm not perfect at it.
We're still growing. That's why we're doing this to
grow. Grow with us.
Come on this journey with us. Welcome to honey, we need to
chat. This is a podcast all about
communication. What's our motto?
To communicate or not communicate.
Funny. Funny.
Excuse me, buddy. She uses 1 song.
Funny. All right, we're just wrestling
with our golden retriever at the moment that is trying to push
Amy off her seat. What is happening?
There's no space for you up. Here.
Funny. Come on, there's no space.
Funny. All right.
Well, welcome. Welcome to my job.
Yeah, of course. Now that's amazing.
OK, we're all about communication here.
We believe that when communication dies, bad things.
Happen. So anyway, welcome.
We are really excited to be here.
We haven't recorded for a little while.
I feel like it's been a while. Two weeks.
Yeah, because I've been doing my
production of Sound of Music, which in which I was just a nun
and don't get excited, but it was very fun.
Just a nun. You were the nun.
One of the 20th. The the the nun wasn't the main
nun. That's who you.
Were one of the non main nuns. Yeah, I'm still doing it.
I'll be back tomorrow and the next three days, which is the
last few days of the run but very exciting.
It just has meant that we've been extremely busy family wise
so haven't recorded. Yeah, we do have our New Zealand
trip coming up, which we're really, really excited about.
So if you're not already, go follow us on Instagrams, the
socials. Yeah, and follow along that
journey with us. It'd be really, really cool.
I'm actually really looking forward to that.
Yeah, it'd be awesome. It'd.
Be exciting. And not to date this episode too
much, but we've had a really exciting week with the podcast.
Oh yeah, Because our listener group has expanded drastically.
Massively due to. Blair being sickly sweet on a
tick tock, but we addressed it. Yeah, we.
Yeah. So just.
Beautiful. For context, for those that
didn't see the If you weren't a part of the 2 million views 2.
Million Tiktok so far, but we don't know when this comes out.
Yeah, yeah, I know. How many?
I there was a moment in the episode that came out where Amy
was making the point of what generalised beauty is.
In that moment, just in the way that she was saying, you made
the comment of you don't even think that I see you as the most
beautiful person in the world. I know that's not what you were
saying, but I could not I couldn't just let you say it,
but it just was really grinding inside of me.
Yeah, just just hearing you say that.
And so I just communicated. Well, actually, you know, Amy is
the most for woman in the world to me and I explained why her
being the mother of my children, my best friend, I really do
think you're beautiful. Anyway, that blew up and I've
got a lot of praise over that. We came out with a follow up
video essentially just saying, man, what I did in that video is
actually the bare minimum of what I should be doing to
express my love for you. And even then, like I said, nice
words. And this, this was one big point
of the video, though, was that unless you feel those words,
they're just words, you know? And so that's one.
Unless you feel and also act them out.
Exactly right. And but it was just really,
really sad. We had a lot of comments come
through about how people hadn't felt that from their partners
and everything else. And it's really, really sad.
And so I put out a bit of a challenge for guys and just to
just to be clear that I haven't always treated Amy like this.
Words of affirmation did not come naturally to me as
something that we have grown in together.
The more that I've, I've known you, the more that we've been
intentional about growing in, in me understanding who you are.
So it's through the growth of our relationship.
If I've been able to speak to you that way.
It's not a natural thing. Yeah, just we wanted to make
that really, really clear because we're getting some
comments about, oh, where do I find a man like that?
Well, you didn't find me like that.
We've worked on that together. I mean you are and always
worried before I met you of just very ready to learn and very
ready to be a good husband and a good dad.
Doesn't mean you knew everything.
Neither did I, No. And I think that's the key is
you work as a team and that team has to be a safe and healthy
place for her to be fostered. But you were always a very
switched on man. But I think you're someone who's
willing to be intentional though.
I think that's a key factor in that.
But we all are capable of being intentional.
Every single person is capable of being intentional.
So it's interesting though, one comment that really stood out to
me, I don't know if we've even spoken.
On the screenshot last night, what was it?
He. Said she's a yapper.
She's a yapper. She's lucky to have him we've
had. Some, like out of the two
million that we've seen so far, there's been like 10 that have
been silly. Yeah.
And we've you've deleted a few of.
Them some, some of them have been just nasty.
I'm like, I don't need you on here.
No, no. Yeah, but no, that's not the
comment I was going to talk about.
What I was gonna talk about was a guy had had commented and said
the man set the bar up on the moon and I was like, he set the
bar on the moon. Yeah.
Excuse me. Yeah, this is.
Like again. He hasn't lifted the bar.
Yeah, this bar is like this bar is where it should be and
someone's saying he's set the bar to the moon.
I'm sorry, is it really that unreasonable to think about
saying something like that to your partner?
I think that is just mind boggling.
So it's been very educational this week, but also super
encouraging in terms of the podcast and the engagement.
So thank you for being here and thank you for liking and
following and all of the above. It's been amazing.
Well, this is a Reddit week, Reddit story week, but
excitingly, we actually have a couple of listener writings
What? And we have to actually just
Reddit we. Have to do like open air
questions and stuff. Yeah, I'm just saying.
Oh yeah, cool. Just given, given, say girl.
Yeah. But before we do that, we'll do
some opening questions and stuff.
Well, it's also from Patreons. Oh yeah, yeah, we got a couple
from Patreon. So Patreon guys, thank you so,
so much for support. We've just activated Patreon.
We've got our first few Patriot honours.
We're going to come up with a. Fine name with a better name,
and if you have suggestions, let us know because it's not just
Patreon, we've also got Spotify subscription.
So just let us know. It's a bit complicated yeah.
I don't want to call them the patties, the honeys, the.
Patries the. Our honeys.
We could call them our honeys, not the pat.
No, we got many names. I've got.
So many names, we could call
them our chatter boxes. Chatterbox.
Anyway, so we do have some.
So my opening question is if you had all the money in the world,
you didn't have to worry about anything, Would you decide to
live in on a beach like in in a different country like Greece?
Like would you like to raise a family?
Yeah, right. In the mountains or in the city?
In the mountains, if I had all the money in the world.
Really. Yeah.
Easy. What do you mean?
100% thought you would have said New York.
Not to raise a family. Heck no.
To the techno.
Yeah, no, Yeah, Mountain's easy. That's some secluded, little
like off the grid you. I've spoken about this for
years. Well, now, now you've thrown me
to get a legit thought. You would have said New York.
No, it's a city. Do you?
Do you know me? I do love New York, it's my
favourite city. But that's not.
Well, because you But you would always talk about how you wish
you lived in New York. I know you've said stuff about
the mountains, but you haven't. I don't feel like you've
expressed your views of the mountains the way that you've
expressed your views of the city.
I think family, raising a family is a totally different thing.
If I was a single woman or even in a couple, then maybe living
in New York would be really cool for a while, but even then I
wouldn't want to live there for my whole life.
Yeah, there you go. Learn something new everyday
you. Me mountains, absolutely.
I just love the mountains in general.
Yeah, I mean the beach would be nice, but it would just be is so
touristy or so like holiday. I feel like the mountains you
can like. I do love the beach.
I do love the beach, but I think I just enjoy the mountains more.
I think because in my head when I think of mountains, I think of
like the videos you see on Instagram and tick tock and
stuff about the like the house, the tree houses, like the actual
legit tree houses and it's it's raining and it's like waterfall
coming down next with that. You need that.
To me, it's really just about where I would be the most hidden
from zombies. Yeah, so that's right.
And that's only partially a joke.
And you? Oh, wait, no, you're ready.
Yeah, but I wanna be away from zombies too, yeah.
Yeah, Yeah. Actually, just in case it does
happen, guys, I'm not going to tell you our plan.
Don't. Tell them about plan.
They become the zombie. They're going to know where we.
Are and I'm not joking when I say we have planned it.
Yeah, so legit, when we used to watch The Walking Dead a lot and
we every time we go for a drive, like, Oh yeah, we'll go here,
here, here, and we plan out the whole, the whole thing, the
whole shebang. But if you have a plan you want
to share with us, wasn't it might be as good as us.
What's the next? Question.
Simple one pineapple on pizza. Yay or nay?
Nay. Nay, nay, what about you?
I am on the fence. Really, I am on the fence.
I mostly nay, but I could double if I could double with some
pineapple and ham. That sound could go so many
ways. Yeah, if I turn it into a tick
tock, I like pineapple. Yeah, I love pineapple.
I don't want it on savoury stuff.
I don't get that. I don't like.
It on burgers and it's a no no go on burgers and again, most of
the time it's a no, but I will say that sometimes a little
nibble is nice. Again, I'll try.
I'll try to think of how many times I could in many ways I
could say this innuendo. Your way through, yeah, yeah,
No, I said no, I'm going to say no with like 1/2 yes from blue
the. First question was by our
Patreon. Gaz, Thank you so much, mate,
for your support and the pizza one.
Shane, thank you so much. Shane.
Thank you. Really appreciate you mate.
And I'm just gonna do another chat chat jar.
I'm gonna do a chat jar. In what ways do you want us to
grow in our communication? It's.
An area of strength for us now. I think probably I want to grow
in being more upfront with how I'm feeling with things.
The issue is I'm not always sure how I feel until I've like
worked it out a bit. So it's a bit hard to do that.
And the other issue is being upfront can come across blunt or
inflammatory, which I have observed in my lifetime a lot.
And so that's why I tend not to do that.
But I do wish I was a little bit better at saying I think I'm
getting better, but just saying what I really think.
I think you're. Getting a lot better at saying
it. Yeah, for sure, I get a.
Lot better at telling what I need.
Tell me what's what? What about you?
For me, I think the way that I would like us to communicate
better, I was not ready for this question to get it out of the
jar. Yeah, I think this is a hard one
for me to answer because we are working on stuff.
So it's not like, oh man, it's not like that.
We don't have anything to work on.
But we're we are working on, we're already actively working
on it. So it's hard to pinpoint
something. This might sound funny, but I
genuinely mean this. I want to get better.
I'd be able to communicate nicely in the mornings.
Yeah, like. At the kids and everyone like in
the morning, I'm not a morning person at all and I'm very
cranky. And so when there's yelling and
these things aren't going forward or if they've, you know,
they've can't find their shoes like this morning, I get very,
very cranky. So what?
So when it comes to communication with us, I don't
know how that fits, but I think it's something like maybe I
don't know our communication about how supporting each other
when we're cranky with the kids or something, Yeah.
Yeah. That's a good one.
That's the one I got. Nice.
So just out of a transparency, that stupid chat jar, that
question. Yeah, that question just sparked
up a lot of stuff for us. So we had to be real.
And that was a conversation that Amy and I always had to have a
break. We had to chat that out and it
was good. It's hard.
Still married. We are still married today.
No, but it's good. We just, we had to have that
break and as to, to chat through that, that's something we're
going to keep private for now. We will cover that in another
episode, I think, because I don't think that it's unique to
us. I genuinely don't.
Oh, I know it's not, but it's still a sensitive 1.
And so yeah, we'll, we'll share with you guys in the future raw
and processed. So yeah.
Absolutely, anyway. Here we are.
So he's. At the moment shall.
We dive into the stories. Yes, I'll do it.
So this week's theme is kind of following along the mental load
episode, the chit chat about mental load.
So this theme is a similar one. It's processing some mental
load, but the the actual theme is going to be basically when
you feel alone in something of your relationship.
So feeling alone in those things.
And as I mentioned earlier, we've got some exciting listener
writings. To talk through which is the.
First time ever. So please guys, I love it.
If you have a story you want us to workshop on the podcast,
please message us. You can contact us via the
website at www.honey.whathoneywe.
Need to chat.com honey? We need to chat.com or you can
just email us at www.honey. We need to chat, not WWWW.
You don't need to say WWW ever. See if they just go to Google
and you need. To say it, just email us at
honeymoonchat@gmail.com. Jeez Louise.
Even if they go to Google, they just type in honey, we need to
chat. Yeah, OK.
Whatever, just mess it up anyway.
We're here. You'll find us.
OK? We didn't.
Have another moment. Sorry guys, honey.
We need to chat. We would love to, we would love
to workshop any stories you feel inclined to share with us
because we love building this community.
So excited to talk through a couple of these that have been
written in from listeners. Thank you for those.
But firstly, we're going to start with the one story from
our slash relationships on Reddit.
It is titled Irrationally angry over something my 29 female
partner, 35 male said bothers him.
My partner told me last night that the state of the house
lately is really bothering him. He said he can handle untidiness
but draws the line at dirty. The night prior, he walked past
the bathroom and one of my kids had torn up a small amount of
toilet paper and evidently thrown it on the floor.
He got angry, made some passive aggressive remarks about the
bathroom, stomped around the house, and then deep cleaned the
bathroom. This is the first time since he
moved in 2.5 years ago that he has cleaned it.
I have always done a majority of the housework.
For the first two years I did 90% even when I was working and
studying. About 12 months ago he stepped
up unprompted and now the split is roughly 70% me and 30% him.
He will do the dishes close to half the time, he'll sweep and
wop, sometimes takes the bins out and maintains the lawns.
I cook 99% of the time and I do 99% of the laundry.
I clean the bathrooms and do everything else mentioned above
when he doesn't feel like doing it.
I also carry 100% of the mental load and do all grocery shopping
etcetera. His comment last night really
hit a nerve. The reasons it did I think is
because one, although he has stepped up, he gets to pick and
choose when he helps. If he doesn't feel like doing
the dishes for a week, he won't. If I didn't do the dishes for a
week he would make me feel guilty.
I've never actually done this. The dishes are done every single
night. 2 The house isn't dirty. We've had three kids birthdays
in the last 1.5 months and it has become cluttered and
disorganised. But I never leave food out or
anything unhygienic. 3 When he lived alone, he bragged that he
only cleaned on Thursdays. He left everything, including
dirty dishes sitting from Friday to Thursday.
But now he claims he has such high cleanliness standards 4.
He spends his days off doing whatever he wants while I'm
expected to spend mine cleaning, and five, I obviously still hold
resentment for doing all of it for the first two years.
I will admit the bathroom is overdue for a deep clean.
I had done it three weeks prior and it was untidy, dusty, and
there was some toothpaste in the sink.
I've done a few toilet cleans and surface wipes in those three
weeks and I do not think it was unhygienic in any way.
I transitioned to working full time this year and also quit
smoking. This combination has made it
hard for me to keep on top of things.
I clean every day, but with limited time and no longer
having the reward of a cigarette, I'm not deep cleaning
as often as I used to. All of the deep cleans I did
fortnightly are now more like every three to four weeks, and
I'm vacuuming about four times a week instead of every day.
Anyway, I'm extremely angry and resentful over what he said and
I don't know how to move forward.
I feel personally attacked, like he was accusing me of being a
bad partner and a mom. He did say we need to do better
but the reality is anything he does is considered helping.
Well it's all considered my responsibility.
How do I process what he said and move past it?
So. Is it?
It's not his kids right? I'm assuming he's moved in it.
Sounds like they're his stepchildren.
Yeah, because he's only been in the house for 2 1/2 years.
Yeah. Yeah, and they've got three
kids. Yeah, this one gets me kind of
frustrated. All right, so for, for this, I,
I obviously think it needs to come back to the conversation.
So if you, if I came at you, I know that this wouldn't be the
end of the conversation, right? If I came at you and said, I'm
sick of this, you know you that would not end there.
You'd be like, no, this is not OK.
It's OK if you're frustrated over the mess, but it's not OK
that you're bringing it back to me.
And one thing that we would talk about is OK, well, what does
this look like for us to make the change?
So if he says US, that's good, but where's the action to back
that up? So, you know, straight off the
bat, it would be put a roster in place like if you need to, and
we've done that before that we hold on to very we haven't
touched again since, but it's we you know, we struggle to keep on
top of the mess with the four kids.
And but when we do put a roster in place, we kick butt, you
know, we clean the place together.
We actually make it fun. We put music on.
It's a dance party, everything else.
But yeah, I don't know. I don't think either of us would
just take it if that was the way that was communicated to us.
We would bring it back. Like, all right, that's fine
that you struggle with that. First of all, don't talk to me
like that. But two, what are we gonna what
are we going to do about that? Yeah, yeah, I.
Think the fact that he said we I would kind of call him on it
yeah and and or like turn it around not to be manipulative,
but be like what would you like to do yeah with this like ask
him OK what it what would be the standard that you would like to
step up to kind of thing. He might have he might have not
meant he might have done it in that like backwards way of
saying it really needs to be her.
But he said we. So I would I would hold him to
that. There's so many things that come
into this and this is the perfect mental load example
because she is feeling like she can't express everything she
does. And he's got a moment of
frustration at the house, which even reading her story, I was
like, Oh my gosh. He cleans every three to four
weeks. Good job.
She's doing very well if this is legit.
And I definitely have times where I'm just, I'm like, this
house is so messy. But I just can't genuinely think
of an instance where I look at the house being a mess.
And I think this house is so messy.
And my anger is directed at you because it's not you.
And especially when you have kids, it's your children.
It is a really tough dynamic when it is a stepparent because
I can imagine that there would be really difficult tensions
that go on where you would feel an element of responsibility
over your children individually, even though that parent
hopefully is, is very much embracing the role and I maybe
some of these kids are his, who knows, I think you would feel a
sense of responsibility individually about your children
and. And maybe even defensiveness.
So I think that definitely muddies the conversation.
It could could make it a little bit more complicated in terms of
figuring out where each person is coming from because it would
be very dynamic, very complex. And when you have entered into a
space with children that hasn't been like when we had kids, we
had them together. And so we both start at the same
point and we've both kind of grown through that process.
So we've kind of slowly been introduced to the things that
need to happen as a family. When you enter into a family
that has children already, you're jumping into them at a
certain level. And so catching up mentally with
that is really complicated, I'm sure.
I can imagine. So that is like one factor that
I think could be adding tension there.
But I think it's a really important conversation to have
and it comes back down to that mental load thing.
He may not really see the dynamics at play for you.
He might not see what's happening every day, those
little things that you are doing.
So I think I would sit you down and say I understand that you're
stressed about the house. I feel you.
Like I don't like the house being in this state either.
I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed though, because this
is what I'm having to do. This, this is in this.
One thing I think is really important to point out, which
we've highlighted a lot through our marriage is what she says at
the end here where it's her responsibility and he's helping.
I think that is a really important clarification point.
It is not her responsibility and he's helping.
They need to do it. It's their responsibility.
And it's the same with parenting.
You're not babysitting your kids, you are just their dad.
So when you take them, when I'm out, it's not because you're
doing me a favour, it's because you are their father.
And so I think I think that's an important thing to explore
together. Yeah, and making sure that
you're both. It could, because you couldn't
really subconsciously take on those things.
Oh. Absolutely.
And especially in that step family environment, you know, I
could easily see him coming into that space.
Again, we're we're speculating here, but I could easily see him
coming into that space to be like, these are your kids.
You need to clean up after your kids.
But honestly, mate, like if you go into a family, go into that
family, like become part of that family.
And I know that's going to be a lot easier said than done, but
especially in something like this, you know, like it it's.
Yeah, you need to connect in there.
Yeah. I.
Think it's interesting because he would have entered into a
space as a helper, yeah. So he would have the times when
he started to clean the 1st instances, it would have been
categorised as him helping her, yeah.
And that's, and that's still, that's still something really
important to point out because it's, it's like that transition
hasn't happened. And that transition, you know, I
think sometimes we expect that transition will just happen.
Yeah, but in, in many different ways, right?
And we think transitions will just happen naturally and
naturally. But again, experience tells us
they don't, Yeah, unless we can clearly communicate what the
problem is. But also be a part of that
together. I work through that together.
It's not smooth. It's just like this jarring
thing. Then you have arguments because
you've got expectations, you've got assumptions, you've got all
these sorts of things that come into the mix.
And then it's just, yeah, it's just messy, yeah.
Absolutely. I think conversation could
really help this. I think there were there are
lots of dynamics at play specifically for this situation.
But this this is a common issue regardless of your family
structure. A common, common issue and the
things that you point I'm glad that this person has stepped
through the things that she thinks is like impacting why
she's so frustrated by it because that's really helpful
That's really good conversation points yeah.
And as we've said before, if she comes into the conversation and
says you this, this, this and this, it's actually going to
shut him down. Yeah, he'll put.
His barriers up if. Instead, you can come to the
conversation, be like, hey, I just wanted to say I was really
wrestling with how you brought that up the other day.
I felt very much like you were upset at me.
I was wondering why it like threw me so much.
So I think these are the reasons I I struggle with this.
I struggle with this. These are things I've thought
about and have that be like you're entering into the
conversation with an attitude of curiosity, which I've said a
lot. No, and I'm probably going to
keep saying you're not coming to attack him, you're not coming to
correct him. You're coming to become closer
as a team. And so you're coming to the
conversation with curiosity at yourself, curiosity about why
you're feeling the way you're feeling, curiosity about why
he's reacting the way he's reacting, and curiosity about
how you guys can be a better team going forward.
Catch phrase of honey, we need to chat.
Think about five years from now, where do you want to be?
Where does it, where team dynamic do you want to have, if
you're happy for this to continue to be a wedge that
slowly gets more and more reinforced, All right, probably
not worth bringing it up. You're happy with that.
If you're not happy, if you want to be a a more cohesive team
that's working together, that owns the stuff together,
especially if you are in that kind of step parent step
relationship, like forming a new family.
This is really important because you need to be directional with
how you're going, and those conversations can be incredibly
important. And incredibly hard.
They can be hard, you know, again, because we've just had
this conversation through one of the chat jars.
They're not easy conversations, but they're so important to have
and they're intentional. You know, it was, it was a lot
of that understanding where you're coming from, where I'm
coming from, It's exactly the same here.
And I think again, we didn't solve it in that conversation.
You know, I mean, this is something that we're going to be
going on like for a while now. And I think that's another big
thing to to bring up. You know, you just pointed out
picture what your relationship is in you want it to be like in
five years. I know for me sometimes I'm
like, I don't want to wait five years mate, like now.
But things take a while. And if you're invested in in
your relationship, investments aren't always fast.
And this is one that is OK for them to go for a while.
You know, I don't know any of our situations we've had to work
through that have been fast, but I know for a fact everyone we
have worked through has made our relationship stronger.
Well, you don't see results quickly like long lasting
results in almost any area of life is not achieved quickly, no
SO. Enough said.
Yeah, enough said. But you're not alone.
Yeah, this is going to. Be yeah, this is be triggering
for a lot of people I think. Also, it's important to say what
you've kind of just said on this podcast.
It might look like conversations are fun and easy and light and
they should just go smoothly and we should just be willing to
hear the other person all the time.
That's not always the case for us.
I wish we could just make it, like, super raw.
You saw all of the difficult stuff.
It wouldn't necessarily be helpful.
It'd probably just be more like reality TV.
Yeah, we're not about that. No, we're not about that.
But just to be really clear, these things aren't neat and
easy. No.
If they were you, there would be no point of having a podcast
like this anyway. Moving right along.
Yeah, So was. That Did someone write that one
in? No.
That was that was our slash relationships.
Yeah. But now we're going to move on
to a listener, write in what? Wow.
So anonymous listener right in. Thank you.
Let's dive right in. Let's do it.
Me, 26, female, and my partner, 30 male, have been together for
six years. We'll use Pete as a pseudonym
for my partner. Throughout our relationship,
Pete has been a wonderful partner.
We have not had any major conflicts and have been able to
work through anything together and we are a very united couple.
The only issue within our relationship that we haven't
been able to work through has been Pete's mother the entire
time we have been together and my experience has been that I've
been bullied by her. Pete shuts down during conflict
and says that he doesn't want to get involved.
Whenever things are at their worst.
We lose contact with him for a few months and then things are
just back to normal and never resolved.
Pete doesn't want to lose his relationship with his parents,
which I understand, but I feel like I've been forever fighting
my own battle with his parents alone.
We have just recently had a baby together and we I have had more
criticism by them which left Pete angry although he didn't
want to get involved. Quotation marks I'm feeling very
alone within this battle. I want to feel like a priority
to Pete though when I bring up this he feels as if I'm making
him choose between his family and myself.
This is a really tough one. That is a.
Tough one, can we give a name for the person that wrote in
Let's? Call her Laura.
Laura. It's not Laura, but let's just
call her Laura, OK? It's not unique to Laura, this
situation. I think I think we've touched
base on something similar to this one of our previous
episodes with the mother in law and it wasn't about the bullying
stuff, but just about how, you know, the the partner whose mum
it is just wasn't really helping the situation.
And I think that's definitely something.
OK. So we, we've had situations with
both of our parents where we've had to navigate through, right.
Yeah. And everybody will.
Have them exactly. And full respect for our
parents. There's been times where there's
been times where you've had to say something to your parents or
you've had to have that conversation.
I've had to talk to my parents and I had the conversation.
But there's also times where I've had to have the
conversation with your parents vice versa.
And we've had to do it together. Yeah, right.
There's been the different levels.
Levels. Yeah, right.
I think definitely, I think it's worth Pete talking to his mum
about it again, like, and this is the hard thing.
Then when you bring you bring your own parents involved with
this and mum, I know you listen and and we're very on the same
page of this. We've had this conversation
before, but it's very hard because there's so many more
triggers and everything involved in those conversations.
What has to do with your parents?
And because there's so much familiarity, it's so much easier
to have a heated conversation with your parents, right?
Because you know them for so much longer.
And I don't know, it's just it's so much easier to get crankier
parents than anyone else. I guess.
I think that he needs to have that conversation with his mum
in the softest way possible. This is the ideal situation and
this would be so hard, but I believe that we would do this
too. Let's let's just pretend I'm
just talking to you, right? And, and with our relationship,
OK, so remove the mum son side of stuff.
How would I want to talk to you about this sort of thing?
And I think it would be again, it's creating that safe space.
But again, like, if he comes out and heated, like every
conversation we've talked about her walls is going to go up and
like the conversations don't go nowhere.
It won't go anywhere. But he needs to create that safe
space. A picture of five years from now
and do this with Pete, Laura, like from five years from now.
What do you both want this relationship to look like with
his mom and picture that and then work back from there.
OK, cool. That's what we want.
And even voice that with her, as awkward and as cheesy as that
can be, exactly what I'd be doing with you because that's a
lot of what we're talking about in this podcast.
Like, yeah, we talk about couples majority of the time,
but it it goes beyond just the couple of the things that we're
talking about. I think this sounds like a
complicated 1 though because it sounds to me like Pete has a bit
of a an attachment style issue going on with his parents which
I resonate a lot with. So it sounds to me like he knows
that this happens, but he does not know how to communicate with
his parents about this. And so it it, it doesn't seem
like just it doesn't seem like the same dynamic as if this was
us playing this out. I think what would be more
similar is if we flipped it and if you were feeling bullied by
my dad, for example, back, let's say when we first got together,
because obviously there's been a lot of work in between me
confronting my parents and navigating that dynamic was a
lot more complicated in some ways because of just attachment
that was happening. And if there's any kind of
anxiety or any kind of like communication style that's
happened in the past, that's meant that you can't, you don't,
you just don't know how to interact with them in a neutral
and healthy and constructive way.
And so it sounds to me from this, it's a short story, but it
sounds to me like he shuts down. Well, she says he shuts down
during conflict and he doesn't want to get involved.
That doesn't sound like someone who's just like, I'm super
neutral. I couldn't care less.
It actually sounds like someone who's really wrestling with a
lot of stuff that's that's impacting how he talks to his
parents and how he engages with conflict.
And so I totally agree with you about sitting down together.
So Laura and Pete sitting down together and I think it's really
valid for you, Laura, to say to him, I actually can't just keep
going in this dynamic with your mom in this way.
Like that's not a journey that can keep going this way.
It's not healthy. It's not going to, it doesn't
end well. We've got a child now and it's
just ramped up. So I think it's a very valid
conversation to have. It might not be a fun one, like
we said before, but really valid.
So I think sitting Pete down and saying, hey, I know you're he's
been recently angry about some of the criticism.
So he's seen it, he's aware of it.
He doesn't want to get involved, but he's aware of it.
So sitting him down and saying something like, I know you've
seen it. I know you don't know how to get
involved. I know you don't want to get
involved, but I need to tell you, this is extremely important
to me and I can't keep going this way.
And so we do need to figure out what we're going to do about it.
And then doing that, where do we want to be in five years time as
your own core family unit? Because really you do as you
become a unit, you do remove from your parents and you don't
hopefully it doesn't have to be no relationship with them, but
it does change and it needs to change.
That transition is really tough for people.
For some, it's tougher than it is for others.
And so I think sitting down and saying we've got a child now in
five years time, where do we want to be as our unit?
Where do we want to be with your mom?
It's no longer. And we've had this conversation
with our parents as well. It's no longer how we interact
with them and who they are to us.
It's actually also we are fostering who they're going to
be to our kids. And parents are just like us.
They're just humans with things that they've experienced and
have made them into who they are as well.
And so they can work out of those traumas.
They can work out of those experiences in a constructive or
in a deconstructive way, in a toxic way.
And they can find themselves stuck in ruts as well.
But a lot of parents actually would love to be really
beautiful blessings to their kids, really beautiful blessings
to their grandkids. And so I think it's really
important for you as a family to get very clear on in five years
time, where do we want to be with this?
In five years time? Where do we want our kids
relationship to be with her, with this grandma?
How? And if you sit down and you make
that clear, it helps you figure out what you what steps you need
to take to get to that place. If nothing is communicated,
nothing will get better. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I like your answer better, I think.
The other really important thing to highlight is she's she calls
it bullying. Yeah.
And so there are absolutely times where it's just not
healthy to be around a certain person.
And so I think that's, again, in that conversation you have with
Pete, it's really important for you to define what the what the
interactions are. Obviously we don't know what
these interactions are, but define what it is that makes it
feel like bullying, what it is, how it impacts you, and figure
out a way. If there's boundaries you can
put in place, which may and probably will be not taken,
well, that's never fun to have boundaries put in place.
But they are really important. And I really believe that
boundaries in the long run benefit everybody.
So whether your mother in law is happy about the boundaries or
not is a different conversation, but it's really not the deciding
factor. But I do think in the long run,
if it helps make the relationship smoother, it's
really important. So in terms of what conversation
or what steps to take, I think it's really important to be
clear with what you've experienced and with Pete and
say this behaviour is unacceptable.
It's not just being with her that's unacceptable.
It's not just this random vague thing.
It's this is what she's been doing that's hurting me and
that's unacceptable. So we need to actually put a
safe boundary in place in that regard.
So once you're when you're having this conversation, you're
like, OK, where do we want to be in five years time as our own
insular little family? Where do we want to be?
And part of that is going to include figuring out what you're
OK with and what you're not. And we've had to put boundaries
in place and every area of life, like we've had to put boundaries
in place because there are some patterns that just are not
healthy. And it means that if not, if
they go unaddressed, they're just going to lead us further
and further apart. And so this is a really
important that if there's something that she, whatever is
going on for her that makes her bully you, which is a weird
behaviour for an adult, there's obviously something there.
So either you know, she's got mental health stuff going on,
either there's some kind of dynamic tension, defensiveness,
whatever is happening for her, it's not a healthy behaviour and
there does need to be a boundary around that.
And it actually will help in the long run.
At least you're into your family, if not the whole
extended family. Yeah, to put that in place and.
And Pete, I don't know if you listened to this podcast.
I hope you do 'cause I hope you guys can listen to this
together. It's, it's gonna take a lot of
breathing from you pretty much, you know, just to, to hear and
to receive what Laura is feeling.
He's gonna be really challenging.
And it is you guys, this could be a real tense conversation for
you. What I would love to encourage
you guys to do is just commit to the journey of, of trying to
work this out. You probably you, I know you
won't work it out in one conversation.
And when things do start to get heated, just pause and say,
let's come back to this. Take deep breaths, go for a
walk, do all those things that can help you calm down because
if you're not already in a good spot with communication,
hopefully this is the start of such a strong strength for you
guys to develop a strength of communication.
So yeah, I would love to just encourage you guys to commit to
the the journey. Commit to listening and hearing
each other and pausing when need to and just take that breath.
Move on, come back to another point, but just commit that you
will come back another point and keep going forward with it.
And really exciting just to see that.
It sounds like you guys have a pretty united relationship.
Yeah, apart from this issue. So that's awesome.
That's a huge foundation, yeah. And how great for you to model
that for your kids, 100. Percent, that's that's the
biggest influence for us is what we're modelling to our kids.
And yeah, there's a lot of stuff we bring from our own childhood,
but that doesn't mean we have to just carry that on.
I think we can be really intentional what we want to
carry on. And if there is some kind of
anxious relationship attachment style style thing going on,
breaking that for the sake of your children is really
important. Yeah, absolutely.
Working on it, breaking it, being intentional.
Cool. It's good.
All right. Thank you so much for writing
in. That's awesome.
That's the first write in. Hey guys, just wanted to pop in
and take a SEC to talk about the extra content you can find over
on our Patreon and our Spotify subscription.
We have a fun little community growing over there with extra
episodes, extra stories. We're also going to have
resources, messages back and forth and also submitting
listener stories through that portal as well, so.
Outro. Themes.
There's lots to be gained. If you want to be a part of our
closer knit community here at Honey, we need to chat.
Please hop on over to Patreon or Spotify subscriptions and join
us there. We would love to see you.
Thanks. Guys, thanks.
And on to another one. This is actually not a written
in story. This is actually a shared reel.
But listeners, very, very loyal and faithful and helpful
listeners, sent us a real following episode about mental
load. Yeah, really interesting, Real.
And I'm just going to quickly describe it, I've actually seen
hundreds of them in the same exact vein.
So it's not you. I'm glad.
You're going to explain it because I'm like, how am I going
to explain this? Yeah.
Yeah, I will explain it. Basically it's a real and it's
from the point of view of the man and it's comedic, it's
lighthearted. And he said.
I think it was like POV, you have a wife or something like
that and it's her. What's?
POV mean I'm a senior citizen these days.
I'm not in with the lingo. What did you just say before
that you're so old with technology.
Oh, I was. Trying to take a photo a video
of Bonnie and I ended up just taking two photos the.
Post that he just made about Bonnie.
I heard him from the bathroom talking and I was like, oh, he's
making a video. And then I heard him do it
again. So I thought it was just free,
but no, he'd just taken 2 photos instead.
Anyway, POV means point of view. Yeah.
And it's used on social media as like a this is the the point of
view to come to the video with. So you think about that
perspective. Yeah, so funny.
I. Seriously, I just see something
like POV POV. I have a wife POV so kind of
mean. Oh my gosh.
Well, POV. I've got a wife and it's from
the POV of the husband. Basically it starts with he's
like watching TV or something and then she's like hey and he
looks over at her and she's like can you please take out the
pants? No worries, give me 5 minutes.
Turns back to the TV and then he like turns back quickly to her
and she's taking the rubbish out.
She's like that's fine, I'll do it.
And then she said, can you vacuum?
And he goes to plug in the vacuum.
And then he turns back. By the time he's plugged in the
vacuum, she's doing it. She's like, it's fine, I'll do
it. And then she asks for a drink
and he goes to get one out of the fridge.
And then he brings it back to her and she's already gotten
herself one. It's it's funny.
Yeah, but it's common. Yeah.
And it was sent in by listeners as like a what do you think of
this type thing? Is that right?
Yeah, yeah, I think it was a bit of a joke, bit of a joke because
we've just. Been talking about mental load,
but it was interesting because straight away we had a quick
chat about it and there's so much that sits into that reel.
Yeah, so, so much. And from a really brief look,
it's a funny video. It's like, Oh yeah, this is
definitely a dynamic that has played out with us.
Yeah, sometimes not too much, but there have been things.
And usually like she had a bit of an attitude while she was
doing her stuff. So you could tell she's like,
it's fine, I'll do it. Usually if I do something like
this, I just actually can't be bothered waiting, so I'll just
do it. It's not not normally an
attitude thing, but I think there would be so many reasons
from a wife's perspective that you might just give up waiting
for them to do something, even if it's only for 5 minutes.
And the first one that comes to mind is how often are you having
to ask him to do this stuff? And why are you having to ask
him to do this stuff? It's asking in the 1st place.
I think that gets me. And again, like I know this was
sent in as a joke, so please don't get all up and arms and
we. Did like it was a.
Funny, we weren't like meme, but but in the back of my head as
well, because just seeing so many writings, comments, all
this sort of stuff that is revolved around this.
Yeah. It I can't just have it as a
joke anymore because it's just so in our world now as topics.
And I think in the 1st place straight away I'm like, well,
why? Yeah, why is she asking?
Like why would you even have to ask him to take out the rubbish
There's? A difference between I'm doing
something right now and there's something helpful you could do.
So bins, let's use bins as an example.
I might be, I might be cleaning the kitchen and the bin is full
and I know it needs to go out. And if I say to you, hey, can
you take the bin out, that's because at that point I'm
cleaning the kitchen. It would be really helpful for
the bin to be cleaned as well. It's not something that you
should have just known I needed you to do.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, it's. Something I'm saying neutrally,
well, can you do that for me because I'm doing the kitchen?
If you said, Yep, just give me 5 minutes, fine.
If you said give me 5 minutes and then you didn't do it,
that's been annoying because having to be your mom a little
bit and be like, hey, can you take?
I'll probably would have just done it to be honest, by the
time it got to me realising you hadn't.
But there have been times where the bin is overflowing and I
have said can you do bins and then it hasn't been done.
That's more of like AI shouldn't have had to have asked you to do
bins. And I need to be really clear.
We are equals in cleaning. Like that's I'm not like the one
that does all the cleaning and you don't do it.
This is not a normal thing. Just to give Blair some.
Yeah. I'm like, oh, I'm going to look
bad at this. No, no, this is not a normal
thing. But but if I had asked you to do
it and you still didn't do it, and you should have actually
noticed that the bin was full and just done it yourself
because you're a part of the family.
That's exhausting. And again, with the mental load,
like the that's one tiny thing. Then you think about all the
other things that this person might have on their head.
Yeah, that they're then having to navigate.
And so yes, it might be kind of funny, but it's actually not
that funny when it's also the bin, the bathroom, the toilet
paper, the groceries, the kids stuff.
It's that's not very funny. It's actually just really
exhausting. Yeah.
I think the other thing as well is looking at the patterns in
the family. So if you are sitting on the
couch watching TV or scrolling on your phone and I've been
cleaning for an hour and I ask you to do something, I might be
a little frustrated. Yeah.
Like, And not that that's
necessarily fair because just because I choose to clean at
that point doesn't mean you need to.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But if that's a regular rhythm
in the family where one person is doing all this stuff and
you're just watching TV because you want to after a while,
again, that's exhausting. That's a really out of balance
thing. So I think looking at the
rhythm, the natural rhythms that happen in your family and being
like, is this something I actually normally do while she's
cleaning? That's important.
That's maybe why she's frustrated.
And here is a joke a lot too, like, oh, I just need to get the
dishes done before I get in trouble, like from a lot of the
guys. And so it's funny, like I
genuinely laugh every time, but I'm like at the same time.
Yeah, 2. Dishes, man.
Why? Do you think because you guys
are capable? Yeah.
Like, you are such a capable person.
Yeah. I just, I honestly baffles me a
little bit because for one thing, there's roles within a
family. And so you'll fall into natural
roles. Some will be kind of really
traditional, some will be a bit more like equal, whatever you
want to call it. But someone might be working
full time. Someone might be home with the
kids so I can understand why tasks would fall under that.
What I can't understand is the household care all falling to
one person or the response like this person before was saying it
being that person's responsibility and the other
person as a helper. I just don't understand that
dynamic. No.
And I think it's again, it sounds the conversation too
right, because I don't think we ever really struggled with.
I'm trying to think, well, you were.
Living out of home before we get together.
Yeah, yeah. So I've been out of.
Home since I was 16 so I'm I'm used to looking after myself and
and whatever else I think. There are blind spots for people
and unfortunately they can go unaddressed.
Yeah, I don't think it's a bad thing that there is a blind spot
in the initial part. I don't think it's a bad thing
that one partner has to identify a blind spot to their partner
and say, hey, this is tough, can you help me with this?
I don't think that's a bad thing that's going to happen from both
sides all the time. I think it is really
disappointing when that has been identified and it is either
faced with criticism or complaint whininess like from an
adult. Come on.
Or it's just ignored, it's not addressed.
Or you may. Feel like you're made to feel
stupid. Yeah.
Something now, yeah. Yeah, you're going to know about
that, Yeah. It's a very strange thing.
Yeah. And I don't think that's fair.
So I I think addressing issues that are an issue is a teamwork
thing. Like we've spoken about many
times on the podcast, if you have a problem, you need to be
able to communicate that to your partner.
Yeah, that needs to be the first step.
It's your responsibility till that's communicated.
Once that's communicated, it needs to become the collective
responsibility and that partner needs to buy into that.
Because if your team that's working to be a unified couple,
a unified family, it's not going to be constructive to have those
things landing on one person, yeah.
I don't know why it is a lot of guys struggle with this sort of
stuff. I don't have the answer, but if
someone was struggling with that, how would you approach it?
I. Would have a conversation about
mental load, I'd say. I know it doesn't look, I know
it's not in your face. It's not clear, It's not obvious
that I'm carrying a lot, but there's a lot of things that I'm
carrying and I'm really struggling.
So I need to talk about this. Yeah.
I would use the Tik Toks and reels that we've made as
excuses. They knew it.
Found this podcast talking about this thing.
Look at this video. It's a new concept.
What about low on? And I would be like, this is
something I've never really thought about.
I haven't had words for it, but this is something that I
struggle with. Yeah.
And because I've got all these little pieces floating around,
they have to keep balancing. I need a little bit of help.
And I think that what would be bad is if you then put like push
that on the guy, I think they would shut down.
From what I've observed, if something's dumped on a guy,
majority of the time the guy will shut down and they'll get
overwhelmed. So a lot of things that guys
operate like responses is that of insecurities.
But I think we go silent, we go inwards, we shut down and it's
like we don't care. I don't think that's true.
I think it's actually more down to securities and overwhelmness
or whatever else because we haven't been brought up how to
deal with emotions, deal with stress till we don't get told,
we get told to suck it up and push through it.
So when something is brought to us, it's I think we shut down.
I think that's just our natural response.
I don't think there's going to be a guy that's happy with
letting their partner just go around the house and doing
everything for them and being the mum of the house.
I don't think guys are, I don't know.
But if that's you, suck it up mate, you got to do something
about it. But I don't think most guys
would be happy with that. They do struggle with that.
You know, we, we spoke about, we've spoken a few times about
how when you're exhausted or you don't know how to do something
and you shut down. Like you've spoken, you know,
you did the dishes today for the first time in, in three days,
right? Because I didn't help, you know,
just to be clear. So I was struggling too, to keep
on top with all the mess. And you were saying about how
you were so tired and you kind of just shut down and you just,
you kind of become incapable of doing things.
Like people do become incapable of doing things.
I think that's actually more common for guys because we don't
work through stuff. I see this a lot with dads with
work. We, we shut down dads, like a
lot of dads disconnect, they retreat, they'll move away,
they'll leave, you know what I mean?
Because it's, it's a fight or flight response because they
just don't know how to communicate.
They don't know how to process that, what they're feeling.
I don't think the upbringing is on the side of the man in terms
of teaching them. I mean, I'm talking about the
collective upbringing, generally speaking, in terms of teaching
them how to naturally fall into these places.
But hearing you say that sounds exhausting from a woman's
perspective. Hearing that and be like, OK, so
now not only do I have, I'm not know how I'm feeling, just to
clarify. But not only do I have to do all
this stuff, I also then have to like pussyfoot around my husband
when I talk about it so that he doesn't feel overwhelmed kind of
thing. I can imagine that being a
reaction like, yeah, OK, you get overwhelmed, but I'm doing
everything. So like, so now I have to take
on board. You're overwhelmed in in
navigating as well. And I can imagine that that
would be exhausting. So I think it's 100%, as we've
talked about before, when you come to an issue, it's really
important to know who you're addressing.
It's really important to know what the goal of the
conversation is. Yeah.
So if your goal is to be constructive, your goal is to be
a team at the end. Yeah.
And you know that your husband or your partner is not something
that he's natural at or they're natural at.
I wanna make it more general than just men and women, too,
'cause I know this wouldn't always fall into this category.
You need to think about how you want the conversation to go and
address it in a way it's gonna be constructive.
Yeah. It is exhausting.
Yeah. That is not easy.
No. Hey.
Again, I'm probably more speaking to the guys that listen
to this episode more than the women is helping us to
understand why do we shut down? You know, I mean, why do we
respond that way? And I think there's still a
responsibility for the couple to ask that question as well.
Oh, 100. So it's not.
Ask the question. Yeah, yeah.
So. It's not a matter.
So it was me. It's good for you to know that.
That's how I respond by shutting down doesn't mean now you don't
talk to me about stuff. But he's going to navigate the
conversation that we have and the way that we have it.
Yeah. Right.
And that's. What that was probably more my
point is if you just come to me and say you're not doing enough
around the house, you're doing on this, you doing that, you
doing this, you doing that, I'm going to shut down and that's
not okay. I'm not excusing that reaction,
but I'm saying that that is a reaction that a lot of guys will
have. So what I'm trying to encourage
is bring that into the conversation, the way that might
react. Feel like a lot of the things
that we talk about, again, we hear about how my, my, my
husband would never talk like that.
I could never have this conversation with my partner and
so forth. I I genuinely think because guys
don't know how to, you know, and that's so important to bring
into this conversation because we're trying to build a
community that is intentional about working on communication.
Guys, we really need to understand and be reflective of
ourselves. Why do we respond that way?
Why do we shut down? Why do we not clean?
You know, that's a question we have to be asking ourselves, but
don't let it overwhelm us. Just be, again, what we said
before. Yeah, just what we said before
with a lawyer, like commit to the growth, you know, like just
be curious, be aware, unpack that.
And, and, and ladies like, I just want to encourage you
create that safe space for your partner to explore that.
I don't want to excuse any behaviour, but just create the
safe space, be intentional. Again, I just see it so many
times with guys. I'm working a lot with with dads
and it's just a big thing that we just struggle with how we do
that, how we work through that, how we grow.
I think it's really important in your relationship to be having
conversations about how each of you work.
Yeah. Why each of you work the ways
that you work, learning about each other, having that attitude
of curiosity so that when you do come to issues like this, it's
not a matter of not only are we not navigating the problem,
we're also now having to navigate who you are and to
learn who you are. The trap that I hear in that is
if a man is like, we shut down when we when we're faced with
these things. And that's the extent of it.
And I love what you've just said.
I love what you've just said. Isn't like the onus is on that
man to understand themselves, but if you've had to bring the
same thing up three or four or five times, coming at it really
gently is obviously not being effective.
As in, sometimes you do have to be a bit more like I need this
from you. I've brought this up what's
happening, like what's happening for you, but I'd.
Also say, like the yes, it would be tiring, but it's not like I
could easily see that as a response of like, you know, why
would I bother bringing this up with you?
It's too tiring. Yeah, yeah.
And. Pulling into bitterness.
Exactly and. That's, that's the other side of
the trap. And I think what we, we've been
saying in this episode especially is that it is hard.
It is a commitment and it is tiring.
You know, especially early days. I had to really learn how to
talk with you because I'm blunt, right?
And, and I would hurt you. It was so exhausting and tiring
and to be like, think of every word that came out of my mouth.
It was so hard then. It still is now.
Like, I mean, we again, we, we were still working on the way
that I communicate and stuff, but it's worth that it's.
A good struggle. It's a good struggle to have, so
I think that's the other point I'm trying to make and if.
I had been in that situation when we were learning that
stuff. If I'd have been like, yeah,
well, I just get mad when you talk to me like that.
I get mad. I shut down.
Oh yeah. It's never an excuse, Oh no.
I'm I'm not saying that's what you're saying.
I'm just exam like following that example through.
If I was like, yeah, that's how I am.
I get I get triggered when you talk like that.
And I never took time to be like, why do I get so triggered?
Yeah, instead of you just being like, OK, I know she's triggered
when I talk like this. I know she's triggered when I
took this. So I'm going to just like dodge
those things or I'm not going to bring up anything in that
category. It's a conversation of like us
figuring that out. Me being curious about myself,
be like, why am I so triggered? So then I can be like, I think
I'm triggered because I feel like when you say stuff like
that, you're criticising me or I feel like because of this
experience, this makes me think this kind of thing.
It needs to be a constant conversation.
It needs to be constant curiosity about yourself 1st and
about your partnership, the dynamics together 2nd, and then
how you can work through that as well.
Because you can fall into one partner is carrying the load of
figuring that out, but they're also not getting the buy in of
the other partner. So if you had been carrying that
load of figuring out how to communicate to me, but I hadn't
been exploring that for myself as well, you would not be in.
You'd be in a better place. You'd be in a place where you're
avoiding all the things that trigger me because you know they
trigger, but you've got no conversation.
The heart of all of this is both partners need to input into
their marriage. Into their partnership.
They have to input like you can't have one partner be like,
we should work on this, we should work on this for the rest
of your life. It's just not going to work.
It's not going to work because either you end up you stay
together and you're just in really bitter separate places or
you don't stay together. Things fall apart.
It doesn't work. It does not work that way.
And so at the core of it, these conversations are important
because we're figuring out how we can be a team in this.
And that's why that's like seriously, my heart behind this
podcast, man. I, I really want guys to step
up. Like I really, really do.
I really want guys to be invested, passionate about
growing as as men, but also as partners, you know, like in
investing in what it means to be in a relationship.
I was thinking about this recently.
There's a lot of stuff coming out at the moment about how
bringing masculinity back, right?
And see if around. And then what it is is pretty
much like, Oh, I'm teaching my boys how to fix a car.
I'm teaching them how to fish and camp and all that sort of
stuff. I'm like, all right, cool.
I want to teach my kids that sort of stuff as well.
But for me, I'm like, all right, well, the part that you're
missing is OK, cool, fix a car, make a meal, go fishing, love
your wife. Like where's those lessons
coming in for, for masculinity? Why does masculinity have to be
the, the rough and tumble stuff? Why can't it be how to look
after your household? How do you look after your
partner? I want this for my boys and I
know that I can't teach my boys this without you.
I need their mom to help me to teach our boys how to treat
their future partners and for our daughter to not settle for
anything less than what we can model for her and teach her.
Do you know what I mean? Like, but I can't do that on my
own. We have to do that together.
And I don't know what the studies, it's around like 50% of
marriages end in divorce, right? And if we can't be intentional,
you know, we're not perfect at this.
We are not perfect at communication.
We're wanting to get better because we see the value in it.
We don't want to be another one of those 50% that ended in
divorce. We don't want our boys to grow
up and mistreat women. We don't want our daughter to
settle with whatever guy finds her interesting.
We wanted to find a man that's going to look after her, care
for her and partner with her in the future.
And we want our boys to do the same.
So we need to be on the same page in our relationship to
model to our kids on what that looks like.
Yeah. And it's not because you should
do this. It's because it's hard work and
you should do hard work. It's not.
It's because it is beautiful. Yeah.
The harmony of working together and being unified and being a
team and it is beautiful. It is, it is so life giving and
it's worth it. And I genuinely, when I see
couples that fall into this dynamic, it makes me heartbroken
because they aren't experiencing that beauty.
And so for if it's the guy that's just not connecting and
just not stepping up in that space, he's actually missing
out. He's actually missing.
Out if that. Is you, you're actually missing
out and it's not that hard to start moving this direction.
It's actually small little steps at a time.
It's not a massive the big task in one big go.
It's it's a small like adjustment so that in five years
time you are more in that harmonious space.
In 10 years time you are more in that harmonious space and you
can do it so. This started by the video,
right? Yeah.
OK. So to round it up, because we've
covered a bit the video. It was funny, all right, just to
be clear. But I think it just captures a
lot of our heart behind what we're trying to do here.
Emphasise the teamwork, emphasise the intentionality.
It came from a male's perspective.
I like, I know there's a lot of great guys out there and you're
doing an awesome job, but I know there's a lot of guys that are
struggling with this. And what I want to do is not
shame you. I want to encourage you.
And again, I'm not perfect at it.
We're still growing. That's why we're doing this to
grow. Grow with us.
Come on this journey with us right in like, I want to
encourage you as much as I can for the guys that are riding in.
I love it, you know, keep it going.
I want to keep going on this journey with you.
Iron sharpens iron. Yep.
All right, so the last one and then we can have an extra 1 for
Patreon and Spotify subscription.
Get on. The Patreon and sub sorry.
Last one from our slash relationships.
Wife 29, female struggling to stay with 29 male husband due to
hobby being top priority. Using a throwaway because my
husband, we'll call him Randy. Yeah, I thought it was so funny.
So Blair. Blair calls himself Randy.
Ramble on twitch and on TikTok. I thought it was so funny
because it sounded like I've written in this story but I'm
not 29 so can't be me. You wish, I wish.
Using a throwaway because my husband, we'll call him Randy,
is on Reddit quite a bit. We have been married for going
on four years. We knew each other and dated
briefly in high school. Found our way back to each other
ten years later and ended up getting married.
Now, Randy is an avid gamer. I don't just mean enjoys the
occasional video game, I mean spends 10% of his life working,
10% of his life sleeping, and the other 80% is on the game.
I mean wakes up and the first thing he does is hit the power
button. The moment he comes home from
work, he hits the power button every literally waking second he
is stationed in front of that computer.
Video games just aren't my thing, never have been.
I'm not good at them and it's never really intrigued me.
I knew about his love for games when we met and I guess part of
me just assumed maybe he'd cut down some of that time for me.
But he hasn't. He doesn't ask me to go out.
He doesn't plan anything. If he had his way, he would stay
at home in front of that screen every second of every day.
I honestly think it's borderline and addiction, but maybe I'm
being dramatic. Either way, we're approaching
year 4 of marriage and nothing has improved.
We've had multiple conversations, fights, etc about
the amount of time he spends on the game and how little effort
he puts into spending time together or with me or just our
marriage in general. I spent a decent chunk of money
on a gaming PC because I wanted to make an attempt at gaming
with him or getting into it in the off chance I could save our
marriage, but I just can't. I work on a computer and
spending 8 hours a day in front of a computer to get off work
and move to a different one just doesn't work for me.
I like to go out and experience things.
Movies, museums, dinners, theme parks, literally anything.
But getting him to go anywhere or do anything is like pulling
teeth. Especially because I know he
doesn't want to go or do those things and it just makes me feel
guilty for dragging him out when where I'd rather be.
In previous relationships I had to become comfortable with my
own company and in many ways I am.
If I want to go out and do something, generally I'll just
do it. But I feel so lonely when I have
a whole husband at home. After four years and many talks
about the issue with no changes or improvements, just sorry and
I'll try and do better. Should I just admit that we
aren't compatible and move on? I've tried and tried to convince
myself I'm OK with being on my own even in this marriage, but I
just don't think I really am. I love this man to the end of
the earth, but is it worth being by myself and practically every
aspect of my life? And then she has a little edit
that says I guess I did leave out some things.
Just so just to clear up. A lot of people have asked why I
married him or how I love him when we have nothing in common.
We actually have quite a bit in common other than the gaming be
like similar movies, music, food.
We both enjoy D&D. We have a lot of similar
ideologies and had similar goals during the time we dated and got
engaged. We didn't just shotgun wedding
at random. We used to go on vacations, we
went on dates regularly. If I was leaving the house to
run errands or just going shopping, he'd offered to tag
along. We'd go on walks to the lake,
etcetera. He didn't make it appear that it
was a chore to be around me. Maybe I changed, maybe I did
become a chore to be around, or maybe he really did what he felt
necessary to keep me. And once he knew he had me,
those things slowly became less and less frequent.
I didn't marry him with the intent to change him.
I wasn't upset that he enjoyed gaming and I didn't have a
problem with it because before marriage it was more balanced.
Cool. Yeah.
So I relate specifically with the name.
No, I do relate. We we relate to that.
I've had a few addictions in my past and gaming has definitely
been one of them. And and by the sounds of it,
yes, I would say this guy's addicted to gaming.
Yeah, I would say, and I would actually say, I don't know what
people think of this. I believe gaming can be an
addiction. So what I would say is like,
cool, he obviously needs to chat.
He needs a conversation, but also understanding that I
neglize that whose partners have left them private gaming because
of their gaming. So it's for him.
Like, dude, seriously, you need to think about like, well, you
value more the game or your wife, but at the same time,
like, man, need to put in brakes, you know?
And I think having that conversation like, so for those
whose partner is is really big into gaming is not having that
time with them. Have the conversation what we've
done before, like come up with boundaries.
You mentioned this earlier. Boundaries are really, really
important. And I have to revisit those
boundaries from time to time. So I still play video games.
We play sometimes together. When we first got married, that
was what we did. We didn't really play watch TV.
We just played Call of Duty, you know, one every time, you know,
so it has its place. I find it relaxing.
I'm a very social person and I can socialise over gaming, but I
know I can get too much. For me, I can get very invested
in it. I can get very hooked, whatever
else. Not saying that gaming is bad
most of the time, but for me it can be.
So I will put those boundaries in place.
It's been issues for us in the past and you've been able to say
to me, hey, I think it's becoming an issue call.
We'll go back to the boundaries that we've set in place if it
continues to become an issue for us, like if it's something that
is like it's just not getting better, then times I've just
deleted all games. Like there's there's a big
period of time where I don't do it.
You know, it's not worth it. And so we don't do it.
And I think that would be the conversation to have like have a
break for six months. If they cannot do that, if they
cannot have a break from a computer game for six months or
something wrong. Yeah.
And there probably. Would be supports for people in
that too. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Category.
I know they've got Alcoholics Anonymous.
They might have something like Gamers Anonymous.
Well, I mean. You actually you don't need to
do Gamers Anonymous. It's like go see a counsellor.
It's in, it's not, you don't have to find a specific thing
for a gaming person. It's, it's what's going on for
them. You know, I mean, for a lot of
addictions that comes from escapism, right?
We're trying to get out of something, we're trying to run
away from something. It's something we have to deal
with, right? So it's not necessarily the
addiction to the game, it's the escape from reality.
So I would say, you know, and again, if you're in Australia
and you know, someone that's struggling with this sort of
stuff, ask if they'll be interested in going to see their
GP going to mental health plan, you know, you know, if they're
not in, if it, if that makes them a bit nervous, offer to go
with them, you know, and just to say, Hey, let's let us when you
can bring in that camaraderie to the conversation.
It removes a lot of the shame because there's so much shame to
addiction. There's so much shame to these
sorts of things. You know, you know, I, I lied to
you many times over my struggles, right?
And it's not that I obviously want to lie.
I am so ashamed of myself that that's more the driving to the
lies. Like I'm just so ashamed.
And I'm not excusing this by the way, hearing on that like
there's no excuse for lying, but I'm so ashamed with what I've
done. And, and it actually makes me go
into a more of a spiral because then I want to escape the shame
and I go down and down and down and I'm just in this hole and I
can't get out. And I had to get professional
help and I still struggle from time to time.
We have those boundaries in place.
We do things about it and we've got, you know, we're, we're a
lot more open about those struggles now and we can do
things about it. But yeah, so there's the things
that you can do. I'm not sure what you can do in
America. I don't know what's there, but
I'm sure there'll be stuff. Yeah.
I think the first thing I would do in this situation is, again,
have a conversation with curiosity and just like what's
happening for you, like identify.
This is a lot of gameplay. Yeah.
Like, just to be really clear, this is what's happening.
What's happening for you? Like is it just that you enjoy
it? Just kind of explore what's
happening behind the scenes? Because as we've mentioned, a
lot of this stuff, when it does fall into the addiction
category, it's not just the thing.
It's actually an escapism, like you said, from a number of stuff
going, a number of things that could be happening.
This screams mental health issues to me, screams mental
health issues to me. So like, if this was us, I would
be trying to explore what's going on with your mental health
because it is not normal to spend that much time on
something, especially when you are in a relationship where
there is like an external draw. Outside of that, it's not normal
to spend that much time, especially if you're cutting
yourself off from out outside stuff.
Like there's a lot of mental health things that could be
impacting that. As we said with the dishes, like
I don't, I just like get in a slump and I, I can't get on top
of it until I can get out of it. And so I feel like this could be
the same kind of thing, like whatever it is that's going on
for this guy, he's in a slump and this is his his like
escapism from that. This numbs his brain.
This fills his brain with what is is oxytocin.
Oxytocin. Yeah, it like I don't.
Know dopamine. Dopamine.
Sorry, it gives him that rush. Oxytocin.
Is the healthy thing, Yeah. So it gives him a rush, it gives
him an escapism, it gives him a sense of maybe community, maybe
purpose, maybe there's something that's drawing him there that
that makes him feel all of the above.
There's 100% I can confidently say something sitting behind
this. I don't think anybody that's in
a healthy space falls into this. And I think it is really valid
to have a conversation with him, especially if you are at this
place where you're thinking this is like make a break at the
stage. You've communicated with him
about it before. I think it's really important to
dig, dig, dig with him curiously, gently into what is
sitting behind this. And I also think it's really
important and what I would be doing in this situation to make
it very clear where you're at and what this is doing.
Like how this is impacting you and what this is making you feel
like. If you're thinking I'm actually
close to being like, I need a coalesce.
That's important for him to know.
He sometimes people do need to know what they're about to lose
in order to be like, I need to snap out of this.
He might need to know that that's where you're at, that
that's how you're feeling. Reassuring him that you love
him. And you say in your post that
you have so many things that you enjoy doing with him.
You love him so much. You love him to the ends of the
earth, but you're so alone. Like you feel so, so alone.
So reassuring him that you want to be with him.
You love him. You enjoy that time with him,
but you're at the point where you can't keep going.
Like this is really important so that he knows the severity of
it. And like you have said, working
as a team in that. So it's not just all right now
you need to go fix this. Yeah, I want you to fix this or
I'm gone. It's how can we work on this
together? I think that's a really
important key, so. A big thing is like, again, go
the drastic mile, right? If he's like, I'll stop doing
it. It's a you a drug addict, right?
You're not going to keep any drugs in the house, right?
You know, you, just to be clear on that, you're not going to.
Yeah, leave drugs around the house for them to get to.
They're an addict. They're struggling with this.
They won't stop, right? You got to remove it all Oh it's
the same with the with the gaming consoles right You know,
I know people that have had to literally get rid of it get rid
of those temptations and I. Think as well, like just getting
rid of the games isn't going to make it better all of a sudden.
It's definitely a good step, but it's not going to make it better
because what we've found in the past is we'll move from 1:00
escapism to another. And so unless you're addressing
what is happening, unless you're actually intentionally digging
deeper than just the surface level out working of it, you'll
probably just find the same anxieties get transferred into a
different thing. Yeah, you latch on a different
way. And it might not be gaming, but
it might be alcohol. Well, COVID.
Again, we went through our three things, right?
We went from eating a lot. Yeah, we ate a lot.
Then we drank a lot. Then we bought a lot.
Yeah. Then we ate a lot and we would
stop one. We're like, oh, we're gonna stop
doing that, and we just go straight to the other one.
We just went on those 3 rotations.
Yeah. And that's, it's been genuinely
difficult to break, genuinely difficult to break.
But we needed to figure out why we were doing that in order for
us to even identify what was happening.
Because it wasn't just like, oh, we should stop spending money.
It was like if we'd done that, we would have just gone into
alcohol. And we did unknowingly.
But being able to identify that was a key for us to working
through it. I think there's so much that can
be done. It's it must be really
difficult. It would be really crappy, but
it doesn't mean that this is, this is dead in the water.
It's not going to go anywhere. It's actually if if you can both
get on board with working together on it, you can be a
really beautiful and again. It's not to put it all on her.
No. He has to buy in.
Yeah. And and just an encouragement
for her to recognise that he's probably not just in a logical,
clear space. So if she's a poaching, it just
come at it from a a gentle, curious mindset.
Yeah, well, that's that. That's good.
Was it a painting? Episode to.
Do now we do. And there's like a sleep sleep.
Maybe this outro will wake you up.
Gonna do a. Dance.
All right, I did a theme and I don't remember the name of the
style of the theme. And there we have it, folks.
Another episode of Honey We Need to Chat concludes Leaving the
world forever changed because clearly our words carry the
weight of global transformation. Return next week as we solve all
relational Well, we're going to solve all relational conundrums.
Conundrums. With the sheer power of our
microphones, we're going to do it.
Wow. Chat GPP.
Hey, until then keep your conversations is exaggerated and
Thea Thea theatrical. I have this outro.
Remember, you're not discussing it on a podcast.
If you're not discussing it on a podcast, is it even worth
talking about? Not a day chatty my friends, I
bet. The thing was exaggerated and
the no no. No, no, it's an S word.
Satirical. No, I don't.
Remember Circus? No.
All right, it's up. There, I love it.
All right. Well, that's all guys.
Bye. Good shot.
Thanks guys.