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  📍 Welcome back to another episode of The 200% Marriage Podcast. Boom. If you've been paying attention, which I'm sure you have, we've been reading the book, the 200% Marriage, your Winning Playbook to Be An Unstoppable Team. This is our audio version, if you will. There will be an audible version as well, but this one has a little behind the scenes director's cut, some stories, and some conversation chitchat after each chapter.

Last week, we finished chapter three, my Story Individually. Now we're transitioning to chapter four, our Story where we get together. Here we go.

Chapter four, Toques, Beer and Hockey. A Canadian Love story, eh. Love is what you get when you weren't looking for it and the universe was feeling mischievous.

Douglas Adams.

We met at a bar cliche, right? Well, sort of. We actually met at work, sort of confused yet? It was a work function at a bar. We worked for the same company and a couple of colleagues were retiring. We each knew one of the retirees and separately committed to them that we'd make an appearance at their special event.

I'll be honest, I'm not the most social person you're ever going to meet. In fact, the old version of me probably wouldn't crack the top 99% on your list of the most social people you know, I skipped out on many of these types of events in the past, but this time was different. I don't know why I can't really explain it other than the universe just had my back, as you'll soon see.

Plus, I thought it might be good for me to get out after work and hang out with people instead of feeling sorry for myself on the couch in front of a hockey game. We're Canadian. I don't know if we mentioned that yet. I told myself I would go primarily because if I went out for a few minutes, I could justify not leaving the house socially again for the rest of the week.

But Mostly because I committed to my colleague. I would, I planned to go make the rounds, make sure my retiring friends saw me, have a drink, congratulate her on a fantastic career, and then bounce.

If all goes to plan, I should be home before the start of the third period of the hockey game. Mer jumpingt in here real quick. I had a similar plan, like Craig, I was thinking of bailing on the party altogether, but my retiring friend popped her head into my office mid-afternoon. You're coming tonight, right? She was so happy and bubbly. I didn't have the heart to tell her no at that point. So I reluctantly said I'd go but wouldn't be able to stay long, so I went.

But As you'll soon learn, I did not end up leaving early back to Craig to tell you why.

When Mer says she's going to do something, she does it. That's integrity. It's one of the many things I love about her. It's a value for both of us. We both end up at this party and we're making our rounds moving from group to group, chatting with different folks, many of whom I've worked with, but haven't seen it in a while.

The bar is full of people looking for an excuse to get outta the house on a Thursday night. Eventually I end up chatting it up in the same group as this curly-haired, green-eyed beauty. She introduced herself as Meredith, I think, to help me out in case I forgot. I didn't. We had seen each other around the office before, and in fact, we had been in a couple of meetings together years ago.

We knew each other's names, but we hadn't really spoken much outside those chance encounters. We made up for that on this night in this bar, and once we started talking to each other, we didn't stop. That would be the end of me shuffling around that bar or any other bar or any other place forever. I didn't know anyone else was even in the bar.

The conversation just flowed effortlessly. My plan was completely blown. We were among the last to leave the bar that night. We closed it down. I don't know that I've ever shut a bar down. Definitely not since my university days college, if you speak American. I never did find out what happened in that hockey game.

I was so intent on watching. After that night, we texted back and forth and started hanging out. I will be honest, I was not expecting this. I was not looking for this. I had the full intention of being single for a long time and focusing on myself after my failed marriage. But the universe had other plans.

I genuinely believe that Mer and I were meant to be together. The universe was doing universe things and making that happen. I'm really grateful I let the universe take control. After all, what I had been doing didn't seem to be all that effective. I'd already put it in the ditch a few times, so I figured maybe it's best to let someone else take the wheel for a minute.

What's the worst that could happen? Boy, am I glad I did. Lesson learned. The universe is always working in your favour. Go with the flow. Don't fight it. Our first real date was a typical Canadian first date bundle up in boots in a parka, and of course a toque to meet up at the local watering hole for a few pre-game beers.

Then you guessed it, a hockey game. We had a great time. The conversation continued to flow. It never felt forced. It felt like we had always known each other. I'd never experienced anything like it before. I'm not quite sure how else to describe it other than it felt like home. We could make each other laugh and feel seen.

It didn't hurt that we were both East Coast Canadian kids and grew up with similar values. Always work hard and play hard, and always do both with love and kindness. But that's the beginning. And in the beginning, most relationships feel like ice cream on a hot summer day. What about when the honeymoon phase ends and we start to bring in our baggage and repeat the patterns we learned from our past.

You know, the inability to hold boundaries, communicate needs, or be emotionally available for someone else. Are we going to be able to handle that about each other? Are we even aligned on our vision for the future? Does she want kids Someday? I should probably tell her about all my emotional baggage. That's gonna be uncomfortable.

She seems so incredible. Why has someone not snatched her up yet? What's she hiding? Is she a serial killer? We both knew deep down that if this relationship was going to be different from our past relationships or the ones we experienced growing up, then we needed to show up differently. We needed to do things differently.

The rest of this book is us showing you how we did things differently, and more importantly, guiding you so that you have the most amazing relationship you've ever had where you feel loved, seen, valued, and respected. So let's set the foundation that ties it all together. Without a solid foundation, everything crumbles.

So we're gonna build that foundation together as a team right now. And it all starts with commitment, but not just one commitment. Like we're led to believe it's actually five commitments.

Was that a hard or easy chapter to write? To write? Yeah. You wrote that one? I did. It was easy in that I knew what happened. You were there. I was there, I call it. Yeah. Yeah. The hardest part of that chapter was knowing where to end it. Mm-hmm. I thought about it. You can go on for a long time.

There's a lot you could go deeper on but does it serve the purpose? Does it serve? Yeah. For the sake of doing it, sure we could do it, but we were very intentional with the book. Everything in it is there for a reason.

It serves a purpose. And I thought that, writing this story about how we met and the first little while of getting together and connecting and growing. I thought that it was a cool way to end the chapter so that the rest of the book, we take the journey together.

Mm-hmm. We didn't do things right early days in other relationships in our lives. And we got together and we're trying to do things differently. And how did we do that? Well, let's talk about it through the rest of the book.

I Also think to your point, we were very intentional. This book is not about us. The book certainly starts like it is. It starts like it's about us. It starts with our stories. That's just for the context of. We didn't know what the fuck we were doing either. Not this book is about us. Come read about us. So I think you struck a really nice balance in this chapter on, okay, now you're kind of caught up.

Now we're together. Yeah. And that's how I wanted my chapter as well. You don't wanna go, too deep into my personal story 'cause this book isn't about me. It's just here's where I'm coming from and how fucked up I got. Mm-hmm.

As we all do, and how fucked up she got and how she got here. We're all fucked up in our own ways. And so then two fucked up people got together and somehow figured it out. Yeah, and so not necessarily super important on the details of our story necessarily, just only to set the context of this is how fucked up we are.

If you're fucked up too, you're not alone. We got you. But also if we can do it . And we can figure this out and get to a better place in our relationship, I promise you can too. And to me, the big takeaway point from chapter four is a line that you said in there that you believe we were meant to be together.

And it was universe, doing universe things. And we've talked about this many times, but even recently, that it's all about timing, right? We went to university three hours apart. And I was in your city. You went to a much bigger city for university than I did. I was over there to party a lot.

Yeah. We never met. No, I, and I'm not convinced we weren't in the same place at the same time. Totally. Were at, at some point, like for sure. But you definitely were at the alehouse at the same time. It'd be interesting if there was like a, you know how sometimes in movies, it shows a love story and how these people like almost met almost a few times and they were in the same place.

Brushed past each other. You were talking to a friend and bumped into me or something. Yeah. Like I spill the drink on your foot. Yeah. Like, who knows? Like, it'd be interesting to have that footage to see if that ever happened. Because it probably did it. It possibly did, but we were, But the timing wasn't right then.

It definitely wasn't. If I had met you back in my twenties, if you remember chapter three, I was not mature enough to be in any sort of relationship that was going to last long. Mm-hmm. And so. Honestly, if the universe had put us in orbit with each other before it did, I don't know. I would like to think it would, but I don't know that it would.

Yeah, we would piss each other off. I would piss you off for sure. I think you probably would've pissed me off too, and it wouldn't have worked because we didn't become the people that we needed to become. To be with each other. . We needed to go and live separate lives for a while and learn some, learn some important lessons, learn some very important lessons, and become different people who were then the people who were meant to be together.

Because Be plus Do equals have, right. We had to become the people who could do the five commitments, do the relationship thing the right way. Yeah. So that we could have the thriving marriage. And so for me, the biggest takeaway from this chapter is that. The universe has your back. It does. It doesn't feel like it sometimes when you, things don't go your way.

It doesn't feel like it. It reminds me of, so when I was a kid, this did not come up in my, in my in chapter two, but my family went through a Garth Brooks phase for a while. So did I. And so we would drive, say to Florida and back. So we drive for days and we would listen to Garth Brooks, like on repeat.

Yeah. And there was a song called Unanswered Prayers. He goes back to like his high school reunion or homecoming game or something with his current wife and runs into his ex-girlfriend and was like, oh my God. All I ever wanted for for years and years was to marry this woman and like, thank God for unanswered prayers because I prayed to marry this one.

And if I had, I wouldn't be where I am now. And this chapter reminds me of that in that. The universe is always working in your favor. Might feel like it's not in the moment, but it just means you're not there yet. Yeah. You're not at the end of that part yet. The fairytale doesn't end when you're lost in the woods.

It ends at the end when you meet the thing person and become do the thing. Yeah. And it's funny because, you know, as much as we enjoy being together and we wish we could have been together sooner, longer, longer, sooner. To our point, it probably wouldn't have worked out that way. And you know, the quote at the beginning of this chapter, and we haven't really talked about the quotes.

The quotes are actually there. I love the quotes. They're very intentional. Good. And they really nail the chapters. They give you a hint of what's coming. But the quote for this chapter, love is what you get when you weren't looking for it and the universe was feeling mischievous.

I think that quote speaks perfectly to that situation for me in particular. Going through a divorce and really not looking for any sort of relationship on the heels of that. Right now, I'm focused on like, I just wanna, not deal with that trauma right now where I was like, let's go, where's my person?

We were in two different places but I am forever grateful and thankful that even though that was my position going in, I wasn't closed off to it.

And I didn't completely tune out the voice, at least the voice that I had tuned out in chapter three you know, the whisper. I at least listened to it. Your intuition, I listened to it in chapter four. I did take that lesson and we talked about that at the end of the last episode of how long did it take you to, to grasp these lessons?

Some of them longer than others, but I'm forever grateful that I grasped that one early. Because I actually, it didn't take long for me to use it. And implement it and learned from it. It just shows that even though we wish, we're further along or that we wish, you know, the business was further along, all the things that we would change about our life.

The thing is, is that it wouldn't in a vacuum work that way. You wouldn't have had the life skills or the lessons or the things that you needed to be successful in that, in that moment. And so that's why you didn't get it when you, wanted it. You got it when you were capable of handling it. I think it's just a really valuable lesson for people, as they, have those almost regrets, I guess.

Lean on the fact that the universe is always working in your favor and everything in its time. It's a bit of a trust, surrender and trust situation sometimes. Yeah. And for, you know, people who like to be in control, dunno who that would be.

That's an adjustment.

Well, that's chapter four. That's how we got together.

What's coming up next week on chapter five, chapter five. Let's get committed.

Love more. Bye.

If you want to turn your marriage into the engine that drives your business forward instead of the brakes keeping it stuck, book a free marriage and business strategy session with us at 200percentmarriage.com/strategycall. We'll see you next week.