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  📍 You've built the business. You are crushing it in your career. You've scaled your impact, but are you winning at home? Welcome to the 200% Marriage Podcast. We're Meredith and Craig, and we're here to help you kill that domestic drag and turn your partner into your most elite teammate. From Russian taxi mishaps to hailstorms on the summit, we're sharing the raw and real stories and tactical drills you need to move outta roommate-ville and into your 200% life.

So grab your gear. It's time to build an unstoppable team. Let's dive in.

  📍 Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage Podcast, continuing our journey through the book, the 200% Marriage, your Winning Playbook To Be an Unstoppable Team. This week is chapter eight. If you've been playing along, you know that we're each reading chapters in the book that we wrote. And so chapter eight is another of mine, so we're gonna read chapter eight, Russian Cab Confession.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. Randy Posh. One of our clients once told us, whenever we fight, I'm always the one who apologizes first. Sometimes I'm the only one who apologizes. My husband never owns his part. Let's pause and acknowledge that it doesn't feel good to apologize first, and in many cases, be the only one to step up and take responsibility.

Nobody enjoys being the one always saying sorry on repeat, but like our goodnight kiss story, one teammate needs to be the first to move to get both of you into momentum. Mer started it and kept it going at first, and then eventually I came along and joined her in the fun lip blocking momentum achieved.

The same goes here. Our client had to shoulder the apology load in the beginning by being consistent. She modeled what taking responsibility looks like. She was the leader in their relationship and went first. Little by little her husband started meeting her here and there, but he never would've started meeting her there or apologizing to her if she hadn't led from the front and gone first. She showed him the way through her actions, and eventually he came along. The thing is though, that level of leadership and accountability is only sustainable for a short time before the person who's always apologizing has a what the fuck Realization. A marriage is two people. Usually for this book, we're just gonna assume it's two people. The 200% marriage mindset is about having those two people take full 100% responsibility.

It will gain momentum at the start with one person starting, and it will continue as long as the other person eventually comes along. This is a journey. So if you're starting this process, you need to be consistent and patient. Consistently show up role modeling the behavior you want your teammate to adopt and have patience for them as they work to meet you where you are.

Suppose they don't meet you where you're leading, if they're not growing and not taking a hundred percent responsibility. Then an awkward and challenging conversation will need to be had, and we'll get into how to do that in chapter 22. As for our client, she was frustrated by constantly having to be first and often the only to apologize.

But she acknowledged that being a leader and going first isn't easy and doesn't always feel good. Still, it's worth the effort to get her husband to the same place where he's also taking full responsibility.

The growth they've shown is incredible. Mer and I are incredibly proud of both of them as they continue to push each other and have grace for one another as they grow. After decades of disconnection and disagreement, years filled with score, keeping resentment and defensiveness and offensiveness.

Their marriage has never been better. They're both still working every day to maintain their 200% marriage mindset. I think by now we've made a pretty good case that 50 50 is bullshit, and that 200% marriage mindset is the way to have a happy, thriving marriage without all that toxic score keeping resentment and defensiveness.

And if those were the only benefits, then those alone would make the effort of having a 200% marriage mindset worth it. Those are not the only benefits. See, when you adopt this mindset, you also drop the need to be right. You become more focused on being happy than being right or winning the argument. I don't know where the saying came from, and I'm doing absolutely no research on it because you know our stance on bibliographies. But the saying is something like, you can be right or you can be happy. It's your choice.

When you adopt a 200% marriage mindset, the whole "need -to -be- right" loses its power over you. Instead, you're both acting in the best interest of your marriage, regardless of who's right. It eliminates the ego, and the ego is your enemy in a marriage. The ego is your enemy in almost everything, really. Your ego wants you to be right. It wants to point out not only that you are right, but also why they are wrong. It wants to win. It intends to provide you with significance and make you feel all self-righteous. Those are all pretty unredeemed qualities for if we're being honest, but that's what the ego does and that's why it's your enemy.

Your ego is never working in your marriage's Best interest. You need to put that mofo in the passenger seat and take back control. The 200% marriage mindset is the tool to do just that. Just recently on our group coaching call, shout out to the Infinite relationship Mastermind. We were so proud to hear about one of our clients wins. A minor disagreement.

He came home very excited to tell her all about his day. She was having a tough day and she felt steamrolled. He didn't ask her about her day. They spiraled for a bit, not nearly as long as they used to.

Then they quashed it by talking about how she was feeling. That conversation ended with him saying, I need to remember always to ask you about your day. That's my job as your husband. He took 100% responsibility for the outcome and committed to changing his behavior.

Then she said, no, actually it's my responsibility to tell you about my day, not just wait for you to ask me about it. And if something you say or do leaves me feeling frustrated or resentful, then it's my job to tell you about it in the moment, not spin on it and make it worse in my head and not talk about it.

Did you catch that 200% marriage mindset conversation? They're walking the walk. They're talking the talk. They're living their 200% marriage, and it's the coolest thing to watch happen in real time. This is exactly what a 200% marriage looks like in real life. Those conversations, those outcomes, those commitments.

Here's another example of a 200% marriage mindset in action. It's a bit of a long story, so stick with us. It's funny and entertaining. Mind you, I am biased as fuck. Hopefully you'll agree with me. If not, sorry, not sorry. How Canadian and somehow at the same time, so un Canadian of me also. Where else have you got to be?

You're reading a book. Just chill.

It was 2018. We planned a very last minute trip to Russia for the FIFA World Cup. That's soccer if you're American or Canadian, football to 99% of the world. The World Cup is a global party. The atmosphere is electric. Russia was on our list of places we wanted to check out, and we thought there would be no better time than when the whole world is paying attention.

The World Cup is a big deal to most of the world. It's a global month long party that only happens once every four years. Fans from all over the world are flocking to Russia, hoping to see their home country hoist the trophy. As a result, Russia wants to ensure none of these visitors from around the world overstay their welcome. They have specific visa registration rules to crack down on illegal immigration.

When we arrive in Moscow, our quote unquote host is required to register us with the Russian immigration authorities. Our host is our hotel, so no problem. Hotels are well versed in this process and ensure the rules are followed with no additional effort on our part, except there is in fact a problem as we get outta the taxi from the airport the driver points toward a non-descript brick, high-rise building. We assume to indicate to us non Russian-speaking folk, that this is the address we gave him. So Mer and I look at each other, both having the same thought. This doesn't really look much like a hotel.

And we were right. It wasn't a hotel at all. It was an apartment building. In my last minute rush to book the accommodations, I booked someone's apartment not a hotel. I used a very popular website with the word hotels in its name. In fact, it's the only word between the www. andthe .com. So you can understand how I might've assumed it was a hotel.

That quick, seamless process of getting our hotel to registrar us just became a lot more difficult. We were warned before leaving Canada not to engage with the police because they might be a tad corrupt, and to make sure that we always had our required documents with us in case we were ever required to produce them by said potentially corrupt police.

We were both a little concerned about the possibility of ending up in a Russian gulag, likely worst case, but the concern was there nonetheless. We were in Moscow for six days and every single day we asked our hosts via text for the required paperwork, and every single day they would not produce it. One excuse after another.

Everything we read said we might not be able to leave the country without it. And to be clear, we definitely wanted to leave the country. We tried everything we could think of. We went to the Canadian consulate. No help whatsoever. We spent a day in line in a Russian government building, quite possibly the least fun and most depressing place I've ever spent six hours while on vacation we got nowhere, so on our last day in Moscow, we just refused to leave this random person's apartment without the documentation. It was stressful because we had a flight to catch to our next destination. We were 100% bluffing. There was no way we were gonna miss our flight, stay in Moscow and pick a fight with a Russian on their home soil by refusing to leave their house, but we made a good show of it.

We were still there when the next guests arrived in the afternoon, groceries in hand, wondering what these two visibly frustrated yet weirdly polite people were doing in their space. Luckily, our host did not call our bluff and produce the documents. Or at least they told us they were the documents they were written in Russian.

So it was a trust but cannot verify situation at this point.

Now we had a flight to catch. We hustled out to the street, hopped in a cab, and raced towards the airport. We finally had what we'd been trying to get for the last six days. To say we were relieved in that moment is a vast understatement. It felt like a weight had been lifted, and we could finally enjoy the rest of our time in Russia, knowing we could leave and fly back to Canada without issue in a few weeks.

We arrive at the airport later than we want it with all that bluffing and Moscow traffic is no joke, but we hustle our asses through security like efficiency ninjas. Somehow we find ourselves with a few minutes of downtime to eat something. Our experience with food in Russia so far hasn't been great. So we've tried to stick to what we know we like as much as possible. Mer goes to grab her phone to check if we are lucky enough to have a McDonald's in this airport, except Mer doesn't appear to have her phone.

You know that feeling of panic you get when you just know you fucked up. That feeling of heat that overcomes you and your heart races, and you start sweating and patting down every part of your body as if you have pockets everywhere. Just praying your phone somehow magically ended up in your armpit pocket.

That was the vibe I was picking up from there, but I refused to believe she didn't have it. So I got in on the action of checking ludicrous places for a phone. We both knew deep down she'd left somewhere on our journey. Check your shoe. I didn't see you check your shoe yet. We both knew she didn't have it, and the longer we fucked around trying not to believe what was incredibly obvious at this point, the less time we had to find it.

The icing on this shit cake is that mer stores her credit card and her driver's license in the back of her phone. So we immediately jumped into solution mode. The first thing we did was run back to security. My advice if you find yourself in this situation is don't do that. The Russian security folks didn't love that.

Plus they don't speak English, so you can't exactly explain your wild, irrational behavior. Realizing we may be about to get tased shot or beaten, we changed course. I called her phone, a Russian voice picked up, realizing I don't speak Russian. I find a lovely Russian lady who does speak broken English.

She's got some good news and some not as good news for us. The good news is we now sort of know where the phone is. The taxi driver has it. The not as good news is he's on his way back to the city with a fare. He can't get it to us right away, but as soon as he drops off his new customer, he will return to the airport with the phone generous offer.

But we are scheduled to take off long before he would be back. Fortunately, we're coming back through this airport again in a few days on another stopover, so we're making arrangements to meet up there in four days to get the phone back. We let him know we will pay him his regular fare out and back regardless of whether he has a customer.

Four days later, as we are set to take off from Sochi, I let the driver know we will be at the Moscow Airport in a couple hours and I turn my phone off for the flight. When we land, I have a message from the driver saying he's not coming. If I want the phone, I have to meet him at a train station in Moscow and bring money to pay him less than ideal.

Even if I had been remotely curious about what it would be like to get shaken down for money in a Moscow train station, which I was not, we had a connecting flight to catch. This was a stopover. We didn't have time for these shenanigans. At this point, it doesn't seem like we are going to get anywhere working with the driver directly.

To fast forward to the end, we eventually got the phone back. I figured out which taxi company he drives for, found an email address, typed a Google translate Russian email, explained the situation and sent it to their customer service inbox. Company mailed the phone to our hotel in St. Petersburg, our last stop on this whirlwind tour of Russian cities, and it was waiting for us when we arrived there over a week later.

By the way, in the back of the return phone was mer's, driver's license and her credit card. All three items were returned, safe and sound, along with a little gift from the company and a card that said, thank you for your trust. It's not like we had a lot of choice to be honest, but it was a really kind gesture.

The reason we tell you this story is to illustrate how the 200% marriage mindset helped us navigate a really stressful situation. It would've been really easy for us to finger point blame and argue about who was to blame for the situation we were in, especially after we'd just finished dealing with the high stress immigration paperwork issue, but we didn't.

It would also have been incredibly easy to let the stress of her last phone ruin the whole trip and the experience we were having, but we didn't. The trip wasn't ruined at all. We had a fantastic time and created lifelong core memories. We realized a couple of essential things. One, we're on the same team. Arguing about this situation or who was to blame, definitely wouldn't change the fact we were in it, together.

We flexed our unstoppable team muscles and got to work solving the problem we now faced. Two. There was enough blame to go around. Sure, Mer left her phone in the cab. When we got out of the taxi, I didn't ask her if she had everything with her. I didn't do one last sweep to make sure we had everything.

I will tell you though, I do that sweep now every single time. The point is there are things I could have done to prevent that situation from happening too. Jumping into solution mode together brought us the best possible outcome. It was adopting the 200% marriage mindset that got the phone back, and in the process actually strengthened our bond and deepened our trust for each other.

Because by not getting angry or frustrated at each other, by not finger pointing, blaming, or fighting about the situation, and by getting to work on solving the problem together, we create an even greater trust. When you're in a really stressful situation and you continue to show up, take personal responsibility and have each other's backs, that tells the other person that they can trust you.

Trust skyrockets when you work together, not when you blame each other. This doesn't just work for us, like we're special or something. We're not. It works for our clients too. We were working with a couple who were getting caught up in financial disagreements. Fights about money are extremely common. By the way, spoiler: it's one of the big three sources of conflict in a marriage. You're probably interested to learn what the other two are... with Time young Grasshopper, we'll get into that more. In chapter 22. When they came to us, they were fighting about where and how to spend the money they brought in.

They would meet every month to discuss their budget, allocate the funds to the different buckets to keep the family afloat for another month. When it comes to money, sometimes difficult decisions need to be made on where you allocate your resources. This family was in a season of making these tough decisions.

The problem was that she would ask whether he could pay a bill or spend money on something that wasn't allocated in their last meeting. That meant diverting resources from an agreed upon bucket to the new bucket. He would do it because as a man, he wanted to make her happy. But at the end of the month when an important bill didn't get paid because the money had been diverted to something she had requested mid month, she would get upset and they would argue because he hadn't paid the bill like they had discussed he would in their previous monthly meeting, she knew difficult decisions had to be made, but she didn't wanna take responsibility for making the tough call.

So she would ask him to do it, knowing he wouldn't say no. She would get what she wanted in the moment, and then when it was time for the consequences, she could point the finger at him for not paying the important bill that was now past due. He would get defensive and then shut down. They'd argue and disconnect.

He'd go into a shame spiral and feel like he wasn't good enough because in his mind this was evidence of him not doing enough to take care of his family. This would happen on repeat every few weeks. Can you see how that cycle can cause disconnection in a marriage? How would this situation play out if they both adopted a 200% marriage mindset?

How would their relationship change if they both took full responsibility for every part of every situation they find themselves in, in every part of the relationship? What if they both did the budget together every week? What if instead of asking him to pay for something outside the budget, she made that decision herself as the primary manager of the home?

What if instead of letting him shoulder the whole burden, she took a hundred percent responsibility for the finances in their relationship and made the call to buy more food and postpone paying that other bill. By taking ownership of the situation and making the difficult decision.

She doesn't put the burden of the decision and its consequences solely on him. He doesn't get defensive. He doesn't shut down. They don't argue about money every month. That's exactly what happened. They both still meet and review their finances together. Each month they make their monthly budget together.

They both have shifted their careers and gotten creative about bringing in new money for the family, and most importantly, she took over the reins as the house's leading manager and when the money needs to be diverted from one bucket to another, she doesn't ask him to do it. She does it. They discuss where it's coming from and what the consequences will be, but they no longer have monthly money arguments that would leave them disconnected for days at a time.

By each taking full responsibility, they have transformed how they interact with one another and their relationship is much stronger for it.

It's really inspiring to watch their transformation happen. It's inspiring to watch all of our clients' relationships transform in real time when it clicks for them that by changing their mindset from 50 50 to one where they take full responsibility for everything in their relationship, everything in their relationship changes.

All it takes is a commitment to having a 200% marriage mindset. But as we discussed, that's just the first commitment required to have the thriving, successful, kick ass marriage you've always wanted and that you deserve. Mer is going to deep dive into the second commitment because this life is a solo journey. Even though we decide to join forces and do life with another badass human along the way, the one relationship you have from cradle to grave is the one you have with yourself.

Nice work. That was a longer one. It's a longer chapter. We did consciously try to keep the chapters short. Both of us like to read books that have shorter chapters. 'cause you feel like you're making progress. Yeah. Like I like to get to the end of a chapter when I put it down. So big long chapters are not my jam.

No. So we made a conscious effort with this book to keep the chapters short. Yeah. This is probably the longest chapter in the whole book. There's that one and there's one other chapter that's maybe close to the same. But yeah, they're the, they're, they're, this would be about the longest. Mm-hmm. What I love about this chapter is it's the messy part, it's the what it looks like in real life. I love the idea of the 200% marriage mindset. I love the concept of taking a hundred percent responsibility. And we gave the example early days explaining the concept with the, the Goodnight Kiss story. But what I love about this chapter is that it's, it's the messy part of it.

That was a, a nice, simple, easy story to explain the concept, and it worked perfectly in that situation. But this chapter. Is the messy real life, what it actually looks like. Yeah. How come I always have to apologize. Apologizing sucks, and I'm the only one doing it. Like, that feels shitty. That's a messy, that's just, that's just messy part of a relationship.

Like that's, that's not fun. Mm-hmm. And so I, I love that this chapter shares the mess of the transition too. It's messy when you don't have 200% marriage mindset. It's a lot simpler when you do, but going from one to the other is messy. Mm-hmm. It's not easy. Yeah. And, and then when you talk about the Russian Cab story, I tell you when that phone situation happened, it was not easy to take a hundred percent responsibility in that situation.

Boy was I not happy. And that's the thing. I wasn't happy either. Of course. I was really upset with myself. Yeah. Like I couldn't fucking believe I left my phone, my driver's license and my credit card in the back of a Russian cab driving away from the airport. Yeah. I couldn't believe that I did it. I couldn't believe it.

Yeah, me neither. I was piling on to myself. I know. On the inside. I know. It took a minute for me to just. In that moment, breathe and be like, she did not try to do this. This is not something that she signed up for either willingly so all that to say is like we have to have, we just have to have grace for each other and, and know that doing this, having, taking a responsibility is not easy.

To be fair, I very well could have said, Hey, do you have everything? Check the cab, got your phone, got your bag, got your hat, got your wallet, got your keys, whatever. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. And so had I done that, very likely we would have the phone. So, but we wouldn't have this great story that illustrates so many no concepts for us to use.

Fantastic. , and all's well that ends well. Mm-hmm. You know, getting together on the same side of like, and you know, we're gonna get into being an unstoppable team in, in, in a little bit, in a couple chapters, but this is a really great example of being an unstoppable team and that it's, it's not you against you.

Like I, if I had started finger pointing and getting mad at you for leaving your phone in the cab, then we've now taken our eye off the real prize, the real problem. The real thing that we're driving towards and now we're focused on each other, bickering and fighting back and forth, and that's how you lose.

And so by not doing that, by, taking a minute, centering ourselves, remembering that we're on the same team, we now have a problem we need to face, we now have a goal that we need to achieve. How do we go and get the thing that we want, which is the phone, credit card, and driver's license back. And get on the same side.

And when you can do that to the point in the last chapter, it's an exponential. When you have that energy directed towards something, both of you, it becomes an exponential effort. And so now it's way more likely that you're going to achieve your goal. And ultimately that's why we ended up getting the phone, the credit card and the driver's license back was, and the gift and the thank you card, all the things.

And it was just, it was all because that we just got on the same side and operated as a team. And it's interesting too, in this particular example, the way to get the phone back, the solution required communicating with either the driver, which it was so difficult 'cause of the language barrier. So there was a lot of WhatsApp via Google Translate.

This, this could have been a much longer story. Yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. Like there, running around like a chicken with your head cut off in the airport trying to find someone who speaks English and Russian. It was, was a couple of times very difficult. It was wild. And then you having to like take his message, put it into Google Translate, write your message, put it into Google Translate, copy that, put it back in.

Like it's, it's a time consuming, difficult, resource heavy process to try and communicate via text with someone in a different language. And I couldn't do it like I didn't have a phone. So not only do I not have, like, not only have I created this problem that we are trying now to solve together, I can't even contribute much to the solution because I don't have the tools required Yeah.

To actually solve the problem. So not only have I created the mess that we are in, but I also can't get us out of it. So you had to step in one and. Be calm and not pile onto me worse than I was already piling onto myself. And two, actually take the lead and do the work because I didn't have the tools to do it.

You had to be the one to do it. Yeah. So in this situation, not only did you like the, the, the 100% responsibility circle was quite large for you in this relative to what it was for me. Well, yeah. But, and at the same time, I can look at that and say, that must have really sucked for you because as someone who like, like, like it was your phone that was lost.

So you, there's a, there's a component of feeling the blame mm-hmm. Of creating this situation. As much as we're all taking responsibility, at the end of the day, you're gonna feel more responsible for the problem. Correct. Because it was your phone. But then to not be able to contribute to the solution like you would want, that has to be really difficult to navigate just internally, like the voices and the, the, the things, stories, the stories that you're telling yourself, like, I'm a, I'm a dummy, and all these things that go through your head when you make a mistake and then don't really have the resources to get yourself out of it.

You're relying on someone else to help you get through it. There's a, there's a shame and a blame and a, the whole situation going on behind the scenes and, and I think by recognizing that in our teammates when that's happening, and just having empathy for them and just showing up for them and not piling on, that's how you build the trust, like we talk about.

That's, that's really how you build trust, is consistently showing up over time and showing them that it's a safe space. Showing them that you care, showing them that, you know, you're showing up in empathy and that you understand what they're going through and, and just being there as a team to get to the ultimate goal.

Mm-hmm. This is a, yeah, there's a, there was a lot going on in this story that, you know, just from, for the sake of, it was already a bit of a long chapter to tell the full story with every detail would've been so much more . but yeah, you're right. The, the back and forth with the Google translate, the immigration paperwork before that even was just, it was such a nightmare for six days. We were constantly like avoiding certain places where there would be more of a dedicated police force out. Like we didn't go to Red Square. We didn't go in there because there was always people, like police officers asking for paperwork and stuff, and we didn't know what we needed and we knew we didn't have that thing. We didn't want to end up in a Russian gulag, so we were like, it's not worth it. Let's just avoid it. So we went and checked out every other different place in Moscow and we had a great time. But, but yeah. It was always in the back of your mind. It was like, yeah, but there's a police officer over there.

Let's go this way. Yeah. And I still remember when we were in that apartment and those people came in with their groceries and they're looking at us like, why are you here? Who are you? And why are you in my place? And it was just funny that Hi just polite Canadians here not leaving.

It was weird. Anyway. they came through or so they say they did. don't even, I never did. The thing is, the silly stupid part of it is, is that document went in our bag and it never came out at any point ever. It was never asked for, it was never required at the border, nothing. Mm-hmm. Literally never asked.

Didn't need it for anything. No, but the benefit of hindsight, it was a waste of our mental bandwidth to worry about. And so another lesson is a lot of times we worry and stress about things that in the end don't even really matter that much. Mm-hmm. yeah, I'm actually working, that's one of the things I've been working on this year so far in 2026, is not worrying, trusting that things are gonna work out.

Yeah. It's going well. How's it, how's it going? Yeah, it's going pretty good. Good. We needed that mindset in there. In Russia. Yeah. I didn't have it in 2018. No, no, we didn't have it yet. We're just cultivating that part now. We worried about a lot of stuff. We worried about a lot of stuff. And that government building, do you remember the chaos?

Oh my gosh. They were having us line up in different, and the numbers and then there was numbers. There was no system. There was no was a loose leaf paper. You signed your name on it. There was, there was no system by the place that actually did it. One guy who was there took it upon himself to explain a system to get people to have some sort of organization. The government building itself had no process. This gentleman took a piece of paper and a pencil out and had people, and he's telling everyone in Russian, and to be fair, 99% of the people there do speak Russian. So it makes sense, but we have no clue what's going on and we're just piecing it together by people's actions.

And then someone, I think. I can't remember broken English maybe had told us. But anyway, it was, it was just such an adventure. And um, also eventually when we got to the front of the line, we were told, and also with a translator in broken English that we can't get the paperwork for ourselves. Yeah. There was six hours of wasted effort for sure.

They could not help us at all. They were like, no, you go, go. You find it somewhere else. And so we were like, cool. That's, that's a day we'll never get back. Russian Cab Confessions. That's chapter eight. Russian Cab Confessions. Next week we're kicking off part three. Mer's gonna jump into chapter nine, your mask first.

So we will see you next week. Bye.

 And that's a wrap on this week's briefing. If this episode hit a nerve, don't let your momentum die. Head over to The200percentmarriage.com/unstoppableteam. Take the Unstoppable team audit. Find out exactly where your domestic drag is hiding so you can start optimizing your team today. And if you love the show, share it with another power couple who refuses to settle for fine because a 200% life is better with a community.

See you on the next adventure.