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📍 Welcome back to another episode of The 200% Marriage podcast with Meredith and Craig. We've been reading The 200% Marriage: Your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team.

The book that we wrote.

Woot, woot. The book that we wrote, released earlier this year.

We are in chapter 21. We're just gonna get after it. I'm gonna read you chapter 21, 'cause I wrote that chapter. Chapter 21, Comfort or Connection. "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off," Gloria Steinem. All right, now that you understand the frame we're operating in, that it all comes back to the team, we're going to dive into the meat of the third commitment of your 200% marriage. It's the commitment most closely related to the one commitment most people believe is all that's required when you get married.

Like we've already covered, most people have it wrong, and most people don't have the marriage you want. They don't even have the marriage they want. So we're going to set the record straight. I say this third commitment is the most closely related to the one most people think about because it's not exactly the same.

Most people believe the one commitment needed in marriage is the vow to stay together for life through sickness and in health, good times and bad. But imagine living out that commitment without knowing how to actually create the marriage of your dreams. Imagine living that commitment out of obligation, staying together no matter what, but you're unhappy and unfulfilled.

I don't have to imagine it. As you know, I lived it. So you stay together, but do none of the work to create a thriving relationship. You're just getting by. You're surviving. Staying together for the sake of staying together is a recipe for disaster and unhappiness, and life is too short for unhappiness.

There is so much more to life than just getting by. You're meant for more than that. You deserve more than that. So the third commitment goes further than that. The third commitment is the commitment to your team and your teammate, the commitment to your spouse and your marriage. It doesn't just mean that you're in it for the long haul, no matter what.

It means you're in it for the long haul, and you're going to put in the work. You're committing to what's best for your marriage. That means committing to grow in your marriage, committing to understand your teammate's needs and meeting them whenever possible, committing to understand their triggers and traumas and supporting them through them, committing to addressing your own triggers and traumas and taking responsibility for working through them, committing to communication, understanding, bridging your different styles, and expressing yourself effectively, committing to having difficult conversations and growing through conflict, committing to connecting, being intentional every day, and watering your relationship garden.

I just made that up this second. It works, so we're going with it. It's committing to intimacy outside the bedroom where it starts and inside the bedroom. Bow-chicka-wow-wow. Committing to showing up every day and doing the little things in your relationship because the little things are actually the big things.

We say this over and over again. Get good at the little things because it's the little things that transform your relationship. This understanding is fundamental to the commitment to the team and your teammate. What else is fundamental to your team's success? Communication. Let's talk about it. How many times have you felt like you were talking to your teammate, telling them about your day, dropping gold nuggets, relaying important information like pickup times, dinner plans, your feelings, nuclear launch codes, only to realize they heard absolutely none of it?

Frustrating, right? Happens all the time. Ask Mer. Happens in every relationship. You are not alone. Here's relationship communication rule number one: timing matters. If you start a conversation when you're ready, but your teammate just woke up, just got off work, or is in the middle of something big, they won't be ready to receive your wisdom.

So be explicit. In other words, state it clearly. I don't mean be sexually explicit. Well, do you. You're grown-ups. It may get their attention, but what I'm saying is be clear about it. Let them know you have something important to share, and ask them when a good time would be.

Agree on the time, then talk at that time. Now, here's the bigger challenge. Many of us would rather walk around in wet socks all day than have a difficult or awkward conversation. Humans are wired for comfort. We avoid discomfort at all costs. And let's be honest, many important relationship conversations fall into the uncomfortable category.

So instead of dealing with them, we just don't. We avoid it. But here's a hard truth. That avoidance is precisely what's fucking up your relationship. Listen, if I love you, I have to be willing to have this difficult conversation about avoidance with you, even if neither of us wants it. That willingness to lean into the discomfort is an act of love.

It's me showing I care enough about you and your team to get a little uncomfortable for your growth, and that's how you need to think about it in your relationship too. Your willingness to have the uncomfortable conversation is an act of love and a way to show your full commitment to your team and to your teammate, just as I face discomfort to tell you that your constant need for comfort and your unwillingness to have hard conversation are what's holding your marriage back.

I know because I've lived it in my first marriage. I avoided difficult conversations until it became so unbearable that I was forced to have the hardest one of all. And you'd think that that experience would have taught me never to avoid tough conversations again. I wish I could say that's true. I got better at it, but I'm human. I still get it wrong sometimes. Mer and I left our corporate jobs at the same time. I'm not gonna lie, scariest decision ever. Corporate life was all we ever knew, and we were really good at it, and our identity was tied to it.

But we weren't happy. Cue the most insane year I've ever experienced, 2020. There was a global pandemic. You may have heard about it. I believe it made the news. There was a lot of uncertainty as companies tried to understand this new future and navigate through the chaos.

Our company did some restructuring and closed some offices, including ours. At first, they had my job staying in a tiny field office and Mer's job relocating across the country. Obviously, they do not know us very well. We are a package deal, forever and always. We told them as much. They came back to us with an option.

We both relocate across the country or we leave. Up to that point, neither of us would have exactly been considered risk-takers. But in that moment, we became giant risk-takers. We chose to leave. We jumped out of the plane and decided to build our parachute on the way down. The only issue was that we had no clue how to build a parachute.

Leaving corporate life also meant leaving corporate paychecks. The steady stream that paid our bills kept us fed and funded our life. So yeah, we'd better get our poop in a group and figure out how to replace that income fast.

So we fired up the Google machine, as you do, and found that 90% of millionaires made their wealth in real estate, and 90% of millionaires can't be wrong, right? The next logical step was obviously to launch a real estate investing company. So we did. We poured tens of thousands of dollars into business coaching, ads, websites, marketing, all the things.

We went all in. We worked 16-hour days crunching numbers, analyzing deals, and running marketing, and we were absolutely miserable. It was worse than our corporate jobs. It was just as unfulfilling with the bonus of no paycheck. The worst part was that it was beginning to impact our relationship. The stress and misery of this work were taking their toll, and we started taking it out on each other.

We were getting short with each other, sniping at each other, and just general not us type stuff. If you remember way back at the beginning of our relationship, we committed to doing things differently than we had in the past. So our relationship has become our bedrock. It was our foundation for everything we were building, and yet we began to feel small cracks forming in that foundation.

The thing is, we let this go on for weeks. We decided to do this together, and it really sucked. We each hated the direction we were going, but in the moment, we didn't know we both hated it because we didn't talk about it. We were both avoiding the difficult conversation. Even though we were unhappy and uncomfortable, the conversation we were picturing was even worse, so we avoided it.

Until finally, enough was enough. We finally had the difficult conversation we'd been putting off for weeks. We finally threw the challenge flag. We borrowed the concept from the NFL, National Football League. In the NFL, coaches have a red challenge flag in their pocket, so if a ref makes a call on the field that the coach disagrees with, they can throw the challenge flag, and that tells the ref to take a timeout and have another look at the call on the field to make sure the right call is made.

Mer and I have adopted this philosophy. When one of us thinks a call we made wasn't right, we can throw the challenge flag at any time. To be clear, we are challenging a decision, an action, a situation we put ourselves in. We're never challenging each other. In that conversation, the call we were challenging was the decision to start a real estate investing company.

I was miserable. I suspected Mer was, too. It was time to throw the challenge flag, so I did. We had a heart-to-heart. It wasn't easy. We apologized. We cried. We talked. Most importantly, we got back on the same page and set a new game plan, one we both felt good about. Through that conversation, we discovered something.

We had no idea what we wanted for our lives. We didn't know who we were or who we wanted to be. We didn't know what our gift was to give the world. We hadn't yet done the work to understand what we were trying to create. We jumped into real estate based on scarcity and fear, on the need to replace our corporate income, but our hearts weren't in it.

That difficult conversation helped us correct the call we had made on the field. It pulled us off of the wrong path and set us off on the right one, the one we were meant for, the one leading back to ourselves and our real calling. Looking back, it blows my mind how long we avoided it, knowing how transformational it turned out to be.

That's the power of uncomfortable conversations. They can change your entire life. If you know deep down that there's a conversation you need to have, please throw the challenge flag. We hear it a lot. "But when do we have the conversation? We're so busy. The only times we're together, we're exhausted. We'll probably kill each other if we have it then."

Fair point. Definitely don't start the convo if you're worried you might need to hide a body mid-discussion. Less than ideal. But the simple fact is the conversation still needs to happen. You have to prioritize it, and you need to have it at a time when you both can play full out and actually receive what's being shared.

Something that has really helped us and our clients is a weekly team meeting. Dedicate one hour weekly to review the big rocks in every area of life. Look at the week ahead together, schedules, projects, priorities, and get aligned on what's coming up. Then look back to unpack what worked, what didn't, and what and how to adjust moving forward. That weekly meeting becomes a safe, structured space to handle 95% of the big stuff so you're not blindsiding each other mid-chaos. It's a way to engineer some of the friction out before you experience it. Remember the lesson we learned from our friend Sharon Lechter?

Here's a refresher. She says high emotion equals low intelligence. By the way, Sharon's written like a million books, closer to 30, and sold like a bazillion copies, more like 40 million. She's really smart. We tend to listen to her. You should too. She's saying when emotions run high, rational thought tanks.

Bad decisions follow, stupid ones too. The meeting creates structure, lowering the chance you'll default to emotional, stupid responses. We even built a simple template to make those meetings easier. You can access it in the resources section at the back of this book.

That doesn't mean you won't still have to address things in the moment. Not everything can wait for the weekly meeting. Some stuff needs to be addressed right away. That's why we also recommend a daily chitchat. Nothing crazy, just 10 minutes over coffee to align on the day or a quick evening chat. What was the best part of your day?

What's tomorrow look like? Anything one-off that needs attention? How can I support you? It's an opportunity to get curious and support each other. Having structure in place for 95% of life will dramatically take pressure off finding the right time to have uncomfortable conversation. For the other 5%, send us an email, and we'll be happy to work through it with you.

Seriously, we love this shit, and we're really good at it. www.the200percentmarriage.com/contactus.

Boom. That's chapter 21.

That's chapter 21.

There's a few things in that chapter that I really like. Actually, but I mean-

All of it, yeah ...

the whole thing.

Give it to me.

I just wanna call out again what a good job we did on the quotes to start the chapter. Like, they really do give the vibe for that chapter.

So that Gloria Steinem quote is just bang on for this chapter, I think.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off Yeah. Because as we get into, these conversations will set you free. W- you don't always wanna hear them. You don't always wanna have them. They- Well- ... are likely to piss you off- For sure ... for a minute. Mm-hmm. But on the other side of it, it goes, and I'm sure we have this somewhere, but it also to me goes with the, um, Monty Williams quote of, "Everything you want is on the other side of hard."

And as someone who strongly dislikes and for a long time avoided difficult conversations as much as I possibly could- Yep ... it does, does not make life any easier to avoid those conversations. It, it- What you want is on the other side of that ... it doesn't, but it's, it's human nature to avoid it anyway, even though you know.

Like, 'cause we know deep down that eating right and healthy now- Mm-hmm ... or working out even- Mm-hmm ... working out today is gonna benefit us in our life long term.

Mm-hmm.

But I don't wanna go out and lift heavy shit right now. Mm-hmm. I w- I don't wanna go for a run. I don't wanna do those things 'cause it's uncomfortable now.

Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna put that off. But then look 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road, 40 years down the l- road, you're in worse shape. Things are harder. Your life is harder. Mm-hmm. You're not as healthy. Now life has become just infinitely harder all around, and we know that.

Mm-hmm.

But that's there, and right now is now.

Mm-hmm. And I'm more interested in now. We're wired for right now.

Yeah, we're wired for comfort.

And we're wired for thinking s- short term.

Immediate.

Yeah, immediate

s- gratification Immediate gratification, for sure. I love it because most people would say off the cuff that, "Oh, I would die for my husband or my wife.

I would die for my kids." Great. You would die for your kids. Would you have an uncomfortable conversation to role model that for them? Would you work on forgiveness to role model that for them? Would you unpack your own baggage so you stop role modeling that shitty behavior for them? Would you take accountability for hard things?

Would you stop score keeping in your marriage for your kids? You'd die for them, but will you have a hard conversation so that you can have a better relationship to role model for them so that they go out and they find a h- happy relationship and learn these skills growing up instead of having to learn them the hard way like we all are doing?

Mm-hmm.

I'm sure you would die for your kids. That's... to me, that's the easy part. Would you actually do the work for your kids? Would you do the work for your spouse? Don't just die for them. That, there's... You're no good to them then.

And most people don't think of it that way. They don't make that...

They don't consider that. Mm. Life is the ultimate sacrifice. But it's, it's most, for most people, death isn't even your number one fear.

Yeah.

Is it your number one sacrifice? I get your point. Yeah. But most people don't think of it in those terms.

So let's start talking about it in those terms so that people will start thinking about it in those terms, because I, I know, like,

I- Also, words are easy to say.

Like, I would, I would die for my kids and, and, and most people probably would.

For sure.

Most people probably would.

But- But would you also-

Have

a- ... have an uncomfortable conversation?

Yeah.

And that's something I, like I said, I avoided uncomfortable conversations for as often as I possibly could throughout my entire life, to be perfectly honest.

Like- So

did

I ... you, I've had them. You had to break up with a boyfriend,

Yeah ...

and, that's awkward and-

Yeah ...

but I... And it's funny 'cause even back then, in my early 20s, I can remember "Ugh, just gotta bite the bullet and make this phone call and, get this over with, and I know that afterwards I can, go out and have fun and do my own..."

It's only, it's only gonna be a, a, a, a few minutes of shit that I have to get through to get to the other side of it. So even then I knew that, it's gonna be so much better when this is over, but, oh, God, I don't wanna do it. So I've, I, I have done it, but for a long t- for as long as I possibly can remember, I avoided it as much as possible.

Yeah.

I do feel like in the last year or two I've had a lot of difficult conversations, more in the last couple years than I can remember maybe in my whole life put together. And I don't know that they ever get easier. I think I'm just more equipped to understand how important it is, and that it is only gonna last, like, it is a finite period of time.

This ick feeling of these uncomfortable, hard conversations doesn't last forever. You just gotta push through that hard part, and then you'll get to the other side, and every... It will be fine. I think I'm less, um... I never look forward to them. I'm... They don't get easier, but I get more disciplined, or I get more willing to bite the bullet and get through it because I know that when I get to the other side, it's going to be better.

So as someone who has avoided them f- a lot, even I can say that they're, they're worthwhile. They're worth having.

Yeah, I'm with you. I had, previous relationship. Obviously, we talk about it in the book, previous marriage that, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't going well. Everyone knows, everyone involved in this knows that this isn't what we signed up for.

It's not what we want. But not having the conversation for literally years is like, "What are we doing?"

Mm-hmm. And the longer you put it off-

The worse it gets ... mm-hmm. I, I knew before the marriage even happened that, ah, something's off, and it was like, "Ah, it's cold feet. Whatever. We- we'll, we'll work it out."

No, you won't, because you won't have the conversation about it. Like- ... sure, maybe you could if you had the conversation at some point, but then you let it fester and do it, like, like, grow and become this thing. And then now it's like, okay, now w- how do you even deal with this? You, well, you don't. You just- It's like, it's like, "We're done here," kind of thing.

Um, but the, the conversation, If you have it in the moment, as uncomfortable as it is, it's the most comfortable it's ever gonna be.

Yes.

It's the most comfortable it's ever gonna be. Yes, it's not gonna be comfortable. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but on the scale of discomfort, it's a one versus...

Or maybe a two, a three, whatever. But if you wait, that three becomes a 10 real quick. And then you're like, "No, shit. What am I doing? Now I really don't wanna have it." But, but the thing is, is that the discomfort in having it at a 10 is still more palatable than living life in this situation.

Mm-hmm.

The previous relationship I was in, sure, early da- that would've been a 5 out of 10 discomfort. Like, like-

That conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have a... We're, like, we're planning to get married, and I don't think we should. Mm. That's a really uncomfortable conversation, and potentially going from, "I don't think we should get married," to, "I don't think we should be together"-

Mm-hmm

is, like,

a

really,

really awkward, uncomfortable conversation.

It's

scary as hell.

Right?

Yeah.

And so, but okay,

but it's a 5 out of 10 now.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, it's gonna be a 10 out of 10 at some point.

Yeah. And then when you're about to have that conversation, you're like, "Yeah, but

the next 40 years or 50 years living the way I'm living,

and it,

on the trajectory it's on, getting worse and worse

and worse- Mm

is a 100 out of 10."

Mm-hmm. "

So I have to have it now.

As maxed out and

as bad as this conversation is, I think I can make it worse."

And, and so

I think

this,

this life that we're building is gonna be worse than that.

I, I... It's gotten to the point where it's that bad. I'm gonna have the conversation.

And

th- that's-

You don't wanna get to that point

and, but that, that's usually what it takes for people. Most of us- Mm ... because we're so wired for comfort, we, we choose comfort now i- in exchange for far worse discomfort later. But most people, they have to wait until the present becomes more uncomfortable than the conversation.

Yeah.

And for you, in the beginning, the present wasn't uncomfortable enough to force you to have that uncomfortable conversation.

It had to get worse so that you were even more uncomfortable day to day to force you to have that conversation, and that's what most of us are like. So the whole point of this chapter is don't be like us. Don't be like that.

Don't wait till that

point. Don't wait until it's so untenable and so unlivable that you're finally gonna have the conversation.

Throw the challenge flag.

Kill King Kong when he's a baby. Like, have the conversation today when it's a 5 out of 10 discomfort, and that's the whole point of the challenge flag. I think the challenge flag is actually, like, our very first concept that we ever really came up with, and I'm, I'm still really proud of it.

One, 'cause I think it's cool. Like, it's the NFL, and it works, and it just fit so perfectly. But two, it's so needed. I, I think concept number two was probably benefit of the doubt as a sidebar from last chapter. But ch- concept number one for us was the challenge flag, and- When we had that first conversation and realized that we were both miserable, yeah, it was not my favorite conversation that we've ever had, for sure.

But I mean, it certainly changed our life into a tr- onto a trajectory that you would never go back and, and undo it.

Yeah. I, well, I... You can look at it from a couple different perspectives. One being the discomfort level, and then ranking it as not one of your favorites because it wasn't an easy conversation.

But I think ultimately it is one of my favorites- Mm-hmm ... because it ultimately set us on a path- Mm-hmm ... that we were meant to be on, and, like, it changed the trajectory of our lives, and it was a really important conversation in our history and in our, you know, journey. And it- So it is one of my favorites

it's such a simple concept. Like, you're challenging a decision, a situation, an action. That's it. I'm not challenging you. Like, there's nothing

personal- And we're not saying y'all, like, were stupid for making this decision, or you're stupid for suggesting it, or anything. Like, it's n- it's, that, that's n- that's not going to get you anywhere.

That's gonna set you back.

We evaluate this decision with some benefit of hindsight today, and is this still the decision we wanna continue on?

And the more you have those conversations, the more you become a team, and the more you make team decisions. And then the more that, you know, if you set down a wrong path, it no longer becomes a, ugh, you m- m- It was your idea

finger-pointing exercise. Yeah. Like, because you made the decision together. You jumped onto this together. This was a team effort. And so it takes s- it, it kind of spreads the responsibility across the board- Mm-hmm ... and you're just more likely to deal with it as a team.

Mm-hmm. I also love bringing up the Sharon Lechter's quote, "High emotion equals low intelligence," 'cause it's some, such a simple concept and easy to remember, that when my emotions are high, my rational thought is low.

My intelligence goes way down when my emotion goes up. So remembering that balance. When your emotion is low, your intelligence is the highest it's gonna be. The higher th- those scales tip, the more emotional you get in any situation, the less sound your decision-making process is, and you're likely to say and do things that a low emotion version of you would not say and do.

I think we all inherently know that. That, like, when I'm at peak emotion, I'm probably not making the best decisions.

I don't know that I knew that, to be honest.

I think all, inherently w- I think we know that when I'm angry and when I'm, when I'm whatever, I'm not gonna make the best decision when I'm frustrated or when I'm angry or when I'm in that s- high state.

It's when you can, - Just come back to Earth, reset- Mm-hmm ... breathe, think about it clearly that you can make a more logical, rational decision.

So I just think it's helpful to keep in mind. For sure. High emotion, low intelligence.

Totally.

Like, that those things equal each other. Those things connect every time.

So if you feel yourself getting a little elevated, high emotion, low intelligence, and at least abstain from the words and the actions in those moments.

Yeah.

And then lastly, the weekly meeting. I love the concept of engineering out as much friction as possible. Putting in a process that engineers out friction.

If we can remove as much friction from life, I mean, it's what we're wired for, right? We're wired to be as comfortable as possible. When we encounter friction, that's discomfort. So if we can engineer out as much of that and engineer as comfortable a life as we possibly can, why wouldn't we? And, smooth out as many bumps as we can through, an hour a week.

Yeah.

And, Mm-hmm ... we actually did a whole podcast on the weekly meeting, so I, I won't get into it in great detail here. I'll link, we'll link to it in the show notes. It feels bumpy at first. The first few weekly meetings will feel bumpy 'cause it's weird and new, but after that, it just becomes kinda smooth.

You find your rhythm.

Yeah. Anything else for chapter 21?

I don't think so.

Actually, I, I wanna wrap it by I love how you start this chapter with Because I love you enough and I wanna see you succeed, I'm willing to share something difficult with you. And that frame for this whole chapter, for every one of these conversations you need to have, is I'm doing this for us.

Out of love. I'm

doing it out of love.

Because I love you so much, I'm willing to get so uncomfortable and have this conversation. None of us, neither of us want to. Mm-hmm. But I love you enough that I'm willing to push through my discomfort to do what's best for us and get us through this hard thing.

Yeah.

So keeping that in mind, I think, is critical.

Yeah. All of this is in service to a relationship. All of this is in service. It's a, it's an act of love, even as uncomfortable it is, as it is. And some of the words that ... maybe the conversation you're having, you're worried that the other person's not gonna receive it well.

Mm. It might feel like from their perspective like y- an attack on them or something. Like, how they choose to see it. Mm. And, and you might see that that's s- something on the horizon- Forceful. Yeah ... that could happen. And it's, yeah, having that reframe of, yeah, but I'm gonna say it in a loving, kind way, and I'm, I know that my heart's in the right place and I'm gonna find the right words because of where my heart's coming from.

Mm-hmm.

And if you can kinda sit with that and, come from that place, then usually it works out, and gives you a little more comfort in that you can attack this the right way. You can have this conversation the right way, position it the right way, in a way that the other person's gonna receive it.

And you can even just say it in those words as, like, this, "I don't wanna have this conversation. You don't wanna have this conversation. It sucks. It's awkward. It's weird. But I love you- I love you

enough ...

enough that I wanna have it."

Yeah. "

And that's how much I love you, is that I'm willing to go to this uncomfortable place to have it- Mm-hmm

with you. Because I, I see something, we can get better from this." Yeah.

Chapter 21. 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 the 200percentmarriage.com/unstoppableteam to 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