Listen Now

Episode Transcription

📍 Welcome back to another episode of The 200% Marriage podcast with Meredith and Craig. If you've been following along, and I know you have, we've been reading our book, The 200% Marriage: Your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team.

Because it's awesome.

We've each been reading the chapters that we wrote, and we're on chapter 20, and I happened to write chapter 20, so I will be reading chapter 20. So let's get going. Chapter 20: Don't tackle your teammate. There's a time and place for that. True story. "Individuals play the game, teams win championships," Bill Parcells.

If you listen to the coaches or star players when they're interviewed right after a tough game, you'll usually hear things like, "We won because everyone did their job. We stayed disciplined. We didn't take bad penalties. We won the turnover battle. We didn't have any unforced errors." If you're a sports nerd like Mer and me, you've probably heard all of these.

If you're just a regular nerd that doesn't care about sports, let me translate. They all mean they didn't beat themselves, and that's the bottom line. Unstoppable teams don't beat themselves. They do the little things that help the team win. They don't self-destruct. They don't take stupid, undisciplined penalties.

They don't fight amongst themselves. They don't waste focus on things that don't move them toward the championship. They recognize the opponent is on the other side of the field. They stay united in the battle against the real obstacle, winning the next game, beating their opponent.

The same holds for your relationship. Unstoppable teams don't self-destruct, and they don't get caught up in stupid stuff that distracts them from their version of a championship, their goals, dreams, and the big life they wanna live. Unstoppable teams understand that it's never us versus us.

It's always us versus the problem. When obstacles arise, and they always arise, unstoppable teams face them together. Take some friend of ours. Yes, even as gingers, we manage to make friends. To be clear, they are not clients. They argue about money regularly, but it's not the fact that they don't have enough or how they spend their money that causes the rifts.

It's that one teammate uses their higher income as a weapon and holds it over the head of their teammate. "I make more money, so you need to do more around the house." That, my friend, is called scorekeeping, and it's toxic. It builds resentment, destroys trust, and slowly eats away at your connection. Please don't keep score in your marriage.

Now, our friends know what we do, but we never coach without permission, and we will not, cannot talk someone into their own future. There are too many people who want our help for us to waste valuable time trying to drag anyone into growth. If they did raise their hand and ask for help, we'd tell them they were focused on the problem rather than the solution.

They're focused on competing against each other. They are trying to win at their teammate's expense. They're trying to be right. They're trying to win as an individual. When you play that game, and you're trying to win as an individual, by definition, it means you're hoping your teammate loses, which means you're trying to beat your own team.

This is not the recipe for an unstoppable team. Unstoppable teams don't beat themselves. Remember our trip to Russia when Mer left her cellphone in the Russian cab? I know. How could you forget, right? That was the perfect example of being solution-focused or problem-focused. We didn't point fingers. We didn't assign blame.

We pulled out Google Translate, messaged the driver, and worked the problem until we had the best possible outcome. We refused to beat ourselves, and because of that, we succeeded.

That's the key. Unstoppable teams get curious. They align on the problem, and then tackle it together. Here's another example. One day Mer and I were walking through the park. She had just come back from a weekend girls' trip. Being a genuinely curious husband and wanting to show her I care about her experience and what she got up to with her friends, I asked, "What did you and your friends get up to this weekend?

Lots of chit-chatting?" As soon as I asked the question, I could sense Mer's energy shift. If you've ever been walking on a sunny day when out of nowhere the skies darken, the winds pick up, and the storm clouds roll in, that's what it felt like. I could tell she wasn't thrilled with me. I stayed curious, and I asked what was wrong.

She said it felt like I was diminishing or belittling her time with her friends, that calling it chitchat made it sound trivial or frivolous, like I thought it didn't matter. I didn't get frustrated or defensive like old me definitely would have. Old me would have had a snarky retort in the chamber ready to let fly.

New, more evolved me stayed curious and asked her what she usually told me after a girls' night when I asked her what they did. She paused, and then she said, "I'd say we chitchatted." As the words were leaving her lips, I could see the connection being made in real time. It was like watching a switch flip.

Her whole demeanor shifted as she realized I was using exact words that I had heard her say to me dozens of times when referring to what she and her girlfriends do when they get together. They all live busy lives, so when they get together, they catch up on each other's lives. They talk. They chitchat. A lot.

When Mer realized I wasn't mocking her, I was simply echoing her own words back to her, we had a deeper conversation, and we landed on this fundamental truth. If we don't assume positive intent from our teammate, the one person we've chosen to do life with, then who else in the world would ever get that benefit of the doubt? Why wouldn't we always assume that our person isn't trying to hurt us, and that if something stings, there must be another reason I'm feeling hurt in this moment, and it's not because they're trying to hurt me? That day, we committed to always giving each other the benefit of the doubt, to always assume positive intent.

When those stories in our head tell us things like, "They're belittling me," we pause and choose curiosity instead of assumption. Instead of getting upset on the assumption that they're belittling me, we pause and ask a question to understand better what they meant or why they said it. Curiosity is critical.

It would've been easy for me to match Mer's energy in that moment and spiral into my own storm of emotions, exactly how old me would have. Then we'd end up in a tit-for-tat argument that each of us would try to win. That kind of cycle never ends well. But instead, I asked a few more questions, and we ended up having a calm, rational conversation about assuming the best in one another.

Instant repair. Offering the benefit of the doubt is one of the best ways to ensure you don't beat yourselves in your relationship. That applies to all connections, but especially marriage. The chances of Mer deliberately trying to hurt me, zero. She loves me. So if I feel hurt, one of three things is probably true.

One, it was an accident. Two, I misinterpreted something. Or three, something from my past was triggered. But the one thing that I assume, it's not intentional, which means it's my responsibility to get curious and figure out why I feel hurt and work through it. There's that 200% marriage mindset in action again. It is my responsibility to do my very best to give her the benefit of the doubt. It's my issue to deal with.

This was not natural for me, and it took me a while to get there, as you're well aware by now. When I finally understood this lesson, it fundamentally changed my marriage. We don't argue or bicker over the little things or any size things really, for that matter. We give each other the benefit of the doubt.

We get curious, and we make sure we don't beat ourselves because that's what unstoppable teams do and what unstoppable teams don't do. Rule number five: unstoppable teams don't beat themselves. Now that we understand the team framework and the five rules to be an unstoppable team, what's next? Adopt these rules.

Incorporate them into your relationship, and you'll show up as the best teammate you can be. And when both teammates commit to that, you become unstoppable. Here are a few ways to get started. One, show appreciation to your teammate and to yourself for something you each do to move your team forward.

Two, listen to a podcast together. Any podcast where you're growing together will do. We recommend the 200% Marriage podcast. We're biased as fuck, but it's good. Three, take the initiative and help your teammate by taking something off their plate. Four, think about your last disagreement in relation to the five rules to be an unstoppable team, and consider where you could have shown up differently, and commit to yourself and your teammate to show up with that new behavior the next time.

And five, think about and have one question ready that you can ask to lead with curiosity the next time you feel an emotional reaction to something your teammate said or did. So now that you know how to show up as the best teammate, let's take a deeper dive into the rest of the third commitment and really take your marriage to a whole new level.

And that's chapter 20.

Chapter 20 in the books wrapping the five rules to be an unstoppable team with unstoppable teams don't beat themselves.

Mm-hmm.

Which is very true. Unstoppable teams don't beat themselves. They're unstoppable after all, so they don't even stop themselves. It's just facts.

I really enjoy the stories in that chapter.

I mean, the Russian cab story's a great one, and we already talked about that one in detail, but it is such a good example of staying united, us versus the problem, not y- you versus me for forgetting my phone in the cab. Us versus getting the phone-

Natural reaction, I'm not gonna lie, it was, it was you versus me.

It was. I was, I was like, "Oh, I didn't realize she, she-"

Oh my God, she, she, she did

that ... there's no way she did that. There's no way. And that was default, that I was, I was like, "Okay. She did. Mm, but it can't be us. Me versus you."

So we did manage to stay united versus the problem as opposed to versus each other, and so it's a huge win in the, in the Russian cab story. But I wanna jump into the chitchat story, 'cause we share this story with people a lot because it's such a good example of leading with curiosity instead of with judgment or assumption.

And I led with assumption and f- you know, did not give the benefit-

I love that we cherry-pick this story. It's the one time where I, I leveraged curiosity early days- ... and it, it worked out and,

It was, it was so... You're right. When, when that connection was made for me, like, "What do you usually say?"

And I'm like, "I say we just chit-chatted."

Oh- I, I remember that da- I, I remember the conversation very- Oh,

clear as a bell. Yeah.

Yeah, very clearly.

And it, blew my mind for a second, that I was like-

And I don't think it's inaccurate when I say it was a nice day, and then it turned cloudy. Yeah. No.

And rum- rumble in the distance- A thunder ... and the birds, the birds went quiet and it's like, "Uh-oh." "

There's a storm brewing." "

Storm a-coming." All- It

just... - chitchat sounded very different coming from you than it did from me.

Yeah. I know.

So o- once the connection was made for me and I realized, like, oh, and then when we had the conversation around if I wouldn't offer the benefit of the doubt to you, then who in the whole world would I offer it to?

Would get, would

get it, yeah.

Who else could I assume that every time they're not trying to hurt me?

Like, if you, if you assume that your partner's out to get you, then it must be an exhausting life to live because you must think that everybody's out to get you- Mm-hmm ... all the time. Mm-hmm. That has to be so exhausting.

Yeah.

And so, -

Being on guard

all the time ... constantly, yeah, always have your guard up, always looking over your shoulder, always waiting for the sh- other shoe to drop. Always waiting for the... And then obviously, you know, when you're looking for it, when you're always waiting for it, well, what do you think you're gonna find?

Mm-hmm. You get what you look for.

Yeah, you're gonna... Because your, your brain wants you to be right, so you're just gonna, you're gonna find the things that actually do make you feel shitty and "Oh, they did get me. I knew they would."

It's the reticular activating system in action again. Like, "Oh, I'm gonna buy a yellow car, and now all I see are yellow cars.

They're gonna screw me, and I'm gonna keep looking and waiting until that person screws me, and then the next person."

Yeah, if you're looki- if you're always looking for a scam, you're gonna find scams. If you're always looking for someone that's gonna hurt you, you're, that's what you're gonna find.

Mm-hmm.

So if you give someone the benefit of the doubt, who's it gonna be? It's go- it's gotta be your closest person, right?

Yeah. And so that, that blew my mind when you said that that day. It just made perfect sense, and also I kinda felt like, duh, like, why didn't I do that? Like, why w- w- why did I go the other way?

wiring. Yeah. All of us have it.

Yeah.

Right? It takes, it takes, uh, like a certain intentionality to get to the point where you... It's rewiring. It's unlearning a whole bunch of shit from your past.

Mm-hmm.

And r- and some of us, you know, grew up with better role models in relationships maybe, and, uh-

They already have this

n- Maybe

nailed. Yeah. You and I did not have that, but hey, some do, and, and maybe it comes a little more naturally to them. But i- it was an uphill battle for us- Yeah ... for sure.

But it's a very simple concept. Assume positive intent. Assume that they're never trying to hurt you, and th- the three bullets that you had in there, if you're feeling hurt, one of three things has happened.

One, it was an accident, 'cause we all-

Yeah, we

all mess up ... accidents happen. We all mess up. That, that happens. When that happens, there's an apology and you move on.

Yeah.

Or two, you misinterpreted something. And so I misinterpreted your chitchat as you making fun of me when it was you literally using my exact words with me.

Or three, something was triggered from your past. You're feeling a feeling in the moment because of something in the past, not because of what's happening right in this moment.

Could be a combination of, of a couple of them too. Mm-hmm. Like, I don't know, maybe you were triggered from your past. I have no idea.

But- I

don't think so ...

actually, the funniest part of all this for me for this story is, I don't know, maybe two years, three years later, I went away for a girls' night, and you sent a text that I read out loud to everybody 'cause it was so funny. You're like, "Is this the approximate schedule, itinerary for your girls' weekend?"

And it was like, "Wake up chitchat, coffee chitchat, post-coffee chitchat, making breakfast chitchat, breakfast chitchat, post-breakfast chit..." And it w- it went on and on and on through every possible mini-event of the entire day. There was probably 24 different things you wrote in there, and it was hilarious.

And it- And they were

all chitchats ...

and they were all chitchats. It was very funny.

And I nailed the schedule.

And you nailed the schedule. Yeah.

Getting, putting on PJ chitchat.

Yeah. Totally.

Settling in on the couch with PJs on chitchat.

Yeah. Second bag of chips

chitchat. So five rules. We've wrapped those.

Now we're, the next chapters are getting into the commitment to the team and your teammate.

Different strategies to support the commitment to the relationship now that we've laid the groundwork and have the frame of the unstoppable team.

Yeah. So everything is gonna happen through the frame of the unstoppable team going forward.

Anything else on this chapter?

Uh, I don't think so. You're reading the next one, right?

Yep. Chapter 21 is up next, so stay tuned for that.

See you next week.

Bye, everybody.

If today's episode gave you a new lens for your relationship, don't let it stop here. The best teams never stop training On Thursdays, we drop the Unstoppable Team newsletter on LinkedIn. It's our high-performance briefing designed to give you one tactical drill you can run with your teammate over the weekend.

So just search Meredith and Craig on LinkedIn, or click the link in the show notes to subscribe. Get the briefing, kill that domestic drag, and we will see you next Tuesday