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Episode Transcription

 Welcome back. It's another episode of the road of life podcast with Craig and Meredith. What are we talking about this week, Craig? Sounds so weird. I always call him Bennett, but I was trying to call you Craig for, you know,

for others, for other people. Yeah, it sounds weird. What are we talking about this week, Bennett?

We are talking about the fact that it's not your spouse's job to make you happy.

Yeah, so I think this is a bit of a myth buster

episode, maybe.

I think there's a, a long held belief or some kind of urban myth out there that I for sure used to buy into that it's Someone else's job to make me happy if we're in a relationship.

We're married. It's your job to make me happy

I think most people start out that way Anyway, I think that's a common thing that a lot. I don't know about most but a lot of people I think

It also a little bit comes from the

movies, TV shows.

Yeah, well, the, if then side of being happy, once I have this, if I get this, then I'll be happy.

And once I'm married, once I'm in a

relationship,

then I'll be happy, which implies that it's up to the other person in the relationship to make me happy.

Right. And. It sets the relationship up for failure given that it's such a high expectation to put on somebody like they have no control over what makes you happy or unhappy.

And by putting that on them, it puts this unreasonable expectation that they're never going to be able to meet. And when they don't meet it. You're disappointed and unhappy, but what you don't know or what you don't realize in that moment is that it has nothing to do with them. Happiness is an inside job.

It's literally your responsibility to make yourself happy, to fill your cup, to make sure that you are fulfilled.

And if you're waiting for someone else to do that for you, if you're waiting on someone else to make you happy, you will never be happy. It will never, you will never find happiness.

If you're a looking for it and be waiting for someone to make you happy, because to your point, happiness is an inside job. Only one person is capable of letting you feel happiness and it's

you. And we've done episodes on happiness in the past and we know that happiness is in the now. It's living in the moment and there's little tips and tricks and things that we can do to.

Make ourselves happier each day and we can link that in the show notes But just like a really brief overview like four quick things or you can do some breathing exercises walk in nature Show gratitude and appreciation for the things that are going well in your life And what was the fourth one?

There's a fourth one. That's really, one is

practice gratitude and one is be appreciative of someone in your life. So send a text, make a phone call, leave a note that someone you appreciate why and

why. Yeah. So those are like four quick and easy things that you can do to improve your own happiness every day.

And the other thing is, is that we're all on this journey on our own. Like we come into this world by ourselves and eventually we're going to die. And usually that's by ourselves. So this journey, the only relationship you have from start to finish is the one with yourself. So why is it that would, we expect that in this short part of our life, , like, we've got to say, if you live to be 80 years old, Why is it that we think that only a short part of that journey would we ever be happy?

Like it's someone else's responsibility and that only for the 50 years that we're with that other person That's the only time we're happy other than that. We're not happy. Well,

that's the flip side of what we're saying If you're depending on your spouse to make you happy then the years with before them, you're relying on somebody else.

You're incapable of being happy. Like that's the converse of that argument is if I need them to be happy, then without them, I'm not happy. I can't be happy. And so it's a great point. Like we're not set up. The universe isn't set up for us to be unhappy until we meet the one person in the whole world capable of making us happy.

And then it's on them.

And what a pressure to put on somebody. Like, It's my job to make you happy. And then, so, okay, today, what is it that you need from me? I'm focused on you and then I I'm neglecting myself. And then I'm, I'm resenting you because I'm trying to make you happy and I'm never meeting that expectation because.

It's an unrealistic expectation. I don't know what it is that you need from me to make you happy, and not even that. I can't actually, you have to do it yourself. Yeah.

Even if you knew exactly what to do to make me happy, it still doesn't work because you can't make me happy. Yeah. It's

not never going to be enough.

You've set someone up for failure. And a lot of it comes down to. A worthiness, like loving yourself, understanding who you are. And I think a lot of times, and this is me growing up. I had no idea who I actually was. I was angry. A lot of times I wasn't happy.

And it was because I didn't actually know who I was or what I wanted or who I want to become. And I didn't do that work to understand who I was and who I wanted to be. And once you do that, then you can start to understand what are the things that I like to do. What are the things that fill my cup?

What are the things that keep me happy and fulfilled? And then you can do those things and then you don't have to rely on someone else to be there to make you happy.

And it's okay that those things involve someone else. Like the things that make you happy today, a lot of them include me. Yeah. And that's great.

They don't all include me. Like I know playing basketball makes you very happy and I don't play basketball with you almost ever. And I haven't for quite a long time. You've got other people to play basketball with to make you happy. We all need to fill our own cup. And it's great when the other, when your spouse can be involved in some of those things, but also don't expect that they're going to be a part of every single activity that you enjoy.

Again, that's setting someone else up. Yeah. That you can't enjoy something unless this person does it with me.

Yeah.

So you're talking about your experience growing up and, and not knowing who you are and, you know, not figuring out what made you happy for a long time until you actually did the work. And I have this same experience growing up.

Like I struggled to your point a lot with not feeling worthy, not feeling good enough, being a people pleaser. and didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be in this world. And I can remember in other relationships thinking like, Oh, he doesn't make me happy. And like using that as a reason to end a relationship, which, you know, cyber, thank God.

But, at the same time, that was my flawed logic in that moment.

Right decision, wrong reason.

Yeah, totally. Totally. But that's where my brain was. That's exactly the thought that I had. That he doesn't make me happy. So, this is over. And I really believed that it was his job to make me happy, but I was completely incapable of telling him what I wanted, what I needed to be happy.

Cause I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what made me happy. I didn't know the things that I enjoyed doing. I was just following the crowd, doing what everybody asked me to do because I wanted everyone to like me. And that's not a recipe for happiness ever.

Yeah. It's interesting too, because I think one of the things that

we hear a lot is the miscommunication or the breakdown between men and women in relationships. And one of the things that's very interesting is that usually men say, I just want to make her happy, but that's not your job. Correct. Yeah. And a lot of times the woman just wants to be heard or seen.

Correct. Or just vent and doesn't want it necessarily fixed or doesn't necessarily want to be happy in that moment. Correct.

Yeah. You just want to make me happy, but I don't actually want to be happy in this particular moment. I just want to tell you about something that's going on with me and have you listen so I can feel heard.

But also it's not your job to make me happy. Correct. I'll do that in a minute. I just want to let you know about my stuff and let's talk about that. And then. I'll figure it out or, and if I need your help with anything, I'll come to you. Mm-Hmm. . But happiness not your job. Mm-Hmm. . And so I think if we got into a, the head space of, on both sides.

Mm-Hmm. like knowing that okay, it's not his job or her job to make me happy.

Mm-Hmm. .

But also on the other side of that, you say, ah, it's not my job to make you happy that's a difficult, you have to both get an alignment on that, but having that conversation of understanding whose responsibility happiness is, is critical to removing that gap that we see a lot of times between specifically men and women in relationships who are struggling to connect because one person feels as though the goal is happiness and the other person's goal is something completely different.

Right. And it actually comes back to the 200 percent marriage. Like I am 100 percent responsible for our marriage. I'm also 100 percent responsible for my happiness and you're 100 percent responsible for your happiness and for our marriage. And so to your point that I am not responsible for your happiness and you're not responsible for mine and we need to have that conversation.

You know, take the ownership, take the accountability, take the responsibility to have an uncomfortable conversation for a minute. Maybe share this episode together so that you're both on the same page with, I don't need you to make me happy. That's not your job, nor can I make you happy. That's not my job.

So can we agree that we're each responsible for our own happiness and we're going to do what it takes for us to be happy. So we're going to do the things that we enjoy doing. Some of them together, some of them not together.

Not to say though that being with your person doesn't make you happy.

That's not what we're saying. And that we want to make that very clear that you can, Relationship can be something that fills your cup and make you happy. It's just not their job to make you happy

It's not that putting the expectation outside of yourself on anyone doesn't have to be your spouse on Literally any other human being on the planet on your kid on your anybody to make you happy is setting It's setting you up for failure.

It's setting them up for failure. It's setting your relationship with them up for failure. And it's certainly going to leave you the furthest thing from happy.

Ironically, very

ironically. , it was a little bit difficult for me to wrap my head around that for a while that, it's not his job.

It's not your job. It's not anyone else's job to make me happy. And if I expect that, I'm putting us in a very, very difficult position. And I'm also probably not going to be all that happy.

Yeah. But it is your job to show up 100 percent in your relationship, ask the questions and be there as support in whatever it is that they need.

So to close back to the big question of the, of the episode always is what's the one thing that you're going to take from this episode?

Maybe it's starting to just shift your own mindset and start to find ways to Who you are, who you want to be, and what are those things that make you happy. Maybe it's sharing this episode with your spouse so you can get on the same page and have that maybe uncomfortable, maybe not uncomfortable, conversation about let's just be clear on our roles here.

It's not my job to make you happy. It's not your job to make me happy. We're in agreement on this, right? And we're going to support each other in our goals to be happy in our relationship. So, what's the one thing that you're going to take from this episode and actually implement, actually put into action because, you know, we're not working this hard to

stay the

same.

We are not working this hard to stay the same. So find the one thing that you need to do for you and put that into practice. And one request from us, share this with a friend, share this episode with someone else who might get some value, might benefit, might enjoy the conversation. And on that note, we'll see you next time.

See you next week. Bye.