Before I Do

I'm your host , Nesha G , and I'm here with my lovely co-host .

We have been married a little over seven years now and we really wanted to kind of just have the open conversation about what marriage looks like after the I Do's . I think everybody has like an idea or a perception of what marriage is supposed to be and it's not until you get into the thick of it where you kind of things change .

Right , because you're still people and as time goes on you as people change . But I also think that there is not enough conversation happening or questions being asked before marriage .

There's premarital counseling and things like that , but I think in today's error there's not enough conversations really being had before marriage actually happens and what that could look like and some of the challenges that you could face being in a monogamous relationship with someone that's intended to be a lifetime or for a long time .

So I thought it was a great idea my husband and I thought it was a great idea just to basically have like an open conversation for especially people like the millennials and things like that to have this open conversation about marriage and to discuss some of the things and challenges and situations that can come up after I do .

Once all the excited feelings kind of wear down not wear off , but wear down and life is really injected Kids , work , money , all the things that spending a lifetime with somebody encompasses Because we find that when we speak to our peers or friends or other people it can sometimes feel isolating some of the things and challenges that you go through in marriage .

So we just wanted to be able to create a platform where we can have that open discussion and hopefully some of the things that we work through can help other people work through I think we need to like , clarify , like , because we've been together two decades but they've only been married seven years . Yes , yeah , I was going to get to that .

Okay , so just a quick backstory . I feel like we can have a whole episode of like how we met and all that stuff , but just to like a quick backstory . I've known my husband since the sixth grade . Okay , as far as like real serious relationships in a technical sense . He is my first and only boyfriend and I'm here to do what I do .

I've been with my husband my entire adult life and like since I was a teenager .

Okay , so a lot of the stages in life that you know especially maybe the older generations like to give us advice on about , you know , in your 20s you want to explore , right , explore , experiment , find out who you are , and all this other stuff , all of those type of pivotal moments in our adult or young adult lives , or whatever .

We had to go through what we didn't have to , we made a choice to . I shouldn't say we have to , we had to . We made a choice to go through all that . Right To go through all of that together . So our teen years , our early 20s , now we're in our mid 30s and that just kind of takes me I don't want to like veer off too much .

But that takes me to another line of thought which is like yes , it is a choice , and I think in marriage you really have to make it a choice . You know what I mean . Like , granted , we haven't been in this marriage thing decades yet , but we have been together for decades .

Even when we were going through some of our like tougher times , especially like in our 20s and not being married , not having kids , not like owning property together , it could have been very easy to just be like you know what the goals and ideas that I have for myself .

I could very much just go off and do those things on my own without having to consider someone else's future or someone else's feelings , which we'll get to later , maybe not later in this pod , but in the next pod where we'll talk about that , where that was kind of like a discussion that we've really had once upon a time in our relationship .

But I say all that to say that you know , commitment , I think , is a decision right .

So as we get later into other episodes , that's kind of , you know , along the lines of why we wanted to start the podcast is because at this moment in life we are still making the decision to want to be in this together and having to create compromises or company coming to a compromise to see what fits each other and what's best for like us as a couple

choosing to stay together . So but back to today's topic . Like I was saying in the beginning , I think what's really important is about having those conversations before marriage .

What I can kind of see sometimes out there you know , I'd be on social media too , just like everybody else and especially looking at the generation that's coming behind us , things can look very I don't want to use the word superficial , but for the lack of better verbiage I'm just gonna look super . I'm just gonna use superficial .

You know , you look at all of the things of what the wedding is right . Everybody wants a beautiful wedding , a beautiful ring , you know a sexy ass mate , you know the career and all this other stuff .

But when you hear some of like people , even you know , older millennials in our generations or older couples , talk about marriage being hard work , it can sometimes be off-putting , but when you hear them talk about hard work , it's not that it's like a struggle , but there is some . There's work .

Like marriage is work and I hate like saying it like that sometimes because , especially when I talk to younger people , it's like well , if it's that much work , why would I wanna get married ? Like I don't see the benefits in getting married , it's just a piece of paper . Why get married when everyone keeps talking about it's hard work ?

It's hard , it's hard , beautiful work , right ? Like I said in the beginning , if you're making a decision to be with somebody , being with somebody and being committed to somebody is a decision , right ? You agree ? Yes , yes , it's a decision . It's a decision that both people have to make .

Now , granted , in the beginning , you can very much have those conversations and things down the line change right , you should have those conversations yeah you should have those conversations and things down the line change , but I think it's really important to really try to know your partner as much as possible and know them at basically like their base core .

You know what I mean . What are their views when it comes to even that you guys have children , how are you gonna raise your children If you guys come from two different religious backgrounds ? How do you rectify that If you both come from two different types of households ?

To how your household was ran , if you came from a two parent household , if you came from a one parent household , what does that person's spending habits look like ? What is that ?

You know ? All of those things I think are extremely important because when you get into a marriage and you're trying to be in something that's gonna help or that's gonna be something that's long lasting , if you don't have like a ground basis , I think that you're operating from it's . Those things are good .

Not only they're challenging essentially , but they're going to be even more challenging trying to make a compromise .

Lord knows that we're not the same , we don't think the same way we did when we were teenagers and we don't necessarily have the same beliefs or ideology in certain things , but you have to at the core of it , you have to have a common understanding and , honestly , just a common love for to be understanding towards one another and give each other grace , like

you're saying .

I do agree , like we sat down and we had the conversation and we pretty much had like we had firm , like we define things firmly like what's okay , who's gonna be doing what , and like we agreed with that and some of those things like we have in place up until this day , and then other things you know as far as , like giving up housework or stuff like that .

Some of those things have changed over the course because of we're not in the same situation . We're not too young adults going to college and working anymore , we are too parenting adults with a full child at the full-time job and like the situation has changed .

So I think that it's important to like just because you place you know a foundation in the beginning does not mean that you can't come back and revisit that conversation after a period of time , once the circumstances in the life has your life has changed and things are not necessarily the same as they were when the union was first created .

I'd be leaving for work , you'd be coming in from work , or you'd be going to class and I'd be coming in from class .

Like it's like so literally during our college years , like we literally only saw each other maybe one full day , and even that day was pretty much just consist of us both sitting in separate rooms studying and trying to get ready for the week .

You know so crazy to say you know for teenagers because , looking back now , when I talked to other teenagers who are like in love and stuff , I'd be like Carol , you know me , you know me , you were in love . But as a person who was a teenager , who was quote unquote in love , we had those conversations Like we had a layaway when what was it ?

Well , my junior year , I think it was my junior year the layaway . Remember the layaway we had got because you were leaving first and when I graduated and I came to we started living together .

So if the goal was that important to us , which was like living together and being together , you know , forever , because , especially when you're first in love , it's like everything feels great . I just wanna be around you all the time . I need to be under you . I love you so much . Life is gonna feel and look like this forever .

And spoiler alert , life don't look like that and feel like that forever . Spoiler alert . Let me get it .

It's like I was never opposed to cleaning anything and I would , I didn't mind cleaning , but it was like bathrooms was like I can't give a bathroom . So you were like okay , fine , you , you don't clean bathrooms , I don't take out trash .

I don't check I don't check milk , but that doesn't mean I don't clean the rest of the house , I just don't clean a bath , right ?

Because that's we have committed to saying like , okay , we're not going to do this . In the event that I need to do it , I know how to pick up the slack case and point , he had a broken ankle . So obviously I couldn't expect my husband we have a two-story house but I couldn't expect him to come up and down the stairs every day and take out the trash .

So I picked up , you know , on something that was , you know , our defined , a defined role that I said I wasn't gonna do , that I did . But now that he's out the cast I mean what fresh day one out , right ? I was like you got to start , you got to start giving . You can , you can walk .

So I'm gonna need to go ahead and start getting your practice back in and get this trash out .

You need to have the financial Conversation like who , if we're both working , who's gonna be responsible for what , who's gonna be able to possible for paying things , or Things like that . And then um and then thirdly , just lost my train . I thought could you say something . Thirdly , you need to have . You need to set . You need to have set boundaries .

Like you need to say , hey , you need to know what , because everyone categorized cheating as different things . So you just say , hey , what are your like ? We live in the social media age , so you need to have a set boundaries on hey , I'm not cool , what you doing this , I'm not cool , you're doing that .

I like what you said because I think also it goes back to , like I said earlier , that comes with also knowing your partner right , and the more time you spend with your partner , the more you learn your partner , the more like new , new nuances , you learn about their personality and things like that , and you'll know what could possibly make your partner uncomfortable

, without them even having to say Like , hey , that makes me uncomfortable . You know what I mean .

Like if you're scrolling on social media for I so happen to look in your phone and I notice you know the algorithm is is Doing its thing according to the things that you look at and if I look over your shoulder and you're scrolling through your phone and all I see is is booty .

I can appreciate the fact that that's not something I had to bring to his attention , because I know essentially , like at his core , what type of man he is and he knows when some , like at the core of what type of man he is and what type of man he wants to be , and especially because we have a daughter , so he tries to be very mindful of even the things

that he does . Now , granted , my , my daughter's not over his shoulder , looking at him when he scrolls , because that's like a very big rule in my house um , but the fact that he knew within himself to be like okay , this is getting a little out of hand .

And when it starts to make like an impact on him , he's like , okay , I need to , I need to change that because we know that this could go down An aisle , that we don't need it to go down so that I can appreciate .

But knowing your partner and getting to know your partner as best as you can and and knowing the things that could make them uncomfortable or what your partner constitutes as cheating , is definitely a conversation , definitely a conversation , and especially in today's society with social media , because speaking , you know when I speak to other married people and I be

hearing about the things they be doing on social media . I be like how could you , how could you possibly think that's okay , like DMing other people ? Um , that's not

okay .

But if you're not , if you think that if you were to show your partner a DM that you sent somebody that could potentially bring up a discussion or Cause your partner to feel some type of way about it , then nine times out of ten you shouldn't be sending that person DM .

If you feel the need to DM somebody , like if you there , if further on Instagram , like I come up you know the Things I see on Instagram like if there's a sexy guy on Instagram , I'm not gonna go out of my way to go to his DM and be like oh , nice pick . Oh your abs looking right today . Oh , great workout . Like would you think .

Would you think that's appropriate , as you should ? That wouldn't be appropriate , but other people would think all I did was give them a compliment . All I did was say nice video .

You're in a face of like I see this bitch keep laughing at all your meetings .

And so I'm just looking at her like and I was like he's not that damn funny , like you can stop . You were such a goodling in his face . He is a married man , he ain't that damn funny , you know you were just .

But now , granted , I think , like if , now , if you are in a relationship with someone who does social media , like that's what they do for a living , that's how they get the income , then you want to live with that , like you should know , like they , they are not gonna . You shouldn't .

I don't think you should ask Someone to scale back their life if that was something they were doing well prior . Yeah okay .

It does not if you think , if your partner has tendencies now that Urk you and get on your nerves to the top , guess what ? When you get married they are still gonna be there and they might get worse .

Um , don't think that when you become a husband or that when you become a wife it's like All those things go away , or the issues that you guys had before go away . It doesn't go away , it gets exasperated .

Because another thing that I also find and this is through conversation , conversations with people who have been divorced is when people get married , there's like this psychological change that happens from having a title of wife and having a title of husband and now all of a sudden , you start putting expectations on your partner that you didn't have Prior going into

the marriage . And then , when you have discussions and disagreements now you want to say , as my husband , you supposed to be doing a , b and C . As my wife , you supposed to be doing a , b and C .

But if you guys didn't have that , that conversation or at least somewhat of an establishment or foundation going into the marriage , that just breeds like a form of chaos .

Just because I married you , right , I'm gonna marry you off based off the things you're doing , as my girlfriend , as you , as you showing me that you are , that you are a suitable partner to me .

That's why I never understood that , like you can't , you can't Want a man to do all the things he would do for you in a committed relationship without , without the paper . But all of a sudden you need but you , but he has to , but you have to have the paper to unlock the next level of you .

And that's not , that's not a fair I can , I can see that perspective .

So if it's , for instance , like if , with that comment , like you said , I'll start being a white , I'll start being a wife when I am one , what is your partner's definition of being a wife ? You know what I mean , because your definition of being a wife and his definition of being a wife may be two different things .

So it's like going into the marriage what do you expect of me and what do I ?

Okay , let's just say I'll be responsible for majority of the housework .

So usually when we've had people in the house , I like to really deeply clean my house , because when there's other people who don't live here in the home , I feel like my house can never just stay the way I like it . So I knew I had to .

I wanted to get to the downstairs , I wanted to get to the upstairs , I wanted to vacuum , I wanted to lay out her clothes .

Now , that is my normal responsibility because I'm also a stay-at-home mom , so normally I take care of all of those things because I'm usually the one that's primary in the house , right , but that doesn't negate him from helping when he is home .

And because he is home , because he's injured , now it's like , okay , I need to be able to tap it in my partner . So this is a task that you don't normally do , but this is a task I need you to tap in on .

So he took her to gymnastics practice , which is two hours , and that gave me the two hours to be at home uninterrupted , get everything that I needed to do and get done for her so that I could get her to bed on time , so that I could get to bed on time , so that we could have a moment together , right , but had he not done that and just been like ,

yeah , but that's the responsibility , that's part of your responsibility , to take her to practice , to do what you need to do with the house to get her prepared , because that's what I normally take care of , because I'm the primary person in the house of I like to call myself the COO of our household then things would have went a lot different and I would have

been more tired and I wouldn't have got to bed on time , still having to get up to get her ready , you know .

Everything else , there are no hard lines , and that sometimes the line may be pushed or the workload may be pushed one way or another , depending on the situation and what's happening at the time . So it's like granted , even though I am aware that I don't do , I don't like you do most of the housework , you do most of the cooking and the cleaning .

That doesn't mean that I never clean or I never cook just because that's what you primarily do . Like I understand that there's gonna be times where it's gonna be like hey , I understand that this is what , this is part of my agreement , but I just don't have that right now .

Like I need your help and it's my role and my responsibility as your partner to be like okay , I got you Because I understand . Like it's not , this is not an every time thing , this is not a once in a month thing , this is a once in a while . Like she needs me to step in and do more than what I'm supposed to do and I'm cool with that .

I have no issue with that , especially because , especially if it's involving our child and anything that she may want or need to do , I have no problem with that , and I think that's one thing that people have to understand .

Just because you , just because , especially if you have a wife that stays home , right , just because she's home doesn't mean she's just home , like she's still , she's working just as hard as you're working .

So like , yeah , she's gonna want time to herself , she's gonna want free time , and like , and if you have kids , we only have one kid and I feel like you do a lot Cause you like , cause , at granted , she may be in school for six hours a day , but it's like you maybe get four of those six hours Cause you still have to use the hour before our , like at

least two of those hours . Just , you know , pick up , drop off and getting her ready and such things of that such . So it's like I do understand that just because you're not physically clocking in somewhere that- .

You have to understand that your partner's gonna need time to themselves because , at the end of the day , you're still we're all still individuals with our own . We're all in passions , our own , our own hobbies , our own goals and things like that . So you have to have you have to have time to nourish yourself so that you can then nourish your marriage .

I don't wanna necessarily say rules , because that's because you're a list person , very much a list person , list work . But responsibilities , you know , like , right now , in this dynamic , I stay home and you go to work , but not too long ago we both worked full time and we had a child , so the responsibilities looked a lot different .

Right , there are more , yeah , there are more . 50 , 50 . Well , there's no such thing , but they were there were more even well , no , because I was doing most of the cooking Right , exactly , and that was a lot based off of our work schedules too .

So before you know he would like , on his days off or even during the week , he would sweep him off the floor . He did majority of all , if not all , the cooking during the week . He did straighten up living rooms .

I'm also the better cook , so Whatever he did do all of those things because we both worked , and I worked a little bit further than from where our daughter originally went to daycare , so things looked a lot different .

And then , once we made the decision that I would stay home after COVID , we had to sit down and not only have the financial conversation about what that was going to look like , but we also had to sit down and , you know , redistribute what the responsibilities were going to be , and it just makes it so much like easier to know , like okay , when you come ,

when he comes home and he's like you know , I would really appreciate it like if my dinner is made when I come home , I have no problem making sure that when he comes home from work after working 12 , 13 hour days or if not more , that his dinner is made , the house is clean , my daughter is taken care of , she's put to bed and he can come in , he can

eat his dinner , he takes a shower we try to spend maybe an hour together if he has the energy and then he goes to bed , right , just like when I go grocery shopping and I want to go out to , you know , get things for the house or whatever I expect there to be funds for me to be able to do that . Do you understand what I mean ? So ?

It should be there , because as long as he focuses on what we agree to be his responsibility and I focus on what we agree to be my responsibility , then things should run accordingly . Now , granted , there are times where those lines like cross because we're still married , we're doing life together , we're individuals . We still go through our own individual crap .

You know , amongst the things that we have to figure out as a married couple , I still struggle and deal with my own personal things , my own mental health , my own health . He still has to think about his mental health , his health and everything else in between .

And then there's what we have to deal with together and then our individual stuff that we deal with together as well .

So , but having those conversations about what your home structure is gonna look like I cannot tell you how important that is , especially before going into marriage right , having the boundaries , like you mentioned earlier , and boundaries also pertaining to family guys . Your boundaries pertaining to each other's family , okay .

So I don't have to hear it , because you know my wife knows I will cuss somebody out heart . I'm heartless , I don't care .

I'm gonna just tell you straight up , like , this is what it is , this is what we decided , and , whether or not you agree with it or not , there's nothing you can do with it because it's what we decided . So a lot of times . So we came to the conclusion , like she has , my wife has the ability to , you know , make bad news sound sweet .

Granted , again , with us it was a little different because we've been together since we were like 15 years old , so there wasn't like careers and , like you know , massive amounts of money or anything like that , bills and all that stuff , and those are like growing pains that we went through together .

But having , you know , once we became adults , and having to sit down and have conversation about finances and each other's spending habits and all of that stuff , you really have to have those conversations .

I remember when we were in our early 20s , the first time we tried to merge our finances , because when we were like in our early 20s , the way we had divvied it up is he paid pretty much all of the house bills and I paid our rent at the time , right , because that's how it worked best for our paychecks .

So I paid the rent , he paid the house bills and all that other stuff , and I want to pay my car note , because you didn't have a car note . So that worked for that time , and then the minute we but I bought groceries . Yeah , you bought groceries .

And when we tried to merge our accounts the first time , this was like in our very early 20s when we tried to merge our accounts the first time it wasn't a successful thing .

And I would say one of the reasons why it wasn't a successful thing too and this is really important when it comes to learning your partner is there can be a lot of ego in things , right . So I felt like when we Before we merged , I shopped a lot back with Before , Back with you , shopped a lot . It was different .

Okay , I know I'm talking about like I shopped a lot when it came to , like , buying clothes and stuff like that . I don't feel like I shop a lot when it comes to , then you buy house shit . Right , it's different . You're still shopping though , right , but it's different , so I used to .

And then I felt like when we merged our accounts because the consensus was we were going to merge the money and the money would be the money and we would pay the bills and we would do this and we would do that so it just kind of made sense and we were going to be like , yeah , we're together , Like this is a commitment , we're together , we're going to

this is the money . And I remember trying to , like I would say , do my weekly shopping and I was like , hmm , I feel like I ain't got no money , though I should be able to like spend like $100 right now or spend like $200 right now , and I feel like I'm real broke . But I didn't feel like that when the money wasn't together .

So then part of me was like , okay , well , are you spending money that you wouldn't normally spend , just because our paychecks are together now ? Or you know , it became this thing . But that to me now , looking back , I'm like there was a lot of ego involved . There was not that much togetherness on the level of finances .

But when we did it the second time , especially when we started , you know , redirecting and structuring our goals , because we knew we eventually want to have kids . We knew eventually we wanted to own property . We knew all the things that we wanted to do . So it was going to be . It made sense to come together also as one financially .

And when you take the ego out and when you both can look at the money and say , okay , we know that we're trying to achieve a goal . So I have to trust that you're gonna make good decisions , I'm gonna make good decisions .

We're gonna set up bumpers for each other so that both of us can have some type of sense of security when it comes to the money right . So before it was kinda like willy nilly . The second time round it was like okay , we both agree , this percentage goes here .

We both agree that if you're gonna spend more than $125 , you need to come to your partner and be like hey , this is what I'm planning to purchase . We both have to agree that , okay , is this a smart purchase ? Is this not such a smart purchase to make right now ? But all of that came with growth . All of that came with experience .

So now you're trying to make like that's the only reason why you were a lot more comfortable , cause we went from living comfortably with both our income to where now , like I got , I found you got a raise because we moved up in work .

I moved up in work , I got to the level I've been waiting to get to and now we're covering all our expenses in one check and we literally we spend about four years blowing- .

So those conversations are really , really , really important , because if you don't at least have an understanding about where your partner's views and thoughts are on family finances , boundaries , family structure , work , even in work then it's going to make for a tougher conversation down the line .

Once there's more things involved , when you guys start having kids , when you start investing , when you start buying property , when all of those things it's just going to make for a much more I would think difficult compromise , I guess you could say .

But at least if you have a conversation before , you can get an idea of where your partner's head is based on how they choose to answer , and I also think the type of household they came from is really impactful , because their views also change .

we continue to have in our marriage on making the decision to stay together and be together and try to have a happy life together . Right , yeah , all right . So thanks , guys , thanks for tuning in . We'll see you . We'll see you . Yeah , see you , or hear from you .

You'll hear us , yeah , you'll hear us next week on another episode of A Life After I Do , peace , peace out .