Join doctor Lee Baucom as he explores ways for you to improve your relationship and your life starting right now. Hey. This is Lee Balchem, and, part of what I find interesting is when I hear the same questions over and over again. So today, we wanna talk about this path that I've talked about. So let me just kind of dive in here because this came out of a question from an email, and the question was simply, you talk about this path and I don't know what you mean by that path, and
that's a core part of my material. And so I responded to this person. I said, well, that's exactly what I talk about, you know, in the 3 c's that path. So let me very quickly cover these 3 c's because they are your control center for your efforts to save your marriage. So the first one is connection. Talk about connection as being so important. You have to connect with your spouse. The reason you have to connect with your spouse is because you become disconnected in your
spouse. That's the pause button marriage that I've talked about, and it's one of, the main issues in a marriage. In fact, it's the core issue of why marriages get into trouble. You didn't stay in connection and you got stagnant. So the connection is a big piece of of connecting with your spouse as a way of reconnecting where you wanna get to. That's the first c. The second c is about changing yourself. So first, let me just say, many people say, hey, how do you why do you think something's
wrong with me? It's not that. It's that I know that you and me and everybody else has the tendency and the capacity of stagnating in life. And when we stagnate, we stop bringing our best self into all of life, but including in our marriage. And so part of what we have to do is change ourselves to get back on the path of where we need to be. It's not about becoming a different person. It's about getting on the path of natural of the changes and growth that we all
need to have. We need to reestablish how we get to the place where we're showing up as our best self. That is the big thing is how do we show up as our best self to our spouse who we're connecting with. So we're bringing our best self into that, and that brings us to this other, the 3rd c of creating a new path, creating the path. So I've been doing a lot of, traveling and driving this summer. Some I meant
to, others I didn't. So when we were in Iceland recently, my family's in Iceland, and, we were lucky that, Google Maps works there just fine, and it took us on the path to where we needed to get to. So we had an idea of where we needed to get to, and we plug it in, and it would plot us the path to get there.
And part of what was helpful about that is since we'd never been there, we needed something to show us how to get there, and that's pretty much why I've been laying out all of these pieces because most people fail to get to the point in the marriage where we're working on. That being a we. That's the whole path. And so when I respond to this person, I said, that's this is it. This is the path to we. That's what we're talking about
here. We need to create a path to we, which raises the question of, what is that? Right? The whole task of marriage is about building a we. And sadly, most people miss that. Most most people don't recognize, a, that that's the path or the the task, and b, what that's about.
Partly because we don't talk about this, partly because many people don't have very good models of that, partly because people misunderstand that, and they've put it into the context of, oh, you're talking about codependence, or you're talking about losing yourself to this other person. I don't want that. That is not what I mean. In fact, it's almost the opposite of what I mean. So let's talk a little bit about what I mean by that building a we of creating this path. Okay? So, first of all,
let's go back. Let's rewind to the beginning of every relationship. One step before that. Before you met your now spouse, before you did anything, it was your spouse and you, or to put it more succinctly, you, me. You, me. Right? 2 people. And, so, if it's like most relationships that develop, something put you in each other's vicinities. Really doesn't matter what that was, and and there are lots of ways that could happen. You met at, an event, you met at, you know, an organization.
You met online. You met at a bar. You met through friends. You pumped in bumped in each other, shot, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. Right? Suddenly, you go, oh, wait. There's something interesting about this person. And maybe it took 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 times, but there's something interesting to drive you a little bit more and more, so that you decide to explore what the possibilities are of a deepening relationship here.
And so you have conversations, and you do things together, and you try to explore what your common values and beliefs and what that all looks like and tell your story and all of those pieces that happen in the building of a relationship. And along the way, you go from you, me to you and me. And you and me begin to move forward and you find closer points together. You and me. You and me. You and me. And along the way, lots of things are possible there.
Some people decide to live together, and I'm gonna tell you why it is that statistics show that you're less likely to survive a marriage if you lived together before. That's a shocker for people because they don't understand exactly what we're talking about. It's a subtle shift that most people miss. In fact, I created a whole training program a number of years ago about the secret to marriage, and the secret to marriage was about being a we.
And I created a whole lot of training on just what that looks like because it's a subtle change that has to happen for a successful marriage to make it. And if you don't know what that looks like, it's tough to see the nuance difference here. That's why I try to create this map, so you can find your way there. That's why my Save the Marriage system and my books behind me are all about that, of of how do you find your way forward
with that. Because marriages get into trouble because people hit the pause button, and they disconnect. And part of that is because they didn't realize the level of connection and the level of being a we that gets them through. So there is an opportunity that only happens when you, make the kind of pledge that's true in a marriage. People who live together think that they have done that. But here's the little secret. If you're living together, you know that there is an exit that's pretty easy.
Wait for the lease to run out, break the lease, sell the property. There are ways that you can, you know, change that pretty easily. There's nothing big about that. Divorce is big. It's a legal process of disconnecting what the state has said is, at least in United States, we'll say the state, but the state or the country has said you are now one unit. That is what happens legally in a marriage. You become 1 unit, Because legally, they know that is the process that needs to happen.
Faith tradition have talked about this too of becoming 1 unit. Right? Many faith traditions have that idea that a married couple becomes this one unit. Except for many marriages don't make that shift. They stay you and me. They don't make the shift, and that is why it's fragile. So this path to we, that's the whole basis for marriage. It's a partnership path. The deepest level of partnership. Sometimes I've talked about the fact that, a marriage is kind of like a a business in a couple of ways.
One is the way you form a business is to fill out some paperwork. You say to the state, this is now an organization that we're gonna treat like a real organization. Then you do accounting, and you do other ways of treating that that make it like it's the unit. Right? You do that in marriage too. Right? You have a marriage license, and that license is that you are now 1, and you, taxes and and lots of other things now are about that. Property becomes our property,
our stuffs. Just like corporations is ours. Now in business, you might have a partnership and you go, you know, I don't wanna be with my partner anymore. I'll just sell out my part. Sure. There's some legal wranglings that have to happen, but even that is different. And so that's where it kinda breaks down.
When you divorce, that is pulling apart this entity that the state and probably even you both have treated that way in your property and everything else you have to split that apart and that's why it's so difficult. That's why it's so painful. And that's why we have to make sure that you have the opportunity of forming that we. You become a team.
And that's the subtle thing that many people miss is it's about being that team together through whatever comes your way, and that is what you have promised in the marriage, and that's why you can make the shift. You say through whatever happens, you know, it it doesn't matter what days come our way. We're gonna stick through this. Through good days, bad days, sick days, poor days, rich days, or sick days, healthy days, rich days, poor days. Right?
And and sticking together through that. Sticking together through thick and thin. That is the pledge. Sometimes the people don't know what that looks like, and that's why they don't quite make the shift. So what happens? What happens is you and me, you and me, at some point becomes you versus me. It becomes a competition. You start competing with your spouse to ask the question, what are you getting versus what am I getting? You know, what's my benefit? What's your benefit? Who's,
carrying more weight here? Who's I mean, all those equations come in. Now, and let me just say, it is great to have discussions about how do we share the load. Great discussion. But when we start making that personal attacks about what am I getting versus what you're getting, it's rarely coming from a place of how can we make this work. And so, I'm I'm suggesting that we have to change that discussion to how do we make this work for us. How can we make this work?
So some people have said, okay. So what you're talking about is I have to lose myself to this. I'm gonna say that's the opposite of what I'm saying. You kinda bring your best self to this. So let's go kind of with this mindset of being a team. Right? So what do you do if you show up to a sporting event with your team? Do you go, I'm gonna lose myself back here. I'm just gonna kind of blend in
back here. Or do you want to bring in your best self, your best athletic self, your best skill set into that? If you wanna win, you're bringing your best into that. Maybe you have someone on your team that is great at something, so you want them to do that. But you're probably good at something too or great at something too, and so you need to be able to blend that together. That's how teams win. And so part of what we're talking about here is how do we bring our best self here.
And that's why it's not about losing yourself. It's about recognizing that you bring your best self into a partnership together to take on life. Now, let me say something here that I hear many times. People use the, the analogy of it's you and me against the world. It is not you and you and your spouse against the world. It's us moving through the world Because you and me against the world makes it adversarial
in ways that just make it difficult. But but that you and me against the world is at least that we're standing together against the world. I'll take that over you versus me in the world. It's you against me. That's not gonna go very far. It's us moving through the world to find the best way forward. That's what we're talking about. So then some people will say, well, you're talking about codependence, because that was another email
I got. My spouse doesn't wanna have anything to do with this because you're talking about codependence. That is not what I'm talking about. That's a misunderstanding of my idea and and really in many ways, it's a misunderstanding of codependence. So codependence is one of those words. There are lots of terms out there, lots of ideas out there from psychology that maybe had some good in the beginning.
But the way we've used them or misuse them over time has taken away almost any sense of what it's about. Codependence comes from the addictions treatment world that says that a spouse or somebody is codependent on the addictive substance. Right? So let's say you have a spouse who is an alcoholic, and the spouse of that person is codependent on the alcohol, not on the person, on the alcohol.
That was the original intent. So let's say that, a spouse realizes that when their spouse has a few drinks, they stop being so argumentative and start being less insulting, and so then they stop drinking, and they're tired of the insults and arguments because they haven't actually gotten sober, and so they, offer some drinks to get them back onto that. That's codependence.
Right? And it comes in lots of different ways and lots of different subtleties to it, but it was all about being codependent on the substance. So then it began to be anytime that you relied on a spouse or anyone for anything has been seen as codependent. So let's talk about the truth of that. We are all interdependent on each other in this world. That's also true in marriage. In fact, it's way more true in marriage.
We have this concept, this myth that we there's a such thing as, you know, pulling yourself up out of the bootstraps and that, you know, you gotta do it on your own. Nobody does that. Nobody. Well, let me just say that this is something that I have been aware of for a long time that when we start looking at I did this. I am the reason for my success. We've already denied the reality,
the true reality of that. So years years ago, I had a client who came in and he said, you know, he he was not happy with life, not happy with lots of things. And he said, but you know, I'm a I'm a self made man. And I said, no. You're not. I knew his story, and he was a little irate that I would challenge him on that. He said, yes. I am. I am a self made man. I built my business, and I said, no. That's not entirely true, is it? And so
here is what I told him. I said, first of all, your business, you bought from a family member. Correct? And he said, yes. And I said, so that in and of itself, you had the opportunity that many many other people didn't have. Now you took advantage of it. You did step up and buy it. So you took initiative. That's different than being self made. Initiative, great. Not about being self made.
2nd, that family member allowed you to acquire the business by using the profits that you were generating in the business by doing the business to pay them. Very few people get the sweetheart deal like that. So even there, you're not self made. You know, you're part of an opportunity that, yes, you were able to capitalize on, but many people would never even had that opportunity. So again, initiative. Yes. Self made. No. 2nd, you're not selling the product. You're not
servicing the product. You have people who are selling it. You have people who are servicing you. You have people who are helping to run the business. They are helping you run it. They are contributing to your process. You hired them, made good hires, initiative, not self made. Finally, there are customers who are coming in your door, who are giving you their money for that product. They're helping you along the path too.
And the fact is that that is true for us as humans that we have people with whom we rely on. I don't grow my own food and create my own power and do all those other I didn't build my house. Right? I mean, there are these places where I am reliant on other people. None of us are independent. That's my point. And so if you think of the continuum from dependence over here and independence over here, A baby is dependent.
And in many ways, we have dependencies along the way as we're growing and developing. The other side of that independence means I don't need anyone else. I am on my own. Okay. So now the truth is that we exist in our lives somewhere in this midpoint of interdependence. When I go to the store, the money I've made in my job, I hand to somebody else for things that they've created from their job and we make an exchange. That's interdependence. I am dependent interdependent on they're
dependent on me buying. I'm dependent on them selling. That's interdependence. It's everywhere. But nowhere as strong as it is in a marriage where you again have bound your life together to walk down the path and make take it take yourselves through life in a successful way. You are interdependent. That is not codependent. Interdependence means we rely on each other to make it through and make it through life. That's what you're
doing. This is a partnership of interdependence, and it is the place where it happens the strongest of anywhere in your life. That is absolutely true. Because you have pledged your futures together. You have bound your futures together. So the path that you are building is to see that, For instance, around resources, money. Right? We have our resources coming into our home and our expenses going out. Right? Resources coming in, resources going out to support us.
So when couples say, my money, your money, that is a fictional accounting Because our household has the resources. How you subdivide it, it's all in your mind, for instance. Our children, how are we going to parent them? That's another place. Our love life. What does that look like? How do we bring that together which is different than what are you getting and what am I getting?
You can always tell when somebody has stepped into me, you thinking when they're asking the question, what am I getting out of this versus what are you getting out of this? You can have a conversation about what are we getting out of this, and what do we want out of this, and what would be, most helpful. And and there are lots of other conversations you might have coming from bringing your your best self there. But it's in the context of our life
together. How does our life join together to get us where we want to get to? That's a talking about negotiation. Talking about finding what fits for both people because you've bound your lives together. The foundation of that binding it together is the love that you have. The connection that you have. Bringing your best self to that. So it's a project. It's a lifelong project. And that's the thing about being a we. You're gonna find places down the road that you go, oh gosh.
We're not doing that in this area and I didn't notice it. So then you figure out a way to do that. You're gonna find places where you say, I'm really not stepping into this the way I need to. So we step into that. You're gonna find places where you're going, wow, we've let the connection kind of wane. We gotta work on that. The 3 c's. Connect. Change yourself. Create a new path. That path is about partnership. It's about being a team. About seeing yourself as being a we. We are in this together.
We move forward. We find a way. That's the path that I'm talking about. If you need help with figuring out what that path looks like and how to build it, come visit me at save the marriage dot com. That's save the marriage.com. This is Lee Balkam wishing you the best as you work to save your marriage. You've been listening to save the marriage podcast. For more information and help, please visit us at save the marriage dot com.