EP 158 A Husband's Take: What Saved Our Marriage

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:  Free Training: How to Stop Feeling Powerless and Become the Expert in Your Own Life Seven Habits of Highly Effective People The 6 Geniuses   I asked my husband Blaine a question at the end of our podcast conversation this week. I asked him what all of our work in learning to understand and live principles has been worth to our family. And he got quiet for a second, and then he said he thought it was “immeasurable.” That there “are too many benefits to name.” Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks: “I think we still have a family because of it.” This week on the podcast, Blaine is here. And we are talking about our marriage — the real version. The rocky years, the finances, the addiction, the therapy that didn't work, the day things got bad enough that we both finally woke up. We are sharing it because I know there are women listening who are right where I was — committed to their marriage, committed to their family, but feeling stuck and completely powerless to change anything.     AI Generated Transcript Introduction Welcome to the Mission Driven Mom podcast. This podcast is for moms just like you, who want to learn how to glorify God through finding and embracing true principles, discovering and developing your greatest gifts, and using them to serve your family and community. Alright, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission-Driven Life and founder of The Mission-Driven Mom. I'm super grateful to have you with us today, and the best part is that my husband is here. We are going to talk about him and me and our marriage and our family, and what it has to do with you and your marriage and your family. So we're just going to start today by talking. Blaine, tell us a little bit about yourself. Just who you are, what some of your hobbies are, what you enjoy doing, so they can start to become familiar with who you are.   Meet Blaine Blaine: I'm Blaine. Nice to virtually meet all of you. I am married to Audrey, and we have six kids. I have a life of sales and construction experience, and I love hobbies. I love to hike, I love to read. Shakespeare's my favorite. I play the viola, I'm in an orchestra, and I love to learn languages. And remodeling. I do love construction. Audrey: So much. And gardening. Blaine: That is true. Yeah. So many things. But I like construction more than gardening, though, to be honest. Audrey: Yes. Alright, so then tell us a little bit about how long we've been married and some of the words that you might use to talk about our marriage and about me. Blaine: We've been married 32 years. Is that right? Audrey: Yes. That's good. Blaine: And words about you? And us? I would describe us as people that are really trying to find out the truth. Our mission statement is "The truth shall make you free," so that's what our lens is always trying to find. If we have something that is difficult in our lives, it takes us sometimes a long time, sometimes it doesn't take very long, to try to find out what's the truth that's really going to solve this problem or make us so we can accomplish this thing that we want to do. So that's kind of our pursuit always. And then we find out sometimes we went down the wrong path. We didn't do it quite right, or we could improve it, and so then we try to improve it from there and level it up even higher. Audrey: That's true. Would you agree? Except it hasn't always been that way. Blaine: Oh. I think we've always been the kind of people that want to improve as individuals, but we didn't always have the tools and the language that you just used, for sure. Audrey: No. And I think I would also say just about us, just our marriage in general. To describe our marriage, I would say that we've always been good friends, and we've always really had a lot in common and had a lot of chemistry and enjoyed each other's company, but it hasn't always been easy to navigate the marriage. And there have been rocky and rough times for sure. Blaine: It's true. I've been happily married for 32 years, and I think you're at 16 now, right? Audrey: Yeah, that's your favorite thing to say. It's unfortunately true. Blaine: Which makes it sound like our marital problems were all your fault. That's definitely not true. But we had good enough times that you stuck in there with me. We did have a lot of good things that we did over the years and good times together. And we've always respected each other quite a bit. And we were very motivated to keep the marriage together, to figure things out, but we didn't always know the way.   The Early Years: Challenges and Struggles Audrey: So let's go back. We want to talk today to couples who are maybe in some of the same situations that we were in when we were younger. Couples that love each other, that want to stay married but don't always know the way forward. Not because we have a lot of marital advice, but because we have an academy that empowers and arms women and mothers and wives to know how to better navigate and negotiate themselves. So we thought we would just take a little trip in time today with you and go back through some of our experiences together and how the concepts and principles and language and tools that we have had the privilege of putting into our academy made a difference for us, and specifically how they made a difference for me, and through me made a difference for us. How would you describe me and what I was going through before this all began when we just had our three little ones? Blaine: I thought everything was hunky-dory, except for all the problems we had. But you... I thought you were all chillax, everything was good. But then things weren't good, and you were like... I just remember you walked around saying, "I'm so intellectually bored. I need to be intellectually stimulated." And I kept saying, "What does that mean?" And you just had this constant frustration. You were longing for something, and I understand what it is now, but I didn't know then. Audrey: Well, neither did I. That's why you kept going around asking. I mean, you asked it all the time. I wanted some depth. "I just need something. What do I need? What do I need? What do I need?" I wanted some mental challenge. Blaine: And so I remember that. With my addiction, we both struggled a lot. I struggled a lot more, I think. But how to not take it personally... You were always really good to me and patient with me, but I think you still struggled more at the beginning than you did later on. Audrey: What do you mean? Blaine: Struggling with being married to an addict. You had no idea what to do. And then later on you felt more empowered and you handled it better. Audrey: What else would you say about that time in our life? Other challenges we had going on? Blaine: Finances. How to handle finances. How to parent the best we could. You had relationships that sometimes were real sticky and you weren't sure what was going on and how to handle them with extended family and even some friends. That caused a lot of heartache at times. Audrey: Yeah. I felt like at the time, and this is one of the reasons why when we found this education and this pathway forward of something to do and try, I just knew that we were both in it. We weren't going anywhere, and I knew that we were both trying. I mean, you were so dedicated to me staying home with the kids. I said many times, "Should I go work?" And you were like, "No, no, no. I will figure it out. I want you to feel like you can stay home with the kids and be there, especially when they're young." So we were in it in that regard, but I also felt like we lacked unity in a lot of ways. Like, we weren't really always on the same page financially. We didn't actually talk about parenting strategies much. In navigating our relationship, we fought way more than I want to admit. Blaine: Yeah, we did fight. But I think our commitment to God and our commitment to each other really anchored us and kept us afloat. Audrey: I feel like one of the most important things, like hanging on to faith, is that it kept us from expecting the other person to fill every hole in our lives. Like, we understood at least that much that there were certain spiritual needs and other needs that God could only meet for us or that we could only meet for ourselves. I think there was a little bit of understanding of that. I don't remember us having arguments about, "Well, it's your fault," this or that. But on the other hand, when we felt rotten, it was easy to blame each other. Like, "You're the reason I feel rotten," or, "Our finances are the reason," or, "Extended family is the reason." Blaine: And I was kind of fragile because of my ego. So you would bring up finances and I'd blow up because I was embarrassed that I wasn't taking better care of you and the family. We didn't have more money and more things. And that was tough for me. And it was tough for you because then there was an argument. You're like, "Why do you always blow up? We're just trying to have a conversation." Audrey: Yeah. And then I would cry, and then I would want to blame you, and sometimes I would. I didn't have any idea how I was contributing or what it was that I could do about it or the different perception changes that I could have. Looking back and kind of being in that moment again with you, the best way I know how to describe it is really just feeling so powerless. Like, I go to church, I say my prayers, I live a good life, I do good things, I followed the prescription of marry and have kids, and now this was my dream, but it doesn't feel like I'm living in my dream. It just feels messy and confusing and hard, and I just didn't have good tools to know how to see it differently and be different myself.   The Wake-Up Call Audrey: The big moment, the wake-up call, we would probably both say is... Blaine: When you slapped me. Audrey: Yeah. What do you remember about that day? Blaine: I remember being a normal man. Things were fine. I've learned that the wife feels it a lot more intensely than the husband, and things were fine from where I stood. And then when you slapped me, I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. Wait, there's a major problem here." That's when I woke up and thought, "Oh, we're in trouble." Serious trouble. So that's why I prayed, and that's why I found a counselor and went and took you there, because I didn't want to lose you. It's ironic in the sense that we don't know what we're doing. We love this person. We want to be with them, but we're doing things to push them away. That's the irony. Blaine: But when you learn some principles and some things that empower you, then all of a sudden it just changes everything. You're like, "Okay, well now I'm not pushing them away. I'm actually drawing them towards me because I have these tools that I didn't know before." Audrey: And part of it, I know, is that we didn't understand who we were. You didn't understand who you were. Blaine: Yeah. And I didn't understand who I was. And so we're blaming the other for something that's impossible for them to do. They're not wired that way. All the times you would say, "Why don't you just plan something?" I was like, "I'm not a planner." I mean, it just doesn't come natural to me at all. And so once you realize that, then almost instantly things got a little bit better because you're like, "Oh, he doesn't ever think about it until you bring it up." So that self-discovery was really helpful.   Therapy: What Helped and What Didn't Audrey: And you know, ironically, what a lot of listeners might not know is that you actually have a marriage and family therapy degree. You actually went through that degree program. You actually worked with couples for a couple of years. So you really do have the inside track. Not only did we go as a couple to marriage therapy, but then you turned around and were on the other side of it. Blaine: Ben Hardy says something really interesting about therapy. It's very helpful for a myriad of reasons, but it's backward-looking. Therapy really focuses very heavily on the past, and it can be very helpful to look at your past and rewrite those stories to be more empowering, but it's limited in that regard. And what happens in marriage therapy is that it's the least successful of all therapeutic approaches, largely because you're in the room with somebody else and it's easy to blame. Audrey: Yeah. And like you said, when we went to therapy, communication was the biggest emphasis. And after we'd gone every week for a year, I remember the day we pulled up and we kind of looked at each other and were like, "I really don't think she has anything else to teach us. We've kind of cycled through. She's talking about the same things again, and I just don't think this can take us any further." It gave us a couple of tools. That was pretty much it. The biggest benefit of therapy was that Blaine called. It was the fact that you called up and you wanted to go, and you were willing to go and spend the money, that I knew, "Oh, he's committed. He really does want to make this work. He really is willing to do whatever we need to do." And that was hugely helpful to just know that. But in terms of that making a huge impact on our marriage, ironically, it just didn't. Blaine: And that's part of the reason I don't do marriage counseling anymore, because it was so frustrating. They would sit there and blame the other person. I had some remarkable stories where people changed, and it was awesome. But I also remember one time a lady came in by herself, and I said, "Look, I have a question for you. Are you just coming here so you can check off the box to say you went to therapy so that you can then divorce your husband?" And she just... I nailed it. She didn't want to be married anymore. She didn't want to do any work to change. She just didn't want to be married to him anymore, and she wanted to be able to say, "I was the good spouse. I went to therapy." Blaine: But I found also that you were doing MDM and having greater impact on marriages than I was having. And you weren't working with couples. You were working with individuals. And people would say, "You saved my marriage." And I was like, "You saved their marriage? What'd you do?" But there was no marriage therapy. And it's because one plus one is two, but if you change one, then the answer's no longer two. If you become a better you, the whole relationship gets better. And that's hard to do because it's easier to blame. It's easier to say it's their fault than to look at your own stuff. But that's where all the empowerment comes from. That's where you feel so much better because you feel like you actually have answers. You actually feel empowered and feel like you can do something instead of just letting whatever happens to you happen to you.   Finding the Education That Changed Everything Audrey: So we'd done the therapy. It hadn't really helped. What we knew is that we were both committed to this marriage, and we wanted to figure it out, and I was really grateful to know that, but we just didn't have answers. And then here I am, wandering around the house, not knowing how to manage the extended family situations, the pornography issues, you were gone a lot, finances and all the things. So I just wanted answers, and I felt lost in motherhood. I didn't have a huge sense of self even before marriage. I wandered around a major university for three years, went and did mission work in Europe, and came home and married. But being married, I knew that I loved you, and I knew I loved the kids, and I didn't want to go anywhere, but I needed some kind of something. And I didn't want to go get a full-time career. I thought about going back to the university, but I was going to have to go to school full time. So we find this classical liberal education because of our sister-in-law. I'm talking to her about this. For a year I've been wandering around the house saying, "You don't know how to help me. You don't know what to tell me. I don't know what else to try. I've tried courses. I've read books. We've been to therapy. I don't know what else to try." So then we find this little school. I know one of the things that women come back to us with in terms of wanting to join the academy is that a lot of husbands will say things like, "Well, if you're going to spend money on yourself and on an education, it should be so that you can earn more money for our family." I know that we were back and forth about it a lot, and it was a huge financial sacrifice for us. It was going to take time. It was going to take money, and I felt I had done my due diligence and researched it, but I wanted it. Where were you at in that moment? How did you feel about spending the money and me taking the time? Blaine: I just felt bad for you because I knew how frustrated you had been and how you were longing for something, but we didn't know what it was. And every time I paid tuition, I was like... It was all out of pocket. No loans or anything. Unaccredited. But you know, looking back, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Because with the kind of education that we have now, ironically, I think people are able to earn more money. They can think deeper. And if they do need a certain credential, they'll be better. They'll understand things better. They'll be able to fit the career better with who they are because they'll understand themselves better. But then all I knew was that my wife needed something, and let's try this. And I was quite intrigued, to be honest. They were talking about Cicero and Dante and Shakespeare and Dickens, and Plato and Aristotle. So it was intriguing to me, but I was still worried about the money, for sure.   Self-Discovery: The First Principles Audrey: So we get started. I take classes online, and then we have that live class a couple of years in. You show up, we're reading Seven Habits, and we realize we have no family mission statement. We aren't even thinking about it that way. Blaine: That was you. You're the planner. You're the one that's like, "We don't have this." Audrey: I was like, "I didn't think about it. The corporations have mission statements, right?" And of course we're thinking about personal mission statements, and then I realize we don't have one. And it was a principle that I was able to latch onto that felt like, "Oh, this is actually something that we could do that would start to build more unity. We could have a shared vision." And it was Covey that was talking about principles. He even mentioned natural law, but I wasn't keyed into it until later when we read Locke, and that's really when the concept of natural law really presented itself as this unique, original idea that I had been totally unfamiliar with. And so one thing led to another. Even though those college classes didn't introduce me to most of the things that are in the academy now, it introduced me to frameworks and concepts and turned me on to the types of learning tools I needed to gain. I was taught and mentored in how to lead Socratic discussion, and I started to understand the kinds of readings that you should engage in and why, and how you would go about doing that. And then as I dove deep into the natural law and we got this mission statement of "the truth will make you free," then eventually somewhere along the line we connected the dots. There must be financial principles then. There must be addiction recovery principles then. Blaine: Yeah. And even when you were doing your marriage therapy, you were like, "Well, there must be marriage principles." And you ran your whole program on those 12 marital principles. But I think one of the attractions to me was to see your confidence rise. It skyrocketed. Because you were in your element, in your strengths. And just the light that you had, and the impact it was starting to have on you, not just the confidence, which was huge, but how the things you were thinking about and the connections you were making attracted me more to it. I was like, "Man, there's some real meat here. There are some real answers that we're starting to get." And so it was easy to pull me into it because of the impact it was already having on you. Audrey: Wow. That's cool. I don't know if I've ever heard you say that that way.   How These Principles Changed Our Marriage Audrey: As we finish up here, let's talk for just a minute about some of the concepts and principles that made their way into the academy and talk about how they changed me, changed you, changed us, changed our family for the better. And then we'll end with what you might say to couples, and especially husbands, whose wives are turned on to this program and are considering doing it and feel concerned about the investment. So first, let's back up a bit. In level one we're learning how to love and like ourselves, and we've got those three core first principles of self-care and self-discovery and self-management, or self-leadership. What are some of the concepts and principles, or stories, that you could relate or examples you could give for discovering those? Blaine: Well, I remember one time when you got really angry. I don't know if you've ever been that angry before, except for maybe when you slapped me. And you told me the next day you felt like you'd been poisoned. And that was a change. You said, "I will never allow myself to go there again." And it was just a step up in the self-management. You weren't going to allow yourself to do things like that because it didn't do any good. It just made you feel horrible. What was the self-discovery that made such a difference for you and for us? Audrey: I think self-discovery is so important. I mean, what does it say above the Lyceum door? "Know thyself." It's huge. I don't think there's enough emphasis on it in our society. People do stuff and they're frustrated. So many people, like me, frustrated for years because they're not in their element, not in the place where their gifts and their strengths are. Blaine: And for you, for mind mates, you just need to talk. You want to talk to people about things, about ideas. And that's really empowering to understand. I was like, "Why does she want to talk?" Always wanting to talk, talk, talk. But it's important to you. It helps meet a need. So you give yourself permission to do it, too, so you have an outlet, so you actually feel better. Another thing you did is you got more serious about exercising and making sure that you met your needs. Because Adler taught you about needs and what proper self-care is. Once you started doing that, you improved. And that improved your emotional state. I think exercising is going to help probably more emotionally than physically, though it will definitely help physically. And so that was really helpful. And you'd always prayed and studied scripture and been in church, so you did a good job on your spiritual needs. But you took it up by meeting these other needs that weren't so natural to you, which helped you, which helped us. And you were a better mom, more patient, because you felt better because you'd met those needs.   Shared Language and Principles: A New Framework Audrey: You know, we mentioned how so much of therapy and marriage tools and everything people talk about is around communication. But actually, for us, gaining an understanding of principles did two really important things. One thing it did was, instead of Blaine being right or me being right, it was the principles that are right. And so it took a layer of friction between us away. So often we've been in conversations that have gotten a little heated, and we've been able to say, "Okay, but what's the principle here?" And we can check ourselves and say, "Maybe I'm wrong. Let's go try to figure out what the principle would be here." And then the secondary thing that's so important is that we have all this shared language. I mean, if you've been listening to us these last few minutes, we have all these words and all this language about drama and victimhood and creator orientation, or whether it's self-deception or whether it's telling yourself the truth, or whether it's meeting your needs. And we're able to correct each other, I guess is maybe the word. But it doesn't bother me. It's not coming from an accusatory place. Blaine: Like you just said, you'll say, "Audrey, you've got to meet your needs or you're going to crash." Or I'll start crashing and you'll be like, "You feel this way because you're not meeting your needs well enough." And I'm not accusing you. I'm just stating you're not in line with true principles, and therefore you're reaping the consequences. Audrey: Yes. And so it's been just... I can't even emphasize strongly enough how incredibly liberating and empowering it has been to have all of this shared language around how to live out these three first principles of loving ourselves. Because now we both love ourselves better, and when we love ourselves better, we can love each other better. Blaine: And I think any husband should encourage his wife to do this program. And I'm not saying that for any reason other than for your benefit and her benefit. It's going to benefit your wife, and she's going to become a better person. She's going to feel better. She's going to feel empowered, and you're going to like that, and you're going to want to follow because you don't want to be left behind. And just the goodness and health and wholeness that comes from it is so attractive. You'd want to be that way too. Plus, if you're like me, you don't want the problems I was having. I wanted to overcome those problems. I wanted to be a better man, a better husband, a better provider. And all this has done is made it easier. We still have our stuff. We still have things to work through because we're human. But we can catch it, and we can arrest it, and we can pivot and go the right way so that pain is avoided, which used to cause weeks or months of suffering. Sometimes it would be an argument for a few days, or those poor choices would have consequences going on for a long time. And now a lot of times we can just see it. We can think deeper. We know ourselves, and we can course-correct.   The Impact on Our Family Audrey: And I think there's so many ways in which this enhances love in a marriage. As we both meet our own individual needs, there are many things I can't do for Blaine. I can't strengthen his relationship with God. I can't make him more fit. I can't help him learn a language or read a great book. I can't help him manage his anger or frustrations or self-pity. Those are all things he needs to do for himself, which is why we need the tools to know how to lead ourselves emotionally, how to manage our hearts and our minds, how to meet our real needs. And then the self-discovery component layers the marriage with this beautiful understanding of each other that's so much richer and deeper. Because instead of expecting or wanting him to be like me, I value that he's different. I want him to be different because I understand that his difference complements me and that it makes us stronger together. And I see it as a strength instead of a weakness. And instead of blaming him, I encourage him to be the person that he is to the fullest. I feel like all of those things have deepened the love that we have for each other. Blaine: I remember one time we were going on a trip. I don't remember where we were going, but you're like, "Why don't you help out?" And I was like, "What do you think I've been doing?" You said, "I'm in here in the kitchen all by myself." And I said, "Did you check the sprinklers? Did you mow the lawn? Did you make sure everything was locked? Did you check the temperatures on the AC? Did you check the pool?" And listed all these things. She's like, "Oh." It was just a case in point of how differently we think. And now she's like, "Oh, you're a man. You think differently." It was just empowering, and we've kept that and used that as we've gone forward. Audrey: And because of the things that we've learned and understand, I was able to say, "Why aren't you helping me?" or "Could you help me better?" rather than, "You're such a loser. Sleep on the couch tonight." Because we had a lot of couch nights in this marriage. Blaine: And I've learned more patience because of it. I learned that you weren't attacking me. You were just trying to talk about things, your concerns and stuff like that. And it's exciting. It's more exciting now than ever because we've gone so far, and we keep knowing that if we hit a problem, we can tackle it and we can beat it. We have the toolbox. We can just grab the tool we need and run with it.   A Message to Husbands Audrey: Husbands, if this is something that your wife is willing to tackle, if she wants to embark on this adventure of self-discovery and self-leadership and really do the work of self-management and understanding herself, you have everything to gain, which Blaine said. And everything will be different in your family culture. I mean, we didn't talk about it, but just the way that we parent, the type of family culture that we've been able to build, rests on a foundation of understanding. There are so many countless stories I could tell about understanding my children better and valuing them more and encouraging them in their strengths and unique gifts and talents. Everyone has benefited. Blaine: And the thing that I think is so incredible about the academy is that you've really built it for women in the real world. You see these books that say, "How do you get a book through? You read it four times." Like, who has time to read it once? But you've got it to 20 or 30 minutes a day. That's all the more time, because it has to be done that way so it percolates and they really get it. And it's not going to overtake their lives at all. And you're going to see immediate results, I think. Right off the bat, you're going to see something. They're going to implement something that they learn, and you're going to be impressed. And they're just going to continue to do that as they work through the academy over the months and years ahead. What Has It All Been Worth? Audrey: As we end, Blaine, one last question for you. What has all of this been worth to our family? Blaine: I think that's immeasurable. I think we have a family still because of it. Because it would've been real easy to make me the problem. You know, addiction was the problem. I wasn't the problem. I was suffering. I was wounded in battle. And I had such a poor self-image because of my addiction that you could do no wrong. I really used to think, "I'm sure she has faults," but because mine were just glaring so huge, I couldn't see them. But you didn't give up on me. And so that was ginormous. I mean, it's helped us in all our relationships with extended family. It's now helped me rebuild relationships with my children that needed to be healed and improved. It's helped us with our finances. We had financial stress for years and years and years. It's helped us with your hip, where you could hardly even walk. And through prayer and study and hard work, finding the answers, you didn't have to have an operation and you're back to normal. I mean, it took almost a year, but there are just so many benefits. And just the peace of mind and the enjoyment that we have in our lives. We know who we are, so we do things that bring us joy. And we've given ourselves permission because that's who we are. Before, sometimes we felt like, "Oh, I can't do that. It's wasting time or whatever." And we understand now, no, we need leisure time, and we need to be in our work and... I mean, I just can't answer it fully. The benefits have been astronomical. Just incredible. Audrey: Well, thank you for coming and talking to us today and sharing a husband's perspective and a man's perspective on how women can gain the tools to manage themselves. And when they manage themselves, everything changes for everybody. I know that firsthand, and you know that firsthand. So hopefully what we've said today helps someone out there.   Closing and Free Training Invitation Audrey: Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so grateful that you were able to be here. If you want to learn more about what goes on in the academy or what the natural law is or how principles work or any of the things that we've talked about today, you can join me in a free training that I'm doing coming up soon. The link is in the description below or at themissiondrivenmom.com. I'd love to see you at that free training. Thank you again for being here and joining us, and we'll see you next time.