Asking For More Sex: Becoming Sexually Confident
Full Episode Transcript
Brad Aldrich:
Welcome to the Still Becoming One podcast. We are Brad and Kate.
Kate Aldrich:
In our more than 20 years of marriage, we’ve survived both dark times and experienced restoration.
Brad Aldrich:
Now as a licensed marriage counselor and relationship coaches. We help couples to regain hope and joy.
Kate Aldrich:
We invite you to journey with us, as we are still becoming one.
Brad Aldrich:
Let’s start the conversation. Hello everyone, Welcome back to Still Becoming One. We are glad that you are back with us again.
Kate Aldrich:
It’s a lovely day.
Brad Aldrich:
And we hope that you are enjoying the start of a new school year or new season for you.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, yeah, but kind of the end of summer is always sad, but also like it’s good to get into a routine.
Brad Aldrich:
I don’t know. I love fall so and I don’t know I find a lot of people at this time, like in the beginning of fall, is like okay, let’s figure out how to end the year strong, and I think there’s like a positive be fun, and it’s kind of nice when the last season is ushered out, Of course.
Kate Aldrich:
we live in boring old Pennsylvania where there’s a very distinctive season change usually.
Brad Aldrich:
Yes, there is.
Kate Aldrich:
Right now it’s still temperature-wise warm, it’s warm, but this whole week is supposed to be the 70s, which I’m super excited about that’s nice. Yeah, very nice, yeah Very nice, yeah, I mean, our kids are back in school, our two are back at college. Life just keeps right on rolling it does?
Brad Aldrich:
It keeps moving, and I’m sure you guys are all feeling the same thing, and that kind of goes with our topic today. Anyway, right, because we wanted to talk about the idea of boundaries in our life and in our relationships.
Kate Aldrich:
And I would think, for many people who have kiddos, a new season means new activities, new sports, new extracurriculars. All kinds of things, yeah, and even if you don’t have kids, you might be involved in them yourself, and the season starting and whatnot.
Brad Aldrich:
Okay, yeah, and I always think it is so important for us to remember that the things that we’re saying yes to are, in essence, saying no to something else, passively.
Kate Aldrich:
Right.
Brad Aldrich:
And the opposite. Yeah.
Kate Aldrich:
The things we’re saying no to. We’re saying yes to other things. True, correct, not necessarily passively right and the opposite. Yeah, the things we’re saying no to. We’re saying yes to other things true correct but necessarily passively.
Brad Aldrich:
I think right, that’s more an active choice. I’m going to say no to this because I want to say yes to these other things. I think the opposite happens, that we say yes to things and we don’t even really realize where that cost is going to come from, and we don’t even really realize where that cost is going to come from.
Kate Aldrich:
Oh yeah, and so we?
Brad Aldrich:
say yes and then we’re, like you know, feeling really stressed and busy, and so we’ve said no to rest or downtime, or we say yes to so much and we in essence have said no to things like date nights because that time disappeared, or things like that.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, yeah, I can see where yep, I can see where you disappeared or things like that. Yeah, yeah, I can see where yep, I can see where you’re coming from with that. Yeah, absolutely, and I think we definitely had times in our marriage where that was a struggle.
Brad Aldrich:
Oh yeah.
Kate Aldrich:
For sure. I think, living with you over these last 25 years, I have learned to take stock of when I’m saying yes.
Brad Aldrich:
So you’re saying I’m better at saying no than you are?
Kate Aldrich:
oh, absolutely. But. But if we’re being honest, sometimes to your detriment that is true.
Brad Aldrich:
No, that’s that’s.
Kate Aldrich:
You’re probably correct probably that is true. You said so I am correct, but also like I now, when people ask are asking for a yes, I’m like I do instead of, like you know, people on our wing or on our shoulders telling us what to do. I have a little Brad there. Good, good, good Perfect. Saying like OK, if you say yes to this, like what is that impacting?
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah.
Kate Aldrich:
For for the rest of us and and for myself. It’s not just about everybody else, but yeah, so 100%, so I do you have a little brat on your shoulder to you?
Brad Aldrich:
I know I have a little you on my shoulder going no, you should probably do those things. It’s okay Sometimes that that, because you’re right I do tend to tend to be a little faster on the not jumping in.
Kate Aldrich:
I would say now, as I’m getting older, our kids are older. My yeses are more for the close circle of friends. I wouldn’t say I’m so quick to say yes to anybody and kind of that rescue that person or help that I mean. I definitely still have that as part of my personality and story. But I would say the people I’m quick to say yes to are the people I’m super close with and enjoy. But I have to even be careful with that. Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
So we run into a lot of people who, even in that close circle, have not figured out how to put up healthy boundaries in their relationship and in fact often feel bad about them having boundaries in a relationship.
Kate Aldrich:
I think most people have a relationship with boundaries, and it’s really a curious thing to me to figure out what those are.
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, and it brings up emotions right of I’m going to hurt people by putting up this boundary or you know that kind of thing, and really what we’re doing is saying here’s where the relationship is healthy or here’s what we need in order to make the relationship healthy. Right, and I think all of us have had the experience maybe, you know, when we were younger, maybe in school or something of somebody who kind of like, drains the life out of you because they don’t have any boundaries, right, they just kind of take over and, like you know, what happens is, you know, this person wants to spend all the time with you. They want to, you know, do everything with you, and eventually it’s like, okay, I need a little space. And then we have the negative experience of trying to push the person away. And I think those kind of events have often shaped our feeling around boundaries in general right.
Brad Aldrich:
Like. We then feel bad I’m hurting this person. They’re going to get upset with me if. I say no or if. I say I can’t do something.
Kate Aldrich:
Right, right, and I think you’re absolutely right with that about the person not wanting to put up the boundary and the person you know, the other person involved. I think we do worry about that, but then what we end up doing, as you said, is put up the ultimate boundary, correct Eventually. We just are like Nope, I’m done.
Kate Aldrich:
Yep, no more relationship with you. I do think. I do think there are times people try to express, express boundaries, but I’m not sure if it’s clear or it’s all so difficult to figure out all of that. You know, cause I think sometimes people do try to say, oh, I need to spend some more time with my family, like and give hints, but it’s not real clear what you’re trying to do. Right, and so the other person just continues to demand, or and they may not even be intentionally demanding, like they don’t- realize this is a pattern for them, but requiring that time of you.
Brad Aldrich:
Well, and this conversation goes right along with the challenge that I think most of us have of being able to express our needs right If we can’t express our needs. It gets difficult to have a boundary right, because then we don’t know where it goes. We don’t really understand why do I need that boundary? And then it’s only like put in place when something is really severe or is a, you know, time issue, that now we can’t kind of thing right. You know that’s about the only time people are forced to put up boundaries.
Kate Aldrich:
What about, though, when you are clear and trying to put up boundaries, but people don’t respect it?
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, I mean, we’ve all had that experience, right. If somebody pushes through, even though you’ve said you know what, I can only come for the day, and then you go and you get this passive aggressive. You know, I really wish you could have stayed longer you know from a parent or something like that, or you, you know what’s another example that you can think of.
Kate Aldrich:
I was just I mean, I was just thinking of our own example. We failed to. This is complete transparency and rawness. We failed to really be able to take a hold of the boundary we needed. As young married couple, we grew up super close to each other and around the holidays.
Kate Aldrich:
You know, thanksgiving and christmas are so close together and we ended up. You know, christmas is a little bit easier because everybody has most people have a little bit of a bigger break. There’s. It’s more acceptable to, you know, visit this family this day and this family this day, and so we were able to establish that pretty quickly what? We needed with that and healthy boundaries.
Brad Aldrich:
Stupid Thanksgiving, which sounds wrong to say it that way. I think that’s true. It took us years to enact a boundary around that, and then nobody could honor it For like 30 years, from five years of us dating together through 20 years of marriage.
Kate Aldrich:
I don’t know that we did our first Thanksgiving together, but like soon after, yeah, we would go to each family’s, because our families only live like three miles away from each other, we would have two Thanksgivings at the same time. Which is super healthy, right? Because when you see all of the shows around the holidays, they’re like don’t overeat.
Brad Aldrich:
They’re talking about one dinner. We would pile them all in, drive an hour, go to somebody’s house for lunchtime Thanksgiving.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
And then pile everybody in the car, drive another five miles down the road, three miles down the road and have another Thanksgiving for dinner and it’s like why?
Kate Aldrich:
are we doing this and our poor children were subject to two very different dynamics.
Brad Aldrich:
Yes, emotional atmospheres, Two different yep.
Kate Aldrich:
And two different, very different Thanksgiving dinners.
Brad Aldrich:
And then we would be utterly exhausted for the next week and we were like how?
Kate Aldrich:
do we do this? We put in place, I think, about four or five years ago, that we are going to do an Every Other for Thanksgiving and, thinking about it, it’s not even a boundary of we could do Thanksgiving here by ourselves. And, thinking about it, it’s not even a boundary of we could do Thanksgiving here by ourselves. But we said we’re going to do every other year back from Brad’s family to my family, that kind of thing Whoever’s available we’re not requiring people to be available, but whoever’s available we’ll spend it with it every year, every year.
Brad Aldrich:
Every year there’s pushback.
Kate Aldrich:
They can’t handle it. So there’s your good example, guys.
Brad Aldrich:
But we’re going to go through a list of steps to putting up boundaries, and these are things that we’ve done and I’m not going to say that they make it simple.
Kate Aldrich:
Right.
Brad Aldrich:
But they at least help you to figure out how to do it.
Kate Aldrich:
I think that’s good. I think it’s good, before we list these, to remember if, well, and Brad, you’re going to talk about some of this. But we also have to be curious about and do our own work on, why do boundaries feel so hard to do? Yes, it is somewhat the other person’s reaction, but it comes from our own story too and there’s probably a reason both of us felt like we couldn’t really put that boundary up earlier.
Kate Aldrich:
Um, so just know that that might be a little work you need to do, like why are boundaries specifically super hard?
Brad Aldrich:
for me. I think that’s so important, right? Because the first step, the first rule in setting up some boundaries is to know what you can give and what you can’t.
Kate Aldrich:
Okay, say more about that.
Brad Aldrich:
So right, like, oh fine, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that, Like we just tend to kind of allow ourself to just give and give and give and give until we’re exhausted and we take the weight of it, right.
Kate Aldrich:
And.
Brad Aldrich:
I think we need to say no, I can’t do that Like. That is going to have a cost that I can’t spend right now. That it has to get to that level before you know, we often are willing to put up the boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Do you have suggestions for people on how, especially with these, are obviously people often that we care about oftentimes family, dear friends, like? Are there specific ways that we can express empathy for what they feel like is a loss of time or whatnot, as well as sticking up for what we need, or is that not necessary?
Brad Aldrich:
I think there are times that we can go along with expressing care and expressing for the relationship, but one of the things that we’re going to get to is we don’t need to apologize for our boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Right, I wasn’t suggesting apologizing, but something like I hear you and I know it’s hard that we don’t get to spend this time together, sure.
Brad Aldrich:
I think that this is important to me.
Kate Aldrich:
So, let’s Something like that.
Brad Aldrich:
I don’t know, but let’s think about a non-time oriented boundary. So somebody you know wants something from you, even emotionally, that you don’t have the capacity for right now. Okay Right, they, they. It’s more than just time that you don’t have the capacity for right now Okay Right, it’s more than just time. They want a connection or they want something and you’re like yeah, this friendship is. I can’t right now, I just don’t have that capacity.
Brad Aldrich:
You know, if we kind of go too far and think, oh, I’d really love to, but now we’re making excuses, sure, right, too far, and they, oh, I’d really love to, but I like now we’re making excuses, sure, right, and that that actually doesn’t respect them or respect yourself. So I want to be a little cautious of we don’t need to like, come up with a million excuses of why we can’t have the boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
That’s not what. I don’t think I meant excuses because, guys, you need to know straight out, brad will not. He’ll always, as I’m saying no to something, we’re talking about something, and someone’s asking me to do something via text, I’m like no. And then I’m talking out explaining why, and he’s like, nope, just erase all that, just text back, no, and so there isn’t. So we weigh each other out.
Kate Aldrich:
But I don’t mean excuses. I mean, especially in cases where you are maybe sad that this is something you can’t do, sure, like being able to say I, I don’t know, because you don’t want to give false hope, I know what you’re saying. You don’t want to be not authentic, right? We don’t want to give false hope. I know what you’re saying. You don’t want to be not authentic, right? We don’t want to say, oh, I really wish I could be there. If part of the reason you’re putting up the boundary is you don’t actually want to be there, sure, I don’t mean that either. But you know, someone invites you to something and you’re just like, I really would like to be there, but I need to make this decision.
Brad Aldrich:
I’m going to spin this into. What I’m going to say is step two Okay, perfect. As you’re talking about the boundary, you actually need to be very specific about what is inbounds and what is out of bounds.
Kate Aldrich:
Right.
Brad Aldrich:
So most of the time when we’re putting up a boundary, we are not cutting off the relationship. I don’t want to see you anymore, period done right Like that’s not what we’re talking about most of the time. This is a I am saying I can’t do this or I need this space or I need this time, or you know, we’re putting up a boundary within, so we tend to focus on what is now out of bounds. Right.
Brad Aldrich:
I don’t want to talk about that topic. You know, I don’t want to talk about my wife to you, mom Right, and then we just focus on that boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Are you talking about a real example there? Probably yes.
Brad Aldrich:
And you know those kind of boundaries like I’m not going to talk about that, and then we just focus on the what we’re not going to talk about. But I think we need to spend as much time and I think this is part of what you were talking about of saying what’s in bounds. Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
Right, like. So. I might be saying, or we did say no, I’m not coming over for Thanksgiving this time, but I’m really looking forward to seeing you at Christmas time. So we emphasize back what’s inbounds. And so, mom, I really don’t want to talk that way about my wife, so we’re not going to do that, but I would love to hear about your experience at church this week, or we can direct the conversation to where we want it to go while we’re still setting up a healthy boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Right Gotcha.
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, so no, I’m not going to share that about the kids, but I can tell you X, y, z. Right, there are healthy things that we can move the conversation to that I think is really important to focus on. Okay, yep. And that might be in that language. Oh, I really can’t do that, but I’m excited to be able to do this right. Like that, you can still emphasize the relationship and you can still emphasize the connection with what you’re willing to do, what’s in balance.
Kate Aldrich:
Right, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, that’s good. I think I was thinking of an example like our 18-year-old. We have our 18-year-old and 16-year-old at home still both girls and our 18-year-old has always unfortunately, she got me as a mom. She’s always wanted me to be involved in all the stuff at school, so when she plays a sport or she does musical. Unfortunately, since she’s entered high school, our younger daughter has, you know, just really struggled mental health wise and required a lot more time, and I remember telling her I can’t this year, you know, and we would evaluate every year.
Brad Aldrich:
I can’t do booster club, or I can’t do right.
Kate Aldrich:
And when I couldn’t again last year, cause we just didn’t feel like we had the capacity, I said to her I will make sure to make it a priority for your senior year, even if life doesn’t look any less complicated and whatnot. And so in essence I was telling her okay, this is going to be in the boundaries, correct, right? And, and you know so this year I said, okay, here we go, here we go. And I told brad, you’re doing this with me. He said what? And I said, oh yeah, not just me, man you and me.
Kate Aldrich:
but like I told her what was, you know, and I kept re-evaluating, you know, I realized at some point with that it’s important to her, and if it’s important to her, it’s important to me. And I couldn’t keep just saying no, because life is extra complicated.
Kate Aldrich:
So telling someone what, what could be or what will be in the bounds, which often makes people feel less like you are restricting everything, feel less like you are restricting everything. You know, mom, you know I don’t want to talk about my spouse that way. I’m willing to, you know, talk about how we’re doing as a family in general.
Brad Aldrich:
But if you want to ask my spouse what they’re doing, reach out to them. Or if you want to sit together all four of us and have a conversation.
Kate Aldrich:
I’m happy to do that Right Like yes again, that’s focused on what’s in, but yeah, not just, I’m not going to do that yeah, so we have know what you can give and what you can’t, so that’s helping you have permission to have a boundary yeah then being specific about where the boundary is, what’s in and what’s out of bounds, and then it’s give yourself actual permission to ask for it.
Brad Aldrich:
Right like actually vocalize the boundary right right and communicate don’t do yeah, no, exactly, we just kind of shut the door or we make excuses that put up the boundary correct but then it’s not clear and nobody actually really knows but you what’s going on. Yes.
Kate Aldrich:
And then that leads to lots of hurt.
Brad Aldrich:
Well, it is almost going to enforce the fact that people will push on your boundary because you haven’t actually told them where it is. So, without communication, which is hard. I like totally. This is the part I would like to avoid too. But you know, give yourself permission to actually go and ask and say I need to put up this boundary, I’m not going to do this anymore. And while you’re doing it, the other part to remember is you don’t apologize for that boundary Right, what you’re doing is putting up a limit of what you can and can’t do, and you’ve decided that limit, and now you’re asking for that boundary right?
Brad Aldrich:
What you’re doing is putting up a limit of what you can and can’t do, and you’ve decided that limit, and now you’re asking for that boundary. So, you don’t go. I’m so sorry. I know this is what you’d want, but right, cause that that just weakens your boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
So really, I think the important thing is just to remember it is hard to set up boundaries. It’s difficult, it’s going to be emotional, it’s hard to have that conversation, but you need to. You need to be able to talk about this because otherwise you are setting up a place that you’re going to have put up a boundary and somebody’s going to roll through it because they didn’t even know it’s there.
Kate Aldrich:
Right.
Brad Aldrich:
Right, and so talking about it, putting it up, not apologizing for it. And then the last step is really anticipating your own reactions, and often negative reactions to the boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
What do you mean by that?
Brad Aldrich:
I think a lot of times we feel bad that we let somebody down we feel bad that we may have hurt somebody’s feelings, that they wanted X more of me, or that I can’t do this with them. That hurts them.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
And we see their negative reaction and all of us people pleasers go oh okay, it’s just my boundary, I don’t want to hurt them and we want to give in. And then we go okay, I’ll find a way to get there. And then we feel like we’re not upholding the boundary because really what’s happened is they have a reaction and we just take down the boundary.
Kate Aldrich:
Should we be thinking about what their reaction is going to be?
Brad Aldrich:
Well, I think we’re going to see their reaction.
Kate Aldrich:
Well, of course.
Brad Aldrich:
And we can anticipate that they may have a negative reaction to it.
Kate Aldrich:
Right.
Brad Aldrich:
And that’s okay.
Kate Aldrich:
Well, and Brene Brown says and I love this quote you are not responsible for someone else’s negative reaction to your boundary. That includes your family, your friends. You’re not responsible for it. Correct, and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard to sit with it, right, Because none of us like to sit with those uncomfortable things, especially things that have probably, if we’re talking about family have been happening to us for years, and we do need to honor that it would be much easier for you to keep going with the way your family functions and the strategies you figured out as a part of your family, but right Pushing against.
Kate Aldrich:
this is how we have some healing, some freedom. It benefits us in lots of different ways and it’s going to be hard to see your family react. The way that you probably already know they’re going to react.
Brad Aldrich:
Well, and I think one of the ways that we can probably see this in action is to think about a situation that we’re probably a little bit more comfortable with. In looking through a boundary that we might give a child right, Like we may say, don’t do this right, and we’ve given ourselves permission to say, oh, I don’t want you to ride your bike past here. Right, that’s a boundary that we’ve put up. We understand why we’re doing that is because of safety reasons. Right, they’re going to come up to a big road. We don’t want them on that. So we’re going to say you can ride your bike in this loop. Right, We’ve created that boundary and we’re pretty okay with that. We give ourselves permission to do that because we know that there’s a consequence on the other side. Safety issue right, we don’t. We don’t even think about apologizing. I’m so sorry you won’t be able to do that like we it.
Kate Aldrich:
We don’t usually do that with kids not usually, but I think sometimes it does happen because when the kids are old enough to say something like you, don’t let me do anything, you’re ruining my life, right?
Brad Aldrich:
And that’s exactly what I was going to, of anticipating your negative reaction and their negative reaction to the boundary. Right, we know why we’re doing it and if we believe in the reason, the boundary is a whole lot easier to manage and to keep. Sure, right, if we don’t know why we’re doing it, I just have some arbitrary line that I don’t want you to cross. Then all of a sudden it’s like oh well, well, your kiddo needs to understand too, exactly well, well, your kiddo needs to understand right, exactly.
Kate Aldrich:
But again there’s that whole like that’s off limits because it’s dangerous.
Brad Aldrich:
But look at all of this that you can explore exactly or whatever on your bike right um you know and focus them back to what they can do, not what they can’t yeah, entirely correct, and I I think it is just maybe easier to see it in that place, because usually the boundaries that we are challenged with are boundaries to people up, or at least on the same level. Sure, parents, it’s boundaries to our boss or our friends or even our spouse, that we need to figure out. How do we put healthy boundaries in?
Brad Aldrich:
a way that says I need this, and when we flip it to the parenting role, it feels like we have a little bit more control.
Kate Aldrich:
True, but I do think, specifically, something that’s probably worth mentioning is teenagers, because it is a time where you’re removing some boundaries which ones still stay, and of course, your teenager is going to think any boundary is just ridiculous, sure. So I do think lots of parents struggle with boundaries to teenagers, because teenagers are also super smart. They’re an amazing population of people and they also know how to manipulate. Absolutely To make you feel all the feels about the boundary you still think is a really good one.
Kate Aldrich:
Well, right and we have to deal with how we feel about that.
Brad Aldrich:
That thing of being specific and clear about what’s inbounds and out of bounds absolutely comes into play with teenagers.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:
Right, Because in the past you may just say, no, you can’t do this. But as they get their arguing skills up and get to figuring out what’s fair and what’s not, they want some clarity on what is okay. Are you? Saying that I can’t check out any book in the library.
Kate Aldrich:
No, you can check out these right, that’s not where I thought that was going, right that kind of stuff, you know.
Brad Aldrich:
are you saying I can’t watch anything on Netflix? No, you can watch like you know, and then. So we sometimes have to be clear and specific, you know, about what’s inbounds and what’s out of bounds.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah yeah, you know you’re so good at that. I think we’ll just let you handle that.
Brad Aldrich:
No, no, that’s okay, well, I mean, you know this takes a team to do together, especially when it’s parenting, because if you’re not on the same page, yeah, um, you know the kids they’re gonna sense that a mile away just run to the person who says do whatever you want, I don’t care yeah, they can sniff that out guys.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, 100. So but and I mean it. It could be possible that the reason we’re talking about this today is because boundaries and teenagers was a recent theme for us.
Brad Aldrich:
In our house? Yeah, maybe, but I think it’s important just to recognize’s the removal of boundaries between two people, and while that’s true, even married couples have boundaries in our personal relationships.
Kate Aldrich:
Every personal relationship Now probably doesn’t look like you hopefully having to go through this list, although sometimes we’ve dealt with those kinds of things.
Kate Aldrich:
Of course, but it’s still like, hey, you know, I really need to make sure I’m getting half an hour a day where it’s just me time, just me, nobody else, you know, and of course, with kids then it’s like figuring that out, but also like it’s not a personal cut on you, it’s and this isn’t necessarily me, but I’m saying like it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I also matter and this is what I need.
Kate Aldrich:
And like trying to navigate those things so honestly. There are times I talk with women about boundaries in marriage and what boundaries do you need and how can you express that to your husband? And it’s more needs than it is boundaries, I think it’s the same thing we go through, actually.
Brad Aldrich:
I think this is really good insight, like being able to say I have a need to your spouse is somewhat a similar conversation. Right, because we have to be able to be talking about more what’s in bounds. Right, I’m going to need to be able to go to bed earlier. I’m going to need to be able to go to bed earlier. I’m going to need to be able to.
Kate Aldrich:
Not cook ever. No, no, no, no Shoot. I tried to sneak that one in there.
Brad Aldrich:
But I’m going to need some more help here or, like you know, that may be a boundary conversation. I can’t do this, so here’s what I can do. Here’s what’s in bounds, here’s what’s out of bounds. I would like to hear from you what your options are on how to cook these other three nights, or something like that right. That is what you’re saying what I can do and what I can’t do.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, yeah. So, no, totally.
Brad Aldrich:
And I think that’s where healthy communication starts in a lot of those conversations.
Kate Aldrich:
I think, though and the reason I brought it up is I think, when you do boundaries, you know you talk about boundaries like we are. We always think it’s external, and even with our kids, but there are things to be learned in marriage about what that looks like.
Kate Aldrich:
Because, every human relationship needs boundaries. Jesus had boundaries with the disciples. He was close with them, he was literally discipling them, and yet there were times he was like nope, I’m going off for a little while. He didn’t tell them what he was doing, he didn’t ask permission. He didn’t tell them what he was doing, he didn’t ask permission, he didn’t apologize, he went and we don’t actually know what he did a lot of the time. And so there are. It is important to even have boundaries in our most safe and intimate relationships.
Brad Aldrich:
Correct, Correct. So well, I hope that that was something that you can chew on and maybe have a conversation with your spouse about how they do boundaries, how they feel about them, what they saw in their homes about boundaries and what does it bring up for them as we are having this conversation. Yeah, Be really good healthy next steps for you. So I hope you found that helpful. As always, we would love to hear from you. If you have questions that you would love to hear us talk about on the show, reach out to us. You can email us at help at stillbecomingonecom. And until next time, I’m Brad Aldrich.
Kate Aldrich:
And I’m Kate Aldrich. Be kind and take care of each other.
