November 26, 2025 • 56 mins
Air Date - 26 November 2025
Nancy Landrum, MA, author and relationship coach, guides couples to use transformative relationship skills. With her Master’s in Spiritual Psychology, personal experience, and research-proven strategies, Nancy coaches to develop healthy communication, to talk without fighting, to respect 24/7, and to experience relationship connections where lovers love for life. Nancy is a columnist, a journalist, and the founder of the online relationship solution, Millionaire Marriage Club. She has authored eight books. Her ultimate goal is to lower the divorce rate globally.
https://nancylandrum.com/
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Nancy Landrum, MA, author and relationship coach, guides couples to use transformative relationship skills. With her Master’s in Spiritual Psychology, personal experience, and research-proven strategies, Nancy coaches to develop healthy communication, to talk without fighting, to respect 24/7, and to experience relationship connections where lovers love for life. Nancy is a columnist, a journalist, and the founder of the online relationship solution, Millionaire Marriage Club. She has authored eight books. Her ultimate goal is to lower the divorce rate globally.
https://nancylandrum.com/
#NancyLandrum #RoyceMorales #PerfectLifeAwakening
Connect with Royce Morales at https://www.roycemorales.com/
Visit the Perfect Life Awakening Show Page https://omtimes.com/iom/shows/perfect-life-awakening-show
Subscribe to our Newsletter https://omtimes.com/subscribe-omtimes-magazine/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Perfect Life Awakening Show hosted by Royce Morales.
Royce has been a transformational facilitator, teaching groundbreaking spiritually based
courses for more than four decades. She is the author
of three books about her teachings. Join Royce as she
takes you on a journey into how to live your
best life and find your true purpose through discovering the
(00:31):
origins of subconscious, disempowering notions and releasing them. She talks
with experts and inspiring people just like you who learned
to trust their intuitive inner wisdom, which led to life
changing shifts. Today, her guests live in empowered existence and
are helping change the world to a higher consciousness place
(00:52):
based on truth and love. You deserve to awaken, to
align with and embody your true self and live a
life I filled with love. Transform yourself from triggered to
empowered and create your perfect life. Here is your host,
Royce Morales.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Hello everyone, Thank you so much for joining me today,
and as always, I am excited to have my amazing
guest today. But before I even introduce her, I want
to just talk about the title that I gave this show,
Love for Life. I think it's a really important notion that,
(01:34):
you know, because we're kind of in a society that
everything is kind of throwaway, and you know, somebody bugs
you so you divorce them or you know, I've done
that myself, and I just think it's so important to
understand what love is and how to maintain it. And
let's go back half of sentence ago where I said
(01:55):
what love is, because I don't even think people know
what love is. I have my own definition of and
I talk about love all the time. I used to
call my program Perfect Love Awakening, but I changed it
to Life because it was more inclusive. But you know,
what the heck is love? And I'm sure my guest
today is going to talk about that. But to me,
love just means acceptance. You know, we don't have a
(02:19):
part of us that is trying to push something away.
We're accepting it, and of course it has to come
from accepting ourselves. That's pretty obvious. And it's also one
of the things that I have seen is something we
want more than anything else in life, and yet we're
terrified of it. We're terrified of deserving to be loved.
(02:40):
And that's one of the things that I talk about
over and over and over in my courses. So enough
about that. Let me introduce Nancy Landrum. She is the
author of How to Stay, Stay Married, and Love It,
and she's going to talk about her marriage and all
she learned from that. She's a relationship coach and she's
guided hundreds of couples back from the brink by using
(03:05):
transformative relationship skills. She has her Masters in spiritual psychology.
Personal experience and research proven strategies is what she uses.
She talks to couples about how to talk about anything
without fighting. That's key. That's amazing, rediscovered, rediscovering deep connection, experience,
(03:31):
piece and lasting love and how does that happen through
healthy communication? And that too is something I talk about
a lot. So we're definitely on the same wavelength here.
She's a columnist, a journalist, and founder of the online
relationship solution that she calls the Millionaire Marriage Club. And
(03:52):
she's the author of eight books and I love this.
Her ultimate goal is to lower the divorce rate globally.
Wouldn't that be nice? So welcome, Nancy. I'm so glad
you're here, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Such an honor to join you. It's such an honor
to join you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Thank you, So tell us a little bit about how
your childhood kind of started you on this path, what
happened to do all that?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
By the time I was three years old, I decided
I'm going to have a happier, more loving marriage than
I observed in my parents. They were wonderful people in
many ways. They had high character, they were very they
were people of faith their church, and their faith was very,
(04:47):
very central to our lives. But they didn't know how
to treat each other very well. There was a constant
level of bickering going on that really wounded me. As
a child. I longed to see them treat each other
with kindness, affection, and respect. I think in my entire
(05:09):
lifetime I only saw them hug each other once.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And they not only didn't know how to treat each
other very well, they came from a generation where survival
was the goal. And I understand that now. But as
a child, I was clothed, I had a roof over
my head, but I wasn't cuddled, I wasn't told I
(05:38):
love you. My accomplishments were not acknowledged or nurtured, and
that left kind of a gaping hole in my self confidence.
But that decision as a three year old literally set
the trajectory of my life. I'm going to learn out
(06:01):
to have a happier, loving marriage than my see and
my parents. And as soon as I learned to read,
I fell in love with reading and books, and I
literally saw myself as an adult writing books that would
help other people have better relationships. I consider this a
(06:23):
download from God. I think it was a purpose that
that seed was planted in my consciousness that guided the
trajectory of my life for the rest of my life. Actually, now,
it's a good thing at that age that I didn't
(06:46):
realize there'd be forty years of pretty hard lessons before
I had anything worth writing about or sharing. But nevertheless,
there was a passionate drive in me to learn about
relationships and also learn how to get out of the
(07:07):
emotional pain that was buried in me for a very
long time.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I married young because I wanted to get out of
my home. I also was very fortunate to marry a
very good man. We had two baby boys and had
only been married four and a half years when he
left home to play softball with our church league and
drop dead on the ball field of an aortic aneurism
(07:42):
that we didn't know he had, so I was only
twenty three. I don't know how anyone can be prepared
for that kind of life shattering trauma. I think in
something I read of yours, you mentioned a shift life,
(08:03):
a shift life from the roots, and that was certainly
an event that rattled me to the roots of my being.
It took about five years to pull out of the
depression and the grief that I felt and for life
(08:26):
to begin to look good again. I enjoyed my two boys.
They were rambunctious. Really, we had a lot of fun
together as well as you know, knowing that I needed
to set appropriate boundaries and have consequences because I didn't
(08:47):
want to very active boys running my life. I wanted
to be the parent. She was a good thing or
they they could have for energy and so forth. But
I'd been single for thirteen years when a mutual friend
(09:09):
introduced me to Jim Landrum, who was also a widower.
He had three children, and we fell madly in love.
We were just so excited to find love again. We
were sure, because we were older, we'd been through a lot,
(09:30):
we can handle anything. So we blissfully said I do
and joined our families under one roof, and then the
next level of learning began.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And so it begins.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yes, before the show began, we were joking about an
old show in the seventies about a step family called
the Brady Bunch. We were not the Brady Bunch. We
didn't have a cook named Alice that handled all the
kitchen duties and did the laundry and all that. I
(10:12):
never had analysis, and it shocked me how much more
time it took to prepare meals for six people rather
than just three. It was. It was, you know, a
shock how much more work a big family was. But
(10:35):
we we didn't have any trouble treating each other with
respect and love and kindness. When we agreed that we
had one issue over which we disagreed very strongly. It
started out as a small irritation. We'd kind of have
a bump in the road. We'd kiss and makeup and
(10:57):
move on. Because we didn't know how to resolve the
issue and we did not know how to manage conflict
very well. That issue grew and grew until a few
years later it was dominating our marriage, and slowly our
love was leaking out of the marriage. We were fighting
(11:22):
more and more often it affected not only us but
our children, which of course we didn't want to have
happen at all. So, you know, our blissful assumption that
we were adults we could handle anything, was just loan
to smithereens until finally it was so bad we humbled
(11:48):
ourselves to admit that we needed help. And then it
took a year for us to find effective help. We
went to three different therapists, we read books, went to workshops,
and none of it. Nothing seemed to give us what
we needed until we found a coach that began to
(12:11):
teach us some good anger management skills, because both of
us were really very angry by that time, and she
also taught us some very simple communication methods. You know,
we had been delivering our messages to each other in
a very attacking way, and my favorite and the method
(12:38):
was sarcastic putdowns. I'm really good with words, and I
knew how to cut Jim with words. And I also
eventually became a yeller, which I hated, but when you're
so frustrated and you're not being heard, it's like it
ramps up the volume for me. Until finally began to
(13:00):
say Nancy the louder you yelled, the less I can
hear you. And he was exactly right, But of course
he had his favorite attacking methods too, and his was
the finger pointing you you should have why didn't you?
I can't believe you didn't know to do this or that,
(13:22):
And that didn't go over very well with me either.
So our methods of communicating were triggering each other almost daily,
and it was exhausting. It was so exhausting, And when
we found this coach. We found out later that I
(13:45):
was saying to her, I don't respect him anymore because
he doesn't keep his word to me about this one issue,
although he was very trustworthy in every other area, and
I don't respect him. I don't know how much longer
I can love him. And later I found out that
(14:05):
Jim was telling her I don't love her anymore. We
didn't believe in divorce, and yet we were considering the
possibility of separating for a length of time. We didn't
like that idea either, and gradually, because she began to
(14:28):
teach us how to deliver our messages in a non
attacking way so that the partner could hear the message
and understand it rather than reacting to it and escalating
into a fight. The first time we sat down to
talk about our hot issue using this respectful language, it
(14:54):
wasn't very pretty. We weren't real good at it. We
kept having to self correct from our old language to
the new language, but we made it through forty minutes
without it escalating into a fight. For the first time
in years, it felt like we were witnessing a miracle
(15:16):
between us. We actually were able to hear each other's
message and began to understand what was going on between
us from each other's point of view. We were exhausted
from the effort of translating our old methods into these
(15:39):
simple new methods, but we decided to set our issue
aside for that day. We came back to it several
times over the next few weeks using this respectful language.
When we stood, I stepped into Jim's arms and he said,
(16:01):
that felt so respectful. Let's do our best to always
treat each other with respect. I agreed. What I didn't
realize either of us didn't realize until later, was that
day some very important things happened. First of all, because
(16:21):
of our new commitment to always treat each other with respect,
we never had another fight. We had to learn how
to handle anger in a respectful way, and there's definite
skills for doing that, so that we weren't lashing out
in anger toward each other. But because we were so
(16:47):
tired of hurting each other and tired of being in pain,
we were so totally committed to this new commitment to
always treat each other with three respect. So we never
had another fight, and I like to say that our
goals changed also before that, my goal was to prove
(17:12):
to Jim, I'm right and you're wrong. Right, yeah, And
of course that was you know, between you and me,
that was true. But his goal was also to prove
to me that he was right and I was wrong.
And as long as that was our goal, we would
keep fighting. That's the foundation of every fight.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, yeah, for most everybody.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It doesn't matter what the topic is or what the
issue is, but that's the foundation of every fight. So
over the next few weeks, we had several of what
I now call skilled discussions, meaning you speak respectfully and
you listen for the purpose of understanding the other person's
(18:01):
point of view. And within a few weeks we started
out at opposite sides of this issue like opposite corners
of a boxing ring. But with every skillful, respectful conversation,
we gradually moved closer to the middle where we could
(18:22):
really hear and understand each other's point of view, and
that led to a resolution of the issue that we'd
been fighting about for seven years. It was magic, right,
it was magic.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
H So just by communicating in that way, the issue resolved.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's interesting, Well, it's pretty hard to consider a mutual
resolution to an issue when you feel very strongly on
one side of it and your partner feels very strong
on the other. So it required some pretty radical shifts
(19:05):
in perspective for both of us. And yet when we
when we had more empathy for each other's position, we
were able to make that radical shift and resolve the issue.
From that day in our bedroom, when we made our
(19:26):
commitment to always treat each other with respect, we had
seventeen more years of blissfully happy marriage without even a
harsh word between us. Although you know, our lives weren't perfect.
We had challenges like everyone has, but we didn't take
the challenge out on each other anymore. We became true
(19:51):
partners and as a couple of years later, Jim suggested
that we we began teaching other couples what we had
learned because we had so much trouble finding effective help.
So we began teaching a class called how to Stay
Married and Love It. We wanted to stay married the
(20:16):
way our parents had, but we wanted to love it
a whole lot more than it seemed like they did.
We taught that class together for eleven years. During that time,
I went back to school and got my master's degree
in spiritual psychology and then wrote the book titled How
(20:36):
to Stay Married and Love It, Solving the Puzzle of
a Soulmate Marriage, and that was published in two thousand
and two. Jim was diagnosed with terminal cancer in two
thousand and four. We had a precious year together before
(20:57):
he died. Wasn't certainly not our plan. We thought we
would be teaching together for ten or fifteen more years
at least, and it took about a year from me
to regain my emotional footing. I realized there was nothing
(21:18):
else that our children were grown and out of the
house long before that. There was nothing else that I
felt passionate about doing with the rest of my life.
So I began teaching some other curriculum for a few years,
(21:39):
and then went back to private coaching. The coaching part
had begun while we were teaching our class together. Some
couples needed more support than they got in class, and
so I would see them as private clients. So altogether,
I've written eight books about various aspects of healthy relationships,
(22:04):
currently working on my ninth, and have coached or taught
in classes hundreds of couples the skills that transformed our marriage.
I might also add that of our five children, every
single one of them, in their own way and at
(22:27):
their own time, have expressed appreciation for the work they
did and what they learned from us about the skills
that keep a marriage loving for life that help couples
resolve conflict. It isn't love and commitment that make a
(22:49):
marriage work by itself. They're important, certainly, but the third
leg of a three legged stool the first two legs,
or love and commitment, but without respect, marriage falls apart.
Couples who end up in the divorce court at one
time loved each other and thought they were committed to
(23:13):
each other, but without respect the conflicts in it. Any
close relationship, like intimate marriage relationship, if you don't know
how to manage conflict with respect. Then it dominated. It
slowly erodes the love and commitment until they're gone and
(23:36):
you end up in divorce court. My dream, my passion,
is to spread the message that marriage requires education, the
education of skills. Most of us many, shall I say,
many of us grow up in homes where we don't
(23:59):
see respect afectful communication modeled, We don't see respectful conflict
management modeled, and we take the lack of good skills
with us into adult relationships because that's all we know.
It requires education and passing a test. To get a
(24:20):
driver's license. Most professionals, professions require an d before you
get paid. To good job, you have to know how
to handle the job. Some of us that came that
(24:42):
were introduced to computers later in life probably took classes
to learn how to manage computers. But we think that
if we're in love, that's all it takes to say
I do and be happy for the rest of your life.
(25:02):
For some of us, that's not enough. It certainly wasn't
enough for Jim and to me.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, yeah, well, so many questions to ask. I'm just
wondering when you say you had a conflict does that
mean that, like he wanted the lights on at night
and you wanted them off? Or was it deeper than
you know? Was it something that was more like your
(25:28):
core value or something that was triggering you, Because you know,
I talk a lot about triggering, and I find that
most of the time, even if it's you know, a
core value issue or the light turning off or whatever,
there's something that's being triggered, and if you don't get
to that in the conversation, it could go on forever.
You know. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yes, it makes perfect sense, Thank you. Rice. Something as
simple as turning the light on and off might be
the surface issue, but really, if you are have the
skills to take it deeper, you'll discover the issue as
much deeper than that. Jim and I each had two
(26:10):
teenagers when we married, and we made a wise decision
which later research of step families has validated that we
would continue to single parent our teenagers. They were not
at a good time to accept another parental figure in
their lives. That worked seamlessly. But he had an eight
(26:35):
year old son and he wanted me to be Jimmy's mom,
so he wanted us to co parent Jimmy. But we
came to the assignment of parenting Jimmy from two very
different perspectives. I'd been a single mom of two boys,
(26:57):
as I said earlier, and I I loved them. I
was affectionate. They heard I Love you frequently, but I
also had certain rules and consequences if they were disobedient. Jim,
on the other hand, did a wonderful job of loving
all of his children. He was very affectionate, very non judgmental,
(27:23):
but he did not like setting rules or having consequences. Basically,
we would agree on certain rules, like he needs to
brush his teeth before he goes to bed, or pick
up choice from his room before bedtime, or do his
(27:44):
homework before watching TV. They were very reasonable rules for
an eight nine ten year old. But then if and
Jim would give me permission if he were gone, for instance,
he gave me permission to enforce the rules that we'd
agreed on. But then when he'd get home, Jimmy would
(28:08):
cry and complain that mom was mean, and and Jim
would turn on me. You know, why didn't I know
that that should have been an exception to the rule. Well,
anytime Jimmy got upset about any kind of rule, Jim
would call it an exception. So what Jimmy learned, without
(28:33):
Jim's intention at all, was that he could manipulate Jim
and turn Jim against me so that this child, Jimmy,
could get his own way, he didn't have to follow
the rules. And I could see. I could see the
(28:58):
long range effects of that disconnect between Jim and I,
and it deeply concerned me for Jimmy's sake. But Jim
just could not see that. He just he was he
(29:20):
talk about childhood. He had a very stable home as
a child, but his father had a very explosive temper
and he didn't lose it often. But Jim was a
very sensitive, single child, only child in the home, and
once in a while his dad would just blow up
(29:40):
at him, and it wounded him so deeply that he
wanted to avoid anything that might cause his child pain,
even if the pain was a necessary part of disciplining
a child, you know, giving Jimmy rules with consequences. So
(30:03):
if Jimmy was upset, Jim would take Jimmy's side because
he didn't want to wound his son the way he
had been wounded. So it's what we eventually The agreement
that we came to was to save the marriage that
(30:28):
we both considered that more important, the highest priority, and
so I resigned from any parenting duties with Jimmy. Jim
took over all the parenting. Again, we thought we were
a total failure at co parenting this child. That we
(30:50):
learned several years later when we were speaking at a
step family support group that the research that's been done
about what makes step families work succeed and the practices
that caused step families to fail, we learned that one
(31:11):
of the recommendations is if there's any conflict over parenting
at all, that the biological parent takes over full parenting.
The step parent is there to support the biological parent,
even if you disagree with the decisions they're making. And
that was basically what eliminated instantly. Well, the decision to
(31:37):
treat each other with respect stopped all the fighting immediately.
But when we agreed that Jim would go back to
single parenting Jimmy and I would step out of any
role of a parenting role with Jimmy, that eliminated the
issue from our family, from our marriage, brought peace to
(32:02):
all of us.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, so it's just about time to take a break.
But when we come back, I want you to talk
a little bit more about commune, some keys to good
communication in a marriage or in any relationship. You know
you don't put the word marriage in there or parent
fit with anything. So we will be right back when
(32:28):
talking to Nancy Landrum will be right.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
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Speaker 2 (35:01):
Welcome back. I am talking with Nancy Landrum. We're talking
about communication, staying in love forever, and I mentioned before
the break that this information can certainly hold a lot
of value for any relationship, which I'd like you to
kind of maybe you expand what you're talking about, so
(35:21):
it's not just about marriage and step families and all that.
So tell us what is it that you think is
really the key to good communication? You were saying respect before,
what else could you add to that?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Respect is kind of a vague concept. How do you
define respect? We would have agreed we needed to be
respectful to each other, but without someone to tell us,
what wording do you use that's respectful? How do you
listen respectfully? When I wrote the book How to Stay
(35:57):
Married and Love It, I included a list of forty
different disrespectful ways of communicating that are very common in
our culture. Things like the accusatory you that I mentioned
was Jim's favorite, sarcastic comments, hurtful humor, interrupting someone else
(36:19):
when they're speaking, Oh gosh, the not really listening. You know,
many times we act like we're listening, but we're really
planning our rebuttal we're not really attempting to understand the
other person's point of view. So the learning to speak
(36:42):
with respect mint keeping my voice low, not screeching, not yelling,
and offering, putting the words together from my own point
of view using what are called I messy, just like
I think I wish what I really am concerned about
(37:07):
is and how I feel. Feelings are, in my opinion,
one of the most valuable keys to communication that connects
you to the other person, like when this happens, I
feel loved. When you do this, I feel validated. When
(37:30):
you listen carefully, You're meeting my need to be heard.
I have come to believe that the basic need in
all of us is to have at least one person
in our lives that gets us, that is willing to
hear and understand who we are, where we're coming from.
(37:55):
And in our case, that meant that when Jim spoke
to me shared his point of view, I demonstrated that
I was listening by repeating back to him what he
said in my own words or in his same words,
but repeating back to him to just let him know
(38:18):
to validate I heard what you said. I don't have
to agree with it, but by repeating it back to him,
I'm giving him the deep satisfaction of knowing I care
about what he said, and I'm listening for the to
try to understand from his point of view, what is
(38:42):
going on in his head, what is important to him.
When Jim would repeat back to me what I said,
to him. It was like a soothing balm on my soul.
Finally someone is hearing me, understanding me once wants to
(39:05):
understand who I am and what is important to me.
One of my sons, was in his twenties, was very
angry about, in his perception, how I had kind of
abandoned him during his teenage years, and I wanted him
(39:29):
to understand what I was going through at that time
and why he, in his mind, was neglected. But what
he really needed from me was he needed to express
his pain and know that I listened, that I heard,
and as I began doing that over just a few years,
(40:00):
we had several conversations felt to me and as a parent,
it was hard to hear those words. It was hard
to hear how deeply I had wounded my son. But
as I listened to him and with empathy, repeated back
(40:21):
to him what he said, the wound healed between us.
And today I'm parked in his driveway going to Sure
of Thanksgiving with he and his family. We have a
very communicating, loving relationship that's been restored because I was
(40:42):
willing to hear his pain without excusing myself for offering
up some kind of explanation. He needed me to be
the loving parent to him even years later, in order
to heal the wound between us. So communication that connects
(41:07):
people is speaking in ways that are respectful, that deliver
a message that doesn't trigger a negative reaction, and mostly frankly,
mostly being willing to listen with empathy.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, what about there are situations where a child, a
grown child, or a partner just refuses to communicate. They
hold it in, or it comes out in misdirected ways,
or you know all that stuff that people do when
they're suppressing things. What do you recommend for those situations.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I've had two different clients whose wives. They were men
whose wives were not willing to come with them to
see me. And in one case, they had been she'd
been sleeping on the sofa for years and angry, and
(42:13):
in the other case, she'd actually left the marriage already.
And these two men were determined to win their wives
back into a loving marriage. They were willing to change
their own behavior, learned to communicate themselves their own point
of view with respect and with empathy, willing to listen,
(42:39):
and in both cases they won their wives back into
the marriage. Now, that might not always happen, but it is.
Marriage is a closed bubble, so when one person makes
changes in the way they handle the relationship, it has
(43:04):
to impact and create a response from the other partner.
It's like pushing on one side of a balloon. The
other balloon bulges as a result the marriage. I describe
(43:24):
this to my coaching clients that marriage is a living
entity like a child between you, and that marriage needs nurturing.
It needs consistent loving communication. It needs date nights, it
needs weekends away, it needs thoughtful kindness day by day.
(43:48):
One of the things I recommend is that couples give
each other a sincere appreciation every day for something that
they are grateful for. One of the most common complaints
I hear from a couple of them feels unupshided to
take and for granted. You can't just get married when
(44:12):
you're in love and expect it to maintain itself for
the rest of your lives. Requires maintenance. Like you, you
wouldn't starve a child. I hope most of us would
not starve a child. But if you're not giving appreciation
to your partner at least every day or going on
(44:34):
regular date, they're starving the health of that relationship. So
sometimes it requires love requires an appropriate boundary. One of
my sons was let's see how to describe he was.
(44:59):
He was a difficult child and became a difficult adult,
and I had to learn how to set appropriate, healthy
boundaries to protect myself from this disrespect to me. One
example is Steve, as a teenager, loved Camaros, the car
(45:25):
model Camaro, and he would junk Camaros and cannibalize them
to put together parts that worked in one Camo, which
you know, never seemed to quite happen. But we had
a couple of junk Camaros in our backyard, and I
(45:47):
kept asking him to, you know, get rid of them,
because our backyard looked like the local junk junk yard.
And he kept promising, sure, Mom, I'll do it, but
it didn't get done. And so I finally got smart
(46:07):
and was beginning to learn about setting loving, appropriate boundaries
for an adult child. And I said, Steve, when's the
earliest you can have these cars out of our backyard? Well,
next Sunday? Okay, Sunday, by what time? By three o'clock? Okay, Steve,
(46:31):
if they aren't gone from our yard at three o'clock,
on Sunday, I'm going to call a wrecker and have
them hauled away as junk. And he said, okay. Sunday morning,
and I stopped nagging. I stopped harassing him about it.
Nagging doesn't help, doesn't work. I stopped lecturing him, because
(46:54):
lecturing is not a good parenting skill. That doesn't work either.
Morning came and Stephen said, Mom, I'm sorry I won't
be able to move the cars today because my friend
and I have made other plans. I didn't blow up.
I just said okay, but that wasn't our deal, so
(47:17):
that if the cars aren't gone by three o'clock, I
am calling the Wrecord to come and get them. Well,
he hustled around and found a friend with a trailer
and got the cars moved out of the yard before
three o'clock. Simple boundary with clear consequences, and he knew
(47:40):
the boundary, he knew the consequences, and I quietly, respectfully
stepped to it. And he took care of it. And
he knew that if he didn't take care of it,
I was going to call the Wrecord and get them
out of our yard. So sometimes when people children or friends,
(48:03):
or even your parents or your partner are doing things
that consistently are disrespectful to you. Then another skill that
I learned over time is setting an appropriate boundary to
take care of myself. And what I learned was when
(48:29):
I set a boundary that is healthy for me, it
is automatically healthy for the other person too, whether they
like it or not. Because in God's economy, He's not
going to teach me a way to take appropriate care
of myself and make that damaging to someone else. The
(48:53):
universe just doesn't work that way. So another book that
you may be interested in if you find yourself being
frequently mistreated or promises keep being broken to you. The
book is called Pungent Boundaries. I named it that because
(49:16):
pungent is a word that signifies a bad taste in
your mouth. Doesn't smell good, it doesn't taste good. Boundaries
are difficult work, you know, they're not fun, they're not
sweet and rosy. But boundaries are also very healthy boundaries.
(49:36):
Appropriate boundaries are also necessary in some relationships.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
So back to my question, somebody you know, somebody is angry.
You know, whether this is your child, or your husband,
or your neighbor, but they just won't talk to you
about it. They just you know, they're sending out signals
energetically as well as in other ways that something happened
(50:06):
between the two of you and they're just not willing
to talk about it. How would you recommend that you
get them to open up what you know? Let's say
you even confronted them on this and said, I know
something's going on, talk to me. What would you recommend.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
You cannot force someone to talk when they're afraid of
being vulnerable. In fact, the more you push them to talk,
the more they may clam up. So one skill that
is taught in my online course called Millionaire Marriage Club
(50:46):
is called perception checking. If your perception is that they
are angry with you, then you call it out. You
just say, my perception is that you're angry with me.
Is that true? If they say no, but you know
it is true that they're angry, you just say, I'm
(51:09):
willing to listen. I want to know what I may
have done that has made you so angry. I'm willing
to listen whenever you are willing to talk. And then
you walk away, You've left the ball in their court.
They have power now, they're far more apt to open
(51:33):
up when they feel like they have. They've been given,
they've been handed the responsibility of talking. And you stopped pushing,
you stop nagging them to talk. It's far more apt
to happen than if you keep pushing for them to talk.
(51:54):
They're saying anger in their behavior without saying it with words,
and people are too afraid. They may have come from
a family or a situation where they're punished for being angry,
or they are rejected if they verbalize anything that's negative,
(52:19):
and so being vulnerable enough to admit they're angry maybe
a huge hurdle for them. And generally pushing doesn't make
it happen.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Right, So we only have a couple minutes, and I'd
love you to tell us a little bit about the
Millionaire Marriage Club and your books and promote away.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
Well. I call How to Stay Married and Love It
my signature book. It tells the story of the recovery
or transformation of our marriage. Along with teaching all the
skills that we had to learn, there's also examples of
men any other couples that were in our classes and
how these skills transformed their marriage. That's the big one.
(53:09):
I wrote a book called Stepping Together two ge th
e r about the research validated principles that help step
family succeed and those common practices that generally lead to
step family failure. That's stepping together. As I mentioned, Pungent
(53:32):
Boundaries is about setting healthy boundaries in a way that
is self honoring and also honoring to the other person involved.
The online course, there are two of them. One is
Millionaire Marriage Club. It teaches all the skills I've been
talking about in an online format where you can go
(53:55):
through the course from the privacy of your home, either
alone or with your partner to learn these skills. It's
very reasonably priced. And then there's an addition, the Millionaire
Marriage Club Stepfamily Edition that also adds all the information
(54:17):
that helps stepfamily succeed. You can go to my website,
which is Nancy Landrum dot com and find all of
those resources as well as if you're interested in private coaching,
there's a contact page on the website where you can
(54:40):
email me and request a strategy appointment where you and
your partner if you're married, can ask me for a
private appointment to see if we're a good fit to
work together to help you achieve a respectful and loving,
(55:00):
lasting marriage.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Awesome Thank you so much, Nancy. Keep up the good work.
Let's get that divorce rate down to zero unless you're
just not supposed to be with that person. And thank
you so much for being here, and I hope you
just keep on doing your incredible work with so many
people that deserve to be in love forever.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Thank you. Children deserve to grow up in a home
where love and is the model.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
That is true. Yep, thank you Nancy, and thank you
all for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
Welcome to the Perfect Life Awakening Show hosted by Royce Morales.
Royce has been a transformational facilitator, teaching groundbreaking spiritually based
courses for more than four decades. She is the author
of three books about her teachings. Join Royce as she
takes you on a journey into how to live your
best life and find your true purpose through discovering the
(00:31):
origins of subconscious, disempowering notions and releasing them. She talks
with experts and inspiring people just like you who learned
to trust their intuitive inner wisdom, which led to life
changing shifts. Today, her guests live in empowered existence and
are helping change the world to a higher consciousness place
(00:52):
based on truth and love. You deserve to awaken, to
align with and embody your true self and live a
life I filled with love. Transform yourself from triggered to
empowered and create your perfect life. Here is your host,
Royce Morales.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Hello everyone, Thank you so much for joining me today,
and as always, I am excited to have my amazing
guest today. But before I even introduce her, I want
to just talk about the title that I gave this show,
Love for Life. I think it's a really important notion that,
(01:34):
you know, because we're kind of in a society that
everything is kind of throwaway, and you know, somebody bugs
you so you divorce them or you know, I've done
that myself, and I just think it's so important to
understand what love is and how to maintain it. And
let's go back half of sentence ago where I said
(01:55):
what love is, because I don't even think people know
what love is. I have my own definition of and
I talk about love all the time. I used to
call my program Perfect Love Awakening, but I changed it
to Life because it was more inclusive. But you know,
what the heck is love? And I'm sure my guest
today is going to talk about that. But to me,
love just means acceptance. You know, we don't have a
(02:19):
part of us that is trying to push something away.
We're accepting it, and of course it has to come
from accepting ourselves. That's pretty obvious. And it's also one
of the things that I have seen is something we
want more than anything else in life, and yet we're
terrified of it. We're terrified of deserving to be loved.
(02:40):
And that's one of the things that I talk about
over and over and over in my courses. So enough
about that. Let me introduce Nancy Landrum. She is the
author of How to Stay, Stay Married, and Love It,
and she's going to talk about her marriage and all
she learned from that. She's a relationship coach and she's
guided hundreds of couples back from the brink by using
(03:05):
transformative relationship skills. She has her Masters in spiritual psychology.
Personal experience and research proven strategies is what she uses.
She talks to couples about how to talk about anything
without fighting. That's key. That's amazing, rediscovered, rediscovering deep connection, experience,
(03:31):
piece and lasting love and how does that happen through
healthy communication? And that too is something I talk about
a lot. So we're definitely on the same wavelength here.
She's a columnist, a journalist, and founder of the online
relationship solution that she calls the Millionaire Marriage Club. And
(03:52):
she's the author of eight books and I love this.
Her ultimate goal is to lower the divorce rate globally.
Wouldn't that be nice? So welcome, Nancy. I'm so glad
you're here, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Such an honor to join you. It's such an honor
to join you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Thank you, So tell us a little bit about how
your childhood kind of started you on this path, what
happened to do all that?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
By the time I was three years old, I decided
I'm going to have a happier, more loving marriage than
I observed in my parents. They were wonderful people in
many ways. They had high character, they were very they
were people of faith their church, and their faith was very,
(04:47):
very central to our lives. But they didn't know how
to treat each other very well. There was a constant
level of bickering going on that really wounded me. As
a child. I longed to see them treat each other
with kindness, affection, and respect. I think in my entire
(05:09):
lifetime I only saw them hug each other once.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And they not only didn't know how to treat each
other very well, they came from a generation where survival
was the goal. And I understand that now. But as
a child, I was clothed, I had a roof over
my head, but I wasn't cuddled, I wasn't told I
(05:38):
love you. My accomplishments were not acknowledged or nurtured, and
that left kind of a gaping hole in my self confidence.
But that decision as a three year old literally set
the trajectory of my life. I'm going to learn out
(06:01):
to have a happier, loving marriage than my see and
my parents. And as soon as I learned to read,
I fell in love with reading and books, and I
literally saw myself as an adult writing books that would
help other people have better relationships. I consider this a
(06:23):
download from God. I think it was a purpose that
that seed was planted in my consciousness that guided the
trajectory of my life for the rest of my life. Actually, now,
it's a good thing at that age that I didn't
(06:46):
realize there'd be forty years of pretty hard lessons before
I had anything worth writing about or sharing. But nevertheless,
there was a passionate drive in me to learn about
relationships and also learn how to get out of the
(07:07):
emotional pain that was buried in me for a very
long time.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I married young because I wanted to get out of
my home. I also was very fortunate to marry a
very good man. We had two baby boys and had
only been married four and a half years when he
left home to play softball with our church league and
drop dead on the ball field of an aortic aneurism
(07:42):
that we didn't know he had, so I was only
twenty three. I don't know how anyone can be prepared
for that kind of life shattering trauma. I think in
something I read of yours, you mentioned a shift life,
(08:03):
a shift life from the roots, and that was certainly
an event that rattled me to the roots of my being.
It took about five years to pull out of the
depression and the grief that I felt and for life
(08:26):
to begin to look good again. I enjoyed my two boys.
They were rambunctious. Really, we had a lot of fun
together as well as you know, knowing that I needed
to set appropriate boundaries and have consequences because I didn't
(08:47):
want to very active boys running my life. I wanted
to be the parent. She was a good thing or
they they could have for energy and so forth. But
I'd been single for thirteen years when a mutual friend
(09:09):
introduced me to Jim Landrum, who was also a widower.
He had three children, and we fell madly in love.
We were just so excited to find love again. We
were sure, because we were older, we'd been through a lot,
(09:30):
we can handle anything. So we blissfully said I do
and joined our families under one roof, and then the
next level of learning began.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And so it begins.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yes, before the show began, we were joking about an
old show in the seventies about a step family called
the Brady Bunch. We were not the Brady Bunch. We
didn't have a cook named Alice that handled all the
kitchen duties and did the laundry and all that. I
(10:12):
never had analysis, and it shocked me how much more
time it took to prepare meals for six people rather
than just three. It was. It was, you know, a
shock how much more work a big family was. But
(10:35):
we we didn't have any trouble treating each other with
respect and love and kindness. When we agreed that we
had one issue over which we disagreed very strongly. It
started out as a small irritation. We'd kind of have
a bump in the road. We'd kiss and makeup and
(10:57):
move on. Because we didn't know how to resolve the
issue and we did not know how to manage conflict
very well. That issue grew and grew until a few
years later it was dominating our marriage, and slowly our
love was leaking out of the marriage. We were fighting
(11:22):
more and more often it affected not only us but
our children, which of course we didn't want to have
happen at all. So, you know, our blissful assumption that
we were adults we could handle anything, was just loan
to smithereens until finally it was so bad we humbled
(11:48):
ourselves to admit that we needed help. And then it
took a year for us to find effective help. We
went to three different therapists, we read books, went to workshops,
and none of it. Nothing seemed to give us what
we needed until we found a coach that began to
(12:11):
teach us some good anger management skills, because both of
us were really very angry by that time, and she
also taught us some very simple communication methods. You know,
we had been delivering our messages to each other in
a very attacking way, and my favorite and the method
(12:38):
was sarcastic putdowns. I'm really good with words, and I
knew how to cut Jim with words. And I also
eventually became a yeller, which I hated, but when you're
so frustrated and you're not being heard, it's like it
ramps up the volume for me. Until finally began to
(13:00):
say Nancy the louder you yelled, the less I can
hear you. And he was exactly right, But of course
he had his favorite attacking methods too, and his was
the finger pointing you you should have why didn't you?
I can't believe you didn't know to do this or that,
(13:22):
And that didn't go over very well with me either.
So our methods of communicating were triggering each other almost daily,
and it was exhausting. It was so exhausting, And when
we found this coach. We found out later that I
(13:45):
was saying to her, I don't respect him anymore because
he doesn't keep his word to me about this one issue,
although he was very trustworthy in every other area, and
I don't respect him. I don't know how much longer
I can love him. And later I found out that
(14:05):
Jim was telling her I don't love her anymore. We
didn't believe in divorce, and yet we were considering the
possibility of separating for a length of time. We didn't
like that idea either, and gradually, because she began to
(14:28):
teach us how to deliver our messages in a non
attacking way so that the partner could hear the message
and understand it rather than reacting to it and escalating
into a fight. The first time we sat down to
talk about our hot issue using this respectful language, it
(14:54):
wasn't very pretty. We weren't real good at it. We
kept having to self correct from our old language to
the new language, but we made it through forty minutes
without it escalating into a fight. For the first time
in years, it felt like we were witnessing a miracle
(15:16):
between us. We actually were able to hear each other's
message and began to understand what was going on between
us from each other's point of view. We were exhausted
from the effort of translating our old methods into these
(15:39):
simple new methods, but we decided to set our issue
aside for that day. We came back to it several
times over the next few weeks using this respectful language.
When we stood, I stepped into Jim's arms and he said,
(16:01):
that felt so respectful. Let's do our best to always
treat each other with respect. I agreed. What I didn't
realize either of us didn't realize until later, was that
day some very important things happened. First of all, because
(16:21):
of our new commitment to always treat each other with respect,
we never had another fight. We had to learn how
to handle anger in a respectful way, and there's definite
skills for doing that, so that we weren't lashing out
in anger toward each other. But because we were so
(16:47):
tired of hurting each other and tired of being in pain,
we were so totally committed to this new commitment to
always treat each other with three respect. So we never
had another fight, and I like to say that our
goals changed also before that, my goal was to prove
(17:12):
to Jim, I'm right and you're wrong. Right, yeah, And
of course that was you know, between you and me,
that was true. But his goal was also to prove
to me that he was right and I was wrong.
And as long as that was our goal, we would
keep fighting. That's the foundation of every fight.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, yeah, for most everybody.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It doesn't matter what the topic is or what the
issue is, but that's the foundation of every fight. So
over the next few weeks, we had several of what
I now call skilled discussions, meaning you speak respectfully and
you listen for the purpose of understanding the other person's
(18:01):
point of view. And within a few weeks we started
out at opposite sides of this issue like opposite corners
of a boxing ring. But with every skillful, respectful conversation,
we gradually moved closer to the middle where we could
(18:22):
really hear and understand each other's point of view, and
that led to a resolution of the issue that we'd
been fighting about for seven years. It was magic, right,
it was magic.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
H So just by communicating in that way, the issue resolved.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's interesting, Well, it's pretty hard to consider a mutual
resolution to an issue when you feel very strongly on
one side of it and your partner feels very strong
on the other. So it required some pretty radical shifts
(19:05):
in perspective for both of us. And yet when we
when we had more empathy for each other's position, we
were able to make that radical shift and resolve the issue.
From that day in our bedroom, when we made our
(19:26):
commitment to always treat each other with respect, we had
seventeen more years of blissfully happy marriage without even a
harsh word between us. Although you know, our lives weren't perfect.
We had challenges like everyone has, but we didn't take
the challenge out on each other anymore. We became true
(19:51):
partners and as a couple of years later, Jim suggested
that we we began teaching other couples what we had
learned because we had so much trouble finding effective help.
So we began teaching a class called how to Stay
Married and Love It. We wanted to stay married the
(20:16):
way our parents had, but we wanted to love it
a whole lot more than it seemed like they did.
We taught that class together for eleven years. During that time,
I went back to school and got my master's degree
in spiritual psychology and then wrote the book titled How
(20:36):
to Stay Married and Love It, Solving the Puzzle of
a Soulmate Marriage, and that was published in two thousand
and two. Jim was diagnosed with terminal cancer in two
thousand and four. We had a precious year together before
(20:57):
he died. Wasn't certainly not our plan. We thought we
would be teaching together for ten or fifteen more years
at least, and it took about a year from me
to regain my emotional footing. I realized there was nothing
(21:18):
else that our children were grown and out of the
house long before that. There was nothing else that I
felt passionate about doing with the rest of my life.
So I began teaching some other curriculum for a few years,
(21:39):
and then went back to private coaching. The coaching part
had begun while we were teaching our class together. Some
couples needed more support than they got in class, and
so I would see them as private clients. So altogether,
I've written eight books about various aspects of healthy relationships,
(22:04):
currently working on my ninth, and have coached or taught
in classes hundreds of couples the skills that transformed our marriage.
I might also add that of our five children, every
single one of them, in their own way and at
(22:27):
their own time, have expressed appreciation for the work they
did and what they learned from us about the skills
that keep a marriage loving for life that help couples
resolve conflict. It isn't love and commitment that make a
(22:49):
marriage work by itself. They're important, certainly, but the third
leg of a three legged stool the first two legs,
or love and commitment, but without respect, marriage falls apart.
Couples who end up in the divorce court at one
time loved each other and thought they were committed to
(23:13):
each other, but without respect the conflicts in it. Any
close relationship, like intimate marriage relationship, if you don't know
how to manage conflict with respect. Then it dominated. It
slowly erodes the love and commitment until they're gone and
(23:36):
you end up in divorce court. My dream, my passion,
is to spread the message that marriage requires education, the
education of skills. Most of us many, shall I say,
many of us grow up in homes where we don't
(23:59):
see respect afectful communication modeled, We don't see respectful conflict
management modeled, and we take the lack of good skills
with us into adult relationships because that's all we know.
It requires education and passing a test. To get a
(24:20):
driver's license. Most professionals, professions require an d before you
get paid. To good job, you have to know how
to handle the job. Some of us that came that
(24:42):
were introduced to computers later in life probably took classes
to learn how to manage computers. But we think that
if we're in love, that's all it takes to say
I do and be happy for the rest of your life.
(25:02):
For some of us, that's not enough. It certainly wasn't
enough for Jim and to me.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, yeah, well, so many questions to ask. I'm just
wondering when you say you had a conflict does that
mean that, like he wanted the lights on at night
and you wanted them off? Or was it deeper than
you know? Was it something that was more like your
(25:28):
core value or something that was triggering you, Because you know,
I talk a lot about triggering, and I find that
most of the time, even if it's you know, a
core value issue or the light turning off or whatever,
there's something that's being triggered, and if you don't get
to that in the conversation, it could go on forever.
You know. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yes, it makes perfect sense, Thank you. Rice. Something as
simple as turning the light on and off might be
the surface issue, but really, if you are have the
skills to take it deeper, you'll discover the issue as
much deeper than that. Jim and I each had two
(26:10):
teenagers when we married, and we made a wise decision
which later research of step families has validated that we
would continue to single parent our teenagers. They were not
at a good time to accept another parental figure in
their lives. That worked seamlessly. But he had an eight
(26:35):
year old son and he wanted me to be Jimmy's mom,
so he wanted us to co parent Jimmy. But we
came to the assignment of parenting Jimmy from two very
different perspectives. I'd been a single mom of two boys,
(26:57):
as I said earlier, and I I loved them. I
was affectionate. They heard I Love you frequently, but I
also had certain rules and consequences if they were disobedient. Jim,
on the other hand, did a wonderful job of loving
all of his children. He was very affectionate, very non judgmental,
(27:23):
but he did not like setting rules or having consequences. Basically,
we would agree on certain rules, like he needs to
brush his teeth before he goes to bed, or pick
up choice from his room before bedtime, or do his
(27:44):
homework before watching TV. They were very reasonable rules for
an eight nine ten year old. But then if and
Jim would give me permission if he were gone, for instance,
he gave me permission to enforce the rules that we'd
agreed on. But then when he'd get home, Jimmy would
(28:08):
cry and complain that mom was mean, and and Jim
would turn on me. You know, why didn't I know
that that should have been an exception to the rule. Well,
anytime Jimmy got upset about any kind of rule, Jim
would call it an exception. So what Jimmy learned, without
(28:33):
Jim's intention at all, was that he could manipulate Jim
and turn Jim against me so that this child, Jimmy,
could get his own way, he didn't have to follow
the rules. And I could see. I could see the
(28:58):
long range effects of that disconnect between Jim and I,
and it deeply concerned me for Jimmy's sake. But Jim
just could not see that. He just he was he
(29:20):
talk about childhood. He had a very stable home as
a child, but his father had a very explosive temper
and he didn't lose it often. But Jim was a
very sensitive, single child, only child in the home, and
once in a while his dad would just blow up
(29:40):
at him, and it wounded him so deeply that he
wanted to avoid anything that might cause his child pain,
even if the pain was a necessary part of disciplining
a child, you know, giving Jimmy rules with consequences. So
(30:03):
if Jimmy was upset, Jim would take Jimmy's side because
he didn't want to wound his son the way he
had been wounded. So it's what we eventually The agreement
that we came to was to save the marriage that
(30:28):
we both considered that more important, the highest priority, and
so I resigned from any parenting duties with Jimmy. Jim
took over all the parenting. Again, we thought we were
a total failure at co parenting this child. That we
(30:50):
learned several years later when we were speaking at a
step family support group that the research that's been done
about what makes step families work succeed and the practices
that caused step families to fail, we learned that one
(31:11):
of the recommendations is if there's any conflict over parenting
at all, that the biological parent takes over full parenting.
The step parent is there to support the biological parent,
even if you disagree with the decisions they're making. And
that was basically what eliminated instantly. Well, the decision to
(31:37):
treat each other with respect stopped all the fighting immediately.
But when we agreed that Jim would go back to
single parenting Jimmy and I would step out of any
role of a parenting role with Jimmy, that eliminated the
issue from our family, from our marriage, brought peace to
(32:02):
all of us.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, so it's just about time to take a break.
But when we come back, I want you to talk
a little bit more about commune, some keys to good
communication in a marriage or in any relationship. You know
you don't put the word marriage in there or parent
fit with anything. So we will be right back when
(32:28):
talking to Nancy Landrum will be right.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
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Speaker 2 (35:01):
Welcome back. I am talking with Nancy Landrum. We're talking
about communication, staying in love forever, and I mentioned before
the break that this information can certainly hold a lot
of value for any relationship, which I'd like you to
kind of maybe you expand what you're talking about, so
(35:21):
it's not just about marriage and step families and all that.
So tell us what is it that you think is
really the key to good communication? You were saying respect before,
what else could you add to that?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Respect is kind of a vague concept. How do you
define respect? We would have agreed we needed to be
respectful to each other, but without someone to tell us,
what wording do you use that's respectful? How do you
listen respectfully? When I wrote the book How to Stay
(35:57):
Married and Love It, I included a list of forty
different disrespectful ways of communicating that are very common in
our culture. Things like the accusatory you that I mentioned
was Jim's favorite, sarcastic comments, hurtful humor, interrupting someone else
(36:19):
when they're speaking, Oh gosh, the not really listening. You know,
many times we act like we're listening, but we're really
planning our rebuttal we're not really attempting to understand the
other person's point of view. So the learning to speak
(36:42):
with respect mint keeping my voice low, not screeching, not yelling,
and offering, putting the words together from my own point
of view using what are called I messy, just like
I think I wish what I really am concerned about
(37:07):
is and how I feel. Feelings are, in my opinion,
one of the most valuable keys to communication that connects
you to the other person, like when this happens, I
feel loved. When you do this, I feel validated. When
(37:30):
you listen carefully, You're meeting my need to be heard.
I have come to believe that the basic need in
all of us is to have at least one person
in our lives that gets us, that is willing to
hear and understand who we are, where we're coming from.
(37:55):
And in our case, that meant that when Jim spoke
to me shared his point of view, I demonstrated that
I was listening by repeating back to him what he
said in my own words or in his same words,
but repeating back to him to just let him know
(38:18):
to validate I heard what you said. I don't have
to agree with it, but by repeating it back to him,
I'm giving him the deep satisfaction of knowing I care
about what he said, and I'm listening for the to
try to understand from his point of view, what is
(38:42):
going on in his head, what is important to him.
When Jim would repeat back to me what I said,
to him. It was like a soothing balm on my soul.
Finally someone is hearing me, understanding me once wants to
(39:05):
understand who I am and what is important to me.
One of my sons, was in his twenties, was very
angry about, in his perception, how I had kind of
abandoned him during his teenage years, and I wanted him
(39:29):
to understand what I was going through at that time
and why he, in his mind, was neglected. But what
he really needed from me was he needed to express
his pain and know that I listened, that I heard,
and as I began doing that over just a few years,
(40:00):
we had several conversations felt to me and as a parent,
it was hard to hear those words. It was hard
to hear how deeply I had wounded my son. But
as I listened to him and with empathy, repeated back
(40:21):
to him what he said, the wound healed between us.
And today I'm parked in his driveway going to Sure
of Thanksgiving with he and his family. We have a
very communicating, loving relationship that's been restored because I was
(40:42):
willing to hear his pain without excusing myself for offering
up some kind of explanation. He needed me to be
the loving parent to him even years later, in order
to heal the wound between us. So communication that connects
(41:07):
people is speaking in ways that are respectful, that deliver
a message that doesn't trigger a negative reaction, and mostly frankly,
mostly being willing to listen with empathy.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, what about there are situations where a child, a
grown child, or a partner just refuses to communicate. They
hold it in, or it comes out in misdirected ways,
or you know all that stuff that people do when
they're suppressing things. What do you recommend for those situations.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I've had two different clients whose wives. They were men
whose wives were not willing to come with them to
see me. And in one case, they had been she'd
been sleeping on the sofa for years and angry, and
(42:13):
in the other case, she'd actually left the marriage already.
And these two men were determined to win their wives
back into a loving marriage. They were willing to change
their own behavior, learned to communicate themselves their own point
of view with respect and with empathy, willing to listen,
(42:39):
and in both cases they won their wives back into
the marriage. Now, that might not always happen, but it is.
Marriage is a closed bubble, so when one person makes
changes in the way they handle the relationship, it has
(43:04):
to impact and create a response from the other partner.
It's like pushing on one side of a balloon. The
other balloon bulges as a result the marriage. I describe
(43:24):
this to my coaching clients that marriage is a living
entity like a child between you, and that marriage needs nurturing.
It needs consistent loving communication. It needs date nights, it
needs weekends away, it needs thoughtful kindness day by day.
(43:48):
One of the things I recommend is that couples give
each other a sincere appreciation every day for something that
they are grateful for. One of the most common complaints
I hear from a couple of them feels unupshided to
take and for granted. You can't just get married when
(44:12):
you're in love and expect it to maintain itself for
the rest of your lives. Requires maintenance. Like you, you
wouldn't starve a child. I hope most of us would
not starve a child. But if you're not giving appreciation
to your partner at least every day or going on
(44:34):
regular date, they're starving the health of that relationship. So
sometimes it requires love requires an appropriate boundary. One of
my sons was let's see how to describe he was.
(44:59):
He was a difficult child and became a difficult adult,
and I had to learn how to set appropriate, healthy
boundaries to protect myself from this disrespect to me. One
example is Steve, as a teenager, loved Camaros, the car
(45:25):
model Camaro, and he would junk Camaros and cannibalize them
to put together parts that worked in one Camo, which
you know, never seemed to quite happen. But we had
a couple of junk Camaros in our backyard, and I
(45:47):
kept asking him to, you know, get rid of them,
because our backyard looked like the local junk junk yard.
And he kept promising, sure, Mom, I'll do it, but
it didn't get done. And so I finally got smart
(46:07):
and was beginning to learn about setting loving, appropriate boundaries
for an adult child. And I said, Steve, when's the
earliest you can have these cars out of our backyard? Well,
next Sunday? Okay, Sunday, by what time? By three o'clock? Okay, Steve,
(46:31):
if they aren't gone from our yard at three o'clock,
on Sunday, I'm going to call a wrecker and have
them hauled away as junk. And he said, okay. Sunday morning,
and I stopped nagging. I stopped harassing him about it.
Nagging doesn't help, doesn't work. I stopped lecturing him, because
(46:54):
lecturing is not a good parenting skill. That doesn't work either.
Morning came and Stephen said, Mom, I'm sorry I won't
be able to move the cars today because my friend
and I have made other plans. I didn't blow up.
I just said okay, but that wasn't our deal, so
(47:17):
that if the cars aren't gone by three o'clock, I
am calling the Wrecord to come and get them. Well,
he hustled around and found a friend with a trailer
and got the cars moved out of the yard before
three o'clock. Simple boundary with clear consequences, and he knew
(47:40):
the boundary, he knew the consequences, and I quietly, respectfully
stepped to it. And he took care of it. And
he knew that if he didn't take care of it,
I was going to call the Wrecord and get them
out of our yard. So sometimes when people children or friends,
(48:03):
or even your parents or your partner are doing things
that consistently are disrespectful to you. Then another skill that
I learned over time is setting an appropriate boundary to
take care of myself. And what I learned was when
(48:29):
I set a boundary that is healthy for me, it
is automatically healthy for the other person too, whether they
like it or not. Because in God's economy, He's not
going to teach me a way to take appropriate care
of myself and make that damaging to someone else. The
(48:53):
universe just doesn't work that way. So another book that
you may be interested in if you find yourself being
frequently mistreated or promises keep being broken to you. The
book is called Pungent Boundaries. I named it that because
(49:16):
pungent is a word that signifies a bad taste in
your mouth. Doesn't smell good, it doesn't taste good. Boundaries
are difficult work, you know, they're not fun, they're not
sweet and rosy. But boundaries are also very healthy boundaries.
(49:36):
Appropriate boundaries are also necessary in some relationships.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
So back to my question, somebody you know, somebody is angry.
You know, whether this is your child, or your husband,
or your neighbor, but they just won't talk to you
about it. They just you know, they're sending out signals
energetically as well as in other ways that something happened
(50:06):
between the two of you and they're just not willing
to talk about it. How would you recommend that you
get them to open up what you know? Let's say
you even confronted them on this and said, I know
something's going on, talk to me. What would you recommend.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
You cannot force someone to talk when they're afraid of
being vulnerable. In fact, the more you push them to talk,
the more they may clam up. So one skill that
is taught in my online course called Millionaire Marriage Club
(50:46):
is called perception checking. If your perception is that they
are angry with you, then you call it out. You
just say, my perception is that you're angry with me.
Is that true? If they say no, but you know
it is true that they're angry, you just say, I'm
(51:09):
willing to listen. I want to know what I may
have done that has made you so angry. I'm willing
to listen whenever you are willing to talk. And then
you walk away, You've left the ball in their court.
They have power now, they're far more apt to open
(51:33):
up when they feel like they have. They've been given,
they've been handed the responsibility of talking. And you stopped pushing,
you stop nagging them to talk. It's far more apt
to happen than if you keep pushing for them to talk.
(51:54):
They're saying anger in their behavior without saying it with words,
and people are too afraid. They may have come from
a family or a situation where they're punished for being angry,
or they are rejected if they verbalize anything that's negative,
(52:19):
and so being vulnerable enough to admit they're angry maybe
a huge hurdle for them. And generally pushing doesn't make
it happen.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Right, So we only have a couple minutes, and I'd
love you to tell us a little bit about the
Millionaire Marriage Club and your books and promote away.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
Well. I call How to Stay Married and Love It
my signature book. It tells the story of the recovery
or transformation of our marriage. Along with teaching all the
skills that we had to learn, there's also examples of
men any other couples that were in our classes and
how these skills transformed their marriage. That's the big one.
(53:09):
I wrote a book called Stepping Together two ge th
e r about the research validated principles that help step
family succeed and those common practices that generally lead to
step family failure. That's stepping together. As I mentioned, Pungent
(53:32):
Boundaries is about setting healthy boundaries in a way that
is self honoring and also honoring to the other person involved.
The online course, there are two of them. One is
Millionaire Marriage Club. It teaches all the skills I've been
talking about in an online format where you can go
(53:55):
through the course from the privacy of your home, either
alone or with your partner to learn these skills. It's
very reasonably priced. And then there's an addition, the Millionaire
Marriage Club Stepfamily Edition that also adds all the information
(54:17):
that helps stepfamily succeed. You can go to my website,
which is Nancy Landrum dot com and find all of
those resources as well as if you're interested in private coaching,
there's a contact page on the website where you can
(54:40):
email me and request a strategy appointment where you and
your partner if you're married, can ask me for a
private appointment to see if we're a good fit to
work together to help you achieve a respectful and loving,
(55:00):
lasting marriage.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Awesome Thank you so much, Nancy. Keep up the good work.
Let's get that divorce rate down to zero unless you're
just not supposed to be with that person. And thank
you so much for being here, and I hope you
just keep on doing your incredible work with so many
people that deserve to be in love forever.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Thank you. Children deserve to grow up in a home
where love and is the model.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
That is true. Yep, thank you Nancy, and thank you
all for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
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