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One of you is ready to leave early. The other is still looking for their shoes. Welcome to marriage.
This week, Juli and Mike are on stage at the Love Like You Mean It Cruise! Live and unfiltered, they talk honestly about how their differences have shown up in parenting, intimacy, and their pace of life—and how they’ve learned to let those differences draw them closer, instead of driving them apart.
Juli (00:00.11)
Hey guys, welcome to Java with Juli. I am Juli Slattery and this podcast is an outreach of Authentic Intimacy, a ministry dedicated to helping people make sense of God and sexuality. Well, today’s a little bit different. I think it’s really fun. You’re about to hear a live recording from the famous life love like you mean it marriage cruise where my husband Mike and I had the opportunity to speak to a room filled with couples just like you who are navigating both the good and the hard things in marriage. So in this talk, we open up about our more than 30 years of marriage, how vastly different we are and how those differences have created tension, but ultimately how God has taught us to let those differences actually strengthen our relationship rather than divide us.
You’re going to hear some very personal stories about parenting, communication struggles, to differences in our personalities, expectations, and even sexual intimacy. And just a heads up, my husband, Mike, is funny if you don’t know him. He brings his usual humor and spontaneity to the conversation. So you’re going to hear those differences of me even trying to keep him back on track a few times. If you want to know more about the Love Like You Minute Cruise and maybe even join us in 2027, you can look for that link in our show notes or head to lovelikeyoumeanitcruise.com.
Juli
Okay, so Mike and I have been married for almost 32 years. Yeah, it’s amazing. And when we got married, we were so different. And you know what, 32 years later, we’re still so different. We have different approaches to anything. I think the only thing we agree on is God and pickleball.
Juli (01:52.332)
We can’t, I mean we just approach things differently. We are so different that about five years ago we went to a marriage counselor and the first thing he did was he gave us a personality test, each of us. And so then he’s meeting with us and he’s got our two profiles sitting right there and he looks at us he goes, I can’t believe you guys are still married.
Mike (02:13.366)
And we still paid him, I don’t know why we paid him that, we should have canceled that check.
Juli (02:18.018)
Yes, I didn’t know how to feel about that. Like, should we feel good that we beat the odds? Does that mean like…
Mike (02:23.458)
We didn’t beat the odds.
Juli
Yes, God beat the odds.
Mike
He gets the credit. Yeah. So one of things we want to talk about is just us being different. Juli and I could not have been more different growing up. My beautiful bride grew up in a Christian home. So she went to private Christian schools her whole life. I grew up in a Catholic home, didn’t come to the Lord until later, didn’t have that same experience. And I got busted in intercity schools. So it’s two very different experiences there. My beautiful, brilliant bride graduated Magnum Cum Laude out of Wheaton College. So she went there. So she’s awesome. I call it Magnum Cum La-di-da-di, but whatever. But you don’t want to see my GPA. Those records are… I graduated. That’s all we need to know. That’s all we need to know. That’s it. That’s it. I’m here. One of the things too is Juli played tennis in this little beautiful body. She played tennis against people who are women who are my size and she got to number one.
So that was awesome. She played number one in tennis. So let’s go play pickleball later. She’ll teach us some lessons. Juli grew up, once again, in a Christian home, and she went to Christian camps. Every summer, she got the gospel. She learned all those good Bible memory verses. The only camp I went to was Marine Corps boot camp when I was 18. And I had to do that to, ooh rah, here we go, ooh rah, do some pushups later. But we basically, that’s how I had to pay for college. So once again, two very, very different lives growing up.
Juli (03:44.864)
Yeah, and I would say that our differences actually attracted us to each other. Because I still am, but back then I was so driven and focused and serious. I actually had ulcers at the age of 16 because I was so uptight and worried about things. And so here I run into this guy. We both lived in South Florida at the time, and he was this laid back surfer dude and he knew how to have fun. You know, he knew how to invite me into fun. And so that character quality of him, of his, him being just fun loving and spontaneous really made me want to spend time with him. But once we got married, that wasn’t so great anymore.
Mike
It was, come on!
Juli
You know, was like the fun guy wanted to play NBA jams instead of cleaning the house. So we had to work through some of that.
Mike (04:35.566)
We did, we did. But as Juli mentioned, those differences that attracted us really started to kind of rub on us a little bit earlier in our marriage. For those who are familiar with the Enneagram, I if you are or not, but Juli’s a five. And what that basically means, she’s a deep thinker and she feels very deeply. So a lot of times what I always tease is I say, hey honey, it’s like you get in a submarine and you go like thousand feet down and you’re all by yourself doing these deep thoughts, reading these deep books. And I feel like I got to put on my scuba gear, go down there, bang on the hatch, dun dun dun, come back up, be with us, the rest of the world. And then you slowly rise to the surface. And I love that about her, but she’s not into the details sometimes, and that causes some friction.
And that was one story when we first got married. We lived up in Stuart, for those of who are familiar with Florida, Stewart. We lived up there and they had this wonderful farmer’s market. But at the farmer’s market, you had to have cash. You couldn’t pay credit cards, you couldn’t pay check, you had to have cash. So we’re leaving as a young couple. We love going there on Saturdays as our date. And we’re going and I said, Juli, you got cash, right?
Juli
Yup, I got cash.
Mike
She looked me in my eye and told me she had cash. All right, we’re good. So we get to the farmer’s market and it’s a bunch of older people and they get a little frustrated when you’re in line, you’re not moving quickly. So we’re dealing with all this stress. We get through line and as we’re there, we have like 15 items, they ring it all up and they say, hey, it’s going to be 26 bucks, whatever it was. I go, Juli, is there cash? And she’s like, oh yeah, I don’t have cash.
Juli
That didn’t bother you did it?
Mike
It still doesn’t bother me.
Juli (05:57.43)
I know.
Mike (06:02.454)
It’s fine. It’s fine.
Juli (06:05.134)
Alright, in all fairness though, okay, he is a detailed guy, which means he brought five suitcases just for him…
Mike
Hey, that’s okay.
Juli
…to make sure he’s got everything, so it’s not all good.
Mike (06:15.054)
And Ronald Reagan was right, trust, but verify.
Juli (06:21.262)
Well, I’m guessing that you all as married couples have differences like that. You can have differences in all sorts of areas. How you spend your money, how cold or warm you like your house or your room temperature in your cabin. We’ve been fighting about that one for 32 years.
Mike
There’s no air.
Juli
There’s air. It feels great.
Mike
Come on guys, there’s air in Italy right?
Juli
You can have differences related to sexual intimacy. One of you wants to have it more often than the other. That’s a common difference. You can have differences in how you raise your kids. Are we going to discipline really strongly? Are we going to be more empathic parents? You have to work some of those things out. And we certainly had to work some of those things out as well. And you might get so frustrated with the differences that you and your spouse have that you are like, God, I don’t even know why I married this person. I wish I would have married somebody more like me. I don’t know anybody ever thought that. So maybe it’s just us. I don’t know.
But what we want to talk to you about today is with these differences, how do you continue to grow together instead of letting your differences really tear you apart? And so we’re going to talk about two reasons why differences are actually really good for you and your marriage. And then we’re going to talk through five practical things that you can do to help navigate the differences that you have with your spouse.
Juli
All right? So to launch, let’s talk about why differences are not just something to be tolerated, but actually part of God’s beautiful plan for marriage. So the first reason that differences are really, really good for your marriage is they balance you out. Mike, you reference this in your prayer that when God created Adam, he’s like, OK, Adam, you’re great, but you’re not really good because you’re by yourself.
And you need a helpmate, you need a partner who is going to bring balance to who you are as a man. And that is so central to God’s design for marriage and for intimacy. I mean, it happened right there in the beginning of Genesis. And so we all need our spouse to balance this out. And if we don’t have that, we will be unbalanced. So one of the things that Mike and I disagreed on pretty much, whole range of parenting from little kids all the way up was our disciplinary styles.
Juli (08:35.405)
As Mike mentioned, he was in the Marine Corps, and so he brought a little bit of that into parenting. We have three sons, so they know how to do push-ups. And, you know, he was really strict. And he was like, hey, what are you doing to help the family? You know, like, just really, he wanted them to grow up and be strong men. And I’m a mom, you know, so I want to understand their feelings. I want to make sure they feel loved and heard. You know, one of our kids falls down and gets hurt, I’m like, come here, honey, let me hold you. And what do you say?
Mike
You’re mothering them. Stop it.
Juli
Yeah, rub some dirt in it, right? So during the different stages of parenting, I never really told you this, but I sincerely like wished that you would just get out of the way of parenting because I could do a better job by myself. Yeah.
Mike (09:26.67)
I’ll check my breaks.
Juli (09:34.99)
But now on the other side of parenting, our kids are now in their 20s. So our official parenting job is done.
Mike
It’s never done.
Juli
Well, yeah, that’s kind of it. We don’t discipline them anymore.
Mike (09:41.07)
That’s true. That’s true. Well, you don’t.
Juli
All right. That’s Really? I didn’t know about this.
Mike (09:45.912)
I still pin them down and bite their left ear to show them the alpha male.
Juli (09:51.438)
There you go! But when we look back, we are so thankful that we had each other to balance out. Because me without you would have been bad, and you without me would have been bad. And so God gives us those opportunities to balance each other through differences.
Mike (10:03.476)
And one of those areas that we do this where our differences really come up is between work and rest. grew up in a household where her dad was a charger, very successful businessman. Her mom had six kids, was running the every activity known to man. My dad was in law enforcement. My mom was a court typist. We relied on crime to put food on the table, so that really helped us. But all honesty, just middle class, hardworking people. But when you’re off, you’re off. And you want to kind of take them on. Juli’s the type of she’s going to work, work, work until she drops. And then I always felt like, oh my gosh, don’t do that, leave 10 % in the tank and we always had that battle back and forth. But, and I was the one who was always kind of trying to scale back and Juli would push me a little bit and go beyond my comfort zone and do things I normally wouldn’t do. So that really helped in our marriage. Those two unique things that were bringing us to marriage really made us better in the long run.
Juli (10:49.74)
Yeah, Larry Burkett, some of you might be familiar with him. He said this, if two people were exactly the same, one of them would be unnecessary. So, boy, that’s a pretty profound statement right there, that God really has put you with your spouse, even with all those differences that can frustrate you, because otherwise one of you would be unnecessary. You need each other. You need to be in the teamwork together.
Mike
Amen.
Juli
Yeah. All right, so you got that? That’s one of the reasons why your differences in marriage are good. As much as they drive you crazy, it is going to help balance you out. Now, the second way that differences are really good for marriage is this is the only way that you’re really going to learn what love is. All right, so let’s say in a quote unquote perfect world, I married someone who is very much like me. Same personality traits, same desires, like the same things. That means you like that idea, right?
But you know what that means? It means that you could love each other and still be selfish. Because you’re not asking me to get out of my comfort zone for anything. And so God is like, no, no, no, no, I created marriage to be a reflection of the kind of love that I have for you. And the kind of love I have for you is mature and it’s sacrificial and it’s caring about the other person.
Juli
Our differences are what cause us to love beyond what feels good. And so when we really can reframe it that way, we don’t enter into intense fellowship or arguments with I’m going to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong. We’re able to enter into it a lot more of like, okay, what does God want to teach me? And boy, I remember those early years of marriage, I did come from the Christian home. And I remember just thinking like, I know how to do this better than he does. And so my job is to change him.
Wives, I’m sure you never felt that way about your husband, right? So you try for about four or five years, and then I start to realize that that was really pride in my heart, that God wanted me to lay down and to really value and honor my husband. And so that’s taken time, but I would just say that our differences in marriage are really what have called us to love each other beyond just a feel-good or selfish love.
Mike (13:06.742)
Yeah, and one of the areas that really became very apparent for us is in the area of physical intimacy. That was something that, especially early on, Juli’s chasing our three sons around, and she was exhausted. She had a cesarean each time, cesarean C-section, so she’s recovering from surgery, and obviously she just wasn’t there, you know, from a physical point of view.
Juli (13:26.68)
That’s not unusual by the way. I mean there’s women in this audience right here who are like you don’t know how tiring it is to chase toddlers around.
Mike (13:34.03)
Do you not feel validated?
Juli
I don’t.
Mike
Okay, I’ll validate you. We’ll talk about that later in our counseling session. But we’re going to get back to this, if that’s okay.
Juli (13:41.656)
Okay, go for it.
Mike (13:48.43)
Anyway. So that was one of the things where in your relationship, you’re gonna have either one of you is gonna really have a higher desire and the other one’s gonna have a lesser desire. There’s a small percentage where you kind of are both locked in. Juli’s gonna talk about that more in the main session. But for us in our relationship, I had the higher desire. So I’m always kind of chasing after Juli and she’s always like keeping me at bay when it came to the physical relationship. But that’s something that I had to learn. I’ve gotta give her space. I gotta back off. A lot more cold showers, a lot of working out.
But it was really one of the things I really needed to be sensitive. But on the flip side too, Juli realized how important that was for me. And I think the person who does have the higher desire realizes that’s something I really want to enjoy and express with my wife. It’s a God-given gift. I want to be able to enjoy that. And Juli started to say, I need to kind of carve out more time and energy to make sure that’s a priority. We put that on the calendar.
Juli (14:38.974)
Yeah, so we both learned over the years how do we love each other through these differences because friends let me just tell you most of these difference do not go away. Can I get an amen? Yeah, they just and you can’t change your spouse. And so it really is about leaning into what does God want to teach us through our differences? So now we’re gonna go through five practical things that you can do as a married couple to actually leverage your differences in a way that will bind you together instead of tearing you apart.
Juli
So you ready? All right. Are you ready? Okay, there you go. All right. The first thing that you can do is always return to the greatest common denominator. Now, what do I mean by that? That’s not a math class, but let me talk about what I mean by that. So when we would disagree on something, like let’s say we disagree on how old the kids should be before they get a cell phone, which we did disagree on. I could give you a million examples of what we disagreed on. But we would go back to what do we both want? Like, what do we want the end goal to be? And we would both agree. Like, we want to raise kids that have discernment and who love the Lord and who have good character.
Now, how we get there is where we had some disagreement, but we always want to go back to the thing that unites us. To use kind of like a metaphor, think of like a road trip. Okay, so Mike and I live in Akron, Ohio. Do we have some Buckeyes in here? All right.
Mike
Buckeyes.
Juli
OH! And you Michigan people, like…
Mike (16:14.222)
Security, come get this guy. He needs to, just kidding, love our brothers in Michigan.
Juli (16:19.342)
So let’s say we’re taking a road trip from Akron, down to Miami to catch a cruise. Now there are probably 15 or 20 different ways you can get from Ohio to Miami. You could take the straight shot, get on I-95, just start going south. You could take the scenic road and you know stop a bunch of times and check out some places on the way. You could say hey we just want to do country back roads and just take our time and enjoy the view of it.
Now you and your spouse probably have very different ideas of what road you would take to get to Miami. But here’s the key. You both agree that you want to end up in Miami. All right, so any time we have differences, again, those differences aren’t going away, but we want to start asking, what do we have in common in this topic? Like, how can we be on the same team? And when we start to think that way, it really changes the conversation.
Mike (17:15.886)
Yeah, and we went very blessed to go to a counselor earlier in our marriage. And when he sat down and talked to us, he kind of knew our personalities. He says, you know, Juli’s a very linear and clear thinker. She likes to go A, B, C, D
Juli (17:28.502)
As it should be.
Mike (17:30.594)
I think we said God was an artist earlier and he wants to be creative and go all around, but that’s okay. And I am more like God, an artist. Small g, small g. But just, do hear lightning? I’m just using it, But seriously, I would like, I’d start at A, but I wanna do a little B, and then maybe hit D, and then come back to C, and change it up a little bit. But at the end of the day, we’re both trying to get to Z. And that was the thing that we had to keep coming back to, what’s the common denominator? And that, we need to kind of remind ourselves when parenting, dealing with finances, dealing with where we’re gonna live, like any other conflict that we had, we had to keep coming back to that common denominator.
Juli (18:12.478)
And the greatest common denominator that we have and that many of you have as a married couple is our commitment to the Lord.
Mike
Amen.
Juli
That when it’s all said and done, how we parent, how we spend our money, how we approach work, all these things where we have so much kind of dividing us to go back to, we both want to seek the Lord’s wisdom. We both want to honor the Lord. That is what gets us on the same page again and helps us to realize that we’re actually on the same team trying to do the same thing in seeking the Lord. And so every time we as a couple pray together, do you know what we’re doing? We’re going back to that common denominator of we’re going to go seek help and wisdom and grace from the Lord. And it’s really hard to pray with your spouse and fight with your spouse at the same time. You know, so that’s just a way of, all right, we’re going to be united in this.
Juli
All right, so the second thing that you can do is nurture curiosity. Curiosity is a great gift that you can give yourself and give your spouse. So when we have differences, immediately we usually go into defensive mode of my way is right, your way is wrong, let me tell you why that is. And that is certainly the way we handle differences, I would say, for the first 10 years of our marriage. Like, let me prove to you why my logic is better than your logic. I mean, nobody ever goes D, F, you know, you just go down. there you go.
Mike (19:40.322)
The true artist do that honey.
Juli (19:40.998)
So we used to try to do that, but then what we learned is to be curious about where our differences are coming from. So for example, we have one difference, again, that has never gone away. I like to be on time. All right, so if I think that I’m running late, I will get so anxious. Like I leave plenty of time for like traffic and I hate to be late. And for you, time is relative.
Mike (20:10.19)
I am like a wizard. I show up exactly when I’m supposed to. Come on, any Lord of the Rings fans? Come on, there you go.
Juli (20:18.84)
So now you’re small g god and a wizard?
Mike (20:21.816)
You shall not pass. I can do it all day, honey.
Juli (20:25.526)
So we have this argument or this tension all the time, but particularly on Sundays, because I really hate being late for church. You know, the worship’s already started, the lights are low, you gotta find a…
Mike (20:38.818)
Got some fans over here, I think.
Juli
There you go, yeah, it’s just, yeah. So almost every Sunday morning, I would be like, hey, we’re ready to go, kids are in the car, and I still don’t know what you’re doing.
Mike (20:50.552)
Hey, I’m connecting with the Holy Spirit. I’m getting my heart rate and I want to beat the speed record.
Juli (20:55.438)
Yeah, that’s what he does. He’s like, it starts in five minutes and we live about 10 miles away, but I consider this a challenge. That’s right. The Lord is with us. Yeah, there you go.
Mike (21:04.823)
All the lights will be green.
Juli (21:07.042)
But then we began to get curious about why these things matter to you. So why don’t you want to get there on time?
Mike (21:16.61)
That’s coming up in counseling. We’re gonna talk about that later. It’s not in the notes here, honey. Come on, stick to the notes. But seriously, one of things that I did was I was in financial services. I worked for banks, insurance companies, and my last was with Charles Schwab. I call him Uncle Chuck, my rich uncle, who basically, when they talked about financial services, they basically came back and said, hey, you can’t just put a financial plan in front of somebody. You have to understand the emotion that they have with money. Because I can come up with a great plan that makes complete sense on paper, however, if I don’t know what’s triggering that person, the way they save, the way they spend, their philosophy of investing, I’m wasting their time and my time. And that was a great model that we had to use in ours. It’s like I had to ask Juli questions when it came to parenting, when it came to being at church when the Holy Spirit led us to, when it came to spending, finances, parenting, all that stuff. I had to be more curious and ask her, well, what’s important to you? Why do you see it that way? Versus, like Juli said, me trying to build an argument or logic to do what I was doing. Because it was right.
Juli (22:16.654)
There you go. You will never run out of things to be curious about with your husband or your wife. So every time you have a difference like that, just ask that question, why is that important to you? Help me understand why you wouldn’t want to be at church on time.
Mike
You want me to answer this?
Juli
Yeah, I do.
Mike (22:34.082)
There we go, it’s getting real. All right, I don’t like to be controlled.
Juli (22:38.094)
By?
Mike
You. She asked.
Juli (22:46.359)
See?
Mike
I got a lot of fans out there, I’m just saying. No, it was just in general, not specifically.
Juli (22:53.602)
It applies to me.
Mike
Half.
Juli
There you go, yeah. So it’s good for me to understand that.
Mike
That’s right.
Juli
Yes. This is not the first time I’ve heard this.
Mike
Give me my space.
Juli
All right. There you go. All right.
Mike (23:05.71)
Hold on a second. I love you.
Juli
I love you.
Mike
Ima get that out of the way. Otherwise, I’m gonna pay for that later.
Juli (23:15.957)
All right, moving on.
Mike (23:17.61)
You’re all flustered. I kissed her. She’s all flustered now.
Juli (23:20.11)
I am. I usually don’t let him up here on stage with me. This is sort of a guinea pig trial.
Mike (23:25.806)
Come on guys, give her reviews. Give me some kudos. The people have spoken.
Juli (23:35.848)
Oh my goodness. so the third one is appreciating the good in each other. All right, so here’s the thing. We are all married to two different virgins, vir- not virgins, versions. Versions of the same person, okay? Because every personality trait has both a strength that goes with it and a corresponding weakness. It’s like two sides of the same coin.
And so you are married to someone that has personality traits that give them wonderful strengths that you just love about them, but you also have the dark side of how that can show up in a weakness. So let me just give you a few examples of how this might play out. Let’s say you have the personality trait of being a perfectionist. Yeah, there you go. The strength is you’re very detail-oriented, and nothing’s going to fall between your cracks. The weakness is you can be overly critical or rigid. How about the personality trait of empathy? This means that you’re going to be a compassionate kind person, but also that you might get over-involved in people’s lives. Yeah. Can I get an Amen there?
Mike
The Spirit’s moving over here.
Juli
I see a lot of elbows.
Mike (24:45.816)
I can feel it, I can feel it.
Juli (24:49.902)
All right, how about for the person who’s diligent? They have that personality trait. It means they’re going to be ambitious, they’re going to work hard, but it also means they might be a workaholic or neglectful of relationships. Or let’s try one more. How about optimism? I mean, optimism just sounds good. It’s wonderful to have a positive outlook on life, but the negative of that is you might be naive, and you might not be accounting for what can go wrong.
And so here’s the thing, you are married to an individual that has both these strengths and the corresponding weaknesses. And we’ll share a little bit about how we’re different in this. So my character qualities that I’ll talk about are compassionate, introspective, loyal, empathic, flexible, and diligent. All right, so what does that mean? That means that Mike is married to a caring, thoughtful, faithful, understanding, agreeable, and hardworking wife. But he’s also married to an overcommitted…
Mike (25:48.526)
Read the whole sentence honey.
Juli (25:52.142)
You’re not controlling me. I’m going my own way.
Mike
Keep your space.
Juli
Yeah, all right But he’s also married to an overcommitted withdrawn people-pleasing overly sensitive–you just hurt my feelings–indecisive workaholic wife. Yeah so you get to choose right?
Mike (26:08.43)
Love this girl. All right, ready for me? That’s my turn. Right, so the same thing, we’re using that compassion and introspective, loyal, empathetic.
Juli
No these are yours.
Mike
I know. I’m doing this. Who’s controlling who?
Juli
Those are mine!
Mike (26:22.53)
Decisive, okay, I see what you’re saying. It’s down here, but my thing’s up here. That’s good. Decisive, perfectionist, disciplined, adventurous, caring, outgoing is me. And that could be like, thank you, thank you. That could be confident, precise, focused, fun, helpful, friendly, handsome, winsome, great sense of humor, wonderful husband, great pickleball player, wise, and Christ-like. I mean…
(Laughter)
Mike (26:51.502)
So I did Chat GPT. Public schools! Public schools! This is where AI could really help, I think. But some people think that could be misunderstood as a little controlling, a smidge critical, a tiny bit rigid, maybe distractible, overbearing, talkative husband.
Juli (27:14.926)
Yeah, and really humble.
Mike (27:18.062)
What did Mark Twain say? I tried humility. It didn’t take.
Juli (27:24.722)
Uh-huh. Okay, so here’s the point though. I’m married to two different virgins. That’s tomorrow night’s session. I’m married to two different kinds of Mike. We’ll go with that word. And there are seasons where all I can focus on is the bad things, the corresponding weaknesses.
Mike (27:36.782)
That’s all.
Juli (27:51.052)
And I can remember about 15 years ago, we were in one of those seasons where we were not clicking. Our differences were really getting in the way of our marriage. And so a mentor of mine said, Juli, what I want you to do is go get a pad of paper and just start writing down the things you love about Mike so you can focus on being grateful and thankful for who he is. And so I sat down and I had my paper and I was like, OK, I’ll do this.
But first, I gotta write down everything I don’t like about Mike. Like, I gotta get it out of my system, just to be fair. Yeah, there you go.
Mike (28:22.158)
Who’s not linear now? Come on, follow instructions.
Juli (28:41.246)
So, I sat down and I wrote all the things that were frustrating me about him. And after I wrote that down, I put that paper aside, and then I took it seriously. I spent like an hour just writing everything I loved about my husband. And I remember in that moment just writing the list of things that I loved about him, just getting teared up, and just even confessing to the Lord that my attitude had become so negative towards Mike. And here’s the thing, every day we wake up and we get to choose which part of our spouse we’re going to focus on. Are we going to focus on the things that drive us crazy and that irritate us? Or are we going to focus on the qualities that really are so beautiful and wonderful about our spouse?
And God tells us which one to choose. It says in Philippians chapter four, if anything, I don’t think we have, there it is, here we go. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything’s excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Now notice it doesn’t say if everything is excellent and praiseworthy. It says if anything is. And every person in this room can think about something that’s excellent and praiseworthy about your spouse.
Mike
Amen, amen.
Juli
And so it’s being intentional. It doesn’t mean that you neglect the things that you need to work through. But what are you focused on? What are you calling out in your spouse? Are you calling out the weaknesses or are you calling out the strengths? All right. Anything else you want to say about that one?
Mike
No.
Juli
No. OK. All right. Here we go. Alright, let’s go to the fourth one, and this one is a little more complicated, so hang with me as I try to describe this. You want to specialize in your strengths without polarizing. Okay, now polarizing and balance are two very different things. Polarizing means that I so camp out in my weakness, or in my strength, that it actually becomes a weakness, because I’m not moving towards Mike. So for example, you wouldn’t guess it because I usually am on stage talking, but I am really an introvert. And I don’t talk a lot. I don’t enjoy talking a lot. I love asking questions. I love listening. Mike is a talker. You do like to talk a lot. And so it works for us in our marriage in that he needs to process his day out loud, and I like to listen and ask follow-up questions.
Juli (30:58.19)
But it starts to work against us if we never start moving towards the center, because I then would never learn to be assertive, I would never learn to express my feelings and what’s going on inside of me, I’d just be like the psychologist with him. And I don’t want to be a psychologist with him. And if I did that, it would never challenge Mike to ask questions and listen and be considerate. And so that’s how we might polarize instead of balancing each other out.
Mike (31:24.776)
Yeah, and do you want to give the example?
Juli (31:27.31)
Let me give you a few examples. Let me just give you on the screen a few different ways that this would play out with different personality traits. So you’ve got somebody more likely who tends to withdraw, who tends to be introverted, and you’ve got somebody else who will be a pursuer, like wants to get things done. And if you polarize, again, you’re not balancing each other out. You’re just compensating for the person’s weakness, and they never have to grow.
Here’s another way you could do it. One of you might be really fun and you like to escape and play and go on vacation. And we can relate to this one. The other one is more duty-bound, diligent, needs to work really hard. And you know what happens if we get polarized that way, he becomes the fun guy and I become the serious person. You know, that’s not good. Like, I need to learn to play too. And I won’t finish that sentence.
Mike
I’m biting my tongue.
Juli
Okay, one more.
Mike (32:20.993)
All right.
Juli (32:23.246)
Here you go, you’ve got again a silent person who tends to shut down particularly within conflict and you’ve got somebody who’s talkative and dominant in the way they talk. Again, they’re not balancing each other out, they’re getting polarized.
Mike (32:37.334)
Yeah, an example for us in our lives are once again, I’m a pretty detailed guy So I’m making sure I’ve got you know, the bills paid we’re on time. Everything’s give me taxes all that fun stuff But when I get into that controlling side or that detailed side
Juli
You said controlling.
Mike
It was a slip.
Juli
It could be pretty telling that it was it was a slip for you…
Mike
But it could be considered as a little smidge controlling but Juli’s strength is once again, she loves people she loves it to always try to help people. She’s always giving giving giving but on the negative side she didn’t set boundaries and she could overcommit and burn out. And that happens, that’s been like the number one thing that we continue to go back to counseling about, is that she feels that I’m controlling, I feel like she’s overcomitting, and we’re just kind of butting heads on that.
Juli
Yeah, boy that argument’s been going for 32 years now.
Mike (33:24.376)
The counselors getting a lot of money on that.
Juli
They are.
Mike
One guy bought a boat. Just kidding.
Juli (33:30.414)
But we really are, even through those discussions, trying to learn how do I grow in my ability to rest and not feel so driven and overcommitted. And I don’t know how you’re going, if you want to say that. No?
Mike
I think you said it.
Juli
OK. All right. Super. OK. So we’ve gone through four of these so far, and we’re going to hit the last one now. All right. The last one, and we’ve mentioned this in our own marriage several times, is we need to invite help and correction into our marriage. We live in a society in the Western world where we get pretty isolated quickly, even as a married couple. We do everything together, but we really don’t have people speaking into our lives and into our marriage. Marriages that kind of camp out on island all by themselves usually aren’t healthy marriages because we need to do marriage in community. We’re getting feedback. And there are times when you need to reach out for help and have a third party really give you perspective on what does it actually look like to love each other through differences? Now, what triggers our desire to go to counseling is usually one of two things. It’s either that we are just at an impasse. He thinks we should do A, I think we should do B. We’ve gone through all this, we’ve prayed together, we’ve had the conversations of help me understand why this is so important to you, and we just can’t resolve it.
And that’s an indication to us that we need to go find a counselor who’s going to help us walk through that. The other reason that we’ll periodically go to counseling is we want somebody to have eyes on how we’re functioning as a married couple. And every single time where we’ve gone to counseling, we’ve learned something.
Mike
Yes
Juli
Learn how to be better spouses and better teammates and how to listen to each other better.
Mike (35:20.11)
Yeah, and one of the things Juli’s referencing as far as what I’ve grown to learn is I’m a verbal processor. So I don’t know if anybody hears a verbal processor, but in order for you to think, you have to talk. Do have any hands? Anybody want to say that? Verbal processors?
Juli (35:33.806)
There you go.
Mike
Validate me. You gotta talk. Juli’s an internal processor, so that means she has to hear it, stop, think about it, and then come back and discuss it. So when we… Well, you’re not a verbal processor. Sounds like a verbal processor if you’re…
Juli
Yeah, there you go.
Mike (35:49.858)
But honestly, really, that helped us in our marriage in the sense of when we were a counselor, he said, hey Mike, you’re giving big gulps. Because I’m talking about it, I’m saying it this way, saying it that way, because that’s how I’m thinking. And Juli’s sitting there for like 20 minutes listening to me and going, where do I start? And then I really had to learn, whoa, whoa, stop Mike. Just say one part, be quiet, let her process, and then come back, and let her say what she needs to say. And that’s not my natural bend. I really have to fight for that, because that’s how my brain works.
So that was like something that we really kind of did is going through counseling. And one of the things that we talk about is people like, well, Juli, you’re a counselor. My baby is educated. She’s got an undergraduate. She’s got two masters and her doctorate in psychology. Don’t you have, here you go, higher education.
Juli (36:32.266)
I’m a nerd. Yeah, that’s just saying.
Mike (36:34.286)
We all work for the nerds, which I’m doing now. Bill Gates did it, I think. Anyway, but at the end of the day, that was something that we had to learn and going through counseling. And when we did, we even went to a marriage intensive. I don’t know you guys are familiar with that. You go for like four or five days where you just do that. Then let me just say something real quick here as just a little side note for counseling. One of the things I always tell people this, highly believe in it, highly think it’s good. Find the right Christian counselor and interview them. Don’t just show up to anybody. Interview them, if there’s a good fit. But the other thing I always say is anytime a counselor sits down, they’re gonna really pick it apart. One of the things they’re gonna go back is your family of origin. Where did you grow up? Who are your parents? Some have been blessed with good parents. We’re all sinful people. I don’t wanna go too deep into that. But the one thing I always say is give your parents some grace. Every time I see people go on counseling, I see people come out and they’re really hard on their parents. And just remember all the good stuff your parents said. I’m saying that as a parent.
So my kid’s here, I think one of my kids is here. But honestly, that’s all right, that’s a side note, that’s completely off script, but I just want to encourage you, because we have gone to counseling quite a bit, and it’s really, really helped us, but just know what you’re kind of getting into and get a good Christian counselor. My commercial’s over. But that was something that we had to go through and kind of figure out.
Juli (37:48.954)
Yeah, you know, I think as we get older and some of you are in our season of marriage, you might start to think you don’t need that anymore. And this season of life where a lot of times when you get to your 50s, 60s and beyond, you start to isolate and you’re like, why would I go see a counselor? You counselors maybe been married 10 years, we’ve been married 40 years, but God says that we are to seek wise counsel. And that we do need other eyes on our hearts, on our souls, on our relationship, on our marriage to point out things that we can’t see. So whether it’s clinical counseling or mentoring or things like that, we always need people speaking into our marriages.
Mike (38:29.536)
Amen. And one thing we just want to convey, we don’t have the monopoly on this. We haven’t figured this out. You know, we shared some of our own personal stories, had some fun with it, but at the end of we’re still working on this. And I think give grace to everybody. We’re all working. We’re always learning. My theology, and I can’t point to a specific Bible verse that says, think God is still working on you as long as you’re breathing, as long as you’re here. So he’s got work to do with you. The one thing, and I… Thank you. One thing I just want to share, and this just happened two weeks ago.
We were at a coffee shop. And we’re talking, it was one of those things, once again, about the normal rhythm fight that we run into. And I’m giving big gulps. And we’re at the coffee shop and this lady got up, who’s sitting at table over in comes over, she puts her hand on you, and she points at me, you need to let her say something. I’m like, don’t you have a latte lady you need to get? I don’t know why you’re up in my business here. I don’t appreciate that. But I joke about it, but that hurt, guys. Because she was right. She was 100 % right.
Mike
And I really felt bad about that. So we’re still learning. We’re still figuring out. Juli’s really giving me a ton of grace. I’m trying to give her a ton of grace as we do this. And just give each other grace. You you guys are on this cruise. You put an investment in this marriage. Other than your relationship with God, that’s the next most place you’d be spending your time is investing in your spouses. Learning, being curious, doing all those things that we were kind of talking about to really invest. And I just…anything else before I pray?
Juli (39:50.554)
Yeah, I just add on to that encouragement. You’re here to grow in your marriage and that’s a fantastic thing to do.
Mike
Amen
Juli
You know, our culture would tell you that a good marriage is marrying the person who’s perfect for you and is so like you and you’re so compatible and that’s not what God says. You know, God made us different for a purpose and the beauty of a Christian marriage is we work through those differences in such a way that we work hard towards unity. And that’s a message for us as married couples. It’s a message for God’s bride, the church, that we are going to have differences and disagreements. But at the end of the day, we want to bring honor and glory to Him and ask Him to teach us to love even through things that might be frustrating.
Mike (40:33.134)
Well said, well said. Thanks guys. Thank you.
Juli (40:46.926)
Well, as I listen to that audio, can’t help but think how Mike and I are still learning these things every day. And I’m grateful for how patient God is with us. But what about you and your relationships? Do you have differences in marriage that create frustration? This week, instead of trying to fix your differences, what would it look like to actually get curious about them? If you need help, we have books, blogs, Q&A videos, and more episodes like this one to help you do just that.
I’ve linked to some of those in our show notes or you can always head to authenticintimacy.com. Thanks for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for more Java with Juli.