Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 102 things we wish we knew before marriage

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

This week on Couple Things, we discuss all the things we wish we knew before getting married! From the obstacles we’ve faced to learning how to love and grow with each other- we cover topics you can talk about with your partner before heading into marriage! We are sponsored by these companies that we love. Check them out below:  Athletic Greens ▶ Athletic Greens Is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/eastfam. Reel Paper ▶ If you head to reelpaper.com/EASTFAM and sign up for a subscription using my code EASTFAM at checkout, you’ll automatically get 30% off your first order! LMNT ▶Try it totally risk-free. If you don’t like it, share it with a salty friend and we’ll give your money back, no questions asked. You have nothing to lose. Go to DRINKLMNT.com/EASTFAM If you haven’t yet, please rate Couple Things and subscribe to hear more.  Follow us on Instagram to keep the conversation going at https://www.instagram.com/couplethings... And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format – we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. Subscribe for more! http://bit.ly/3rnOdNo Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. something I wish I knew on my wedding day was that was literally just a needle size amount of love that I will feel over the course of our marriage interesting way to phrase that but we'll roll with it we could

never have known that on our wedding day I love you too baby come here oh my god come here oh get what's up everybody Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Today's topic is brought to you by you guys. This is a highly requested topic, which is the things we wish we knew before getting married. Wow.

How is marriage different than engagement? How is it different than dating? And what do we wish we knew going into marriage? So we've put together a seven page script. There's a lot of things we wish we knew. But before we get into it, please, whatever platform you're listening to the show on, please subscribe to this show. Give it a rating. We're on YouTube and video format.

We're also wherever you listen to podcasts, we're on Spotify, we're on Apple Podcasts, we're on Google Podcasts, we're on everywhere. So we love this show. We love doing it together from a marital standpoint. We love doing it with you guys. We just finished up the tour and seeing your faces, you know, it was good to hear that the show has impacted some people, no matter how. how many it was really special it was really special to meet you guys to put faces to names and actually see you guys in person yes so anyway uh we do it for you we hope that this is fun to listen to maybe a little bit helpful a little bit useful and we'd love to hear your feedback so that's all

we got but you ready to roll in this one i am let's hit it things we wish we knew before he got married let's start with what we thought marriage was going to be like ander what were our expectations before getting married so i'm not going to lie i was really naive going into marriage And I learned very quickly that society likes to paint the picture of marriage as if you marry the right person, then it will be easy. And if it's not easy, then it's probably the wrong person. Interesting. And that's what I believe. That's what fairy tales depict.

That's what society and social media depict. That's what tabloids depict when you see all these like stories about divorces. Oh, he just wasn't the right one. and going into marriage, I thought that's what it was going to be like. You go through the dating, you learn about each other, you go through engagement,

you kind of figure out the kinks, and then you get married, and it's like, oh, this is my person. It's going to be easy. So you thought marriage would be easy? To a certain extent, I think so. Did you think your parents' marriage was easy? Absolutely not.

That's interesting. Which is funny, too, because I consider their marriage very successful. They've been married 43 years, and I have seen every emotion and every roller coaster and it was never a bad thing, but I don't know why. I just figured, I figured it was going to be easier than it has turned out to be. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Wow.

Thank you so much. I don't mean that a bad way. I'm kidding. You said your marriage is successful, your parents' marriage is successful, but can you say it's successful until the very end? Mm-hmm. You know what I'm saying? It is successful so far. I, because I view marriage as now, not then before we get married, but it's like an ever

continuing process. So it's not successful yet. It's not like a, oh, they stayed together. It's like how has this marriage molded each individual? Yeah. And what impact have they had on the world? It's kind of how I view marriage. I also have another thought of what I thought marriage would be like.

I also believed, again, just naive, that your wedding day is the peak of your love. I'm not saying it like goes down, but it's like, oh, I love you so much. And on your wedding day, it's like, oh, this is what our life is going to be like. And I have a lot of thoughts about that. Can I go into that now or should I wait? Let's wait. Do you mind? Jeez.

That's a teaser. I definitely viewed marriage as a finish line in a lot of respects. You mean the wedding? the wedding day yes as a finish line you had viewed it like it was the finish line yes like all right finally I get to see Sean naked

and spend time and live at this person and do all this stuff with now my wife I don't think I don't really have or think about how easy or difficult marriage would be you don't really think about the issues that will arise like

what financial difficulties are going to roll into 10 years from now or how will we co-parent together and you don't think about you know what baggage is Sean bringing into the relationship or expectations of of me that she'll have which I think is actually probably a good thing to think about like if I were going to do it again vetting a wife or a potential spouse like going through hey so what chores did your parents have you do growing up because the ones that they didn't have you do you're going to expect me to do right And, you know, going through what, how do you treat finances? Are you more risk averse?

Are you debt-free? Are you yada, yada? Like, there's, I would actually be curious. Maybe I'll put time into thinking about all these technical questions that might be helpful to know, like a vet list. But I didn't really have expectations on it being easier or hard. I think my parents did a fantastic job at displaying a healthy marriage. and fortunately they are still married

and which is not the case for for everybody but they would argue in front of us they had conflict you know my mom would have to take a little weekend retreats when she was stressed out with five kids which which happened to time understandably but I did think it was like almost this fairy tale land of oh great

I don't have to go through the dating process anymore or you know there's like stresses of that whole thing and so I was like okay this is a finish line. I think the bottom line of my expectation. I think yours is similar is, in thinking the wedding was the finish line, we knew and we had both seen with our parents that there were arguments and there were emotional roller coasters, but I guess I didn't, I expected that the work was already done.

Does that make sense? Like you knew everything about me. Yeah. I expected and perceived that dating. and engagement was the work that had to be done for your marriage. And I didn't realize that instead of the wedding being the finish line, it was actually the starting line of work. Right.

So, preach. Getting into, before we talk about that, getting into the ways we prepared for marriage and adding in other ways that we think you should prepare for marriage. So the one, I would say the option and only thing, Andrew and I did to prepare for marriage. I think there's maybe a hundred things you should do. I think we did one, which was premarital counseling. And that rocked our world. So usually premarital counseling, you do spread out for quite a few weeks.

And you go like once a weekend for like an hour or two. Well, we went to this premarital counselor who's in Chicago. Well, actually, should we link him? Yeah, sure. We'll link him because he changed our life. But Andrew's older brother had gone there with his wife. And they loved him. So we went to him as well.

And we did like an intensive. So he went Friday, Saturday, Sunday for like four, five, six hours a day. And he just covered so many different topics. It was kind of like, we went through all the weeds of what was your parents' relationship like? What was your relationship with your father like? What was your relationship with your mother like? What were your exes like?

Why did you break up with your exes? Did you get dumped? did you like you go through everything we took three or four personality tests we took myricks enegram uh love length we took like a bunch of these different kind of personality test too so he had reviewed all that we had oh my gosh we filled out like several hours of surveys several hours i would like to see our answers from back then by then um and then we did this full weekend where it was like 12 hours a day for two or three days of us just sitting down and talking which was our first experience with counseling

and he would bring up traumas and he would bring up unhealthy habits and he would bring up like we went into depth of like what could be possibly brought up in marriage that he could help delegate now so it's not just a surprise because here's my thought and this is this is my thought on and i's relationship and marriage because we got married young my thought is when you're dating someone you're constantly trying to impress them. You're holding out little details and little parts of you because you always kind of want to have that impression. And you always want to have that guard up a little bit just in case you get broken up with that you didn't fully give yourself to that person. And then you get engaged. And I feel like it's a little bit the same thing. You aren't quite married, but you're more than dating. So you might get a little bit more raw and real and a little bit more vulnerable, but you're still saving up that impress, like impressing each other to where you're. you aren't really giving your whole self to them but then you get married and you spend the rest

of your life together and there's no break time you're living together you're sharing a household you're sharing kids like all these things and you get to see qualities good bad and ugly of your hard times your good times and there's none of that like impression anymore it's just you and i feel like our premarital counselor tried to give us a window into that which helped yeah and but that's what's so beautiful about marriage is that there there is the the foundation for you to be fully you and that's unlike any other relationship structure out there which is why we're like marriage heighten so we're big fans if you are engaged or in that process of like vetting a spouse premarital counseling is extremely useful and Sean and I talk about all the time about how big of an impact

it made for us to really know how to be sensitive with each other to understand each other in like a deeper way and to have discussions and arguments in a productive healthy way because arguments I feel like as I've gotten older I've realized that hey if we're arguing that means that there's like an outcome that we want changed and uh you know all these things like just dramatic emotions and whatever unhealthy arguing habits that we all bring into a relationship a lot of times we can do away with all those but you have to identify them first so big fans of premarital counseling real quick today's show is brought to you by athletic greens i literally used them every single day i started taking athletic greens because having two kids

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is taking on the Dakar rally, the ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. I will say, though, when it comes to preparing for marriage, I don't know if you can ever be, like, fully prepared because you don't know what life is going to throw at you. Right. It's not like you can prepare for your whole future,

but I do think you can talk about things that are important. And Andrew and I have covered this in other podcasts, but you need to talk about religion. You need to talk about how you're going to raise your kids. If you want to have kids, how many kids do you want to have? Are you open to adoption? Do you want to conceive naturally? Do you want to do IVF?

What if you can't have kids? You should talk about finances. Are you going to merge your finances? Are you going to keep them separate? How is your relationship towards finances? Do you want to be a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad? Do you not want to work? Do you want to retire at a certain age?

Do you want to be a full-time entrepreneur? That was a pretty solid list right there. Yeah. Do you expect your husband to take out the trash? Kind of like Andrew alluded. Do you expect the wife to restock groceries and cook every meal? Do you, I mean, do you expect you and your spouse to cook together every night? Do you plan on ordering dinner out every night?

These are things that you learn about each other. And. Yeah. I feel like, first of all, this is not a conversation you have on the first date. Like there's a time and place for everything. So as the relationship matures, it's kind of like use your own discretion as to, hey, now is the right time to talk about kids or like finances for us. We didn't touch because of complications until we were married. Yeah.

Like, yeah, pretty much. We had discussed it and set the foundation for it in premarital accounting, but not until after we were married, right? Yeah, not until after we're married. But to give a little bit of detail there, we don't always go fully into like finances because everybody's. is different, but I had started, like, my own company when I was 12 years old. And I had very complicated finances that way when it came to, like, the Olympics. And Andrew also came from family business and complicated finances. So how figuring out a way to talk about those, merge those, and have families trust each

other was a very touchy topic. Yeah. And I think kind of like a premarital counselor bringing help in to, to kind of delegate that kind of stuff is really important. Yeah. And also we're not saying like, oh, you know, this is set in stone. Your response is to how many kids do you on or yada yada. Obviously that will change.

But I think, again, setting the habit of talking about things like this is super helpful. So we had a relationship who they had never, we had friends who had never talked about their exes before. And then the whole issue that happened with the relationship had to do with, like, past relationships. And so our philosophy is, you know, I don't need to know all Sean's nitty-gritty stuff if she doesn't want to share it. But I definitely want her to feel comfortable sharing it. Yeah. Well, and we are both firm believers that your past kind of helps form who you are. And in talking about exes for us when it came to marriage and when it came to our relationship, we each whole.

baggage that happened from our past relationships. Now you don't have to go into like Andrew said the nitty gritty, but I thought it was important that Andrew knew that I got dumped, that I had dumped someone, why that had happened, how long those relationships were, because that actually affects our relationship. And I think that's important for your spouse to know. Yeah. Do you think he can fully prepare? No. For marriage before you get married? No, because like I said, said earlier. I don't think you can fully prepare for the future. So you just got to be open. But I do think going into things we wish we knew. So we both thought in going into marriage, it was the finish line. It was actually the start line. And I think something that I wish I knew,

I've actually talked about this. I'll start with this one. Something I wish I knew on my wedding day was that was literally just a needle-sized amount of love that I will feel over the course of our marriage. Interesting way to phrase that, but we'll roll with it. The tiniest, the fraction of love, I feel like on your wedding day. And also frustration, though, if you're being honest. What do you mean? Like, there's so much more about me that you found out that you love, but also so much more that you found out that you're like, oh, he's definitely not perfect.

No, no, no. Yeah, but you're interpreting what I'm saying. No, no, no. I'm trying to prepare those listening for like your love grows, but also your potential dislike can grow. Yes. Well, I'll elaborate on this more, but like marriage is so much harder than I set myself up for. And I don't mean that in a dramatic way or a bad way, but it's so much more work. And with every argument we get through, with every milestone we get through, With every loss and whatever it might be we get through, I love you and I love our marriage so much more. Like the depth of that love is so much richer.

And we could never have known that on our wedding day. I love you too, baby. Come here. Oh, my God. Oh, get. Today's up also brought real paper. Every day, tens of trees are cut down to make single-use paper products that are flushed or thrown away into land.

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So I think if you zoom out, the bigger picture of that, the bigger picture of why I feel like our love is so much stronger and deeper and more meaningful now than it was on our wedding day is because back on our wedding day, I believed that marriage is going to be, quote-unquote, easy. I knew there were going to be arguments and conflict, but I didn't think it was going to be a growing, like a frustrating, annoying,

like truly growing pains conflict. And I think what I've learned is conflict and marriage is not bad. The world likes to depict that if your marriage isn't fairy tale, then it's the wrong person. I wholeheartedly disagree. I think the right person is someone who will go through the roughest conflict with you and work it out and stay that is a marriage preach and i truly don't believe that there is anybody out there that is perfect that is like the one for you that makes marriage easy

and like there's not going to be hard times yeah because we're all very difficult yeah like even no matter what type of success or patience or how good you are with kids there is always a flip side to everything and as we just learned in our marriage counseling which we're also doing the quality that you love about someone like Sean's ambition is also the thing that is most frustrating to me now where it's like can we just chill out for a second like can we just stop and like ease up and in that same marriage counseling session we had the thing that I loved so much about Andrew at the very beginning was your like free spiritedness yeah and now my biggest frustration is like can you stop being so like free spirited and like be a little OCD in Taipei like be punctual you're not you're not

punctual like here you're always 15 minutes later whatever which I'm not but this marriage counselor said over the years she sees it over and over and over again when you start getting into the rhythm of everyday life you start making your spouse who you are and And she said, isn't it funny how the things that you loved the most about your spouse at the beginning are the things that can annoy you the most if you don't have perspective. And did you hear me just say that? I did. Thank you so much for reiterating.

I also want to share one more thing on that note about the overcoming challenges and then feeling more love after them. And by challenges, I mean arguments or whatever obstacles that we go through together, financial, et cetera. love grows not when someone else sacrifices for you, but when you sacrifice for someone else. So think of a parent-child relationship. The parent oftentimes loves the kid, more than the kid, loves the parent because the parent makes such heavy sacrifices for the kid. So like when you think about love like that, that makes me want to sacrifice a lot for you.

obviously there's boundaries to like what's healthy to sacrifice and not but but i'm willing to sacrifice my free spiritedness for sean because or i'm willing to sacrifice my minimalism which i would love to or my RV trip which we're still going on you would never be able to be a minimalist i would the amount of cords you hoard i'm sacrificing for you and that that actually grows my love for you not detracts from it so little uh perspective shift there another thing we learned. Another thing I wish I knew before we got married is love is a commitment and not always a feeling. Andrew and I have talked about this a lot. You go through phases and marriages. You truly do. Like today. Excuse me. Sean is very annoying to me today. So are you. But love is not always a feeling.

You don't every single day of your marriage, you're not going to wake up and be like, oh, I just love you so much. You don't? Kidding. I always love. love you. I don't always like you. But you're not. You're not, okay. You're not going to wake up feeling that every single day. But if you commit and if you choose to make the, like, if you choose the decision every single day that you are going to love your spouse and be committed to them, when you get through

that phase, that day, that week of whatever feeling you have, whether it's annoyance or frustration or just like a funk, when you get through that, you're going to love them so much more and that's something that I think a lot of people have a hard time with because a lot of people feel like they're falling out of love when in actuality they're just going through a phase in life where life is hard and it's just a moment it's not actually the marriage I think my my whole feelings on feelings could be a whole podcast and of itself but we'll save that for another Feelings are valid, Andrew. People use them as the captain of the ship and not just a signal of the ship anyway.

Wow, that was an analogy right there. I hadn't thought that through before I said, but I feel like it was pretty good. It is. One of our favorite things that we have learned from this podcast is when we interviewed. Carl Pilmer? Nope, the couple. Zach and the Zanacos. Nope.

Who? Give me something. L.A. You're just throwing. They were like our favorite. They were older. The Brittle? Zach Brittle?

No. Oh, Phil and Marla No The older couple We've been to their house Bro, what? We've been to their house You're crazy right now

I don't know She, the wife interviewed me Why can I have a brain fart Oh, the billiose They're not older Lisa and Sorry Tom If you heard that

And Lisa We don't view you like that Well Anyways One of our favorite things We have learned From the billiose On the podcast

and we interviewed them, is every single time they approach a conflict or an argument or whatever it might be, a phase in life where they're just in a funk, they view it with the thought that they know how it ends. They know how every argument ends, which is them together. And I think that whole concept of love is the commitment. I think if you know that, if you know through thick and thin, he or she is still going to be there, then it makes those rough patches easier. That was definitely

Snaccos, but that was a really good point. That was a Zanacos? Yes. Stop it. That's fine. It definitely was. No, it was not. Anyway, the Billy's interview was fire as well.

Okay, so we touched on this earlier, but another thing that we've learned is conflict is not a bad thing. Yeah. So, like, the way you resolve conflict matters and can make it good or bad, right? Like, people have so much adverse. Did you not hear me talk about this? Okay. I covered all that. Okay.

I was just, all right. Okay. All right. Let's go to this one then. Okay. Have you talked about this one? No. Changing your name.

I wish I knew this before you already. That, it's a freaking hard. We need a tutorial video on how to change your name, dude. It is freaking hard. No guy has to worry about this. It is so. No, it is not true. It's not true.

What? Some guys change your name. Okay, so. I'm having fun. I'm digging a hole. It is so hard and it took me five years to change my name. Still not done. It is done.

It's not done. Oh, you're bad. I have four licenses and they all have different names. They're not all valid. Don't worry. Anyways, someone, maybe we need to do this. Maybe we legit need to like put together a checklist of how you change your name. name because it's different by county it's different by state remember remember the whole debacle of

the county that we got married in so when you went to the um dmv no where we had to yeah the courthouse when we went to the courthouse to like say we're getting married and to get our certificate they actually had this weird protocol which is different than the county next door which is in the little book that you write, like Sean Michelle Johnson is marrying Andrew D. East. You have to like sign your names. Whatever name you signed in that book is like your new married name.

Yeah. Do you remember this? And so it made sense. Sean Michelle Johnson is marrying Andrew D. East, right? Right. That makes sense. It wouldn't be Sean Johnson East as marrying Andrew Dean East. No, that would make it sound like we're siblings.

Exactly. But evidently that's how you're supposed to do it. So then I messed my whole thing. self up and so my legal married name was Sean Michelle Johnson and then I had to ask for a new certificate and then we made a series of YouTube videos on this because like we kept thinking that we figured out bank accounts and licenses and passports and TSA pre checks and it's a lot dude I still my name is different on every ID that I have wasn't an easy decision for you to change your name or not because you're like you know a big deal my personal

experience. I know everybody is different with this. It was a very easy decision for me. Same with like a pre-up. That we should do a whole episode on that. We made it talk, we made it sound earlier like we didn't talk about finance before. We did a lot, but we didn't like really, I wasn't like actively involved in our finances before then. So let me finish the thought. It was a very easy decision for me with our name. I wanted to take your name. I was something I'm dreamed of my whole life is to take my husband's name um deciding to like get rid of michelle and keep johnson was kind of a wishy-washy thing i kept johnson for business just to make business easier so i could always kind of have johnson but i didn't really care it's like your stage name

yeah um finances that was only a harder decision because of like outside influences but it was an easy decision in my opinion that I didn't want a pre-nup. So you're saying it's like there were signals for you about the commitment that you were making. Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm willing to change my name and yeah, I'm really, okay, interesting. Yeah, whereas I think the outside influences and like managers and stuff who encouraged pre-naps didn't have the same level of commitment and faith and marriage that I did. Interesting. I don't think that's the case for everybody.

No. Like there, yeah. That was our situation. could be some really headache of a name that you don't want to take on but it was i'm not going to lie it wasn't a thought what do you mean by that i'm saying like if it's 80 letters long like gazoon height pathologist that would be a long last name to be like yeah i'm walking in that so i i'm just saying there are probably conditions not necessarily a length of it was an easy decision for me uh apparently there are our producer wrote this that there are companies who make

it easy to change your name you just fill out one piece of paper and they take care of shut up Why didn't I know this? We just, I actually just, I just found out live. That's, I just read that. All right. Here's one thing that Carl Pilamer, we're moving on.

I mentioned that I think is not thought about often. And like people try to act like, no, I'm my own person and I'm so independent. But when you say I do at the altar, you really are marrying your spouse's family. And. it's true

I don't even care if you are a strange from your family that counts because if you're marrying into someone who's estranged from their family you're marrying into someone

who's a strange from their family and that's part of like the baggage and everything so even if you love that person and that is your person you also are taking on their baggage yeah people and that's not supposed to be interpreted bad

no like when you marry a family that can be a great thing but like you're likely the goal is to have your spouse still close with their parents and their siblings and yada yada and so there's that aspect of it but also i've seen this with you don't take this mom just starts out there as we've had kids your resemblance of your mother and habits and patterns has grown right like when you're sub 25 i feel like you can you have your own like style of life but then you settle into the daily life of raising kids and whatever and like you've only seen you only have one example in life of how to do that

you've become more like your dad is that true yeah yeah i definitely i've seen that in myself yeah and that's not a bad thing i'm not saying i am my dad and i'm not saying you are your mom but there are resemblances for sure right they weren't there before for sure so over time like more likely to not you're going to morph closer to your parents well and I also think we've had friends who went through this with like marrying the spouse's family and not realizing it so when you're getting caught up in the moment of like I want to marry you I want to spend the rest of my life with you I don't care what's going on with like the family situation it's you I'm marrying not the family I understand at the beginning how that can be that way but then you have to walk down

that fine line of what do what our holiday is going to look like now what when you get married and it's your wedding day is someone's family not going to show up is that going to bother you and i'm not saying these are deal breakers by any mean but because you're marrying someone and you're marrying their family you just have to be aware of it and you have to go through those situations so that you can hopefully not be surprised by something yeah and i i still have friends where you know they've moved states and they've you know the parents were really big into like corporate businesses and they've now done you know startups or no business at all and they're like oh I'm not like my parents at all but you you are like you are last thought about in-laws so something that we

were taught by our premarital counselor as it pertains to any family that you marry into no matter what your rule within your relationship and your marriage should always be to take your spouse's side this good in front of your family so let's just do a hypothetical if Sean disagrees with me on I don't know how many kids we're going to have

and this is like a discussion that my parents are privy to like hey Sean only wants two kids and I want five and my parents know that and my parents confront me about it like hey so what do you think about Sean only wanting two kids and that five like isn't that such a bummer and like there's a little bit of drama that can come in because I'm a mama's boy and yada yada it is my role and let's assume Sean's not there in this confrontation to say either you know this is between Sean and I figure out or I love that about Sean and we're going

to make the right decision together it is not to expand the problem because that drives a wedge and try to follow this and this is what our counselor taught us your parents and your family by nature and default will always have your back they will always take your side no matter how much they love your spouse

they will always take your side and if you go to your family and you start venting about your spouse they're going to take your side and they're going to build up a tiny wall for your spouse and if that happens multiple times they're building up quite a bit of resentment towards your spouse and you don't want that

so as hard as it is never talk negatively about your spouse to your family unless there's obviously there's obviously like if you need help or there's issues there but just think about the path that you're walking down like what is what is me talking trash about my spouse to my parents going to result in five 10 years from now today's episode is brought to you by Element. I am obsessed with this new company that we've partnered with and cannot believe that more people don't know about them. Well, tell them, babe. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't.

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for slash EastFam. We'll also link it down below. Okay. Other things we wish you knew before I got married, let's just skim through a few of these. This is good. No, this is my favorite episode we've done so far. Thanks. We're just actually like dump in all this info. Yeah. Probably need to break it down.

But go ahead. There's usually one more person or one person who is more organized. Thank you so much for saying that. And in our relationship, it's me. So thank you. We can just skip her to the next one. You're more organized? Actually, I was raised.

Sean, that is not true. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm not a horror. Okay. Anyway, my siblings told me this tip when I was going to college That you should be only as clean as the Sorry, as a second least tidy person that you live with

So if you have five roommates and there's one absolute mess of a person Just be a little bit cleaner than them and you're good to go And who's that in our household? Yeah, me, that's a tough part. There's only two people There's not like five or six. So you be better than yourself, Andrew? Yeah That's true. Be better than yourself. Next one. Money can be a hot topic.

We talked about this. It can. There's probably someone in the relationship who's the spender and someone who's the saver. You need to figure out what you like to splurge on, how you like to discuss money, what are kind of off-limit topics. I mean, there's... How much insight do you get or don't get to your spouse's spending habits and bank accounts

and whatever? there's a lot to go into here but just make sure that you know you've kind of addressed what your system is together as a couple so we kind of did that we're still all of this by the way it's still a work in progress for us these are just things that have proven to be issues for us like the tightness thing clearly this finances thing is something that we talk about where Sean has a history of feeling, you know, there's baggage with finances for her that I don't necessarily have or am now just understanding. So like it's interesting. Just talk about it, you know. Well, and that plays into the next point. The next point is the roles in

marriage are always changing. And I think like Andrew said, we're still learning all of this in the middle of all of it and we will be for the rest of our lives. Because in every phase of life in every phase of marriage, things change. So, like, right now with kids, we definitely talked through before we had kids the roles of our marriage. Like, what roles do I want in parenting? What roles does he want?

Andrew wanted to work more. I wanted to be more of the, like, go-to parent if someone has to work. But we are, we do have the understanding that, like, if I have to work really late someday, Andrew's going to go home and watch the kids, it's just kind of. Yeah, it's not like an absolute sound.

like Andrew never takes care of kids. I'm obviously with the kids a lot. And that was something we talked about. Like, hey, we both expect to be hands-on parents. Right. So, but it is, it is a fluid situation, right? Where our roles together of like, hey, Sean needs to go on a one week work trip. Great.

I'm here for that and I support you. And I, like, I want you to succeed. Well, and it's another thing you can talk about too to prepare for marriage. So that goes back to how are you raised? What did your mom do? What did your dad do? So, like, for me, my mom and did, my mom and dad did 50, 50, everything. So there are a lot of different roles in marriage.

And, you know, they tend to only grow that list of rules that you have and not decrease. So, like, we've added mom and we've added, you know, now you're a friend and you're like a leader in a bunch of different groups. So what's the balance between these roles? How can I support you and the most important and prioritized roles of yours? it's a constantly changing thing and that's why I'm glad that we have a fluid conversation around that as well I think the other thing too

to remember something that I wish we understood more when we were getting married or before we got married is people will always have an opinion so every single person around you has their own idea of like what your timeline should be how long you should be engaged

how long you should be dating what your wedding should look like when you should have kids everything what your career should look like and at the end of the day they are other people's opinions and your life is your life and you have to do it your way with your spouse

and I truly think that's like my number one advice for all my friends getting married to is let it be your marriage and not your friend's marriage and do you the way you would like you do yourself. Yeah and obviously you want a certain amount of perspective added

from people you trust like your parents or older couples or your good friends that have a history of holding you accountable but it's definitely going to look different on a case-by-case basis right so last one i want to talk about nobody told us this i feel like every single friend of ours was saying oh don't get married you're going to lose all your freedom you're not going to be able to still have fun and do all this is you do not lose your freedom when you get married life becomes more fun because

you can adventure with your best friend i feel like we had so many people say you know go live it up go have fun go you know push marriage off as long as you can because you're not going to have a life afterwards and i just think it is completely false i agree babe my life has only become more enjoyable maybe in a different way than i thought it would be but way more enjoyable in what way my life is full it's just the commitment i found a lot of purpose in you know maybe we should make a part two of this i think we should we have a lot more to get there we do and this is we're a good bit in so we'll just end it there I'm curious to hear your feedback on this please leave comments any additional things that you wish you knew before you're married

um and what you thought of the things so far that we've shared about what we wish we knew before getting married uh we could obviously chit chat about this for a long time but for the sake of your day we'll cut this in two parts so that's all we have if you made it this far please subscribe to the show give it a rating and uh we're thankful for your time that's all we have I'm Andrew I'm Sean. We're the East fam. Out.