WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?: How I Met Your Mother (Dayton Edition) Part 2

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Emily and Greg welcome Stephanie Schutte, Greg's wife and Emily's Mother, to the show. Join them in the second of a three-part series in which Stephanie and Greg share their relationship from dating to marriage to starting a family.

Batman doesn't do ships, as in me. You complete me. I'm George, George McFly. I'm your density. It is not about the nail. No matter when, no matter who, any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. You're listening to Where For Art Thou, Romeo? The show that discusses how to navigate romantic relationships

and how to achieve a meme between the extremes of hookup culture and over-discerned dating. Here's your host, Emily Shudy. Welcome to Where Far Out Dal Romeo, the show where we talk about how to follow your heart without losing your mind. I'm Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed marriage therapist and also my dad, Greg Shuddy. We're all navigating relationships every day, but sometimes the most intimate are also the most challenging. Our goal is to help you get out of your own head when it comes to your or even your friend's relationship questions and concerns. again joining us today is my mother and Greg's lovely wife Stephanie Shuddy to continue the story of their relationship, how they met their dating relationship, and on to marriage. So last time we were

talking, we were discussing just some challenges that you had regarding your different families of origin and how that affected your relationship, how you communicated with each other. I want to I wanted to ask you, though, to take a little bit of a step back and tell me about how long you dated, like, up until getting married. And like, what did time look like in between when you met and when you got married? So I was a freshman in college when we met, so I was 18. and dad was a sophomore. So we dated all through, mostly all through college. We broke up a couple times, backed off a little here and there.

Every time I would say that I wanted to take a break and maybe date some other people, we would break up and dad would date some other people. And make sure that you knew about it. Would you actually date other people? I did twice. Once when after dad was already, he graduated and was in grad school. And there were a lot of difficulties at that point because he was away. He was somewhere else.

His mom was also dying from cancer. And he was, and I don't mean this to sound insensitive. He was just really needy. I was. It was a very hard time. And I was looking for something to hold on to. And I am not a clingy. person at all.

This is one of those things where, you know, temperaments and personality differences, we were kind of laughing about this last night. I'm like, not sure how we actually ended up together. Because dad is, he's a melancholic. He is definitely got some phlegmatic, but he's also sanguine. He likes to be in the spotlight. And I'm caloric. Like 100%.

So pretty much everything he's not, that's what I am. And that is, that's been really hard. So what was the question? Talking about like in between, how long you dated and like in between. Yeah. So we dated for four years and then we're engaged for a year. So five years before we got married. Way too long.

Way too long. Yeah. So because dad had, he went to grad. school and was there for two years and then in his second year was when I had graduated and went to do my internship. So we were kind of all over the place. We weren't even living in the same town. So that we, you know, that last year was long distance and. But we, we worked at it. I mean, I think that that was one of the things. There were times when we weren't working at it because we kind of were, I don't know, things were kind of distant as far as

us and you were thinking about dating something you just wanted to enjoy your senior year and right i was over in grad school miserable because i'm like you don't enjoy your your grad school you kind of just trying to get through it yeah um and then my mom was passing away but i think in in all of that time you know there was a lot of ups and downs where we were working through things together um sometimes not always the most productively but we also had a spiritual advisor that was really important to us. And I think that that was one of our saving graces. So just to clarify, you were, you had broken up a couple times while you were together at

University of Dayton and then gotten back together. And then you broke up again in his first year of grad school. Right. But how did you, you guys were still in dialogue? How did you end up getting back together? You know, it's a little fuzzy to me. I can't remember. Was that when Jeff was.

dating Catherine? Could be. I think it was. So Uncle Jeff was dating my roommate for a while. And so there was some connection there. So dad was still coming to campus. And it's like, I don't know. We never really, we never like, you know, we would put things.

I don't even know if it was break up. Well, I was definitely dating someone else. Well, yeah, but it was just kind of like we still stayed connected in some ways because I don't remember ever being like where we just didn't talk because you're like, leave me alone. I'm actually, but I do remember I was struggling with the fact that. Yeah, because this was,

you have to remember long before cell phones. And I mean, this was in the days that your phone plan was still, oh, on Friday after 11 p.m. until Sunday at whatever time, that's when the phone rates were lower. And that's when you would make your phone calls.

So our communication was radically different than what yours is today with your friends. So we had to be incredibly intentional about being in touch. And so I think that I fairly quickly figured out, though, that I wasn't really interested in dating someone else. And that was the same with me. I mean, when we would kind of put things on hold, we'll put it that way. In my mind, it was kind of on hold. and she just wanted to, you know, see if there was, because she kept saying, I never dated much. And I think this is not fair to the relationship, you know, to ever go into something long term,

feeling like I've, you know, and feeling like you've missed out on something or didn't really walk through this. And that didn't make sense to me. But again, it was just one of those. And I think that it was more, more that I didn't want, I really didn't like the clinginess. Yeah. I didn't want him. to need like to want to be with me because he needed me for stability. Yeah. I wanted our relationship to be more equal. And so I was very sensitive to that. I didn't want I needed him to be strong.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were kind of talking about this the other day about how I was specifically with the concept of being swept off of your feet. And how. If you are being swept off of your feet, maybe you're not very stable. So if you're like relying on that person too much to be your stability. And responding too much to emotion, I needed it to be more cognitive, which is really funny to think about because I think I did have romantic notions. But your dad is the one that really is the romantic. He's the one that's always writing the poems and writing the songs. and drawing me little pictures and sending me things.

He, that's, that's, and most women when you talk to them, they would just want to punch me because they'd be like, what's wrong with you? I would give anything for my answer. I've been looking for a man like that. Yeah. And. But I think the other thing was for me is I didn't want to give up. I had, when I said, I, because I'm the kind that, you know, I know what I want.

If I go out shopping, I know what I want and I know what I don't want. and at this point in time I knew what I wanted and and unfortunately I did some dumb things because like I said when when she would say I want to date other people well she wouldn't and I would and I would make sure that she knew about it yeah again very jerk like stuff you know and it wasn't fair to the the young ladies that I dated but my goal was to win her back was struggling on how to do that. And then when I went off to grad school and I knew that she was trying to just have that time of figuring out, okay, he's not here. I really need to figure out. And I think that I truly believe that mom was trying to determine whether I was right for her.

It's not like she had decided he's a jerk. I don't want anything to do with him and he just keeps showing up like a bad penny. But it was one of those where she was trying to figure out and How I know that is right before we got engaged, your mom, and I found this out later, she sat down and wrote a list of reasons to marry Greg and reasons to not marry Greg. And the list was really long for marrying and the list was short. Of course, when I saw it one day, I'm like, what? You know, I focused on the five and I just missed the whole. Well, why were those such a big deal for you, like those five or whatever they were in this amount?

Because I was, from the time I was, and my personality is pretty feisty. And I just, I don't know, you can edit this however you want to, but my, my grandma, my, my dad's Italian mom said from the time I was very small, no one's ever going to bleepity bleep on Stephanie. And I was like, I mean, I've thought about that so many times. It's so true. I am so justice-oriented. and I just have very, very strong feelings about the rightness of events and actions and stuff. And I find it funny because there's so many people now that are like,

your wife should go into therapy with you and help people out. I'm like, no, no, no, you do not want her doing therapy. It would be like, you know, Bob Newhart, when he does that, just stop it. That's so stupid. Stop doing that. You dumb? I just don't have I definitely don't have the patience for that

I'm very like I said I'm very choleric I know that things need to there's something that needs to be done and this is how it's going to get done and I don't have time for all that frou you know processing things

you know everybody shares their feelings and we have a conversation about all of them I'm like no okay can we just put that aside and let's look at the facts of this. And so I'm being the person that's very justice oriented and very much, I really, I'm a very hard worker, a really strong work ethic that definitely came from my parents. Dad's family was much more of kind of a good time, Charlie. I mean, they did a lot of

playing. And that was very foreign to me. And so I had to learn the value. of playing, and dad had to learn the value of working. Which is true because, yeah. This is just a reminder that you're listening to Wherefore Art Thel Romeo, where we are discussing Greg and Stephanie's relationship experience. I'm your host, Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed marriage therapist to Greg Shuddy here on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So Greg had to learn how to work.

you had to learn how to have fun. What was that like bringing that into your relationship as a married couple? Well, there's so much we had, I think this is the thing that I, you know, I'm trying to always pick these things apart to help other people with it. And, you know, the hard part is the fact that we had differences, that we had, that we are opposite in certain areas. But we were right on target in the key areas that mattered. And, you know, I think that that list that your mom put together, maybe I did in my own head. It was kind of that, you know, what are the things I'm looking for? And she met so many of those things.

And the things I didn't care about, they weren't deal breakers. But I guess the good part was the dopamine kicked in. And so I didn't really think about the deep work that was going to have to go into it. And this is where I'm trying to help other people who are trying to. to get married or in a relationship to understand that some of these differences, you're going to have to find a way to work through. I mean, they can make you better or bitter. And I think that that's what we had some really big struggles at times because some things could really make us bitter. And we even hit that point 10 years into our marriage where we had kind of that come to Jesus

of, okay, what are we going to do with this? To about the time I was born. About the time you were born. I literally just postpartum with you. And there was like a massive kind of. It's had nothing to do with you. That's what they all say. Well, and as far as how those like the work and play thing came into the relationship, I think that early on that, you know, we were we were young. We weren't as young as some people historically have been or then when they've gotten married. But I think that some of that is you are allowing each other.

whether to grow up still. So, because I remember when dad, dad lost his job. And I was like, oh, is this guy going to be able to support a family? This is after we were married. And I was like, well, crap. What did I do? How many years were you into your marriage at that point? It wasn't that long because I, it was right after.

After the crisis counseling, which I was there maybe a year. And then I started into the hospital. and that went south quickly. So maybe we didn't have any kids yet. So I wasn't quite terrified about not being able to feed my kids yet. But I definitely had this because he still at that time would definitely rather be playing than being at work. He was still not. And that's not why I lost my job.

I want to be very clear. No, it was one of those where I don't explain it. No, no. They eliminated it. my position. We'll put it that way. Anyways. So, but it was a mindset of I would rather be doing this fun thing than really investing myself in my job. He had definitely not found his, hit his stride yet in his professional life where he really cared about what he was doing. Yeah. And I was waiting for him to find that because he was passionate about a lot of things. He was really passionate about his

music and he was really just starting to learn the woodworking and he was starting to learn how to be the fix it guy, you know, because we had, we had bought a house and so we need to do home repairs and he was figuring all of those things out. So he was growing and maturing. But, you know, now that I'm looking back on it, I really think that a lot of it, because this is still a struggle that I have today, working with couples and working with people with broken lives. Oh, I thought you meant you personally. Well, yeah. No, it's

just the fact that I think that even back then I was dealing with some really horrible things. And so it was hard to really find all this joy in my work. It wasn't that I was just kind of this playbaby that didn't want to do.

I think it's the same reason now that I want to take time off and do woodworking or to write music or to, because I love creating. That's a part of who I am. I love building things that last and that are heirlooms or, you know, making something and you've got something to show for it. And I think early on as a young kid that, you know, was trying to be a

therapist thinking, I wonder how many people's lives I'm screwing up because I'm kind of, I'm kind of, you know, making it up as I go along because I didn't have enough guidance in it. In experience. I mean, that's just being a young person. And I think that that's why I just wanted to be home instead of working. And I don't think it was just because I didn't. But once I found places that I really enjoyed, I started to invest more. And I think that that's kind of the case.

Yeah. So I think that when you're both so young and you're young individually, where you're still trying to figure out how to grow up and be an adult, and then you're young in your relationship, those two things kind of layered on top of each other. And then you add kids in there.

And then suddenly you're a young parent. And you just kind of get lost in all of the things that you don't know how to do. And having mentors is so important. And those were, there were some people that we really looked to that were important in our growth as a couple. And again, no, I don't mean disrespect in saying this, but your parents and my parents were not, they weren't as helpful as we, what we needed. And I know a lot of people had that. My, my mom had passed away. So my dad was trying to figure out the rest of his life and wasn't investing in, you know, all of that. And moms, well, her dad was not someone we wanted coming in and helping us raise the kids. And her mom, you know, eventually. moved in with us and and that brought its own dynamics but I think so we had to find other ways to do this and and the other thing that we found quickly was um when life started to kick in we didn't have that same amount of time to just look into each other's eyes and you know go listen to people

play guitar here and there and and we had to be intentional so while you know while we may have in a certain sense kind of had, you know, like a hallmarky beginning. And we did have that, that very quick connection that was on, on an important level. Those things, you know, they can burn out really quickly. And I think that we could have fallen prey to that as well, but there were deeper things that held us together. And we did grow the relationship on those different levels. you know, our faith being a really, really important one. That was definitely a cornerstone for us. And I'm going to give myself a little credit here because as much as I was not disciplined in faith

and your mom really had a better foundation with that. Because that's something my mom did really well, was past the faith on to me. Yeah. That I've always, for the most part, I mean, I've had my bonehead moments, but have really tried to be open to growing and to becoming better. And again, that's, that keeps being my mantra over and over again about, you know, when I'm talking to young people dating and all of that is, are you trying to become better? Are you finding someone that's trying to become better? Because you're not going to find the perfect. You aren't. But if you find someone, and your mom was, she was trying to become a

better person. And even though throughout life, she had those moments where, you know, her past would come up and kind of overwhelm me overwhelm her and she would have to deal with it you know for me it was it was the same thing was i had to face some of my own demons and become you know like your mom said i needed to step up put my big boy pants on and actually lead the family lead the family in prayer and she was it it got there was a struggle at 10 years in marriage but after that and somewhat before that, your mom has always been someone who tried to encourage me to be that leader. But I still had to pick up the baton and run with it. And so many people don't.

They just want to do their own thing. No, that's really interesting that you say that about, like, just the continued mantra of, like, becoming better or, like, looking for someone who's seeking to be better. And it's not just about, like, her being better. You're, like, looking for her to be better. but it's like you are looking within yourself to become a better person. I think that's something that we often miss is like we make that checklist, but that checklist is entirely other focus and it's not at all focused on like ourselves and what we can do to be better. So you've been listening to Wherefore Arthel Romeo, where we've been discussing

Greg and Stephanie's romance and the challenges thereafter. We will continue this story in future episode. And I just wanted to remind you that relationships are a process and they take time and effort. And we want to help you learn how to balance your head and your heart. This is just your friendly reminder to not be discouraged because if you haven't found your Romeo or Juliet yet, maybe you're the problem. If you have questions that you would like us to address, Please email them to E-Shoudi, S-C-H-U-T-E-T-E at Hillsdale.edu, and we will discuss them in future shows. That's all for Wherefore Art Thel Romeo. I'm Emily Shudy. And I'm Greg Shudy.

And I'm Stephanie Shudy. On Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.