WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?: How I Met Your Mother (Dayton Edition) Part 3

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Emily and Greg welcome Stephanie Schutte, Greg's wife and Emily's Mother, to the show. Join them in the last 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 Wherefore Art Thel Romeo, the show where we talk about how to follow your heart without losing your mind. My name is 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. joining us again today is my mother and Greg's lovely wife Stephanie Shuddy for the third part of our series on their relationship. So they've been telling us about how they met in college. And then

just the early stages of their marriage as they've tried to figure out how to navigate the differences of personalities and families and how they, today we're going to talk about how they went to build their own family and what that looked like and how they learned how to prioritize each other as well as their children. So could you, Greg and Stephanie, would you tell me about what you did to build your family, to build your culture and I'm like what you did to keep each other at the center? Well, since I have the best memory of the two of us, oh, no, no, mine. No, mine. Yeah, I'm a little concerned when they said, I don't know, I don't really remember what happens. Well, I do because I teach it all the time. And without going into a lot of depth,

you know, I think what happened was life started to really play out. That's not the question. What? That's not the question she asked. She asked, how did we build our family? Well, yeah, but you got to start with how we unbuilt our family. No, no. What do you mean unbuilt your family? What? Start again. I know. No, how did we start? Okay. Okay. Well, apparently I don't have that good of memory.

Okay, so we had some friends. What was actually dad's? That far back. Okay. I'm like, oh, geez. Who he had known since he was young. And his brother was in a band with him. And they were about five years older than we were, kind of five years ahead.

kind of five years ahead of us in their family life. And I just loved, we actually, since dad then had joined a different band, but they were practicing over there, he started going to their house a lot, and I would start to come along, and I got to know them. And I, they had a couple of kids by that time, and I loved the way that their family was together. And I was like, how are you doing that? And it just so happened that they were homeschooling.

and that was the way that they were able to accomplish some of those things. And I was like, oh, what is this? I had never even heard of homeschooling. And because we were so also at the time we had met, let's see, how old Sarah was four and Molly was two by the time we met Father Amberger. And that was also like when the faith really exploded for us because he, He was just really feeding us all of the goodness, truth, and beauty of the faith. And dad really came alive in his faith.

And he was studying and studying and studying. And we, even though we had never fallen away, it suddenly became really clear to us that this was what we wanted to do with our family. And for me, I think that it was something about having children that really, woke something up in me because I'll never forget. I don't know if it was before Sarah was born or after. That's when I started to go to daily mass and really tried to make that a habit in my life. I think it was after because that's when we moved right after she was born. Yeah.

So really trying to get to daily mass and make faith more central. And so when we started having kids, I started reading. And the whole idea, this, that one of the things I love about homeschooling, I think it's kind of in my nature to be a teacher, and I didn't really realize that before. But that was such a wonderful fit for me, and it allowed me to,

because like I mentioned in the previous podcast, I didn't know how to play. And so being a worker, this was something that combined that play and work together, because when you're teaching young children, and you do a lot of playing and just a lot of creating and I loved it. I started to learn. This was really at the time when there was this kind of explosion of all of this wonderful,

all these wonderful materials in the Catholic homeschooling world where you could really share this beauty and joy of the faith with your kids. And so all of a sudden, I was getting this education. You know, and regardless of the education that I got when I was growing up, When you're a kid, what is that saying? Youth is wasted on the young. I mean, you just don't know what you don't know when you're a kid and you can only absorb so much. And when you're an adult and you get to teach these things, I mean, I love the First Communion year.

I've gone through the First Communion seven times now. And I've learned something every single time because of that experience of sharing it and being deep into the materials and into the prayer life of that time. and getting to really experience that. And so not that everybody has to homeschool in order for this to happen, but having that experience of having children that you're really educating in the faith, whether you're doing that by all out homeschooling, or if your kids are in a traditional brick and mortar school, and you are still responsible for teaching them the faith.

That was when just so many things came up. alive for me. And then I was able to kind of share that, like, feed that to your dad and bring him into what we were doing there very naturally by kind of, you know, sharing that with him, and then he could take it and lead with it. Well, and we also had what we called a faith-sharing community that naturally came out of our college years. That was, it was a great support for us to have in those early years because we were talking about everything as far as, you know, having kids, natural family planning. The adjustments in the first year of marriage and what that looks like. And disciplining and, you know, just everything. And it, you know, and even though we didn't all

agree on things, we agreed on some of the, a lot of the basics and how we wanted to bring that so into our family, the faith and all of that. And I think that support, was really huge for us, just learning along with pulling from who your mom was talking about before, that couple that was kind of ahead of us that we're still friends with today. And it's been so important to us. And I often tell people all the time, find someone a little bit ahead of you that you really enjoy their kids and learn from them or someone that you don't agree with and learn from them too, you know. because it's really interesting because sometimes, you know, you think that your friends,

kids are going to be your kids friends. Wait, what did I say? Like best friends with their kids. Right. And you'll be friends. But that does not pan out that way all the time. It's really interesting because we have such different approaches to parenting and family life.

So learning how to be, to put not only. our relationship first, but to really pay attention to what your needs were as kids and to be willing to let go of the things that I wanted in order to help you with what you really needed. And I don't mean I'm always putting myself last, you know, that I don't mean in that sense that I was just completely, it's completely irrelevant what I want. But a lot of times it is. You know, I think that that's one of the things that I've noticed that we live in a culture that is just very focused on, well, you know, you do you. You do what makes you feel good.

You do what's right for you. Well, there's a whole lot of carnage that's left behind from that kind of culture where you're just doing the things that you want to do. And there's, it has consequences. And, you know, it's really important for me as being someone who was outside the home main breadwinner at this point. It was very helpful for your mom to include me into these things because I would come home, you know, and try to catch up with what was going on. I didn't see what was going on in the day's time. It was hard for me because there's times, you know, I'd brag about my math skills because I was so good at math. And mom's like, good, you can help them with math.

And then I would sit down and go, oh my gosh, I've been out of this for so long. Maybe I'm not the best person. Why would they change math? Math is math. So, you know, I think it was that, but she was always inviting me into that and be a part of it and the things that we would put together. And that's where we used our strengths. Mom was great at the planning. I was good at the grunt work.

She would say, here, build this. because we're going to use this and I would build that. Knock out this wall. Knock out this wall. We want to do shadow puppets. Make this puppet stage for me because we're going to do this. And so even though he wasn't, you know, he wasn't good at this set of things over here, he was really good at this other set of things.

And I always knew that I could count on him to get those things done when I asked him. So, you know, even though, so it's kind of like in that same theme, even though he would probably rather go do something else, he really made himself available to doing what the family needed to do. And because of that, I mean, you could probably speak to this as one of the kids, just knowing that, you know, dad can fix anything. He can do, you know, whatever we need to do. What do you think would work for this?

Let's go ask dad because he's really good at designing things. And so instead of dad just having his thing that he goes off and does because he's good at that, It's not that. It's that dad is part of this family unit. And I am part of the family unit. And you kids are all part of the family unit. And we all contribute to that in a way that makes us interconnected in the best way. It's not kind of thinking back to the beginning of our relationship when I was kind of freaked out about dad being too dependent on me and to clingy and being transformed into. No, this is this is a group that I can, of people that I can turn to for ideas, for honesty, for processing through when I'm trying to figure something out, and then just getting something done. I mean, we know how to get things done. Yeah. And that is, that's a really great way to, for me to experience family life where I came from a place that was so, so,

broken and so disjointed and not a place where we supported each other to being able to have this opportunity to create a family where I one of the most important things to me was guys you are not and this doesn't mean you all got along all the time but you are not going to tear you're not allowed to tear each other down there's a whole world there's a whole world out there that's going to be there to tear you down. In this family, we build each other up. And that's one of the things that I love about your mom that I don't see in a lot of people around me is this really this strong effort to build unity within the home because there's so many things going on. And one of the things that was always a mantra of mine, even with the house that we're in now, why I wanted to buy it

was because I wanted to build memories. I wanted to build memories for you guys and for the family, which means I had to be involved. I had to be a part of the planning. I had to execute these things, whereas I see so many, and I'm sorry to say, I'm sure I'm going to offend somebody here.

I see so many dads that don't do that. So many dads who are like, my job is to bring in money. It's like, no, your job is, you know, to support your family. Yes, and you have to do a job and bring in money, but you have to be present to them. You have to be active and interacting with them.

And your mom would help me balance that because sometimes I would mess up those relationships. Being, you know, with Molly was one of those kids that always had the last word. And I found myself early on just really battling with her. And I'm sad to say I was mocking her because I was so full. frustrated and I'll never forget your mom pulling me aside and saying, look, if you don't stop this, you're going to destroy any type of relationship you will ever have with her. And I took that serious because that was so important to me. And I think that that actually is another really important point of when you're looking for

someone in a relationship is what kind of conversations can you have with that person? Are they willing to listen to what you say and take it to heart and do something with it or not? Are they just like hardheaded and no, I'm going to do it my way and you can't tell me anything? Dad is so, so open to that. And, you know, whenever I would say those things to him, because being the ones at home that was at home primarily with you kids, I had more of a finger on the pulse. And so he would listen to me about those things. Sometimes, you know, it takes a little while to process it and kind of get over being upset about whatever it is that you're struggling with. But really, in the end, it's like he trusts me to have his back.

I trust him to have my back. That took a while for us to really get a hold of to that, oh, this is like, you're actually on my side. Why am I not? Why am I thinking that you don't want the best for me? I need to rethink the way that I'm approaching that because we're on the same team. Yeah, yeah. This is just a reminder that you're listening to Wherefore Art thou Romeo, where we are discussing Greg and Stephanie's relationship experience,

particularly their life as a married couple with children. I'm your host, Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed marriage therapist, Greg Shuddy, here on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So you're talking about being on the same team. how did you prioritize being able to have those conversations in the midst of, so seven kids, which is a very different experience from your personal families, which were smaller. How did you balance the amount of children of the unruly masses running around your home with still trying to make time for each other?

Well, yeah, initially, we did fine in the beginning because it was, we weren't outnumbered. And, you know, but there came a point where we were outnumbered. You guys were still little. And we got so much into the functional part of our relationship that the emotional part of our relationship started to suffer. And the way I often put it is, it was a divide and conquer. We were dividing and conquering and getting things done and doing this and doing that. but we weren't making the time to really do the dates and to check in and to listen and to not end up fighting about things and trying to get our way and feeling hurt. And which eventually, like mom said, we had to kind of relearn how to remind ourselves. Why did we start getting to this point where we thought the worst of each other?

Like, you're doing this deliberately. You're doing this because you, no. everything I did was I wanted your mom to be happy. I just, I was doing it the wrong way. And I think what happened was we lost sight of each other's needs in that. And so we went through that very difficult time in our life where we were just like, okay, we had that come to Jesus and we're like, we need to do something different. And we had to rebuild.

Yeah. And I think that that the rebuilding, one of the things that I often talk about, which I learned, quickly was the importance of check-in time, of coming home and checking with your mom. How's the day been? What do I need to know? Good day? Great. I need to connect. Let her have a human being versus a babbling child talk to her and listen to her. Babbling children are not human beings. Yeah. Yeah. And then just listen to her. But if it was a bad day, then jumping in with how can I help? And, you know, it's, again, not to pick on dads, but since I'm a guy, I can do this, is sometimes we feel like we've put our work in.

Now I need to come home and I need to check out. And yeah, there is a value in guys going into what's called the nothing box. But, you know, when your spouse needs something, you can't do that. And so this started a rebuilding point in our life where we were more intentional and really listening and understanding and started to come up with kind of a plan for how we were going to parent, versus just kind of doing it and critiquing each other. Yeah, because you were kind of difficult to agree. I'm sorry. Yeah. You really broke us in. And you said it wasn't my fault. It wasn't.

No, we just, we had to take the time. And that's the thing with kids. And I think that's the hardest part is every kid's different. Every kid has so many different needs that you have to be working together as a couple. Because the kid's job is to figure out life and to push every. button, we just had to figure out a better way. Yeah, yeah. She's pushing buttons again over there.

Had to figure a better way to deal with that, and we slowly did. Yeah. And I think that I had to allow myself, well, and honestly, I personally sought some counseling and had to get some of my own issues. I had to figure out what it was that I needed to do to find some healing. And that was really important for me. So I just, I think that it's just a whole lifetime of learning, of learning how to adapt as things change.

Because as soon as you get one thing figured out, the ground shifts. You know, now we're going through all of you guys moving, you know, growing up, getting married, moving. You know, we have kids coast to coast now and our house is almost empty. And so this is we find ourselves in a new place again. And so we're looking at each other and saying, okay, so how are we going to navigate this? What is it that's going to be our North Star at this point? What are we going to do?

And what's God calling us to in this next phase of our life? Because things are changing pretty radically. And so it's, I think it's knowing maybe that you hear that marriage is a marathon and, you You know, that it's something that you're going to have to work at. But I think maybe we don't really think that that's true. And we need to understand that that is really true. And until the day we die, we're going to be working on our relationship. You have to.

If you don't, it will slowly. Which kind of kind of takes us back to what you were talking about with, like, you maybe started out with a little bit of a homework type relationship, but that's not the reality of your entire relationship at all. Not at all. But you know the hallmark is when you can look at each other after 30 years and just love being with each other. And I often say because we put in the work, we now, you know, it's not perfect, but we enjoy

each other sometimes even more than we ever did because there's that comfortableness, there's that love, there's that shared experience. and we put the work into it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you both so much for sharing your story. This is truly a testament to love and commitment and working at the relationship. And this is just a reminder to all of our listeners that relationships really truly are a process. They take time and effort and we're here to help you learn how to balance your head and your heart.

And this is just your friendly reminder to not. be discouraged because if you haven't found your Romeo or Juliet yet, I don't have something to say here. Maybe just go to the library and pick out a book. That's probably a good idea. Honestly, anyway, if you have questions that you would like to address. That's pretty good because you could have mom just say if you're still complaining about not having a Romeo, then just stop it. Stop it. That's pretty nice at me. It's pretty gentle.

If you have questions that you would like us to address, please email them to Eshutte, S-C-H-U-T-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. I'm Greg Shuddy. And I'm Stephanie Shuddy. On Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.