Join Drew and Katie Taylor as they discuss the best Catholic marriage advice they’ve ever received! This is so critical to build on-fire Catholic marriages, grow in your skills of Catholic parenting, and develop a faithful Catholic family!
Video Transcript: Catholic Marriage Advice
Hey everyone, we’re Drew and Katie Taylor. We’re passionate about helping you reach new heights in your marriage and building faithful family cultures. We’re excited to be jumping into this marriage series talking about expectations today. If you’re new to the channel, hit subscribe, and definitely check out the description because we’re going to leave all of our resources below.
One of the things that we’ve most experienced and seen in our own relationship and those that we’ve journeyed with is when we fall into complacency. It’s really easy to say, “I’ve read a bunch of books, or I’ve taken classes, and I know everything that’s out there about marriage. I’m also married, so really what else could I learn?” And it doesn’t apply perfectly to my spouse. When we get into that mindset, we, in fact, limit our ability for growth. So Drew and I are really passionate about taking the opportunities that are given to us to grow, to continue to set goals for our marriage, to strive to reach new heights. Because any time that we’ve sat down and rested, that’s when things have gotten rocky, a little rough. So right now, we just want to talk about how setting some goals, clear expectations in your relationship about where it’s going can make all the difference.
One saying that we’ve heard that I think really rang true to our hearts and we’ve said it over and over again is that expectations are premeditated resentments. So what does that mean? Often, we hold an expectation. We may not even externally know that or be able to express it or put it into words, but I have some opinion about how the day is going to go, how my marriage is going to look, what time I’m going to go to bed, what I’m going to do in my free time, what my kids are going to be like, the activities that they’re going to be involved in, what school is going to look like for them, all the child-rearing questions, my faith, how we live that out individually as a couple. I have all these expectations, all these visions, and maybe I’ve learned some of them from TV, some of them from just friends and those that have influenced my life. But all of a sudden, my experiences, my family of origin, is starting to shape what I think life should look like. And then sometimes I’m able to express that, and other times I hold that internally, and it can cause friction between the two of us.
So the first type of expectations would be external. So those are expectations that you communicate with your spouse, saying, “Hey, here is how I wish the day could go, here’s how I think we should find time for us to have date night,” whatever it is. And so, we always recommend getting as much expectations as you can out there because it’s so freeing once you’ve just set the expectation and now everyone’s on the same page. Recently, we put together a family kind of calendar, like a weekly calendar, and at first, I was a little nervous because just setting things in stone is, in my mind, doesn’t have a lot of flexibility. I’m kind of a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. But actually, when we put it down on paper, it was so nice because I’m like, “No, this is when I have to go to work, and this is when I’m going to be home,” and then that allows Katie to be able to plan out her day and for dinner time and bedtime for the kids. So it was really freeing in a way when we were expressing those external expectations to each other.
We took a lot of this from “A Mother’s Rule of Life.” I had the same experience. I read it and I was like, “Oh, this sounds incredible and really good,” but again, I don’t want to lock myself into a schedule. I have three kids; their schedules constantly change. Like did it come up with excuses? I gave it, and then also Kimberly Hahn talks a lot about this too in “Grace and Gifted,” and she calls it a plan for life because she thinks that the wording should be a little bit more flexible, but it’s the concept of when I lay out what is my priority and how do I order my life to meet the goals, the expectations that I have in a way that is actually fruitful so then I can go to a block schedule or I can go to kind of a daily norms or a clear timeline, which really allows us to communicate. If Drew knows he takes morning shift a lot right now, he knows what time I’m going to get up so he doesn’t feel like he’s just out there forever and definitely, there’s no break coming ever flies on my own in the morning. But it is something because it clears, “Okay, this is what time she’s going to wake up, and this is what time she’s going to come out.”
And so now there’s not resentment between the other person of like, “Why are you in there praying and sleeping while I’m out here with our kids that are wonderful and beautiful but I’m tired because I’ve been up since 5?” And so it just really helps when we have clear communication. So we’re going to break down how Drew hates the word priorities because priority has to have just one and so, ah, priority that’s what the word comes but this has six in order. So it’s your number one priority, it’s God, yeah, it’s prayer. So they use the letter P to start all of these, but I think that’s so important because it’s really tempting in society and just in life right now to put 100,000 things before prayer, before our relationship with God. We’re busy; it’s like the last thing on my to-do list, I kind of want to do it but at the same time, like, it doesn’t always make the cut. And yet, that is idolatry. It is really hard, but it’s really important because our entire life has to flow out of that. And the beautiful thing about making God number one on the priority list is the fact that when you build your relationship with God, that overflows into your marriage and your family. And so you plant a seed and you get a hundredfold out of that, you know what I mean, like it’s not time wasted, that’s time that you’re investing that multiplies and makes your whole life better. So I just think about it sometimes; it’s you’re not wasting time. Any time that you pray, you are actually building yourself up and giving yourself the graces that you need for the other steps or kind of checklist in your life. And so this way this works is I would really recommend, you know, sitting by yourself and maybe having some time in prayer to answer some questions about these six different priorities in your life, and then to come together as a couple and have an intentional date or like we did when we were at the YMCA and our kids were in the childcare to sit down with a computer and really talk through what is the best schedule.
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