Mission of Marriage
The Mission of Marriage Podcast, hosted by Sean and Candace Tambagahan, provides insights for a stronger marriage through a Christian lens. Inspired by real conversations with Christians navigating marital challenges, we aim to infuse hope and value into every union through a biblical perspective.
Mission of Marriage
Ep. 7: Disconnecting In Your Marriage
We kick off with a deep dive into relational connection, emphasizing the importance of shared experiences and memories. Then, we navigate the intricacies of spiritual connection, addressing the challenges faced when partners are at different levels of spiritual inclination. We also stress the importance of recognizing and understanding the current season of life you're in, as this is vital for maintaining connection. As we progress, we tackle emotional connection, exploring how openness and transparency can serve as the cornerstones of trust and intimacy.
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We're Sean and Candace Tambagahan and this is the Mission of Marriage Podcast! Have you ever been at a crossroads in your marriage, wondering if there's any hope for restoration? We've walked through some rocky patches ourselves. Our marital journey has taught us about perseverance, grace, and the infinite love of God. And it's these lessons we strive to share with you, to help navigate the trials and tribulations of marriage. We don't claim to have all the answers, but we do have some tools and insights that might just help you on your journey.
My name is Sean, I'm Candace and this is the Mission of Marriage podcast.
Speaker 2:We talk about a Christian perspective on having a better marriage. You guys clap, I'll clap. No, it's only one. One more needed, only one. It's the sync audio. No, let's clap together. No do it Clap, oh sorry, all right. So, babe, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:We were together, but I told Candace on the way here so I'm not going to talk to you Until we get on the podcast, and so we haven't been together really pretty much all day. Yeah, and I didn't talk to you.
Speaker 1:You didn't talk to me the whole ride over here.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, but Because we're I'm saving it all. I got to lay out my best on the podcast, and so, before we talk about our subject today, which I don't even know what we're going to call it but so I was listening to something else and and I didn't ask you this earlier, so I'll just ask you right now, like when people say hey, you know the statistics on divorce right. Like what is the percentage of people getting divorced? What is the statistic you always hear?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't, you know, I don't hear statistics. I mean, I think, when they say hey, like X amount, I know it's more than 50% for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is what's told to us, right? It's usually like hey, half of all marriages end in divorce, 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and that's the statistic that I've been hearing since I was a kid 50%, about 50%. And they're like oh, it's more now, but like, it's never saying, like according to this study, and so the idea is like we're told half of marriages end in divorce, and but it's never. It's always been the same statistic from when I was like a kid until now, which means that, like this data doesn't change when we know the rates of marriages have decreased and so, anyway, they don't actually have a good number. It's actually, according to us census bureau, is closer to 35%, which is a lot less. It's still like a lot. But the the idea that we hear nowadays is that, hey, most marriages end in divorce, and I heard some guy talking about and there's this whole idea and I don't think you're too familiar with like the red pill community. Have you heard that term?
Speaker 1:Red pill. Okay, you're kind of talking over my head. No, it's okay, you're not missing.
Speaker 2:Some of these people might know what the red pill community is. It's like these overly aggressive masculine. It's like this pendulum swing to the other side of feminism, and so it's like people like Andrew Tate, who you might have heard Okay. She doesn't. She's not missing out on a whole lot. It's okay If you don't know what these things are. So the there's people on this side that are saying you're being married is like winning the lottery You're likely going to lose, so yeah, so they're really discouraging young people.
Speaker 1:Well, I knew that. I knew that people are being discouraged from getting married.
Speaker 2:Right and the idea behind is like, hey, most of them end in divorce, the when they actually studies are actually showing most of them don't end in divorce and it's also been historically like throughout in the entire human history. Marriages the bedrock of human civilization. And so just weird that, like, so many people are discouraging young people from getting married and the idea is like it's it's hard, it's going to probably end in divorce. They get half your stuff, you're going to go through all this hard, so just don't do it and just kind of be free. And I don't know. I was just thinking about. That has nothing to do with our topic for today, but it doesn't have everything to do with. One of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is not just to instill hope into the people who do have a marriage, who are married, but one of the worst things you could tell a young person is that you probably shouldn't get married because it's likely not going to work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like young people need to be encouraged and be told like marriages is incredible. Marriage could be the I always tell people, the best, three best decisions I ever made in my life giving my life to Jesus, marrying Candice and having my kids. All three of them. All three of them will change your life and giving your life to Christ, marrying your spouse and having children. And people just aren't talking like that nowadays and there is just really sad to me that people are discouraged from being married.
Speaker 1:Well, you're seeing families that are divorced. Most of those kids are saying that they don't want to be married because they saw the strife and conflict in their parents' lives and then how they separated and how it affected them negatively in such a big way and versus us and a lot of people we know that are still, that are happily married. And those kids are like I want to get married, Like for sure, get married young, have kids. They're seeing the positive in marriage.
Speaker 2:Right, and the statistic of people who are gonna die is 100%, but that doesn't mean you don't therefore live or improve your quality of life.
Speaker 2:The statistic of people who are overweight, obese, is like 40% in America. It doesn't mean that you have to be obese right, because these things are dictated by behavior and you can do things that are gonna make you not be overweight or not be obese, right. In the same way, you can do practical things. Just because the statistic is out there of X% of people are having these bad marriages or they end up in divorce Doesn't mean that that has to be your story, because you can do things and set yourself up to have a successful marriage, just like you can set yourself up to be a healthy person and to live a healthy life. And so that's what we're really hoping for.
Speaker 2:This podcast is not only to instill hope into marriages and give you practical tools and advice, but really just to kind of change the conversation in our culture that marriages this negative thing that you shouldn't pursue and you should just pursue free love and just do your own thing. That's garbage. And so the things that Candice and I are talking about in this podcast we're hoping to help you guys out to have that healthy marriage, healthy relationship. And so, babe, the last do you remember what our last podcast episode was about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, about connecting.
Speaker 2:Right. So we spent 30, 45 minutes talking about the ways to connect emotionally, relationally, spiritually and physically, and you have to be connected in your marriage if you're gonna have a successful, happy marriage. And so before listening to this podcast, if you haven't listened to that one, I would say listen to that one first, because tonight's topic is kind of like the sequel to that and it really is not gonna make a whole lot of sense unless you first listen to that first one right, yeah, correct, I agree.
Speaker 2:So do you wanna set the stage for why we were talking about this? How would you title tonight's episode?
Speaker 1:Well, I was just titling it how to disconnect in a healthy way and so disconnecting. So what does that look like? And so am I just going into it, or we?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, go ahead and go into it. So why would we wanna disconnect? So we talked about ways to connect in your marriage but like, okay, how to disconnect in your marriage, why?
Speaker 1:So I see a lot of people that end up getting divorced or separating and because they're trying to find themselves, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I was in this marriage and I didn't really know who I was and I'm changing, or for whatever the circumstances are, either you're getting older, so you are changing as an individual, whatever the case is. But most people are like I'm separating, I'm divorcing and I'm trying to discover myself and oh, I didn't know I liked this thing and I didn't know I didn't like this thing and I didn't know, like, oh, I actually wanna go to the gym and I want you know. So they're trying to figure themselves out.
Speaker 2:Do you think this is mostly women or men, or 50, 50? I see it both. You see it both.
Speaker 1:I do see it both. I see it with younger girls, like in their third, getting close to 30s, because 30s is usually like when you hit 30 years old. I don't know if this is a statistic, but typically you're changing, your hormones are changing, you as a person are changing as you're getting older, and I see it happening with men closer to their 50s.
Speaker 2:So when men get closer to their 50s, so what we would call a midlife crisis right, that's what it used to be called where a man is gonna get the sports car and look for the younger woman or whatever it is. There's something that happens to where you kind of get to like this middle age era and you're like I'm not getting any younger and who am I really? Who's underneath this person? And you try to find who you are in your identity and you start to do new things and then I would agree with that Like and this isn't like statistically and maybe it is. Maybe there's some science or studies that we didn't look at that, but generally speaking, we see this happening in men that are probably in their 40s to 50s and a little bit younger for women in their 30s, and I wouldn't call it a midlife crisis in your 30s. It's just a change, like you said, maybe hormonally or just your life circumstances.
Speaker 1:And I have seen men in their mid 20s to 30s also.
Speaker 2:And it usually is like again, this is just speaking in generalities the women have, they've gone through the young child raising phase. Now the kids are a little bit older, they don't have kids and diapers anymore, and now that- Well, I would say it starts when, typically, men and women get married at a younger age.
Speaker 1:You see this because they get married at a young age and so they kind of leave their friends, they leave their family and they're just like all surrounding their whole lives around their partner, and so they're disconnecting from everything else but their partner and then they get their lives wrapped up in that little bubble.
Speaker 2:Right. So, regardless of your life circumstances, the general truth is this when there's some kind of transition of life from one season into the next and you've lived your life in a particular way for an extended period of time and now you're going into this next season, you kind of feel lost and you're figuring out, you're trying to figure out who am I, who is inside of this person? And a lot of times you lose yourself in your marriage and a lot of women and men, their identity becomes intertwined with their spouse to where they can't do anything without their spouse and they do all these things together. They're kind of like attached at the hip and that sounds like a really good thing. That's why it's really hard to pinpoint it and it's hard to correct it, because it's like, oh no, they're just like always together. They're doing things together. They're always, but on the inside they're like losing their own personal identity.
Speaker 2:And then some kind of crisis point happens in the marriage, to where now, whether it's the wife or the husband, like, well, hold on, I just need to find out who I am. I need space. And when they separate, when they find this space, they start to do things that they didn't know they enjoyed doing, and so, whether that's hobbies or hanging out with certain people or whatever, in their mind they're finding themselves, and so they equate that with oh, I've been suppressed in this relationship, I've been kind of like in a prison in this relationship, and so for me to live out my true and authentic self, I need to separate from this relationship, to live out who I truly am, and your encouragement is you can find yourself, discover who you are, your personal identity with your spouse.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be separated to do that, and so I wanted to start. My first point would have been first you need to find your identity in Christ. That is the first. You have your foundation as an individual in Christ. Christ is what brings me joy and peace and happiness. If Sean is not on point and our relationship is going through a season of just drought, god is going to be that peace, that joy, that happiness for me. He's not going. I'm not gonna allow that to be stolen from me because of whatever is going on between us. So first and foremost is finding your identity in Christ and then also finding who you are as an individual. So outside of Christ, obviously it's not like oh, I found who I am in Christ and in Christ I like to hike. Obviously there's a personal, individual thing going on as well.
Speaker 2:So I've preached a lot on identity at the church, and this is just a message that I think is so important for the church. On the one hand, we live in a culture that prioritizes image over identity, especially with social media. Your identity is who you are. Your image is who you want others to believe you are, and so what we do is we present forth our best image and we put that on social media, and whether that be like, hey, my image is this family man or this family woman, or a mother or a father, and so we want people to know these things about us, and so we prioritize our image what we want people to believe, rather than who we are. And so, as Christians, as Christ followers, like Candice is saying, we find our identity at least in the three things. One is our identity as humans. Like you are created as a human in God's image with a particular purpose to make something beautiful out of this world. Everybody has been given a gift, something that you're gonna have to do something with this world. God has given you potential as a human being, but also you have your identity as being in Christ right. So, as as fallen people, we need to find our identity connected to God because humanity's fallen. So we need to find our identity primarily through Christ, because we, apart from Christ, we we have nothing. And then, third, finding our identity as an individual, and there's a lot of different ways we can do that now, before we talk, can't us about how do we have we done this? I like I want to go back to why people are so connected. Right, because we're. This is like we last week was how to connect, and so Hopefully you guys are connecting in a healthy way emotionally, physically, relationally, spiritually.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't mean you have to spend every waking moment with your spouse. That does not mean that you don't have your own hobbies. That does not mean you have, you don't have, your own friends. That doesn't mean you don't have your own time with your family, that you should be able to disconnect, and some people have a really hard time doing that. We know couples who they. You never see them apart and it doesn't. It's not in a healthy way necessarily. So why? What are some of those reasons? Why people are for lack of better words clingy. I have a clingy wife or a clingy husband.
Speaker 1:I see one aspect is fear-based FOMO fear of missing out, but also fear of losing your spouse. If they even, you know, hang out with their own families or their own friends or go on a trip without you, then you feel like there's that fear that. So you kind of want to control that situation. And I think it's like For some reason I've heard this before where women's like I just don't feel like you want to spend time with me, you love me, I don't feel like you care about me as much as you do your friends or whatever the case is, and and it's just sometimes people just need to be able to hang out with other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and we've gone through seasons like this right and I think for you correct me if I'm wrong, it was I was at my job. I love my job. I love getting to connect with people, I get to take clients out to lunch, I'm doing cool, creative stuff, I'm I have fun at work. And so, especially when I was building up this business and having a lot of fun, of course it was hard use, hard work, but Candice is at home with kids and diapers and take care of it Wasn't the funnest thing. And I'm coming home like all full of joy and you're like one, I'm just stuck and I don't have anybody and I'm like socially connecting with everybody. And so now you're like, well, any waking moment you're not at work. And you would even sometimes get jealous about me being at work, like, hey, where are you at? Oh, I'm at lunch with this client or I'm taking.
Speaker 1:You'd like, okay, well, that's great and that was coming from a place of me not Knowing who I was and my likes and I felt like trap. But I was doing that to myself because if I were to be in church and that community and really reaching out and Going to events, I could take you could take your children, you know, or Ask, being okay with asking people for help, being okay with asking hey, can you watch my kids so I can go do this, or whatever the case is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So I think that's one reason right is because one spouse has all kinds of Like a bigger outside life Maybe that's work or whatever and the other spouse like why don't have anybody? And then you said another one Is fear, like I'm fear losing my spouse, and I think another one is it ties into fear, is insecurity and trust. I don't like where you at, you know what do you don't know who you with, yeah, and this is like, oh man, like she's tripping or he's tripping. He's always like questioning you know. And so there's this like insecurity, and I don't know if you want to talk about any of that. But in the last one here is, I put, lack of identity, which you've already talked about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, within insecurity, I've also seen controlling from. Typically it's on the men side, where men are insecure and so they control and they don't want to allow their wives to really go out because yeah yeah, and so that's what I was gonna say. Sorry, I lost my train of thought, so there. So then there becomes, starts coming in manipulation, so manipulating well. Well, why don't you want to hang out with me? You're, you know, trying to make your your partner feel bad.
Speaker 1:For not wanting to be with you 24 seven and having a life outside of the home Because, on the one hand, you can be aggressive.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, you can be manipulative. So aggressive looks like in the marriage, like where do you think you're going? You're not going out and you work the heck. I'm still at home with all the kids or I'm doing all these things and you're going out all these places and you're just very verbal about it and you don't want to disconnect, you don't want to have this person apart from you, so you might be aggressive.
Speaker 2:The manipulation side of things is like I'm afraid, so I'm gonna make you feel terrible, like, oh, you're going out and it's like I feel so, and you're making them feel like a really terrible person, rather than just your exerting Aggression towards them, and so, either way, that's coming from a place of insecurity, of fear and of pride, and so the idea here is that you need to, of course, connect in a healthy way, but also disconnect in healthy ways, and healthy ways of disconnection are not to say I need a break from you, candice. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about finding the things that you enjoy doing and being okay with your spouse doing the same exact thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, encouraging each other even.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I support Sean and things he likes to do that I don't like to do, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm secure in myself, I'm secure in our relationship, I'm secure in who I am in Christ. I don't need him to always be with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so there's, you know friends, relationships and hobbies. So friends, my friends don't need to be your friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:And your friends don't have to be my friends.
Speaker 1:Correct, and they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Right, but we do have friends together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have married couples that we're friends together with. That we hang out together. But I'm not going to go hang out with men, because that is we also have proper boundaries in place. I don't hang out with men. He doesn't hang out with women unless we're both hanging out together.
Speaker 2:That's like another topic but I feel like it's just in my mind, is just common sense that healthy boundaries means that if you are a husband you have no reason to have girlfriends in the sense of a friend. That's girl.
Speaker 1:And we have friends that are like well, I've had a long lifelong best friend. That's the opposite sex and I say well, that's your spouse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. That needs to be cut off because it's just inappropriate. But it's also setting yourself up for failure.
Speaker 1:You're allowing a door to be open for the enemy to come in Just because you think like oh, I would never trust me.
Speaker 2:If you say I would never, then that's the enemies Like yeah, and you can be like oh, you guys are being religious, you guys are being, you know, whatever. Just how's that working out for you? You do you I'm just saying nine out of 10 times when we see that it does not lead to a recipe for success. And so, of course, having healthy boundaries to with your friends but my friends don't necessarily need to be her friends that means I got a guys group that I hang out with, apart from Candice. Candice will peek her head and she'll be like, hey, how you doing? And then once she realizes, like I don't want to be in this conversation because they're much of theology nerds talking about stuff that I just do not care about, she usually leaves us alone and let's us usually don't even go out there, I stay in my room.
Speaker 1:The only time is when I'm like coming in the driveway and you guys are there, so I have to walk past you guys and like, hi, and she has a girl's night and they do charcuterie or whatever girls like to do and I'm either in the room doing my thing or I take the boys out and I let them have a girl's night.
Speaker 2:A lot of times I have guy friends when I have guys night and they're like, oh man, I just really want. They say they want their wives to go out, all right, and then what happens is the wise go out to you know Candice's girls night or whatever, and she, they get hit up all night and the guy and I'm surprised at this because I'm like, oh, these guys are just saying they wanted their girl, their wives, to go out for girls night or whatever. And they're where you and the guys are hitting along. How long you gonna be? I said guys don't do that.
Speaker 1:They're babysitting their own children.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you guys watch your own kids. Be a father, let your wife go out, have girl night, do your thing. But we like have fun. Be like, have fun with your friends. Why? Because I know I want to do the same thing and she's gonna let me do that. And we don't nag at each other about not having the same friends, even though we do have some friends that we get together with, will have dinner, and that's incredible too. So my friends don't have to be your friends and vice versa.
Speaker 2:Have boundaries, use wisdom, and that was the other thing not just having, no, not having friends of the opposite sex, but choosing your friends wisely. Like you know it, I'm not going out with a bunch of single dudes who are on the market trying to pick up chicks. That's just not my scene and that's not where I am in life. I'm usually hanging out with guys around my age or older, sometimes younger, but we have, if we don't have the same life situation, we're at least going in the same direction. I'm not hanging out with people who are going to try to bring me down.
Speaker 2:You know, again, Jesus hung out with all kinds of centers and that's totally fine. I'm talking about my inner circle, the people that I'm closest to, not for the purpose of outreach or trying to pour into people we have all of those for their particular place. But when I want to unwind and let my hair down and just be myself and hang all my inner circle, my friends they're usually the guys that we're going in the same general direction, yeah, yeah. So use wisdom with your friends, Okay. And then I think the the the last thing can us was just the finding hobbies and things to do that you like to do. And so I think, for a season, we I don't know if we were the clingy couple I feel like there were. There were seasons where, like you were jealous that I was going out.
Speaker 1:So most everything we talk about are things that we have gone through personally. We have all the experience of going through these things and learning and growing. And praise the Lord, we are growing and learning and not repeating the same things. So yeah, and I think that. So hobbies again, I bring up snowboarding because that's a big one. Sean loves to snowboard. I don't there are times where we will connect on that level, where we'll go up with the kids and we'll play in the snow and Sean will take a round or something. But if he's going to go snowboarding, he's like I want to go up the mountain and I want to snowboard. That's all I want to do. I'm not going to go with him. Why would I go with him when I'm not going to be with him because I don't want to snowboard?
Speaker 2:Because she knows she's going to be a drag the whole time. Yeah, there would be no.
Speaker 1:It would literally be zero point in me going.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like so. And like we did find connecting on hiking, you know, but they're OK. But another example we do a lot of things together, but there are certain things that I just want to do with my girls or do with my family, my girl family or even my brothers, Like I love hanging out with my brothers too.
Speaker 2:I like hanging out with her brothers too, so I do kind of get jealous when you do that.
Speaker 1:I took off to Disneyland with my siblings.
Speaker 2:I've been to Hawaii a whole zero times, candice. Ok, so a funny story. Candice goes on girls trips with her sister and this is it used to be once a year. Now COVID kind of messed things up, but so she this is how she starts the conversation, sean. So I was thinking Hawaii. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, yes, I love. She said no, no, I meant like my sister, me, and my sister.
Speaker 1:I was like oh.
Speaker 2:And so I was disappointed, not because I was like it was Hawaii, I want to go to Hawaii. But the point is like, of course, baby, I'm not going to tell you can't go to Hawaii. So she went to Hawaii with her sister, had a girls trip.
Speaker 1:And I went for a whole week. You went for a whole week and it was amazing.
Speaker 2:And she's like you travel all the time by yourself. I go to missions trips, I go to third world countries to serve the Lord.
Speaker 1:That's your choice.
Speaker 2:That's your choice, but the point is encourage that. So if there's any kind of takeaway from this, this episode makes absolutely no sense unless you listen to the first episode, where we talked about connecting. Me and Candice hang out a lot together. We do a ton of stuff together. We love each other. We are each other's best friends. We hang out with each other more than we hang out with anybody else. It's not going to be healthy if she's hanging out with her friends more than me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I do want to interject real quick. There are times where Sean's like, hey, I want to have the guys over tonight. I'm like you literally hung out with them the last three nights and we haven't spent hardly any time together. So I'm going to pull the wife card and say no Totally and let's hang out. And he's like, got it, and then there's no problem with that and it's because we know that we're not saying no just because we want to say no and pull a prideful card or a controlling card or something. It's usually for a good reason, but typically we don't ask for permission. It's just like, hey, I'm going to do this or hey, I'm going to do that and we just support each other and who we are as individuals. And, like Sean said, as long as we're connecting on all those levels that we had talked about in the previous episode, then this one you should be able to disconnect, then you should be able to healthily disconnect, and so that's.
Speaker 2:The thing is, the encouragement would be find your personal identity and then support your spouse in finding their personal identity, and it's not just go on your journey. If it's encouraging to do fun things, don't be the clingy person and get jealous and hold them back from doing things because you're insecure or you have trust issues or whatever it's like. There's a healthy way to connect and there's a healthy way to disconnect.
Speaker 1:And if you do feel that way that's why I say your identity in Christ is the first point Because if you do feel those ways, then probably you haven't really found your identity in Christ, Understanding who you are in Christ. So you're secure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. And so again, just to kind of recap and summarize all of this, today's episode makes no sense unless you watch the first episode on how to connect. We are coming into this conversation with the understanding that you're connecting in a healthy way, because if you just take today's episode and you're not connecting emotionally, relationally, spiritually, physically, and you're just saying, hey, I need to disconnect, that's a recipe for disaster. Also, the other caveat in the note is that you have to disconnect in healthy ways, not to be unhealthy to where you're connecting with someone of the opposite sex, connecting with somebody who's going to be dragging you down or who's not like the best influence. That doesn't matter who you are, how strong of a personality you are. You are going to be influenced and so guard your circle closely, but you don't have to separate from your spouse to find who you are. So, in light of that, you're connecting healthy. You have healthy boundaries and guardrails up. Find those healthy ways to disconnect. Find out who you are.
Speaker 1:And separation and divorce is not the answer. You can do that with your spouse.
Speaker 2:Amen. Should we put a pin in that for right?
Speaker 1:now and just call that our episode. Yeah, I think that was good. Amen, all right, high five, good job.
Speaker 2:We're done yeah.