Building a marriage that not only survives but thrives through the chaos of life—careers, kids, and all that jazz—takes more than just good luck; it requires intention and dedication. Today, we're diving into this deep end with Susan McKeown, an absolute powerhouse who's spent over 50 years navigating the highs and lows of marriage while helping thousands of couples find their footing. We're unpacking the differences between merely surviving a marriage and truly flourishing together.

Spoiler alert: it’s all about being intentional and giving your relationship the attention it deserves. So, if you're ready to transform your marriage from a daily grind into a joyful partnership, grab a comfy seat and listen in as we share insights, tips, and a few laughs along the way! Marriage isn't just about making it through the tough times; it's about thriving together, even when life throws chaos your way.

In this conversation, we dive into the essence of a lasting partnership, guided by Susan, a seasoned expert who's been in the marriage game for over 50 years. She shares her insights on how couples can go beyond mere survival and embrace a flourishing relationship.

The discussion highlights the importance of intention over perfection, emphasizing that a thriving marriage requires ongoing attention and nurturing. We also explore common pitfalls that can quietly erode a relationship, like neglecting to invest time in each other amidst the busyness of life. Susan's metaphor of dance captures the dynamic nature of marriage—it's not always about the perfect steps, but about staying on the dance floor and enjoying the rhythm of life together. The episode is a treasure trove of practical wisdom, offering couples tools to facilitate open communication, foster intimacy, and create a supportive environment for each other, ensuring that their love continues to grow amidst the daily grind.

Takeaways:

• Building a lasting marriage requires more than just surviving the chaos; it’s all about intentionality and love.
• Thriving in marriage isn’t about perfection; it’s about showing up for each other every single day, no matter what.
• The metaphor of dance highlights the importance of flexibility and joy in navigating the challenges of marriage together.
• Effective communication is key; using 'I' statements instead of 'you' accusations can drastically improve conflict resolution.
• Self-care is essential; you can’t pour from an empty cup, so take time for yourself to be the best partner you can be.
• Regularly checking in with each other can help unpack the little annoyances before they build up into bigger issues.

Links referenced in this episode:

• beyond the first dance.com

What does it really take to build a marriage that lasts not just through the good times, but through the times of chaos, career, kids and real life? What if thriving in marriage isn't about perfection, but about intention?

Today's guest has spent over 50 years not only living that journey, but helping thousands of couples navigate it with wisdom, grace and faith. So the question is, how do we move beyond the just making it in marriage to truly thriving together?

Welcome to Becoming Bridge Builders, the podcast where we connect family, faith and life leadership, building bridges between where we are and where God is calling us to be. I'm your host, Reverend Dr. Keith Haney. Today we're going to talk about one of the most important and challenging relationships in our lives.

Marriage. Joining me today is Susan. She's an author, speaker, and pediatric nurse practitioner.

Over 40 years of tireless advocate for healthy relationships and strong families. Susan has worked alongside families in both medical and ministry settings for over two decades.

She and her husband have facilitated a weekly support group for those impacted by substance abuse. She and her husband Patrick have been married for 52 years, raised four children, and have helped prepare over 4,000 engaged couples for marriage.

In her latest book, beyond the A Guide to a Thriving Marriage, while juggling careers, kids and chaos, offers practical wisdom for couples who want more than survival, they want a marriage that flourishes. Susan, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Reverend Keith. I'm really happy to be here meet with you.

Well, good. This is be great. As someone who's been been 50 years, you got me beat. So I'm looking for some advice that I can use and take back in.

My favor every day, don't we. We need it every day.

Every day.

All of us. All of us.

So your book titled beyond the Tango, I love that imagery. Tell us a little bit about what led you to write that book.

Well, this was my second book and I came across the idea of the dance metaphor just early on.

I think working with the engaged couples and seeing that here was a room full of 30 or 40 couples so excited and young and passionate and really looking forward to getting married.

And, and then to think in my head, you know, oh my God, the statistics are saying that half of you in this room are going to get divorced, you know, in the next several years. That's just not, not acceptable to me. I also witnessed, Keith, six divorces in our extended family that affected 12 adults and 14 children.

These are nieces and nephews of mine. These were people that were part of our family, these in laws and the impact is tremendous.

It's tremendous on children, the adults involved, and all the extended family, the aunts, uncles, grandparents, you know, so this is what, you know, motivated me. I've always been intrigued by marriage, even as a young, idealistic adolescent, you know, and.

And then watching couples really have great marriages and others not so great. All these things were of interest to me. And when I think of dance, I think of the fast footwork and flexibility that you need to be a good dancer.

And I've never really taken dance lessons, but my husband and I dance at every wedding we go to. We don't care what we look like. We just keep dancing. And so I think that's my metaphor. Stay on the dance floor, enjoy it, have fun.

Yes, marriage is work. But, you know, some people act like work. It's just so, so hard. Does it have to be that hard? I don't think it has to be that hard.

Yes, you can have lots of challenges. There is no marriage. I don't care how good it appears. That's without challenges.

It's how you address them, how you look to handle the conflicts that do arise. So my, you know, beyond the first dance, that was for couples who are in a serious relationship thinking about marriage.

They're not committed yet, but they're thinking about it.

And as a prevention person, and that's what I am as a prevention person, is really looking at what do I need to think about before making this commitment that's supposed to last a lifetime? What things are important.

And so hopefully, reading that, I like to think that couples can think, we got it together, we're okay, we're going to do fine, or, gee, there's a couple of areas that, you know, I'm not. I'm not really sure about. Maybe we better postpone this, hold off, get to know each other a little bit better. So that's for that.

Beyond the tango is for couples who've already committed. They are now juggling kids, careers, and chaos. Okay, they're busy, but they're married.

And, you know, the tango is that that dance of passion that we have. And so the wedding is really wonderful and exciting, but it is a party. And the day after is the rest of your life. It's your marriage.

And that's where we want to think.

Yeah. So thinking about the, the. All the work you've done, what are some common patterns you've noticed that are quietly erode a marriage?

They quietly erode a marriage. One of the ones I think, Keith, is that people don't recognize marriage needs attention.

There's a Book written by David White called the Three Marriages. He talks about the marriage that you have with yourself, the marriage that you have with your partner, and the marriage that you have with your work.

And I would say I would add two more. I think we have a marriage with our children and a marriage with our home because it's such a big, huge investment part of our life.

So people are aware of giving time to their work, of course, because it's where the paycheck is. Work to your children, because a lot of demands there. Work to your home because it's your biggest asset.

So you want to make sure that you keep up with that, making sure you take care of yourself. Well, that's another topic we will also hit on today is self care and marriage.

And I think people put marriage on the back burner, thinking, when we're married now, that's. That's enough. We got to take care of the careers and the kids in the house and, And. And then, you know, we'll just stay married.

But it doesn't work like that. It needs deliberate time and attention. And I think that's what is eroding is because you're not giving it that. So you want me to go on. On that topic?

Because I can.

No, that's good. I do wonder because you kind of touched on it. So walk us through the difference between a thriving marriage and a surviving.

You kind of touched on a little bit there.

Yeah, there are a lot of marriages that survive. Okay. They're. They're good enough. They're, you know, there's nothing serious or bad going on, and we get along okay.

Some people even say we never fight. Now, I'd say that's a red flag. Okay, what are you not addressing if you don't have a little bit of, you know, challenge, interchange once in a while?

Now, there are things I do want to mention is Keith, because as supporter as I am of marriage and why I really would like to prevent divorce.

There are some situations where it needs to happen if there's physical, emotional, sexual abuse, domestic violence, or untreated, and I do emphasize the word untreated, mental health issues and substance use, these things are destructive to a relationship and dangerous for the children and adults involved. So in those cases, there should be a safe exit strategy. However, fortunately, most marriages are not dealing with those very serious issues.

They're dealing with irritations, frustrations, conflicts, raising the kids. You know, the major ones are money, religion, sex in laws, raising children, careers, and household chores.

Those are the things those should not be derailing A marriage. But they often do. They often do.

So I think it's paying attention to those things and recognizing that you need to take time to address them with each other.

I love that because some people look at your book and I look at you have like almost 40 chapters. If someone picked up your book today and said we need help, where would you tell them to start from your book?

Well, this book, it's very important that it's not to be read like a novel. Okay. You just don't whip through it. It's to be read a chapter at a time.

And I tried to keep the chapters fairly small so that you could go through them fairly quickly. But ideally, both partners should read the chapter and then sit down and talk about it.

And you'll notice at the end of each chapter there are steps, kind of these are the things to think about, promote discussion between the two of you. And then you might skip chapters. If you don't have children, you don't need to read the chapters on children.

But if you are planning on having children, you're pregnant or you just delivered the first baby to, those are chapters you definitely want to whip into. So go where, go where you need it. But I would say start in the beginning and read it.

And the introductions are important, I think because they set the tone of why the book was written and what the hope is that you will get out of it as a reader and then just skip chapters if they're not relevant to your situation.

I love how you start out with know yourself and then trying to. And not trying to change your spouse. I think chapter two is sometimes you want to start with in lines and argument is let me just fix my spouse.

Right.

Wouldn't that be great? Just come on. Isn't that what we all want to do?

We want to fix our spouse, we want to fix our children, we want to fix our co workers, we want to fix our boss, we want to fix our neighbor, we want to fix our church people. These are just what we want to do. If they would just shape up, we would be fine, right?

Exactly.

But pretty soon we all learn that. Who's the only person that I can change? Guess it's me. Right?

But that's a full time job really because we're growing and changing hopefully throughout our lives.

But you know, if we spend time and I say solitude, 15 minutes at least every day, just sit in the quiet with yourself and figure out who you are and what you need. What you need. It's amazing how many things that we do need. We could do for ourselves. We're quick to look at other people.

If you would just do this and that, everything would be fine for me. There's a lot we can do for ourselves. And I say figure that out first.

Then if there's other people that you need their input, their cooperation, fine. Now set up a time to talk to them. And you know, when you're talking to them, it makes a difference how you talk to them too.

I've discovered that it's helpful in life to have habits. Are there some foundational habits that keep a marriage strong over time?

You betcha. That's what you discovered. And you are right. Habits are those things that are built into our routine. We just do them. We don't even think about them.

They're so ingrained in us. And some of them are healthy and then some of them are not so healthy. And that's what it is really wise.

If you take some time and think about what things are really contributing to my well being and our relationship and enhance the ones that are and think about changing the ones that aren't. And you know, habits, they start first thing in the morning. Everybody's got habits that they do.

And some people, you know, you'll hear people say first thing they do to each other in the morning is grunt. Yeah, I know. Don't talk to me. I haven't had my coffee yet.

Right.

And I'm saying, well, that's a habit. But you know what? Isn't that habit? You can change. You can still have your coffee, but you could make a decision not to grunt.

You could make a decision to say, good morning, hon. Maybe I didn't sleep so well last night, so I'm a little grumpy this morning. But anyway, I love you and I hope you have a good day.

I'm off to get my coffee and then come back. The tone is different. Yeah, the tone is different. And that's what people don't realize.

Doesn't take much to tweak some of the habits that you have to turn them into more positive ones.

I know as a, as a couple, we have six kids and we've been blessed by that.

You are busy.

We are busy.

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Congratulations.

Thank you. I'm curious, Philip, for couples who have family, especially have kids, how do you help them?

Teach them to stay connected when life feels overwhelming.

Yep. Really important. And I think parents, couples first of all need to be kind to themselves.

Stop being critical of yourself because you're not the perfect spouse, the perfect parent. Be kind to yourself and look at all the things that you are juggling and what you are doing well.

And children take an awful lot of time and energy and resources, so there's just no denying that a lot of the energy during the day is going to be put to the children. But there's also a thing called what we call in our house.

My husband was born in Ireland on St Patrick's Day, so we're tea drinkers, so we have tea time every day. That turned out to be a habit that has been exceedingly beneficial in our marriage. And what that represents, Keith, is 20 minutes of alone time.

If you have kids, wait till they're either out or in bed, and then you sit down. When you don't have them, it's easy. Sit down after work and have your 20 minutes. And this is what I call your time of connecting.

You sit down, and you'll look at each other eye to eye. How are you? How was your day? The good and the bad. And listen. Listen to your spouse. If you could have one wish, honey, what would it be? Listen.

Do you know your spouse's dream? Ask them. I'll bet they have them buried underneath all that rubble of household chores and raising children. They have some pipe dreams.

Do you know what they are? Are you able to foster them in little ways that can make such a difference? I always wanted to write a book.

I told my husband that I were married, I wanted to write a book. He said, oh, Susan, why would you say that tonight on our wedding night, you're gonna write a book about marriage?

I said, it's just because I'm so looking forward to it and everything. But I never could write that book. With four kids and working, I just couldn't do it.

But I did take a writing course once in a while, and he bought me a journal. And so he encouraged that dream, even though I didn't have any time to do it until we were older and I got retired and. And the kids were grown.

And then I could put my effort into it. So my point in sharing that is, is that every one of us have little dreams in us.

Keep those alive and foster them, even in little ways, just to keep that alive.

And those are the things, I think the time that you give to each other, and it's a good model for your children to say, yep, we'll be helping you with your homework, you know, in 20 minutes, but mom and I need to sit down right now and have our special time. Oh, really? What's that? Well, that's the Time where we just need to connect with each other.

You're modeling a wonderful thing for your kids when you do that. Emergencies are different. You have to take care of them. But most things aren't emergencies, right?

Exactly. One of the things I know when I was counseling a lot of marriage couples in marriage counseling was we always talked about healthy communication.

What does that look like, especially for couples when they're in the middle of stress?

If you're really in the middle of stress and things are escalating, you want to take a little break and cool down. And this is something you have to learn. I mean, I don't like to argue. So if we were going after something, I wanted to hang with it till it was done.

And he'd say, no, I don't want to talk right now. And it took me a while to realize that is a smart thing to do, as long as you get back to it.

So if tempers are running high, best you not let them escalate and say things that you will regret later. Take a breather, go off by yourselves. But then at some point make sure that you do reconnect and address those things.

And when you do talk about things in terms of the first person, the I, not the you, if you get into you and finger pointing, conversation and communication doesn't go so well.

But if you can use the I things and how I felt when this was happening and you know, just to use an example of, I was really angry last night when you didn't call me and you were late coming home. You know, I expected you around 5:30 when you usually come home and I had dinner ready and I didn't hear from you.

And then I start to worry, of course, because I don't know what's happened and I couldn't reach you, but you didn't call me. And so I felt really disrespected by that.

And what I'd like to happen is next time, I understand the commute's long, you get a meeting that runs late. That's okay. Just if next time you could give me a call and give me a heads up, then I don't worry and I can hold dinner. Oh, it's no problem.

And so you can see that the difference in a tone there that you're talking about you and how you felt and about what happened and what you'd like to see happen next time, that gives a lot of hope to a relationship that doesn't have to occur again and again and again. That next time just give me a call. Next time's a great little phrase.

And one of the things I always told couples was be careful of the you always or you never comments.

Oh, thank you, thank you. Just like next time is a great phrase. Two other words you want to drop are never and always.

You know, you could greet that, that, that coming home spouse with, you know, and you never call me and you're never on time, you're always late for dinner, I have it ready, and you're never here.

Those are terribly accusing, labeling titles that almost give permission to your spouse to continue to be late and not call because you've just told them. That's what they always do anyway.

Right. I always tell a couple of those were, those were fighting words, if you.

Want to use they are fighting words. You always and never absolutely erase those from your vocabulary. True, true.

Speaking of the role of couples and how they get along, I think forgiveness is a huge part of this. So as you talk, as you work with couples, what role does forgiveness play in long term relationships?

Forgiveness is so important because if you don't forgive, you really are pretending and, and that you're not still upset about something and moving on. You, you have to be. And you know, we don't have magic minds. All of us aren't going to forget the injustices.

But you can make a conscious effort to say, okay, talk about it. And you know, I forgive that. And the true forgiveness happens too.

When a partner's willing to actually, you know, change their, some of their behavior that they know upset you or hurt you, then it's much easier to forgive because it's not always happening over and over and over again. I had this thing, another metaphor. My dance is a metaphor. This is another metaphor. I think kind of ties in with what you're asking Keith.

And it's the metaphorical backpack that I talk about that we all wear. Okay. And in that backpack, we shove all the little things that happen to us during the day. Yeah, some of them can be positive. That's great.

But I'm afraid a lot of them are the frustrations, the annoyances, the irritations that happen. And we're in a hurry, we're doing something with the kids, we got to get to work.

We can't deal with them right now, but they get into that backpack and you know what?

By the end of the day, if that backpack isn't unpacked and dealt with in that, addressed in that 20 minute time I'm talking about, when you sit down with each other, what happens is those stay in there and guess what tomorrow happens again and more irritations and frustrations and it gets shoved in there, packed down and then another day. Days have a ways of turning into weeks and months and in some cases years.

And this is one of the things I think that's responsible for long term divorces is we've let a lot of things that weren't huge to begin with, but they have piled up and they've piled up and we have not addressed them and now they just are ready to explode.

Wow. Well, I can't let you get out of here without asking my favorite question that everybody has to answer before they get off the show.

And that is, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

It's probably something that I've read. If this is the reality, what's the plan? Oh, I just, I just loved that because reality sometimes is not fun.

A problem, an issue you're dealing with, life. Reality isn't always fun. What's my plan? Okay, Am I going to just get angry about it? Am I going to pretend it's not bothering me? No.

What is the reality now? What's my plan? How can I address this and deal with it?

And I think that that leads for a lot of happier, healthy, thriving times in your marriage because you're not in denial, but you're also looking towards the positive. And you know, I, as I know you do have a lot of faith and there's so many things that we can solve ourselves and we do as well as we can.

And then you just look to your higher power, my God, and say, okay, this is reality. This kind of sucks right now. I don't like it. I'm doing the best I can here.

If there's something else that I'm supposed to be doing, please show me the way. I'll do anything, read anything, talk to anybody. I have to. But I need some direction here.

And so I guess I think that's probably the piece of advice that I've heard that has, has really helped. And even in funny things, you know, we're talking about relationships today.

But that little staying, you know, has helped me in stupid little things like locking the keys in a running car, you know?

Yes.

Yeah, you can stand and, and just be, berate yourself, you know, how can I be so stupid? And that's two things I do want to mention. They're in self talk. Okay? We all talk to ourselves every day.

Some of us talk out loud, but we all talk mentally to ourselves. Oh my God, I can't believe you did that. That was so stupid. You know, you wouldn't hang around with people that talk to you that way.

So don't yourself that way and be kinder. And that's. I was saying that earlier. Be kinder to yourself. Be kinder to your spouse.

Forgive yourselves of, of the little injustices and mistakes that we all make. Um, and take time for yourself. We are in a real self care deprived society. We take care of everybody else and we don't take care of ourselves.

And the fact is that we're like a well and if we don't replenish that well, we're pretty soon we're going to get just burned out. And that's what you want to avoid. You want the energy for your marriage, for your children, for your job. So you got to take care of yourself.

That's very insightful. So now we're going to have some fun. We've had some, some weighty discussion, but here's some fun quick questions for you.

Okay.

Some lightning round stuff. One daily habit that strengthens a marriage.

That sitting down together for 20 minutes undisturbed, undistracted, alone, no children, no cell phones, no nothing. Just you and me.

Best marriage advice in one sentence.

Respect your spouse. It's just the most important thing. Compliment. I'm doing more, but respect and compliment your spouse.

They will live up to the expectations that you have of them.

That's good. Coffee date or long walk together?

Which one?

Yes, which one?

Oh, well, either could be do it. But a long walk is getting out in nature and the research on nature is huge.

And so I would go for the walk because you're getting outside, you're getting out of your house, you're in nature and, and there's a whole lot of energy that happens with that one word.

That describes a thriving relationship.

Respect. And you know, this is hard because friendship. I didn't talk about friendship. I mean, I think that's just really critical too. Really critical.

One word that describes this season of your life.

Oh, rewarding.

No, I love that.

Yeah.

I love to ask my guests this question too. What do you want your legacy to be?

I would love my legacy to be that people read my books and implement what's in them. That's what I want. I don't care about the buying part, how many I sell.

I'd love to sell 10 million because I really want people to use them, not put it on the shelf. There's a lot went into my books.

I went to grad school at 70, I wrote the book and I just have for the last 12 years, I have read and listened to everything I possibly can, met people. This is not a book about Susan's advice, okay?

This is a book based on research and, yes, personal anecdotes, you know, mistakes, but things that I have learned and other people. You're busy. You don't have time to dig into all this stuff. I've had that luxury in the last 10 years, and I have loved it.

And that's why it's been a rewarding time for me. And so my legacy is, think about marriage. Not everybody is meant to be married. Not everybody is meant to have children. That's perfectly fine.

It's just if you do make those decisions, and I think they're vocations, and if you choose that vocation of marriage and the vocation of parenthood, take it on with true commitment. Really delve into it, learn about it. And that's what my books, my blogs, and I hope people get on my website and sign up for my blog.

Listen to podcasts like yours, really educate yourself. Look at this thing as the vocations that they really are. This isn't just something like, oh, I got married.

No,.

It's a vocation. It's a commitment.

But that's what makes it thrive, is when you really find out about, yeah, how can we make this better and keep this better and really enjoy. Yes, you're going to have your hard times, but, you know, you should have some fun in there. Definitely, definitely have some fun.

So, Susan, where can people find you? Mention your blogs, where can they find you on social media, your books and all the information about you?

My website is beyond the first dance dot com. They can contact me in an email with susan beyond the first dance dot com.

And I am on LinkedIn and I am on Facebook, primarily a little bit on Instagram, but primarily on those two. And I can send you those sites if you need that.

That'd be great. Also spell your last name for those who are listening.

M C, capital K, E O W N. It ends in own. And you're right, it's a little tricky. Keith.

Yes.

M C, capital K, E O W N. Susan and I would love to hear from you. I love people that, that, you know, answer and respond to emails and podcasts and everything. It's great to hear what things are important to you.

That's how I learn from other people. It's great.

Well, Susan, thank you much for this amazing conversation filled with wisdom, encouragement, and hope. If you're listening today and you want to strengthen your marriage grow in your relationships and simply take the next step toward thriving together.

I encourage you to pick up Susan's book, Beyond the Tango and explore her work and speaking opportunities. The links will be in the show notes below and everybody listening. Strong marriages don't happen by accident.

They're built over time through grace, perseverance, and intentional love.

The bridge between where your relationship is today and where it could be tomorrow is built with one choice, one conversation, and one act of love at a time. Susan, thanks so much for being a blessing on the podcast.

Thank you Amy. This was really fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it and your provocative questions. It was great.

Thank you. Susan.