The Full Life Crew: Foundation of a Successful Marriage

The real question is this, are we living a full life? Are we making the right decisions when it comes to children, marriage, work, faith, and so many more issues we deal with daily? How can we know with confidence we are living a full life? Welcome to the Full Life Crew Podcast. We are your host and life coaches, Jareth and Deborah Navarro. We will help you find the confidence in those critical areas of your life. Our goal is to help you bring to your family the support, structure, and providence we all desire so we can live the life we want to live, a complete life, a joyful life. We are so glad you're here. Now let's get started. Hey, and thanks for tuning into the podcast. I'm Jareth. And I'm Deborah. And we are the Full Life Crew, well, at least some of the Full Life Crew. If you don't know who we are, we are the Full Life Crew and we have a YouTube channel, Facebook page, a website, and what else do we have? You name it, Facebook, Instagram, you can find us almost anywhere. Yeah. So what we are is we are a social media marketing company. And what we do is we help people promote their businesses and other things. At the same time, we are social influencers, so we're providing good quality content that advertisers can put their brand or products on. So at any point in time, you can go to thefulllifecrew.com and check out our different things. You can actually sponsor one of these podcasts if you'd like to. Speaking of blogs, each one of these blogs in this series, this is going to be our series on marriage. It's going to be a, just a, what, how would you say it? It would be a, just a grazing. A grazing? Yeah, just a... Like a light... A light... Dusting? Yeah. On the surface. On the surface, yes. This is not deep, thoughtful things. On the surface marriage advice. Yeah. And based on your response and viewership, we can go dive into these topics a little deeper. Each one of these podcasts are also in conjunction with a blog post. So if you hear something you like and you want to dive a little bit more, there's a blog post at thefulllifecrew.com forward slash blog. And in there you can find the marriage tab and all these will be under the marriage tab. So, and we're looking to do at least 10 of them. We did 10 with our series on children. Those were very interesting. We enjoyed doing those. You could find out a little bit how we raise our kids and kind of see what we're like. Yeah, and tips and tricks and, you know, all of our kids are straight A students. They all play multiple sports. They're all... They're all very different. Personalities are different. All different. They're all highly functioning kids, children. They're all happy children. And there's, there's no, there's really no secrets to it, but there are certain things that make all that happen and make it possible. And in our, in our, our series on children, raising children, we covered a lot of those things. There was, there's, I think we did 10 of them. There's 10 of them. 10 of them. They're all on different topics. And we do talk a little bit about different ways and tips that we do with our kids. And we've found them very successful. And if you're not familiar with us and you'd like to learn more about us, we also, we're not, you know, these podcasts are like the serious side of what the Full Life Crew is. If you're looking for something more fun and entertaining, you can either check out our YouTube channel. It's, just go to YouTube and type in the Full Life Crew. You can keep up to date. We post daily on Facebook. We do a lot of funny stuff and fun stuff, try to, we try, I mean, like any family, it's not always serious and it's not always, it's not always laugh and fun. So it's, our brand is very diverse in the content we produce. So we produce some serious stuff. We produce some funny and fun stuff. And we just try to have fun with it. Yeah. And then we produce educational things. So, you know, we're, we're trying to create content that can appeal to, you know, several types of audience members. We have young kids that listen and watch our, our programs and we have older people that watch our programs. Yeah. So just check us out. But today we're going to get started on marriage advice. Marriage. Is it advice or just, remember all these things that we talk about, this is what's worked for us. We've been married for how many years now? Oh, that's a good question. We're going on 23 years. Yes. We've been married 22 years in May. We've had nine children. We have eight with us. We lost one. We run and operate our own business, including all our digital things, which is what you're listening to right now. We work together on a daily basis. We feel pretty confident that if we share these things with you, that you would be able to find some value in them. And that's our goal today. We want to help you find some value in this podcast and it's the foundation of a successful marriage. Foundation. That is the part that holds you up on a house. You have a foundation of the house, which holds everything up above it. And so this is kind of the groundwork for a marriage. Yeah. Like I have friends that are in construction and if they're going to build a big building, the first thing they have to do, they have to have a big foundation and it has to be deep. You know, it can't be a superficial foundation. Yeah. If you start too shallow or too light, you're going to crumble. So you have to start off with a very well-supported foundation of yourself and your spouse. I think it kind of reminds me of that Bible passage where, you know, it says, don't build your house on sand. You know. You'll wash away. So the foundation of a successful marriage. And you know, when it comes to marriage, it is usually one of the most important commitments that two people make in their lifetime. It's a partnership that requires hard work, dedication and understanding. But what is the foundation of a successful marriage? It's basically just a few basic things. Number one would be selflessness. Number two would be God. And number three would be children. Now you notice that all three of those things had nothing to do with yourself. And that is the, at the core of it, that's what it is. If you're not a giving person, if you're not a caring person, if you only like to receive, you're probably not right for marriage. Yeah. If you're like, okay, I'm going to get married, so I have a husband and I have kids and I'm going to have this and I'm going to, if you're finding you're saying, I, I, I, then that is not the right way to start a marriage. You need to think about your future husband or wife and you have to think more of them than of yourself. Yeah. Marriage at its core is, is all about compromise, but it's not compromise in the way that maybe we use the term correctly. It's more about a shared goal. Like a lot of people have played sports before. So if you've ever played on a team and the team is like all cylinders are firing well, and then all of a sudden one person doesn't want to be on the team anymore, you know, then the engine, the team, it starts to miss, it starts to malfunction. And in a marriage, both people have to be firing in unison. They both have to be looking outward to an external goal. That's the secret. That's the key. When one of the teammates, when either the husband or the wife start looking inward in and start, when they look inward, they automatically almost look outward and all of these issues that they have that are on the inside, they start putting them on the other person. Yes, I agree with that. There's no secret that with our, our relationship, we are a, you know, a faith based family. We believe in God and I, I, I, um, I feel like our relationship has been stronger because of our faith in God. I feel that there is times that if we didn't have God, we would struggle a whole lot more. I think, I think the best way to describe this whole marriage foundation is to tell you a story and this is a story about the purple clothes basket. That's funny because I don't even remember the purple, well, we still have the purple clothes basket, but I don't remember this, like exactly what happened with it. And the day you throw the purple clothes basket away will probably be the day our marriage actually ends. Well then I better start duct taping that thing. So I'm going to write a book one day called The Purple Clothes Basket. But I think it's important that, that I tell this story because this story was a very prominent moment in my life. You're going to have to refresh me because you remember this story vividly so much and I don't actually remember that story. Like I don't remember it happening. Well, before I jump into the story though, we need to thank our sponsor. 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When me and Debra first got married, we were in our early 20s. And I was, I was, I had not graduated college, so I was working on my college degree. Debra had graduated college. She was a registered nurse. She was working nights. I was working pretty much all day. We hardly ever saw each other. You know, there was times we'd go like passing and coming and going. And also, also into our first year, into our second year of marriage, we had, we had our first child. So there were so many factors that were going on. And me, me, me being probably the biggest problem in the relationship, you know, because I can't control Debra. I can only control me. So I, if I was going to change things for the better or for the worse, it was going to be something that I was going to have to do. And so here, here, here was our situation. So I was working a ton, like 60 hours a week, plus going to school. She was working quite a bit and also taking care of a baby and trying to take care of the house. We were, you know, struggling in the beginning, you know, financially, emotionally, spiritually, everything was a struggle. It was hard. We were young and freshly married and had a brand new baby. And not a clue. No clue. Just going through life, you know, like just, just messing it all up. And now we dated for seven years prior to getting married, though. We did. So it's not like we didn't know who we were. I didn't. I knew her and she knew me. But we had never lived together. We had never had to rely on each other for bills and food and it was brand new. That was new. That was a stress in our life. So the story goes like this. So to sum it up, it's it's it's an interesting story. But over the first four or five years of our marriage, it was it was it felt like all we did was was work. And we came from dating and we hung out all the time, but, you know, you know, we were living on somebody else's dime. We were in we were in high school and college and, you know, we were living on on other people's money most of the time and we didn't have hardly any responsibilities. But all of a sudden, when there's a house note and there's a gas bill and a water bill and there's there's a child, all these things change. And it's no more like, hey, we're just hanging out, you know, go watch a movie, go get some food. Now it's like, hey, we got to we have a goal. We have a mission. We got to get done. And I, I, I had felt like in the beginning that she wasn't doing her part, like I would come home after working. So my schedule looked like this. I would get up at about six, six thirty in the morning. I would get dressed and I would go to college. Yeah. I would go to college. I'd wear my work clothes. I sold cars. I'd wear my work clothes to college. I'd leave college around 11 or noon. And then I would go work till eight, nine o'clock at night. Then I had we had also opened a small business on the side and and then I was working that into the night. So there was one point where I was only sleeping like maybe three to four hours a day. Yeah. Because then you'd have to study on top of it. Yes. I was under a lot of pressure to to graduate college. So with that being said, there was a there was a lot of things and, you know, the environment I was that I was raised in was, you know, you just get it done. I was fixing to say, get it done. And you weren't raised in that. No. How were you raised? Like you. I mean, you went to work and you come home and you did your stuff, but you didn't like you didn't work 24 hours a day. Like that was just ridiculous. I mean, nobody works 24 hours a day and keeps their sanity. No. And apparently I didn't. So here's what happened. So we we always had most of our fights after church on Sunday. And you may be thinking, oh, we do, too. And we're going to talk about that in a later podcast. There's a reason for that. And we we we were blessed enough to get the answer to that. So the story happens like this. So we we go to church and we come home and after church, the house is a wreck and there's no food. There's no food cooked. There's no food in the pantry. There's dirty clothes everywhere. The bed's not made. The house is dirty. It's just and and I felt like, hey, my wife should be cleaning my house, cooking my food and doing all these things. Right. That's how most men think. I mean, I guess, but it was my it's kind of, you know, at the beginning, that should have been my job to take care of you. Yeah. OK. So, you know, maybe you assume that role. Right. Yeah. And I had failed that role as what I thought should a wife had done. But I don't think you failed. No. I'm looking back. No. Yeah. So. So the story goes down like this. So we come home from church and the house is a wreck. And something just set me off. And in that moment, I told now we've been married probably four or five years. Yeah. I don't remember how long. And in that moment, I went through like this very destructive phase of belittling my wife, telling her that she wasn't good enough. I told her many hurtful things. And basically what I proceeded to do was to show her. Because I remember this. I said, you know what? I'll show you. And what I did was I started cleaning the whole house. Looking back on it, I think she was sitting there laughing like, hey, now I got him cleaning the house, too. See, I have blocked all that out because I don't remember how it all went down. So I start cleaning the house, you know, and the whole time I'm cleaning the house, she's laying there on the couch. She's obviously crying because I was so rude and so disrespectful and so mean. And so she's laying there on the couch, emotionally compromised and broken hearted, like, you know, like, why are you being so mean? And I'm vacuuming and I'm doing the dishes and I'm doing the laundry and I'm just and every time I pass her, it wasn't a very big house. So, you know, you take eight steps, you're going to pass each other. So every time I pass her, I would be like, see, I can do the dishes, do this. And it was all about me. Like, look what I can do. And you're not good enough and blah, blah, blah. And anyway, so that that's the scene. And it was very true. It was very traumatic for her. So traumatic that she tells me to this day, I don't really remember this, which is I don't. It's almost like a gift that she doesn't remember. But here's the other side. I can't forget it. I can't forget. And here's what happened. So here's the point of this story. So I'm on my last load of laundry. Deborah's laying on the couch and just boohooing, like, get me out of this. This is insane. I didn't sign up for this. And I'm still raging with my ego. I go into the living room and I remember we had that mauve pink 80s carpet. Oh, gosh, yes, it was pink. That house was pink. And we had a brown couch. Yes. So like, it was total clash. Mm hmm. We were poor. We were broke. We were so poor. So I walked in there. I walked into the I walked into the living room and she's laying there and I had this last load of clothes that I just took out the dryer and they were in the purple clothes basket. I'm going to make sure I post a picture. We're going to take a picture of this purple. And if you if you're listening to this and you're like, I want to hear more, you know, we're going to post a picture. So, you know, we're not messing with you. And this is the real deal. So I took that purple clothes basket and I slammed it on the ground. And when it hit the ground, I could have swore that Deb says she doesn't remember any of this. I don't. But I could have swore lightning struck the house like you've ever been in that situation where there's a bad thunderstorm come through and lightning either strike your house or strike right in the yard. And it's like so loud. I could have swore that lightning struck that house. It's probably this the clothes basket hitting the ground. The clothes basket did hit the ground, hit the ground. I thought the whole they felt like it felt like to me like there was this loud bang and the house shook. Right. I don't remember like the clothes basket did crack and it's still cracked to this day. We're going to put a picture. The handle's gone. Oh, the handle finally broke off. I think so. I don't remember. Like, yeah, it's it's like as soon as we're done with this, we're going to take a picture and we're going to post this one and put the picture. That'll be the the main picture. So you have to go to full life crew dot com forward slash blog and go to the marriage tab to find this blog. But so I throw the basket down. It hits the ground. It feels like the house explodes and then and then I hear a voice and the voice was not nice. It didn't. It wasn't like a nice voice. It was like a very stern voice. OK. And the voice I heard in my head and maybe I'm just crazy. OK. But this has changed our relationship. This one moment. You tell me that. Yes. Because it changed me. You know. Yeah. I went from looking at you and blaming you for everything to looking more inward. And then how can I be more? How can I help you? How can I do it for you? And this is what the voice said. OK. It said these exact words, how dare you broke the basket? No. How dare you? It said it twice. OK. You asked this woman to share your life, not be your slave. That was the lightning coming down. I don't know what it was. I'm assuming it was a divine inspiration. Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe I had a psycho psychological break. I don't know. I'm assuming it was God or guardian angel or whatever. I don't know. But the message was delivered. And the basket is still here. The basket is broken. That basket should have been gone a long time ago. And at that moment, I left that room. I think I left the house because I was. I don't remember. I was changed forever. I probably had to work that night. But I left and I was distraught. And I had to rethink this whole process of what the heck was I doing? Yeah. And that's when I started to work more on me and be more supportive of you and start turning my focus toward what I like to call the marriage triangle where you have the spouse at the bottom left side, the other spouse at the bottom right side, and you have God at the top of the pyramid. So it's like a pyramid or a triangle. Right. Kind of like on the back of the dollar bill, you know, you got the all-seeing eye. You got to just imagine like, you know, the spouse and the other spouse on each bottom corner. So your selfishness and your faith is two of your main foundations. Yes. In marriage. Yes. We've, I, so we've been, we're going on our 23rd year. Yes. To this day, I'll leave the house and I'll call you just to talk to you. We don't fight a whole lot. I mean, our kids are fantastic. So I would say that we have, we are successful at this and those are the core principles that we've, we've used through this whole process. And then we have been blessed with wonderful children. Yes. And the children help guide the focus. Yes. They, they definitely help with learning that it's not all about you. There are other people involved. So you give, you give a whole lot more of yourself to others, especially your spouse, because you need it when you have kids. You need their support. You need them to help you through the day. You need their emotional, everything from them because children's a big deal. And you know, society is all about anti-children. They're like, you know, go get, you know, abortion should be a right. They should be paid for by the government. You know, they like people look down on us because we have a large family. We've been, you know, judged, persecuted. We've had rude comments people made because we have a large family. Like people just aren't into big families and kids. It's like, it's like the opposite. And when you have a large family, I think one of the reasons me and Deborah are a good team is because you need a good foundation. There's a lot more of them than us. Yes, there is. So if you have, if your foundation is set when you get married, especially with being selfless as far as not wanting it all for yourself, but for your, for your spouse as well, and you have a good, and you have a good moral foundation, especially in your faith, that will definitely lead into being successful in your marriage when children come along. Yeah. Children, children change the dynamic. So yeah, I mean, just to, just to recap, so yeah, just, I mean, just to recap, marriage requires like, it's hard work, but both partners need to remain focused on selflessness, faith, and when you have children, be focused on the children. That doesn't mean that you just put your marriage on the back burner. That means, and when I, when I say focus on the children, not so much like all your time and effort, but that your children are going in the right direction. And that doesn't require a whole lot of time. No, no, no. And then if they see you and your spouse working together as a team, that helps them in their, their goal and path in life. Yeah. And that was totally off the subject. I think, I think the last thing I would say is probably that every couple is unique and, you know, finding something that works for them is, is, is key. But those three basic things that we talked about, selflessness, having core faith, and then being focused on your role, you know, what is marriage? Marriage is when two people come together to, to make a family, yeah, little copies of themselves and, and carry on humanity. People think about like, I got kids. Well, you know, you are keeping humanity going, yeah. I mean, imagine if everybody on the planet, everybody that was alive right now that they could not have a child, you know, in a matter of one more generation, humanity would cease to exist. Yeah. Well, we hope you picked up something good and educational in this process and maybe learn something from us. If you enjoyed what you heard today and you'd like to hear more, please listen to our other podcast. Yeah. The next one is going to be the benefits of being mentally attracted to your partner before marriage. Mentally attracted or physically? Mentally. I was definitely mentally into you. Mentally. That's a good one. Well, while you're out there doing your best, trying to live your best life, remember life's a journey. Enjoy the ride. Did you enjoy the podcast? Would you like to sponsor a podcast? If you're looking to advertise your brand product or message, our platforms are the best place to do it. We reach a large and engaging audience and we can help you get your message out there. If you want to learn more about how you can advertise with us, visit us at thefulllifecrew.com forward slash shop. So thank you once again for listening and tuning into our podcast. And just remember while you're out there trying to live your absolute best full life, life's a journey. Enjoy the ride.