Kalenne Marie Krohn here with me and today we're going to be talking about

our five sacred rules of communication in marriage.

We are celebrating 17 years of marriage

15 and a half years of marriage and in that period of time we have

definitely learned some very fascinating things about the way the two of us

communicate and the more we've been out in the world, we meet couples and do our

work with a lot of people we find that there's a lot of people that have been

going through some very similar challenges on learning how to get on the

same page with communication style. So today we're going to be sharing our five

rules for us these are five sacred rules of communication in our marriage and

we're sharing them with you in a space of love and hope that they will help

help you on your journey. Alright the first rule is say yes. Say yes to your

spouse. Say yes when your spouse wants something say yes when your spouse asks

for something. If it's important to them say yes. I mean do you remember when you

guys were first dating each other? and you were in such a good habit of saying

yes? And then let's just be honest, most of us go through a pattern that eyes

half-open get married open her eyes the rest of the way. And then after it

doesn't take many months of marriage before you start realizing that your

spouse has a lot of flaws right? And you're starting to see the things that

you don't like and all the sudden it's like, well I saw everything I loved that

I got married and now it all went downhill from here

and what that means is that when we're in love with each other and seeing

everything we love, we'd love to say yes but the moment we start bickering and

fighting or start noticing the flaws yes is turn into no's. And it could be

anything from you know, honey I really want a guys night can I go out with the

guys tonight? And you know maybe I've had a long day with the kids or long didn't

work and I'm like, oh I just want you to be with me I don't want you to do that

but you know maybe on another night I asked to go out with my girlfriends and

I want him to say yes to me, you know? It's a give-and-take of supporting

each other when we ask everything. You know it's also about developing an

unconditional love. You know when when we're saying no we're often stepping

into a space of conditionality. It's like unconditional with you. I love you when, I

love you if, I'll say yes if, but these are my terms. And now it turns into a

scorekeeping game. It turns into trade and I'm just inviting you with this

first rule of saying yes to let go. Go back to the beginning, go out

of your way, don't keep score. Say yes as much as you possibly can that's why you

married this amazing divine human being was to do everything that you could for

their happiness. This goes to number two, advocate for your spouse. And that

means to me is I want what you want because you want it. Did you get that

right? There's a gold nugget that just got dropped on you right there. I want

what you want because you want it and I want to if you want and I want to amend

it and even add to it this idea that says, especially if I don't want it I

want what you want because you want it especially if I don't want it. That's

where you show up as the hero. And you know what we need in marriages today? We

need spouses that can pull off hero status. I'm gonna demonstrate right now. I

know we're leaving for Africa in a couple of days between now and then. What

do you want? how can I serve you? like, like, how can I help you get everything

done that you need to get done? Well you could put the kids to bed tonight so

I can work on my project. I want that I want that so desperately. Yay!

okay advocating for your spouse is really really fun. You did that for me a

couple months ago for our Spring Break. You know, now Kris especially loves to

travel abroad. I love to travel abroad and for spring break I wanted to take

the kids on a desert road trip. Does that sound exciting?

It did to me. I wanted to go see the Grand Canyon, I wanted to go see Bryce, I

wanted to go see Moab. And Kris was just like rolling his eyes at me of oh, that

sounds so unexcited. Sounds so domestic. Domestic and I'm like these were the

most beautiful places in our whole country and we're gonna go see our kids

have never seen the Grand Canyon. You've never seen the Grand Canyon, So I invited

him. I said, would you take the kids on this road trip with me for a whole week?

and would you choose all in? would you choose all in and be passionate about it

and loved every minute of it and help me with the kids and just go play and have

an outdoor adventure? And

I said yes and I chose in. he said and he ended up

wanting what I wanted or choosing to want what I wanted and we have the most

magical trip and took the most amazing spectacular pictures, went on the most

the coolest hikes. Saw the most amazing formations and we had a blast. You know,

it's interesting that we live in a world today where there's a lot of selfishness

that's one of the rules that really reigns supreme

and yet learning how to know know the balance of how to honor yourself and how

to take a stand for what's important to you, even if at times honoring

yourself means going against your spouse's wishes, there there may be those

moments in life but for the most part the moments really get to be constructed

from this selfless giving that says I love you and I promise to do everything

and anything for you. And for me that means, let's be each other's heroes. Kalenn

shows up as my hero all the time. And there's things that she may not want to

do but if they're important to me, then she makes them important to her as she

chooses into an energy that isn't filled with a begrudgingness it's filled with,

all right I'm here, I'm gonna play. Yhis is important to you so this is important

to me. Advocate for your spouse. Now number

three is maintain boundaries and what that means is allow husbands problems to

be separate from wife's problems. And what that means to me is, you know if

Chris comes home from work and has had a hard day or things have happened and

he's got like a negative energy coming from him. Which almost never happened. It

almost never happens now. It used to, it means that I don't get swept up in that

negative emotion and negative energy because, have you ever noticed if

someone's in a bad mood like if mom's in a bad mood then the kids all of a sudden

are in a bad mood because they're, they feed off that negative energy. And you

know I can show up in a in a neutral space and say, hey babe looks like you

had a hard day tell me about it. And he can tell me about it and I don't have

to take on that negative energy myself. I can stand there and be a support

to him and help him work through it. A lot of us become very empathic when when

there's someone that we love in our air space. If they're having a good day we'll

allow that to build us up and if they're having a hard day we'll actually use

that as a reason to build ourselves down. But I want to ask you this question, do

you really want your energy to be directed by

other people? Do you want the emotions of other people to determine your state

of happiness or sadness? that's an emotional incompetency that most of us

bear in this world until we wake up to this consciousness that says, you know

what? I may be married to you and you may be the love of my life

but right now you have a problem and here's the rule, the person with the

problem is the person with the problem. And the person with the problem is also

the person with the solution. so if Kalenn is having a day or if I'm

having a day, part of this rule of maintaining boundaries says alright I

love you you're having a problem and you're even maybe directing that

projecting that problem on me. Maybe you're so upset about what's going on

that you're now projecting that anger towards me and guess what? That's okay. I

can hold space for that. that's your problem. Or if I have a problem, that's my

problem. And what it means is that we can actually help build each other up

way faster because we're not buying each other's story of garbage. We're actually

able to hold space for that individual and show up and love because I want to

ask you this, when you got married did you agree to love them when it was

convenient? or didn't we really make the commitment to love them especially at

their hardest moments? It's the times of crisis when we need each other the most

and we're not going to be able to rush to each other's aid if we're too busy

feeding off of each other's negative energy and tearing each other down as a

downward spiral. You want to create an upward spiral then set a boundary in

place that says, hey you've got a problem how can I help? how can I serve? In other

words, it doesn't have to become my problem. I love what you said about

emotional intelligence and if you are allowing someone else to make you feel

bad or make you sad or make you upset, you're giving your agency away. That's what it is.

On Facebook I happen to be scrolling and I saw a post and someone said, well today's

tomorrow is going to be an awful day. Oh well that's a strong prophecy that you

are gonna sell fulfill. Well if you believe that probably but why would you

do that? why would you say that? why would you call that into the universe that

it's going to be a horrible day. Yeah so that's why this maintaining

boundaries number 3 goes into number 4 which is mastering neutrality. And here's

what neutrality means, it means that I can consciously choose

to remain neutral no matter how triggered your spouse might be. And it's

not even just about marriage it might be a boss it might be a co-worker it might

be a friend. You know let's be honest, we live with people you know eight

billion people on this planet and we get triggered or on a regular basis. We have

our issues and we have our problems and then when we have a problem here's what

most of us will do, some of us will internalize and say I'm bad. Most of us

will project onto others and say you're bad. And so we live in a world where

people are gonna vomit energetically on us. They're nasty yucky pastiches yuck

and if you're the master of neutrality, then you can choose to be perfectly

happy whether someone is happy, sad, having the best moment of their life, a

peak moment or they're having one of the worst day of their life. Either way, that

neutrality says I love you and I can hold space for you and when I maintain

the space of neutrality I can serve you. I can show up. I can help because I'm not

being affected by choice of that negative energy around me. Now you know

in like Star Trek where where they go shields up and like they have this force

field around them? Okay that's what I think of when it's maybe someone

negative coming into your space oh shields up! And I just imagine this like bubble

of protection around me. it's real you can touch it and feel it

will zap you. But it's sorry you can't you can't penetrate this force field because

this is my special protection area and I I don't allow that into me, into my body,

into my airspace. I might be getting a little grouchy, I might be

having a moment and Kalenn is so good at coming up to me and and she got here by

choice. You know it wasn't always this way but she'll come up to me I'll she'd

give me a hug. she'll connect with me, she'll look right in my eyes, and she'll

ask what do you need right now? Or sometimes it's the other way around and

I've had, so we have four kids. And sometimes they are as every family knows

a lot to handle. Little beasts. Little beasties sometimes. And I've had times

where crystal crystal come home and I'll just be like I'm done. I'm done

talk to you, I'm out. Check out and I'm going to lock myself in my room by

myself and you get to put them to bed and like mommy's done. And I'll advocate

for that. We'll do it. Show up but he doesn't have to take that negative negative

energy on either.

It's not yours it's mine.

And he knows Kalenn needs space. Kalenn get some space and when she you know has

that then I can pull myself out and I'm like okay I'm good again. Or Kalenn just

needs a foot rub. Okay here's the final of our five sacred rules that we

wanted to share with you today. Strive for unity to be one. Okay so what does

that mean be one? I think being one doesn't mean being the same. It actually

means that we can celebrate each other's differences, strengths, and weaknesses.

We live in a very judgmental world that says, I celebrate your strengths but I

come down on you for your weaknesses but you know what? Here's the way I look at

it, Kalenn is a brilliant mother. I feel like between you know, when it comes to

parenting our kids I want to be the best father I possibly can be but man I

married up. Kalenn has got that skin covered so well. And what that means then is because

she possesses that gift, we possess that gift. I on the other hand, I'm really good

at working. Kalenn is the master of our domestic household and she's the chief

engineer that keeps her home running. She doesn't have a technical job. She's got a

harder one I think