114: Supporting Each Other's Passions

Summary Brian Mayer talks about supporting your partners passion’s in life.  Your relationship should be more than just coming together on the day to day grind of your relationship, work, parenting, dealing with ex spouses, and the rest of the day to day craziness.  It should be all about encouraging and supporting each other in what gives you individual happiness in life.  We hope you enjoy today’s message.  For more information and additional resources please visit our website at http://www.theremarriedlife.com Today's Goodies The general definition passion is “intense zeal or enthusiasm or desire toward something or someone.”  For us Christians, it also applies to Jesus pain and suffering during his crucifixion and death.  His passion was toward “someone” namely saving you and me from a death that would end rather than what he paved the way for and it is for an eternity spent in heaven with him.    There no doubt you have a passion in life.  It might be something you are indeed acting on or it may something that is lying dormant.  If it is dormant because your spouse is not encouraging you in this but actually discouraging you then this is something we need to talk about today.  Or maybe your spouse has a passion that you are not supporting.  Your relationship and life should include support for the individual passions you each have.  This can be so difficult in a blended family.  So many day to day responsibilities including cooking, cleaning, helping the kids with homework, grocery shopping, dealing with exes, spending time with each other, time with friends and family can cause the days to just zip by and sometimes a feeling of emptiness because there is no balance for what you enjoy and love.  What is it that you have a passion for?  Is it some activity alone like drawing or painting or some other craft?  Maybe you have thought about picking up the tennis racket or golf clubs.  What about taking a foreign language course?  What about a gourmet cooking class?  What about starting a travel blog that details your travels including the great places you have been, the great food you have tasted, or very tasty wines from around the world.  Sometimes the reason we don’t start something we are passionate about is because we are too busy but sometimes it is because we are not supported.  I promise that if you support your partner in their passion and they in turn support you it can often mean amazing things for your relationship.  The reason I am doing this podcast and this podcast episode is because there is a great deal of support for my and my wife’s passions.  My passion has been publishing a great podcast for those of us in remarriage and blended families.  Her passion is jewelry making.  My wife has supported me in my podcast journey, by always being so positive about what I am doing and the topics I want to share.  She has even been so supportive that she has been a guest several times.  Those have been some of my favorite episodes for sure.  The reason for this specific episode is that over the weekend my wife sold her jewelry in a second craft show.   I attended with her and offered support by helping her bring everything in, setting it up, ringing up sales, and conversing with customers.  She actually made 2.5 times the sales in this show that she did in the first show.  So all around was such a great show.  But most importantly it helped us both feel so much more connected in our relationship.  So how can you both support each other in your passions?  Let’s talk about that now, but before we do I certainly understand that this can be tough.  I have talked to lots of couples that struggle with the other spouse spending “too much time” with a passion.  For example, I work with couples where the spouse usually the male enjoys hunting so much that he will go many weekends out of the year.  This can feel taxing on the spouse and so it will be hard in these instances to be supportive for sure.  So of course some balance is needed.  Here are some ways to be supportive: Be excited when your spouse wants to talk about what excites them.  For my wife it is all about jewelry making.  For me this is not my passion so it would be very easy to tune her out.  What I recommend in these instances is to focus on the excited emotion in your spouse rather than on the topic at hand.  Offer to help in whatever way you can.  Maybe it isn’t like me where you offer to take an entire Saturday to spend it with her at a craft show (or maybe it is!) but maybe you offer to some small things to help get whatever the passion is off the ground. Help take other things off their plate.  Maybe it means helping around the house more with cleaning or caring for the kids to help your spouse spend more time with their passion.  Think about ideas you have you to make their passion even better.  For example maybe your spouse wants to get involved making a craft and selling it.  Maybe you are great with social media and have all sorts of ideas about social media and how that can impact your partner’s passion.       Praise your spouse for something well done.  For example at the end of the craft show in which my wife did a great job selling her jewelry, I just hugged her, gave her high fives and just gushed over how proud I was of her and how I just thought she rocked it out.  Be proactive and ask questions about your spouse’s passion.  Maybe your spouse has stalled out.  How great would it be for them if you asked what you could do to help.  I hope this podcast episode has been helpful and gives you some ideas to implement to start supporting each other. I hear too many stories of couple not supporting each other in what makes them individually happy.  This can have a negative impact on the relationship for sure.         Resources: None Mentioned Thanks For Listening! With so many things that take time in our lives, I am more grateful than you know that you took time to listen to this podcast episode.  If you liked this episode and believe that it would be beneficial to a friend, family member, or colleague, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. The Remarried Life Facebook Group is a community of people just like you who get and give support.  Please join today!  ​ As always remember that marriage is not something you have, it is something you do.  Talk to you next week unless you are binge listening in the future in which case I will talk to you in about a minute!  Take care.