Ditching the Marriage Fantasy Suite

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Ditching the Marriage Fantasy Suite

Guests:Bruce & Maria Goff, Alyssa & Jon Miller, Brian Goins and Shaunti Feldhahn

From the series:Healthy Habits for Happy Marriages (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:February 14, 2025

Bruce:I get frustrated when she’ll make herself coffee and leave the creamer out, and the little tab that she pulled off of it is there and all these kinds of things, and it’s like, “Can you just throw it away when you’re done?” And thankfully, we had a good counselor who didn’t indulge me in that, and he’s like, “What you need to do is just see that as another opportunity to serve.”

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

So I’ve always wanted to say this on FamilyLife Today. Today we’re going to talk about marital fantasies. But it’s a lot different than it sounds.

Ann:You’re my ultimate fantasy with everything.

Dave:Yeah, that’s what I was hoping you would say. Well, you’ve heard some couples in the studio that I’m going to introduce in a minute, but what we’re going to do today is we’re going to watch a clip from Married With Benefits with Brian Goins and Shaunti Feldhahn who wrote a book called The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Couples, where she studied the best of the best; who have the best marriages in the world, and what do they do?

Ann:Shaunti is amazing at this. She’s a Harvard researcher, so all of her material comes from stats and

Dave:—research.

Ann:—data and research that she’s collected. But if you haven’t already been watching and listening to their podcast, and it’s also on YouTube, we’d really encourage you. You can hear the whole episode when you go to their YouTube page. And this is season four. We’re going to be listening to episode seven, and this is going to be pretty fascinating.

Dave:This episode, Brian is asking Shaunti about one of these habits, which is highly happy couples have factual fantasies.

Ann:Interesting.

Dave:Which, what in the world does that even mean? What’s a factual fantasy? Well, we’re going to find out.

[Recorded Message]

Brian:What actually causes unhappiness. People tend to think, and the usual suspects are like money, conflict, different parenting philosophies, in-laws have become outlaws. So since I’ve got the expert on happiness right here in front of me, what is the leading cause of unhappiness in marriage?

Shaunti:None of the above.

Brian:None of them.

Shaunti:It’s what causes those problems, which is unmet expectations. And this is a very common neuroscience principle. It’s a common psychological principle where you have a certain expectation about your spouse, about whatever it is, and you just think that this is the way it “should be,” and that’s not something that is being met equals unhappiness. If we’re not careful, that’s what happens.

Brian:It’s so true. We talk about it on the Weekend to Remember often with couples, the conference that FamilyLife does, is that I like to give this illustration. Those of you that are on YouTube, you’ll actually be able to watch this so if you’re listening to it, you might want to go watch the YouTube channel on this. You’ll see it. But we like to use this illustration with arms Shaunti. You can do it with me if you want to.

Shaunti:Okay.

Brian:It’s like the bottom arm represents reality. The top arm represents expectations and what happens in marriage and in life, really, this principle that you’re talking about is the farther that expectations get from reality, what’s in between that gap is disappointment.

Shaunti:There’s a giant, giant gap there for some people.

Brian:That’s right.

Shaunti:And yes, exactly.

Brian:And so the goal of any pursuit in life, whether it’s work or relationships, is how do I get expectations to match reality? And that’s really what the secret’s all about, isn’t it?

Shaunti:Yeah, it really is. The key here, and this is the most important thing, we call this chapter is Highly Happy Couples Have Factual Fantasies.

Brian:That doesn’t go. That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? What I remember from English.

Shaunti:And it’s like what? I know our producer Bruce was like, ah, yeah, those two things don’t work together. And so here’s really the way that this works. The key is that all of us have the tendency to have certain expectations of our spouse that they are just not wired to meet and expecting that is going to cause us pain. And let me give you an example of this. So this is a very, very common thing, and I’ll just use amongst women. There’s others that men have.

But for example, any woman who has ever watched a romance movie, any woman who’s ever read a novel that has any kind of romance element or has whatever, listened to songs or whatever, it is very easy in our minds to subconsciously expect that when we have been having a really bad argument with our spouse and we pull away and we’re crying, and there is something in us that expects and wants our spouse to come after us because we’ve seen that’s the plot of the romance novels. We don’t realize that that’s kind of the plot of every romance novel that’s ever been written. She goes weeping away and he goes, “I am not going to let you get away. I’m going after you.”

Brian:I’m not leaving this room until we settle this.

Shaunti:Exactly. I mean, and every woman listening to this, when you said that went, “Oh,” because it says, “I love you. I care about you.” Those are those things that make you feel that way. Okay, that’s a character and a novel that’s usually fiction.

Brian:And usually written by a woman.

Shaunti:And probably written by a woman because the actual real guys out there, the neuroscience of the male brain is such that in most cases, not all, but in most cases, when you pull away in the middle of an argument and you’re secretly hoping he’s going to come after you, but you’re pulling away, he’s going, “Oh, thank goodness. I just need to get alone and think,” right? “I need to figure out what I’m thinking.”

Brian:Right.

Shaunti:“Okay, this will be good. We’ll go to our separate corners. We’ll think about it, and we’ll come back together again.”

Brian:Or if you’re like me, “It’ll just blow over.”

Shaunti:Or it’ll just blow over. And you’re over there as the wife going, “Why isn’t he coming after me? Why isn’t he pursuing me?” And if that is your expectation, it is highly likely that you may be unhappy instead of going, and here’s the key, it’s got to come full circle. It’s not just sort of going, “Okay, maybe that expectation is something that he’s just not wired to do,” or “she’s just not wired to do” or whatever. You also then have to go, “But what are they good at? What can they do that I can celebrate?” That’s the fantasy that I can expect. And actually something they will delight in meeting.

Brian:And that becomes a factual fantasy.

Shaunti:There you go.

Brian:But when we get married, I’m finding that for me, I know it seems like all marriage, especially the first couple years, is just unpacking these fantasies that you never really knew you had that, and you don’t end up questioning the fantasy you question your spouse. I know for Jen, if she were on right now, she would say, yeah, because she grew up with her dad as a general contractor. I mean, every home she lived in, she lived in 27 homes as she was growing up in one zip code. One zip code, twenty-seven homes, all built by hand by her dad.

Shaunti:Oh my goodness.

Brian:Who could do all of it if he wanted to? Now he had subcontractors, but he knew how it’d all get done, and it was all done perfectly. And so naturally when we get married and we walk into our first house, which is just this beater of a house, had literally a tree growing through the back door. I mean back part of the house. It was a roach motel in Dallas, Texas. We walk in, and Jen had never seen the house, and I remember something happened. She’s like, “Hey, Brian, the door’s broken. It’s not lining up right.” I’m like, “Ah, it’s interesting.” She’s going, “Well aren’t you going to fix it?” I’m like, “I have no idea how to fix that.”

And something would break down. And there was a sadness that started coming where she started to realize that she didn’t know that was a fantasy. It’s a fantasy because her husband can’t do that. And if it can’t be fixed with a screwdriver or a hammer, I’m pretty much out of luck. I grew up with a dad, and when something broke in the house, he called somebody who would fix it. And so those two things came together, and that was a struggle and has been. And fortunately, I’ve grown a little bit, but I’m never going to be your dad. That just wasn’t my background.

Shaunti:Let me just tell you, sometimes the factual fantasies can work in the reverse order. Sometimes it’s you, being kind to yourself and saying, “It’s okay that I’m never going to be her dad. My fantasy might’ve been that I was the perfect handyman, and that’s just not me. It’s like, I can work, I can learn, I can grow. But there are just things that we are just not ever going to really feel come naturally.”

Brian:Yeah.

[Studio]

Dave:Okay, now we know what a factual fantasy is, and we’re going to find out from our factual fantasy couples who are back with us. We got the Goffs, Bruce and Maria back with us. They were here yesterday. Bruce is normally running the audio right now; but married 12 years. Three girls; fourth on the way.

Bruce:Yep.

Dave:We’ll hear from you in a minute. On the other side of the studio is Jon and Alyssa, have been married three months, on staff as well. So I mean, even what Brian and Shaunti were talking about, expectations. Let’s talk about that to start with. What expectations did you come in with and were they high? Was there a big gap between the elbows?

Jon:Man, I think for me, I have always experienced you as kind of a very logical person. You even relate to your own emotions pretty logically. You’re able to kind of suss out, what am I feeling? Why? And you can kind of move through those pretty well.

Alyssa:Did you like that?

Jon:I did. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was great. It’s how my brain works sometimes, hopefully. And then now, being married, I’ve seen more moments where it’s just kind of that emotional flooding of “I’m really sad,” or “I’m really discouraged about something.” And it was almost like disconcerting at first. Wait, you’re like—

Alyssa:He learned I cry a lot.

Jon:I know. I just didn’t think it was a thing, which is so naive of me. But yeah, just kind of that.

Maria:Buckle up.

Jon:Well, it’s like in dating you see a certain ratio maybe of emotions or qualities.

Dave:So you’ve seen that already in three months?

Jon:Yeah.

Alyssa:Oh yeah.

Maria:You haven’t even experienced pregnancy yet.

Jon:I think that’s what, maybe surprised me a little bit is you do have those moments of just kind of needing to feel your feelings.

Alyssa:Oh, yeah, all the time.

Dave:You guys have the same thing or totally different.

Maria:Our relationship was pretty fast. We were married in less than a year from when we started dating, courting, and our entire relationship was long distance. So there was a lot of things, I think, assumptions maybe that we made about each other, things that we thought about each other. We had a limited scope of what we could see about the other person and know about the other person. So when we got married, I think it was like, rude awakening. No, I mean, there was just a lot of things that we didn’t know about the other person because our time together, spent together, had been very limited.

Ann:Ours was like that too. Maria, what was your most surprising, or Bruce, you too, what was the most surprising thing that you didn’t know that was there that you had expectations about?

Bruce:I mean, the emotional ups and downs. Yeah, I totally resonate with that.

Maria:Except you knew I was an emotional person.

Bruce:I knew, but I never saw it though.

Maria:You didn’t expect me to be logical.

Bruce:Yes, or you’re happy is happier than my happy. Your sad is sadder than my sad kind of thing.

Maria:And you came from a family that’s very even keeled. Most of the women in your family are—

Bruce:Yeah, my mom’s totally—

Maria:—very practical, very—not super emotional people.

Bruce:Yeah, I expected, so for one, I expected that we were in a studio apartment, and I expected that if I needed a drink of water in the middle of the night, that that’s an acceptable thing to get even to open the fridge and get the Brita pitcher out. The light comes on. And I just had the expectations of, you’ll roll with that, because obviously I need to get a drink of water. And that was an early fight we got in. She’s like, what are you doing in the refrigerator? Yeah, I guess I had the expectation of you just roll with things and roll with me. Yeah.

Maria:Well, I grew up in a family where if somebody’s sleeping, it’s just everybody just tip toes around the person who was sleeping. The person who is sleeping rules the roost. And I mean, I guess being the baby, Bruce ruled the roost, so…

Bruce:I don’t know. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that’s one. Another big one was my mom kept the house very clutter free, but I was also the youngest, so there weren’t any younger siblings cluttering it up.

Maria:She also only had two. And you also went to school?

Bruce:Well, three. Yeah, yeah, right. Look, these were not factual fantasies. I totally admit that. So that was definitely one that was not a factual fantasy.

Dave:So when you hear this factual fantasy mindset, how’s it hit you? Because it’s like taking those expectations and saying, “I’m not going to focus on what they can’t deliver. I’m going to focus on the facts. They can deliver this, and that’s what I’m going to focus on.” Is that like, “That’s ridiculous.”

Ann:Does it seem impossible?

Dave:Yeah.

Jon:We were set up for success in this area immediately. Well, success or failure, we’ll find out. We were thinking about this episode today, and we remembered a moment from our wedding reception.

Alyssa:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jon:Our dear friend, Jaycee, Alyssa’s matron of honor, for her little speech during the wedding reception, she had a prop. She had a poster of, and you should unpack this.

Alyssa:So in the old house I lived in, so Jaycee was one of my roommates. We started this tradition where whenever a roommate came back from a long trip, we created a poster of their dream men, which sounds so ridiculous.

Jon:From movies, TV shows.

Alyssa:Yeah, their favorite celebrities. We had a poster of it. And so then for her speech at our wedding, she pulled out this sign.

Dave:You brought it with you.

Ann:Wait, you brought it.

Alyssa:We have it.

Jon:They’re kind of falling off.

Alyssa:They’re kind of falling off. So all of my dream men, and she replaced them with John’s face.

Jon:But here’s why this is kind of funny.

Dave:I want to see who’s behind there.

Alyssa:So I would say, I don’t really remember why—

Jon:It’ll make me insecure. I don’t think you—

Alyssa:I don’t remember why she chose all of them, but there was one of them, Aaron Tavate. He’s a Broadway star. He can sing. He’s very musical. And so it’s like, ”Oh, the fantasy is a guy that’s musical, and John is actually musical,” so it’s like a factual fantasy. She basically found—

Jon:This was a poster full of factual fantasies. It was like all of these things you’d love about these TV or musical characters.

Alyssa:And she found all of the reasons why John is the perfect man for me. So this is our factual fantasy in a poster.

Jon:So that was a funny moment from our wedding.

Ann:So John is your factual fantasy.

Alyssa:Exactly. Look at him. How can he not be?

Dave:As Maria said, “Just wait. It’s coming.” So when you realize your expectation is not going to be met, how have you dealt with that? Because every couple, at some point, it could be a weekend, it could be a year in, it’s going to happen. And usually, like Brian said, it’s disappointment.

As we’ve said many times on this program, many spouses will think “I married the wrong person because I thought”—and basically, I thought he or she was going to make me happy. Now I’m not. I’m disappointed. And we always say, that’s not the issue. You’re looking in the wrong place. But what do you do when you realize, “Oh my goodness, this dream is not ever going to happen with him or her.” And that’s okay. That’s actually good, but how do you get to that mindset?

Bruce:We had a counselor tell me. So with the actually closing—

Dave:Tell me.

Bruce:Yes, tell me.

Maria:I’m not perfect just—

Bruce:I get frustrated when she’ll make herself coffee and leave the creamer out, and the little tab that she pulled off of it is there and all these kinds of things, and it’s like, “Can you just throw it away when you’re done? Just throw it away. It’s so easy. You’re done with it. Throw it away or put it back in the fridge.” And thankfully, we had a good counselor who didn’t indulge me in that, and he’s like, “What you need to do is just see that as another opportunity to serve.” That’s who she is.

Maria:So now every time he goes, “Oh, an opportunity to serve you.”

Bruce:Another opportunity. Okay, so that’s the bad application. But in principle—

Maria:No, not every time.

Bruce:—but that is a non-factual fantasy. That’s just not who she is. She has other values, and that’s okay. Just because they’re not my values doesn’t mean they’re wrong values. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t room for spouses to grow and to be able to sharpen each other, but at the same time, it’s not my job to change her, and that’s who she is. And it is an opportunity to serve. And when I’m at my best and when I’m walking with Jesus and I’m filled with the Spirit, that is there, you know what I mean? I thought that was great advice that he gave.

Ann:I do too.

Dave:That’s good advice.

Ann:I think it’s easy for all of us to do that, to see little things, and they don’t meet what our expectations were.

Dave:I mean, when we were first married, on staff with Athletes in Action at the University of Nebraska, we go out to dinner—I think it was dinner—and one of the things Ann, and it’s still, 44 years later, it’s still there. And I thought, I can change this. She loses things, loses her watch, loses her. She’s lost her sunglasses in this room, and she’s still upset about that. And I thought I can fix this. This is first year of marriage. And she left her—

Ann:—mittens.

Dave:—mittens on the restaurant table. And so I took them, and then we got in the car, and she goes, “I don’t know where my mittens are.”

Ann:I said, “Oh,” I opened the car door and said, “I left my mittens in the restaurant. I’m going to go get them.”

Dave:And I just let her go—

Alyssa:Oh no.

Dave:-into the restaurant thinking “This’ll show her.”

Bruce:This will teach her.

Dave:And she comes out, she goes, “I couldn’t find them. I don’t know where they are,” and I go, “Here they are.” She’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m teaching you. You’ve got to know where your stuff is. This is part of what you do as an adult.”

Maria:Oh, no.

Dave:Guess what? That has never changed.

Bruce:Someone slept on the couch that night. If you said the adult part—

Dave:I did not say that.

Maria:Oh okay.

Bruce:Yeah, only a fool would say that.

Ann:I was so kind like, “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for teaching me how to be responsible.” No, I did not say that. I said, “I’ve been like this my whole life, and you think you’re going to teach me this. It’s not going to happen. So you might as well give up.”

Dave:And you know what? It’s a beautiful thing now.

Ann:But is it?

Dave:Not really, but…

Bruce:So the dark side of the non-factual, whatever we call those, the non-factual fantasies is—

Jon:Fantastical fantasies.

Bruce:Fantastical fantasies. There’s a dark side to that of yes, on the one hand, it’s just her leaving stuff out as annoying. But I also, you start believing lies. And I’m thinking, man, I mean if she loved me, she would do this. And it’s such a small little thing. So if she can’t do this small little thing, she must not love me. And that is completely a lie. You know what I mean? That is just not factual at all. But that’s the ridiculous stop pattern you can get into.

Maria:And it’s a burden that you put on their shoulders because then I live every day under the umbrella of, well, if I don’t get to the dishes in the sink, then he doesn’t feel loved and I’m failing him.

Bruce:And unless you change as a person and who you are and what you value, then you don’t love me. That is a fantasy. It’s ridiculous.

Ann:I remember mowing the grass one time, which—

Dave:By the way, everybody’s always like, “Your wife mows the grass. What’s wrong with you?”

Ann:I love mowing.

Dave:I mow the grass too.

Bruce:You always have to defend that.

Dave:Everybody gets on me. But she loves mowing the grass.

Ann:I remember though, but having kids, I was thinking, “Why am I always mowing the grass? Why isn’t he even home to mow the grass? Why is this always on my shoulders and my responsibility?” And then there’s something about taking a breath and talking to God and complaining to God. When you complain to God about your spouse, it doesn’t go well. People, He doesn’t let us get away with it.

And so I’m like, “Lord, don’t you think he should be mowing the grass? Is this my responsibility?” And here’s this question, came to my mind, “Do you like mowing the grass?” And I’m like, “Yes.” “What are you complaining about?” And it was so convicting and yet so true. I remember thinking, “I do love mowing the grass,” and I quit complaining about it because I thought, “That’s ridiculous.” This is ? I feel like the enemy of our marriage, who is Satan likes to take us “If he loved me,” exactly what you’re saying, “if he loved me, if she loved me, and man, that’s a foothold.

Dave:And by the way, I mow the grass every week now.

Maria:You, too.

Bruce:Way to go Dave.

Dave:And that’s just saying, “I love you.”

Maria:That reminds me of early on in marriage where another studio apartment conflict came up where it was an election night and he wanted to stay up and watch the election results come in, and I was sick and I wanted to go to sleep, and I’m not a good sleeper. I can’t sleep if he’s got the TV on and the lights on. I can’t sleep. And that’s how I felt. I felt like if he cared about me at all right now, I am sick. If he cared about me at all right now, he would turn it off. And he’s thinking, this only happens once every four—

Bruce:The leader of the free world. What’s it going to be?

Dave:So what do you do with that? Do you actually put it away and say, “You know what? My fantasy is going to be something he can’t deliver, and I’m going to be okay with that.”

Bruce:Honestly, what difference did it make if I knew who the president was that night or not? Yeah. I mean, I didn’t take a vow to make sure I know who the president is. I took a vow to nourish and cherish her.

Maria:I think it’s weird to say, but I think that there is room for grieving those things, for grieving those things that you expected to have in your spouse, to grieve that they aren’t that way. But then grieving those things allows you to then see all the riches of who they are and what they do bring to the table.

Ann:I had a women’s conference; we had a guest that talked about that, having a funeral for your unmet expectations. And he said, and what I said to the women was, I want you to write down, we’re just going to do this one time. Write down the things you’re grieving that your spouse doesn’t have that you thought they would. So they wrote them down and then we burned them. It’s kind of like we had the funeral, we had the dirge, we had the mourning and the grieving. And sometimes it takes longer than just a talk, but I think it’s important to do that, Maria; that we place those in a casket, and we bury them.

Maria:Even if you have those funerals and you think, “Okay, I’ve let go of this thing and this may never be a part of this person’s life and how they interact with me in this marriage, I have to let this expectation go,” they will come back and surprise you.

Ann:Yes.

Maria:They will come back and surprise you and grow in ways that you don’t expect and do things for you that you didn’t think would ever happen.

Ann:Better than you even expected.

Dave:I mean, when you say that makes me think, okay, how’s Bruce surprised you? Is there one that’s come to your mind?

Maria:There’s just small moments. I’m a spontaneous person. I love spontaneity, I love romance and he’s just not—he likes to plan. He likes to know what’s going to happen. And that was just something that I had to let go of, like, “Oh, well, this kind of thing; these lovely, wild, romantic, spontaneous moments. There may not be a lot of those. There may not be any of those in our marriage.” And he has surprised me; things that he does not enjoy. When we came down to Florida for our vision trip, we were at Disney Springs, dancing with me when there was live music in public. Something I thought would never happen.

Dave:Way to go, Bruce.

Maria:That happened spontaneously. Just little moments like that. And yeah, he continues to surprise me.

Jon:I remember talking to a friend named TJ, and he was telling me, when you realize you’re disillusioned about something. We often think of the word disillusion or disillusionment, just like having an all-negative context. I’m disillusioned about this, disillusioned about that. Think about the word for a second. You are dis – illusioned. You’ve lost the illusion. So all of a sudden you have an opportunity to embrace reality. I’ve kind of carried that with me. Shout out, TJ. If there are moments where it’s like I’m feeling disillusioned about something about you or our relationship or just life in general, yeah, I could sit there and spiral about it, spiral downward and be discouraged. Or I could be like, “Okay, this isn’t what I thought it was. What’s actually true? What can I celebrate, be excited about?”

Maria:Yeah. Well, and I keep thinking of when we talked about keeping score, keeping score of the good things, or there’s another secret on Married With Benefits that talks about believing the best. I’m a very positive person, but if I can get negative, I then very quickly spiral. Even just thinking about, a lot of the secrets are, okay, we need to recognize the hard things. We need to grieve the hard things, but also what can we celebrate? And so I feel like believing the best and keeping the good and finding the illusion of that I feel like is really sweet.

Dave:I mean, that’s the factual fantasy. You just sort of defined it. And I thought this as we close, I thought, and it just came to me, maybe this is a good thought, maybe it’s really bad. When I think of Ryan doing the gap between expectations and reality, we fill it with disappointment. What if we filled that gap with grace? What if we thought, if we just flipped that whole thought because we are disappointed, but it’s like we can take that disappointment and go, “My spouse is, it’s never going to happen.” It isn’t like we keep trying, “Please put away whatever it is.”

It’s not going to happen. She’s going to keep losing her phone four times a day. We found it one time on our bumper of our car, and we drove five miles, and it was still on our bumper. And now I laugh. That is hilarious. She dinged it like, “Oh, it’s in the car.” “Okay, let’s go.” And it’s on the bumper. And now it’s like the grace is like, I love it about her. I mean, it’s still frustrating and I’ve got a million that she has to do with me. But when you fill in that gap, instead of disappointment with “I’m going to give grace because she’s given me grace, he’s given me grace. That’s a factual fantasy that will bring a marriage to life.

Bruce:Is this not what God does with us. How often could he say, well, you’re falling this short in this way.

Dave:Every second.

Bruce:And His grace makes up the difference.

Dave:It’s the gospel.

Ann:And if our spouse met all of our expectations, they’d become our God, and we wouldn’t need our Savior.

Dave:I mean, this is some great stuff. And let me just say, if you want help in your marriage, I mean FamilyLife, we have resource after resource. It hits right where you’re living. And if you want some of that, we’ve pulled together, really some of our best stuff. It’s free. We want to help you, and you go to FamilyLife.com/MarriageHelp, and it’s there for you and it’s going to help.

Ann:FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® Ministry. Helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

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