Not-So-Mini-Episode About Motherhood and Marriage

[0:00:05] (Lacey): Welcome to Sharing the Middle, where we’re covering perfectionists overachievers and anyone in the middle of a struggle come together to learn to embrace the messy middles of life. I’m Lacey, your friend in the middle and guide whose claim to fame this week is stuff I don’t know. And you know what? Being okay with that. You know, that’s my claim to fame this week. Anyway way today’s episode, we’re going to do an essay from the middle about motherhood and then roll into the second half of my conversation with my husband Joe about advice from the middle on marriage. The first half of that conversation is in last week’s mini episode if you want to go take a look at it. And then we’ll end, of course, with some Lacey loves. Let’s jump right in.

[0:00:48] (Lacey): Journey to Motherhood I love being a mother and I love my children more than words can express. But at the end of the day, motherhood can be really hard. This is an excerpt from a longer essay about my motherhood experience. This is about my real thoughts and feelings before I became a mother. It wasn’t a simple decision about whether or not to have kids and become a mother. It was a gray area. It wasn’t middle. The yes Years my mother is amazing.

[0:01:17] (Lacey): I have always looked up to her for strength and love. So it’s not surprising that when I was young, I wanted kids. Not just any kids. I wanted a big family just like my own. I wanted to be the amazing mother my mother was. As the youngest of five children, I learned a lot from my older siblings this life experience. They all married relatively young and had kids young. This meant that I had my first niece at 14.

[0:01:44] (Lacey): In a span of ten years, I got eleven nieces and nephews. Growing up, I thought I loved kids, but I quickly realized that wasn’t entirely true. The I don’t know years kids are fine and all, but I prefer adults. Chatting is a core aspect of my personality and how I relate to people, and most children don’t really chat. Don’t get me wrong. My nieces and nephews are wonderful and I love them so much. They all hold a special place in my heart and I admire things about each of them. While I was in college, I would go over to my sister Amy’s house once a week and hang out with her and her kids because they lived nearby.

[0:02:24] (Lacey): While this made me close to them, even to this day, they knew I was there for my sister, not for them. I don’t think they oversaw this as me loving them less, but it was one of the first times I saw total acceptance of who I am and everyone, including me, being okay with it. My niece Grace once said, lacey, we know you come over here to see Mommy. She wasn’t upset about it. It was just a statement later, one of her brothers said to me, I know you don’t play or imagine.

[0:02:57] (Lacey): When he asked me to come check out the a fort in their backyard, I told him I would love to come see it in action, but I’m not going to be a pirate with him. And he was cool about it and he went about his day. I’m not the fun doting ant and I’ve come to accept that that’s okay to just be the ant that I am. This is important because it started to shape whether or not I wanted to have kids. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother.

[0:03:24] (Lacey): As I got closer to the reality, it made me question whether or not I would be capable emotionally and mentally, not physically capable, but that’s in there too. The yes years when I met my husband, we both agreed we wanted to have kids eventually. It took us a while to get married and we wanted to be married before having kids. After marriage, everyone comes out of the woodwork to ask you when you are going to have kids.

[0:03:51] (Lacey): This was always the most bizarre question to me. Basically they were asking if you were having or when you planned to have unprotected sex, which would be so weird if they said those words aloud.

[0:04:05] (Lacey): I always wanted to have the guts.

[0:04:06] (Lacey): To be like, you know, Diane, I really prefer to take it in the ass so that makes our chances lower, but will you keep your fingers crossed for me, this has no reflection on my actual sexual preferences. I just figured it would make people the most uncomfortable. I never actually said it, which is a little bit of a bummer. Also, what if we were trying and not being successful or I just had a miscarriage and chose not to share?

[0:04:31] (Lacey): I know I’m guilty of the same question and can think of specific times I did ask. I now try to ask if they want kids and in the same breath I want to be clear that I am coming from a place of curiosity and interest in them as a person and that they can choose to answer or not. I am so much fun at parties. I knew too much. The questions did start to make me think about it and at the end of the day, I was scared.

[0:04:58] (Lacey): I knew too much. I had seen so much of pregnancy labor and delivery babies and toddlers to know that it was really hard. It was something that was all of the time and I had a hard time getting dinner made every night for just me and my husband. There was also an element of losing myself in motherhood. Working hard to get everything that you have, working hard to like yourself, working hard on your relationship, makes it a lot harder to say, you know what? Yeah, let’s just completely change everything.

[0:05:32] (Lacey): Most of the women in my world are amazing mothers and now that’s what I think when I see and talk to them. Motherhood first and then everything else is kind of quiet. I did not want that. What about all the other things going on in my world? What about all the other things that made me me? I shared this fear with my husband and naturally had the best answer possible. We won’t let that happen. He had always been insistent about me not losing myself in our relationship and still having hobbies and friends outside of him. He said we would continue to make that happen in it together.

[0:06:10] (Lacey): The key in what he said was we. He was showing up to be my partner in this. Not to just change a diaper here or there or take care of the house sometimes, but to take care of each other and push us to be the people that we both want to be. This is the magic of a marriage based on partnership and equality. I don’t want to pretend that my marriage is perfect because it certainly is not. But I never knew a marriage like this could exist.

[0:06:40] (Lacey): I didn’t know that you and your partner could truly negotiate how things worked and be there for one another in so many different ways. It’s very possible that the marriages around me work in this way and I just didn’t see that side of them. But from the outside, many of them looked very traditional with traditional gender roles. I began to see that they may be contributing to my fear of losing myself and it was something that wasn’t totally necessary.

[0:07:09] (Lacey): While this didn’t eliminate my fear completely, it helped me see we could overcome it and we did. We had our son friendly reminder that this is the continuation of last week’s conversation between Joe and I about advice from the Middle in marriage. A lot of the themes in my motherhood essay show up here in the Advice from the Middle and it is a beautiful, happy accident that I wish I could take credit for but I can’t so enjoy more.

[0:07:45] (Lacey): Lacey and Joe on marriage.

[0:07:51] (Lacey): I will say something that we I think could be better at. Is that kind of that same thing of I feel like we both try to get as much out of one another and we could. Like, you’re my best friend, you’re the person I socialize with.

[0:08:07] (Lacey): You know what I mean?

[0:08:08] (Lacey): I go to you for a lot of things and that’s a lot for you. And I just think maybe that’s something.

[0:08:16] (Lacey): I’ve tried to work on is getting.

[0:08:17] (Lacey): Better at asking for support other places as well.

[0:08:22] (Joe): No.

[0:08:23] (Lacey): Okay.

[0:08:24] (Joe): I’m going to disagree with you here because I think that for you to say it like that is incorrect.

[0:08:32] (Lacey): Okay.

[0:08:33] (Joe): And this is the point that you should have already known that I was going to make in order for a marriage to work. Both people in the marriage have to be their own person in some way. Yeah, you don’t necessarily have to have your own friends. You don’t necessarily have to have completely separate hobbies. You don’t necessarily have to watch TV shows by yourself or read books by yourself. But you have to do some things that are just you.

[0:09:02] (Joe): You have to be a person outside of the marriage, otherwise you become dependent upon the other person. And if the other person isn’t giving 100%, you can’t expect them to if they’re not doing that. Because basically you’re putting all of the relationship burden for your entire life on that other person. That means any interpersonal connection, any activities or hobbies or shows or movies or anything that you want is directly linked to that other person.

[0:09:39] (Joe): I’m sure there are people out there who are just weirdly perfect for each other and don’t mind that it’s just the two of them and don’t need anything else ever. But I find that very rare. So I think it is important that people be individuals within the marriage and have their own thing so that they’re not relying on the other person. Now, that’s not to say that you can’t rely on them for anything, but you have to be your own person in some ways, whether it’s a few hobbies here or there.

[0:10:12] (Lacey): And this is something that Joe has always really encouraged me on. And honestly, it’s something that I really needed when we started dating because I could have very easily gone down the path of just Joe and lose myself in a relationship. But I did for a little bit, we’ll be honest. But then I found more of my.

[0:10:34] (Lacey): People and that made it a lot better and easier.

[0:10:36] (Lacey): Like when we talked about having kids, he was very insistent because I was worried about losing myself in motherhood. And he was like, no, it’s the same thing. You’re still going to be a whole person. We want you to be a whole person. That’s important to us. That’s a value. And he was like, I will help.

[0:10:52] (Lacey): You not let that happen.

[0:10:54] (Lacey): And that’s really cool. I mean, it’s more work technically on your part, but I mean, if we’re just looking at normal societal things because I’m invested in you having your own things too, and your interests and how.

[0:11:08] (Lacey): I can support them whether I’m part.

[0:11:09] (Lacey): Of it or not. Yeah, I mean, how many pieces of dice do we have in this household? Die, we have a lot of dice here smiling at me. And I know it’s just because you’re like, yeah, we’re going to keep that in.

[0:11:32] (Joe): Yeah, you got it. You have to leave in the awkward stuff, so it makes it fun. But yes, I think it is important that people have their own interests because God forbid something happens to your partner or your children and then what do you have? Nothing left. For example, if you make your kids your whole world. At what point are they allowed to grow up and be on their own? When they turn 18 or when they’re 40? Are they still going to be like your whole existence?

[0:12:06] (Joe): So what? Their whole life with you not having any interests and all of a sudden you have to try and find life again? It’s too much to expect people because you’re putting too much of a burden on the other person.

[0:12:20] (Lacey): Yeah, it will.

[0:12:21] (Joe): Not your partner or your children.

[0:12:23] (Lacey): At our wedding, we did have cards for advice on the tables, and your grandma gave what I think is one of the best pieces of advice, and it was that marriage is not 50 50. You both should be trying to give 70% because then you’ll both always reach 100. And I just remember being like, that’s.

[0:12:43] (Joe): Some really good yeah, well, and I think that makes another point, too, is your marriage is not going to do well if you see everything as, like a tit for tat. It’s like, I did this, so you have to do this. Keeping score, saying, well, it’s got to be 50 50 doesn’t work at all. I guarantee you it’s going to end in failure, it’s going to end in resentment. And honestly, it stems from a lack of communication, not communicating what you need.

[0:13:14] (Lacey): Right. You have to trust that you will give and your partner will give, and there will be that back and forth.

[0:13:23] (Joe): Yes, absolutely. But I think what it comes from is someone not saying, listen, I feel like I’ve been doing the lion’s share of work in this one area. Is there any chance that we could work a different deal out or maybe you could help out and instead they just say, Well, I did this, and then not doing something else. And then it just snowballs into just disaster if you can’t communicate about it.

[0:13:52] (Lacey): Also, we suck at that. I mean, we don’t suck at it.

[0:13:55] (Lacey): We’re getting a lot better.

[0:13:55] (Lacey): But you and I both have a tendency to not intentionally keep score, but like, oh, I’m doing all this, I’m doing all this. I know we both have had periods.

[0:14:04] (Joe): Where, I mean, everyone does it to a certain extent. I wouldn’t say that we do it more than anyone else, I guess here’s.

[0:14:12] (Lacey): What I should say. This is something that we definitely still work on all the time because it is such human nature to look around and see only things from your perspective and you see what you’re doing and not somebody else. It’s a hard one.

[0:14:30] (Joe): It doesn’t help that when you teach children about the world, you teach them that everything is fair and just and everything is equal and the bad guy is going to get punished and the good guy is going to get rewarded. And that’s not how it works, man. I don’t want to say sometimes you have to be the bad guy, but sometimes you have to give more than you get one.

[0:14:58] (Lacey): There’s so much great. We talk about this with Isaac all the time. I feel like lately of he’ll ask who if somebody’s a good guy or a bad guy. And you’re like, it’s a little more complicated than that, buddy. And I think you’re exactly right.

[0:15:11] (Joe): Yeah. And I think, like I said, sometimes you have to be willing to give more than you get. But also sometimes you have to be willing to get more than you give. You have to be able to go both ways. You have to be willing to accept help from someone else. You have to be willing to ask for help.

[0:15:28] (Lacey): You have to be willing to let somebody do it their way, not your way.

[0:15:31] (Joe): Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, all of it comes back to communication.

[0:15:39] (Lacey): Almost like that would be a really great thing to, I don’t know, like study in school.

[0:15:43] (Joe): No, probably not. It sounds like just a made up fantasy thing. Now, science, on the other hand, that’s real. You can touch science because every day.

[0:15:58] (Lacey): You’Re like, I’m going to go touch this science. You do?

[0:16:03] (Joe): Yes. Almost quite literally, yes.

[0:16:08] (Lacey): I used the phrase, let’s try an experiment yesterday with Isaac and he got really excited and he was a little disappointed when I was like, oh, we’re just seeing what fits in which bowl. Sorry, bro. Yeah, I mean, he came around to it, but he was thinking of like.

[0:16:25] (Joe): Beakers and all these we have done that before.

[0:16:28] (Lacey): I know we have. That’s why I know he got too excited and I really let him down.

[0:16:32] (Joe): You need to come up with a better experiment next time. Sounds like you need a less boring hypothesis.

[0:16:41] (Lacey): Any other thoughts?

[0:16:43] (Joe): Yeah, tons.

[0:16:44] (Lacey): I know you have tons, but that’s the problem.

[0:16:46] (Joe): You’re trying to do a mini episode about marriage is if people didn’t write entire books, spending their entire lives studying it.

[0:16:55] (Lacey): I’m not saying that we have to have the end all, be all on marriage. It’s just I thought in this advice for the middle section, we could talk a little bit about marriage advice and.

[0:17:07] (Joe): And and come up with some final thoughts. Communication is key. Find someone you are sexually compatible with or make sex not a thing at all. Well, you can be asexual or you.

[0:17:20] (Lacey): Can be well, that’s still compatibility though, right?

[0:17:24] (Joe): Yeah. Or you can just have an open marriage which sounds there’s a lot to it.

[0:17:31] (Lacey): Talk about communication, man.

[0:17:32] (Joe): That’s the only way something like that works. But yeah, guess it all comes back down to communication and not assuming that the other person understands your inner thoughts, you have to say them out loud. And sometimes you have to say them out loud multiple times to really be heard. And when you aren’t getting what you want or need, got to say, got to say it out loud. Even if it’s just texting the other person.

[0:18:00] (Joe): I know that a lot of younger folks find interpersonal communications to be difficult.

[0:18:06] (Lacey): I love how you’re like younger folks when I know you prefer sometimes. Text.

[0:18:10] (Joe): I hate people. I hate talking to people. Okay. But you, like the texting, is infinitely.

[0:18:14] (Lacey): Easier to think about your message and edit it.

[0:18:18] (Joe): Well, yeah, because my mouth to brain connection is not good, and I say things that I don’t mean all the time.

[0:18:24] (Lacey): I’m just saying it sounded like you were being judgmental of the youths.

[0:18:31] (Joe): I was trying to do both. I was trying to be judgmental and give people an avenue for communicating outside of saying something in person. Especially if they’re uncomfortable saying stuff in person.

[0:18:43] (Lacey): And it’s making sure that your partner knows that.

[0:18:46] (Joe): Yes, absolutely.

[0:18:48] (Lacey): Okay. And I’m really proud of our marriage, that it’s not perfect or anything like that, but it’s sacred because it’s ours. And I’m proud of that.

[0:18:56] (Joe): Good.

[0:18:57] (Lacey): Yeah.

[0:18:57] (Lacey): All right.

[0:18:57] (Lacey): You want to switch into Lacey Loves? I’m going to talk about jury duty.

[0:19:04] (Joe): Swear to God, if you mention Bugs.

[0:19:06] (Lacey): Life, I will mention Bugs life, because oh, my gosh, that is the moment I fell in love with that man. Okay, so Jury Duty is a show on Amazon’s freebie.

[0:19:20] (Joe): I’m sorry, are we not introducing Lacey’s Love as a category?

[0:19:24] (Lacey): I kind of did, didn’t I?

[0:19:25] (Joe): I don’t know. Isn’t there, like, supposed to be, like.

[0:19:27] (Lacey): A I usually do have music and that kind of stuff. Well, welcome to my Lacey love. Yeah.

[0:19:33] (Joe): Well, hold on. Hold on. Pause for music. Okay, Good. All right. Now we can get back into it. What were we doing again?

[0:19:41] (Lacey): Jury Duty.

[0:19:42] (Joe): No. You have to introduce Lacey Love.

[0:19:45] (Lacey): Okay. All right.

[0:19:46] (Lacey): We’re pausing again.

[0:19:56] (Lacey): Well, welcome officially to Lacey Loves. It’s just Lacey. No Joe in this segment since that was last week. But I thought that was still fun. And my Lacey loves. This week is still a continuation from last week. Anyway, I do want to update you all on the veggie tray. You know how excited I was about the veggie tray? And friends, the veggie tray was magic. Two refills of the veggie tray and not even a week later and the veggie tray is empty.

[0:20:23] (Lacey): I have a little bit of Hikama left, and that’s pretty much it. When it comes to the vegetables. So highly recommend that veggie tray. I mean, yes, you can go like I said, go to Anne Amazon and buy from my links so they can get the, like, $0.25 for it. But whatever veggie tray you have, totally worth it. The kids thought it was so fun. And I was like, should we get the veggie tray out? And I was like, yeah.

[0:20:48] (Lacey): Will it keep this novelty? I have no idea. But in true lacey fashion, we’re going to roll with it and see what happens.

[0:20:59] (Lacey): The other thing I want to talk.

[0:21:01] (Lacey): About this week is a book that I got for Christmas and just now started actually reading called The Science of Stuck breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward. I’ve talked a lot on here about how I find a lot of self help books to be very, like a guru on a hill who’s like, this is the way to do this. And if you don’t do this this way, then you’re wrong and never recognizes an individual’s specific situation with systems of oppression and trauma and all those things.

[0:21:37] (Lacey): And in the introduction, this recognizes the working assumptions of the book that it’s not the end all, be all. Love it. I’ve read two and a half of the chapters thus far that give you like, actual recommendations. It’s very validating because a lot of what I’ve learned in the process of this podcast in my blog, you’ve heard me talk about this idea of really turning within myself to find the answers because I’m finding a lot of the messages, then the stories that I’ve told myself are not helping me.

[0:22:15] (Lacey): And in the first chapter about anxiety, she really goes into talking about the science and how that actually could be very true. And so one validating two, I just love her style and that kind of stuff. So it’s the science stuck by Britt Frank, and I love it. It’s in my podcast links. You will hear me talk about this more and I think I might even start doing like a little I don’t know if it’s going to be like an Instagram or TikTok series where I do some of the five minute challenges that she gives in the book of ways to actually overcome.

[0:22:51] (Lacey): It’s also going to be a goal of mine to get her on this podcast because, yeah, it’s what I love and believe in. So hopefully you can like it too. And again, buy it from Amazon using my link so I can get these $0.13 for it. I really hope that my candor around that is refreshing and not annoying, but I’ve learned that the more open and honest that I am about things, the better I feel and the better it goes for all of us. So hopefully that works for you.

[0:23:23] (Lacey): I’ve got a lot of really cool things that I’m working on coming up and I cannot wait to share them with you. Not to be that guy, but like, stay tuned. Big announcements are coming from the middle. Thanks so much for joining me today. I’ve loved sharing the middle with.