A Successful Marriage Starts With You

Most people are not really grasping how valuable they are as a human being. So for me, if you think baby steps, it was like, I'm going to go for a walk instead of cleaning the house today because I need to take care of myself. So I did action steps and then now because my kids are older, I can like go out for the evening with my girlfriends without feeling guilty or I can like it's both the thought work and the speaking to yourself kindly and also taking action to prove to yourself that you're someone who has needs and they get to be met. Welcome to the Thrive Her podcast.

I'm your host Amy Sanders. I'm a fitness and wellness pro, mom, stepmom, second wife, and master certified life coach. I'm here to help you manage your mind so you can uncover the most potent version of yourself and create the thriving life you love. Welcome back to the podcast everyone.

My name is Amy Sanders and I am so excited to be here with you today. I have a special guest. You guys know that my guests are always juicy and awesome. And I'm so excited to have Shiloh Minor with me today.

So Shiloh, we're talking about marriage and we're talking about how to have an awesome marriage. And guess what? It could be just from you women doing your own work without even having to go into couples therapy without even maybe even having to tell your husband that you are doing anything to enhance the marriage so that you can have an awesome marriage. Awesome love affair within your marriage, even if that's not how it started.

The man you chose can be the same man that you stay with in a completely different marriage. So welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to have you here and let's just jump right in to how you came across this like your story and what you're doing with all these women helping them in their marriages. Thank you so much.

So yeah, the reason that I know how to help women create this amazing love affair without couples therapy is that I have the husband who won't go to couples therapy. Many of you before I got married, I was like all about self help and a relationship and I was reading all these books. I thought I've got this nailed like I'm going to be great. It's an amazing marriage.

And then I met my husband and I was like, okay, it's like great guy. We communicate well, no problem. We had our little niggling things, but it was okay. And then we had kids and everything fell apart.

Because obviously so much more stress. And we had a three year old and a one year old and we were just bickering constantly, totally distant, totally roommate scenario. And I was like, this is not okay. Like it was my life dream to have that amazing love affair.

That was my whole thing. I didn't have anything else I even wanted to do that much other than have an amazing marriage. And then here I was going, oh my god, this is like, those kind of marriages you see the previous generation, they just stick it out. They just hang on.

And I was like, I cannot just hang on. Like I'm not built that way. And so I would try to talk to him about it. Naturally, right?

Hey, this is working for me. Hey, can we talk about this? Hey, I want more of that. And he just did not get it.

I couldn't get through to him. And he would like, listen, but not listen. When you see the face, it's you're here, but nothing is going on inside. You're just waiting for me to finish.

And I was like, really distraught. So distraught because we have great kids, we've got a great property. And he's an awesome guy. Like he's smart.

He's loyal. He's hardworking. So I'm thinking to myself, that would be insane to divorce this person. This makes no sense.

We're super attracted to each other. And yet, like my emotional needs are not being met. This is super frustrating. I can't communicate with you.

And so I tried to get him to read books. I tried to listen to this podcast. Can't we like have a conscious conversation about this? No, we cannot have a conscious conversation about this.

Not really. Not in the way that worked. And so I hit the wall one day and I thought to myself, Shiloh, what you're doing is not working. Yeah.

It's not working. Like you are just hammering the same points and you're on message and it's not working. So that's when I made a choice to do everything I could to heal this marriage and get over my ego that he should do this and he should do that and just figure it out. And so through that process, but it took a while because I didn't know what I was doing.

I had to figure this out for myself. I saw our marriage turn around and I saw the light return to his eyes and the flirting and the conversation. And when that happened, it was like an instant light bulb. I thought there's got to be so many women in this situation.

Yeah. I mean, I think there are so many women, especially because a lot of women. Now, when I say this, I've been guilty of this too. So I'm not saying I'm so great.

And you guys do this. I don't, we expect our men to show up for us a certain way. And a lot of times we don't even tell them what we need or what's going on or even know what, they need, which is huge, right? Like what if we're not doing what they need to light them up, to spark that, to, to have them also be vested in us.

Yeah, that's exactly it. And I didn't know those things that I had read all the relationship books. I thought I already knew this is a trap we fall into a lot as women lower. Hey, I've taken in so much content.

I must be an expert, but there's a deeper level that comes from like your soul and your energy where you are giving him what he needs. You are giving yourself what you need. And that's where you can see the big changes. But if you're just trying the techniques and the tips and tricks you hear on the internet, it doesn't work.

Yeah. So when you talk about like the soul, like going even deeper, what did that look like for you? And how can women who are tuning in say, wait, I can start implementing that right now. So the biggest thing that was destroying my marriage and I see with so many of my clients is that I wanted him to make me feel better.

And I was like, my thinking was, what's the point of being married? If you can't make me feel better, you can't make me feel better. And I was like, what's the point of being married? This is like the whole thing to me, make me feel better.

And he didn't know how to make me feel better. And my way of asking him to make me feel better was actually pushing him away. And so the big shift for me was when I started doing inner work with myself to make myself feel better. I learned how to self-soothe.

I learned how to be my own best friend. I learned how to validate myself and encourage myself. And at first you think, oh, that sucks. Like your husband is supposed to do some of that stuff.

And then you're like, oh, that sucks. And it is great when he does and he should, but when you're in crisis, nobody has anything to give. He doesn't have extra to give to you. He feels like you think he's terrible and you're ready to leave the relationship and you're like fried out.

So I basically pulled up my big girl panties and was like, I'm going to make myself okay first. So then I can go into how to feed into him, how to feed this relationship instead of just being like, I'm dying here and you need to fix it. Yeah. I like how you said, you learned how to self-soothe.

Some listeners might not even know what that means. You can think, okay, self-soothe, but what does that look like? And I do know that it's going to look different for every person, right? It's going to be a little bit different.

What did that look like for you to know, to understand what's going on and then self-soothe in a way that worked for you? Yeah. So that's a good question. It can really depend on every person and every situation because there's so many tools.

Like you can go into breath work and movement and visualizations and whatever. For me, the really most important thing was to be able to speak to myself with kindness. So like when I'm having the emotional meltdown and I'm bawling my eyes out and my husband's not coming, he's not comforting me. Ladies, this is really common.

It does not mean he's a monster. He's just, this is too much for me. I don't know what to do with it. I'm just going to leave her be for now.

So I'm in this and wanting him to rescue me. And I would say, Shiloh, this is really hard. This is really hard. And you're really doing your best.

And that's amazing. And you're taking care of these kids and you're feeding them this, whatever you're nursing all night. And instead of just feeling victimized by my circumstances, not fair. I have to stay up all night and nurse and nobody validates me.

And nobody's telling me how wonderful I am. Like this sucks. I just told myself everything I wanted to hear. Yeah.

Which we can do. It seems not allowed, but it is actually more powerful than anybody else because here's the trick ladies. If he can say it to you, you can do it. You can do it.

But if you don't believe it, it won't stick and you'll be a bottomless pit needing validation. Yeah. Which how frustrating for him who wants to be, if you switch that around, because a lot of times these ladies were like, they should do this for me. All those shoulds what they're supposed to do, all those things, but people don't know you better than, you know, yourself or what you need, what you need better than anybody else.

When you can learn how to give that to yourself, life gets so much better, but how annoying is it when there's someone you're always want your validation every second? Like the girl I'm just, I don't know why this is coming up, but I'm just saying like the girl that has the total tiny tight body. And she's like, I'm so fat because she wants you to validate her and be like, no, you're not skinny. Oh my gosh.

You're so skinny. Like we did the same thing with our husbands. Right. Think of it from his perspective.

You were like, Oh, I love you. Let's I want to be married. And then he gives you the ring and you have the wedding. And now you're still like, I don't think you care about me.

You don't care about me. Like I did all this stuff. Like I work, we did the house. Like what the hell else is there from his perspective?

Right. I have done all the gestures to get to this point. And that's where I really learned like that feeling of being loved is an inside job because if you don't have it, if you can't give it to yourself, it's almost like that receptacle doesn't exist. The one that says I can receive love.

I can receive validation. I can trust that you care for me even when you're not around or even when you haven't said a compliment recently. Yeah. Cause you're starving for it.

You have to give it to yourself first. You have to give it to yourself and everyone loves differently. Right. There's two things that just came up for me that I wanted to just ask you about or bounce ideas off of.

And the first is I had this friend who she was in an unhealthy marriage and ultimately that marriage did end and it needed to, and now she's happy. But during that marriage, when things were so awful, she learned that he was not going to show up with her for show up in the way that she needed. And she started doing that. And she was such a great example.

To me, because she would be like for my birthday, this is what we're doing. Like she would plan her entire birthday. And I was like, wow, I always like rely on my husband to plan my birthday for me, but she's no, I was sick of getting frustrated that he wasn't doing what I wanted. So I just started planning my birthday.

I was like, oh, that's amazing. And then she'd be like, I want flowers. So she'd get herself flowers, but then she wouldn't be so upset with him that he didn't get her flowers. And that was time to get flowers.

She would just do it for herself. And eventually that marriage did end. And now that process though, she is good at taking care of herself and showing up in the way that she needs for herself, but also she's now in a much healthier marriage, which is great. But I think it really did start that ball rolling of like her figuring out what she needed.

And yes, it's going to look different, but your husband doesn't know what you need or what you want, unless you talk to him about it. But ultimately those feelings, like you said, yeah, they need to land and you're the one that actually knows. What, what needs to be said and what needs to be done in order for it to land. I like that you said that it can sometimes feel like a lie in the beginning.

Cause yeah, you don't really believe it. So how did that go for you? Like, when was it that you're like, oh wait, yeah, I can get behind this. I believe this.

I liked myself. I can fulfill those needs. That's interesting. Cause it's ongoing, right?

Like it's a lifelong journey because your, your actual self-worth is infinite. And so you're not really grasping that. Most people don't know that. And so you're like, oh, I don't know.

I don't know. People are not really grasping how valuable they are as a human being. So for me, if you think baby steps, it was like, I'm going to go for a walk instead of cleaning the house today. Cause I need to take care of myself.

So I did action steps. And then now, because my kids are older, I can like go out for the evening with my girlfriends without feeling guilty. Or I can like, it's both the thought work and the speaking to yourself kindly, and also taking action to prove to yourself that you're someone who has needs and they get to be met. But what I really found, and this is the coolest thing is that it was totally mirrored in my husband.

The more self-confidence I had, the more self-worth I had, the more he automatically treated me though. Yeah. I love it. But ultimately you teach people how to treat you.

And that starts with you. Exactly. If you don't put up with things for like for yourself, then they'll also see that's not acceptable, which I love. I love.

So with your journey, now you talk about how you have just a thriving marriage and that it's, it's continually evolving and getting better. So what have you seen when it comes to women and you're working with women? What have you seen as far as, I know this is going to be hard to answer by the way, like shooting from it, like a timeline, like when women start really, truly working on themselves and they start doing the work, what ends up happening within their marriage? Is it quick things that, yeah.

Talk to me about that. That's interesting. I love this question actually, because I've noticed that it takes about three months to get an upgrade. And if you keep working on it, you'll get another one.

Three months later and you'll get another one. Like, cause there's a lag time for, cause you have someone else you're working with, right? If you're just working with yourself, things happen, whatever speed of your openness or your willingness, right? But when you're transforming yourself and influencing someone else with your energy and your approach, it's a different thing.

So this is actually a really good measure of if your marriage can improve or not. When you said your friend, it should end. And it was like really unhealthy. If your marriage is really unhealthy or abusive emotionally.

Women can do this for three months and see no change. Yeah. Cause yeah, exactly. Or it gets worse because you're now standing up for yourself.

And this person has no time for that. Like you don't get to stand up. You don't get to have boundaries. You don't get to change the rules here.

I make the rules and you're subordinate, right? That's the energy of the more abusive dynamic. But with my clients, the ones who have what I call like the good guy, the strong, silent type, traditional man character, you trust him, but he's lacking in these. Emotional realms.

It's usually within six weeks that they see this shift and they're like, wow, like it clicks and they experience all this more love from him. And they notice him being more attentive or being more considerate, checking in about the things that you said mattered to you or remembering the thing. Like I had a client who had the strong, silent ex-military man, and he didn't do the words of affirmation. He didn't do the gift giving.

He did the acts of service, which is a very traditional man thing to do. But she told him she really liked him. He likes getting cards with like nice notes on them. So on Valentine's day, he bought her two cards.

He knew what to do now and he just did it. And he was so happy. Awesome. And just the communication.

Okay. So I have a question about this. Yeah. So there's the five languages, right?

Which you've already talked about some of them, which I think those concepts are really great. I do, but I've also like through my coaching and through working with other coaches and stuff have discovered that. When you rely for like, these are my needs and these are your needs and you're supposed to fill mine and I'm supposed to fill yours, which is, I think, not necessarily how the book was meant to be. It was be aware of what they are and show up in space.

What they need, I think is what the book was doing, but people have interpreted that as, yeah, it is his responsibility to fulfill my needs because we are married. You're so right. And I'm glad you brought that up because what people use them as limitations. Yeah.

Instead of opportunities. Yeah. They're like, I'm, and I was like this when I first learned, cause I'm reading all this stuff. I'm physical touch and words of affirmation.

He's acts of service. So I'm never getting my needs met. You despair. This person can't do it.

It's I'm going to be lonely forever. Right. That's the problem with these frameworks, right? People use them to limit the relationship.

They don't understand. It's just one framework. It's not your whole life or whole relationship. So the way I see love languages, number one.

If your husband has a love language, it's different than yours. So maybe he's giving you acts of service and you want words. Your first goal is to expand your capacity to receive. You can develop love languages.

You can look at him and go, wow, this is him giving his best to me. Yeah. Might not speak my language, but he is pouring into this other category. What if I allowed myself to receive how much love that is?

Yeah. And that was. Yeah. I like that.

Yeah, so you first you expand your capacity to receive and you allow everything in that's coming, you don't filter out any love, you have rose colored glasses, you probably did that because he loves me like we do the opposite, he did that because he doesn't care, we're always finding ways to prove our husband doesn't really care about us doesn't respect me doesn't care or else he would have, he would have called he would have been home on time he would have done the thing I asked for you do the opposite of that you receive all this love, and then you're able to communicate from a really full place of your desires. Okay, you're. already loving me, I already am appreciating this and what would really make my day is if you like complimented me randomly. I love that the most.

Yeah. And I already know you think I'm beautiful. I already feel beautiful it's not because I'm so insecure and you have to fill that pot. It's because it would just light me up make my day, make me feel so desired and happy.

And that's a huge switch and you say we have to tell them what we want. We do and I used to do that, but if you don't come from a place of fullness and appreciation. It comes across as criticism every time. Yeah, which I also love that when they do, it's like the dog.

When you're petting the dog it like let you know you want to pet it more or it's like wax it's tell more it gives you more to where you're like, oh, this dog's loving us let me go all in and scratch me now or whatever, but it's the same goes here it's like when something when he's doing the thing that maybe he's listening and he's trying to show up for you in a way that you need, give him more like more appreciation. I saw that you really. Appreciate or I saw that you did this thing for me, and that meant a lot to me, this totally helps me feel connected, like me and my husband do that a lot is because our love language are our love languages are completely different which I think is normal, right, a lot of it is normal, different love languages that it's like, they're completely opposite, so he's not going to naturally do those things that I want, vice versa. But when we do and we always are like hey doing that just really helped me feel.

More connected to you, I really loved that thank you so much for whatever we always go out of our way to show the other person that yeah, that really hit for me that landed for me thank you, because then, then they want to do more of it. Exactly you're truly teaching them how to treat you like people think of that from a negative point all the time, don't let people do this to you and don't let people do that to you, but it's no when they get it right tell them all about it, like instant feedback show it in your body language in your face and tell them. Because that's really the gold and teaching people how to treat you. Yeah.

And then what I have felt for me is like his love languages, like, I think most men are this honestly it's like physical touch sex right. A lot of them are that way and that is his top but that has become more enjoyable for me by serving him, knowing that's what he loves. And so, yeah. No, you can go.

I was just gonna say that this is where you're getting into interpretation right. So, and I call it the rose colored glasses like you assume the best or you see the best and everything because a lot of women are going, oh he only wants sex, and they see it as like a mechanical thing, like they're servicing him, it's feel soulless why don't I have to do this, whereas if you have the belief that this is how he deeply connects with you and this makes him feel so loved and he's lit up by it makes his day makes his week makes more powerful. All of a sudden. And this is like a really meaningful thing for you to do.

Yeah, and it feels really good. Yeah, it feels good even during like it's got even better during but then after two it's like, he's as high as a kite for the next until the next time pretty much is become really great for us, and it was like a discovery is like we both had to change and grow, but now like my biggest one is quality time. That's number one, followed by words of affirmation. But again.

I get so much more of that now. Anyway, so yeah, it's just interesting like looking at like how you can shift and how things can get better. So tell me more about you have a program, tell me more about anything you haven't talked to us about, talk to us about the program and like what's within the program and what you can experience. Yeah, so I have one on coaching and I also have a course called happily married woman.

And so the happily married woman course distills my whole real love method, so you can get like all the tools you need. To heal your marriage and just keep it on an upward spiral. So the first step like we talked about is put yourself first. Like you have to feed yourself you have to be in live in yourself you have to be able to stand up for yourself.

If you're thinking, how can I please him so he gives me what I want that's old thinking. That's the thinking that got you in your codependent cycle of I do so much for you, you do nothing for me, you have to put yourself first so that you are assured of never becoming resentful when you put yourself first there's no resentment because you don't give someone permission. You don't self-abandon. So you put yourself first, emotionally, physically, spiritually.

And then the next thing is you is understand your man. What does he really need to feel loved? Because often we're giving him things that he did not ask for that are not hitting the mark. Just like he's doing to us, right?

Like we're like, oh, it's really important that I do this and this because that's what a good woman would do. That's a loving thing to do. And meanwhile, he's, you know what? That's not really the point to me.

That's not what's hitting for him at all. No. And so I talk a lot about men's emotional needs because we know all about men's physical needs and we get stuck there. But men have these core emotional needs that when you meet them, they soften.

They feel safe. They don't tell you that stuff because they're always hiding their vulnerabilities, right? They're like, I got to be tough. It's not okay for them, right?

Yeah. We've been taught that it's not okay to be emotional, which I think is so sad because men are very emotional beings. We all are. Yes.

They have deep emotions and they conceal them because they don't want to be attacked. Think about it. From the schoolyard, you get beat if you cry. So they're trained all through their lives that no vulnerability, can't do it.

But when you understand that about them and you stop thinking they're tough and you can say whatever you want to them, they're not. They get deeply hurt by the throwaway comments we make. If we're sarcastic, if we're complaining about them, especially around other people, like they're not going to forget that stuff. Yeah.

That goes deep. So I really help women see these are the areas that you're probably accidentally really hurting him. And that's why he's so distant. And here's how you can repair that and start creating that emotional safety.

So that I always say, I don't even get to communication until you've done those two things. Yeah. Because it's going to fall flat. Makes sense.

Yeah. So we focus on putting yourself first and then learning how to care for him. And then you get to powerful communication. Like how do you really bring something up in such a way that he's not going to get defensive and feel like it's a criticism and it ends up in a big fight.

Right. That's a real art that truly no one has been taught. Like we never saw our parents do it. You don't even see it on movies.

Like how do you, in a long-term relationship where you are building the foundation for the rest of your lives, you don't want to cause damage, but you need to stand up for yourself. You don't want to sweep things under the rug anymore. How do you communicate so that they really can hear you and they, you can create that growth. That's the third pillar.

And then the fourth one is be his lover, not his mother. And so as you might think, we do a lot of mothering, which. We find a big turnoff when we think of our husbands as children and they find a big turnoff when we, they experienced us as the mother. And so it's like switching back into that girlfriend mode.

Like when you met him and it was just all fun and games and you admired him and thought he was fantastic. You were just lit up when you see him. If you bring that energy back to the relationship, you reignite the passion in your life. Yeah.

And it doesn't have to go away. Which also makes sense. Right. No one wants another mom.

No, we don't want to be their mom. No. It's a lose. Yeah.

It doesn't feel good, but being the girlfriend that feels so much more fun. Don't we always want to have that flame and have that crush and fill those feelings. Do you believe those feelings can stay within a marriage? Yes.

Not this first three months feelings. Cause that pure chemicals, but you're out of your mind. You couldn't even have that. But what I actually believe is the chemistry and passion.

You can feel in long-term is even better because you're not anxious and freaking out. Like you are when you're madly in love at the beginning, but you like don't sleep and you're like vibrating with, Oh my God, I have to have this person. But in the long-term passion, it's like slow burn. What's always there.

You can always tap into it. You can always have a little flirt. You're going to have amazing sex. Like what a gift that is to know you're having amazing sex for the rest of your life.

These things do not have to go away at all. And that's why I love this work so much. Because you basically reverse engineer it. Like what are the things that really keep the passion and spark alive and just choose those behaviors?

Like not really, it's not really hard. Once you start understanding that it's like leverage, right? Instead of doing all these things and working so hard on your marriage, you do the things that have the biggest leverage. And then you don't have to work so hard.

Yeah. I love that. Don't have to work so hard. Cause a lot of people feel, I remember my, so I am second marriage.

And so. A lot for my first. And I remember just telling my sisters all the time. I'm like, just really working on my marriage.

I used to always say that. And my sisters would be like, it's so weird that you say that. Cause it feels like it's so heavy and hard. I'm like, I feel like it is, but it doesn't have to be.

And sometimes marriages need to be done, but a lot of times they don't. A lot of times there's just things that we can do to save that marriage and to stay in that marriage. So. I love what you're doing.

So what would you leave our audience as far as like another one, another nugget of wisdom, something to just let them chew on for the next little bit? What would that be? I would say, you don't know what you don't know. So there might be a sense that you've tried everything and like it's stuck and you feel like it's a dead end and like, I got to leave or I got to deal with this terrible marriage, but we're too close to it.

When you're in a marriage and you haven't got support from someone else, you cannot see the big picture. And you don't know what's possible. So should it be something that can't last, or is it something that just around the corner, just a couple of tweaks and all of a sudden you're through four weeks later. And so I just really encourage you to talk to someone like me or get some really expert advice from someone who has a wonderful marriage.

Therapists are not necessarily good at this. I warn you because they're focused on the individual wellbeing and they don't necessarily have relationship skills. So don't give up until you've really sought. Expert advice, because you can't tell, you can't tell from the inside, if it's like truly a toxic relationship or you're just lacking some relationship skills.

Yeah. Which I do think a lot of times it is the latter because inherently most people are good. And even within a toxic, toxic marriage, there's things that can shift and happen. If there's just like healed trauma, which then can also change everything.

I love this. You don't give up. Just don't give up. If you've been in love.

With them. There's a reason why, right? Continually fall in love. My belief is that you can continually fall in love with each other over and over again.

Doesn't have to be just in the beginning. Yes. I completely agree with that. And it's deeper and it's more satisfying because you really know each other and you've been to hell and back and they've seen you at your worst and you see them at your worst, their worst.

And it's just something so satisfying about having that in love feeling when you also have the depth of security. Totally. And that you're continually choosing each other over and over. I love that.

Shiloh, thank you so much for your time. So for everyone who tuned in, I know that we only got a few minutes of her compared to the knowledge that she still has inside. So all of the links will be down below. If you guys want to contact her, everything's down there.

And then your website is just your name, isn't it? Yeah. It's just, it's just her name, Shiloh minor. com.

So that's really easy. So thank you again so much for being on the podcast and thank you listeners for tuning in. And we will see you. All right.

Thank you so much. Bye. www. amysanders.

co forward slash services. Again, that is amysanders. co forward slash services.