The B-Side of Marriage

The thing that has kept us connected almost 18 years in
is not date nights.

It is conflict.

Stay with me.

Most couples treat a disagreement like proof that something is broken.

So they rush it, avoid it, or fight to win it.

But conflict is one of the few places
where you get to see your person’s actual interior.

What they fear. What they need. What they have been carrying quietly.

You do not get that from a good day.

You get that from a hard one, handled well.

“I don’t have to win this. I get to understand you.”

That one sentence changed how we fight.

👉🏾 Tag someone who needs to hear this before their next argument.

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We break this all the way down, including the part where Jason tells me this is easier said than done.

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You are not married to the person you married.
And neither are they.

We have been together 20 years.
Married almost 18.
The Jason I met is not the Jason I am married to today,
and thank God for that, because I am not the same Ra’Shunda either.

Here is where couples get stuck:
they keep relating to a version of their spouse
that stopped existing years ago.

Same expectations.
Same assumptions.
Same script for a person who has rewritten themselves over multiple times since.

Your relationship is not supposed to stay the same.
It is supposed to evolve, because you both are.

👉🏾 How long have you and yours been together? Drop the number below.

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In the middle of it, ask yourself one question:
am I building a bridge right now, or burning one?

Because that is really what conflict is.
Every hard conversation is a chance to build a way back to each other.
But if I have already decided you are the enemy,
I am not building anything.

I am setting fire to the road that gets me back to you.
And then I am confused about why we feel so far apart.

You cannot burn bridges all week and then wonder why nobody can reach you.

👉🏾 Save this one for the next disagreement. You are going to want it.

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If you walk into a disagreement seeing your spouse as the opps, you are going to fight to win.
And you will lose. 🤎

Because winning was never the goal.

When I see him as the enemy, I attack.
When I attack, I cause harm.
When I cause harm, we both walk away further apart than when we started.

But when I walk in thinking “I get to understand him differently right now,” something else entirely happens.

Same disagreement.
Completely different outcome.
Conflict is not war.
It is information.

👉🏾 What is your first instinct in a disagreement: defend or understand?

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We thought silence was keeping the peace.
It was doing the opposite.

Here is what nobody tells you: avoiding the conversation does not make the problem go away.

It just moves it somewhere you cannot see it.

And then it grows.

Silence does not keep the peace.
Silence builds resentment, and resentment is the thing that actually interrupts your peace.

So that thing you have been “letting go” for three weeks?

It is not gone.

It is waiting.

👉🏾 Be honest in the comments: are you an avoider or an addresser?

🎧 Brand new episode drops Wednesday and we get all the way into this one.

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“If he does not see it as a problem,
maybe the problem is me.”

I said that to myself more times than I want to admit. 🤎

I do a lot of self-reflection,
which sounds healthy until it turns into
am I reading too much into this?
Am I misinterpreting the whole thing?
Am I the difficult one?

And while I am in my head doing all that math,
the disconnect just gets brushed under the rug
until the next blow up.

So at some point I had to decide:
am I willing to actually address this,
or am I going to keep swallowing it?

I chose let’s just talk.
Because if I did read more into it,
fine, that is something I can work on.
But at least now I know,
instead of guessing.

👉🏾 Tell me in the comments: are you a brush it under the rug person or a let’s talk about it person?

🎧 We go all the way in on this one.
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Waiting on them to be ready to talk is not a plan.
It is just a longer silence. 🤎

Here is what we are learning:
if something is sitting heavy with you,
you do not have to wait for the perfect moment
or for them to bring it up first.

You can start the conversation.
You can even set up the conversation.
“Hey, can we talk tonight after the kids go down?”

That one sentence does two things:
it gets the thing out of your chest,
and it gives your spouse time to show up ready instead of ambushed.

Cycling through it in your head
is not the same as working through it together.

👉🏾 Drop a 🙋🏾‍♀️ if you are the one who usually waits for them to bring it up.
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New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you do not miss one.

There are things we set aside because we didn’t know how to unpack them yet.

Some conversations bring up so much anxiety that shelving them feels like the safer choice. And sometimes it is, for a minute. The problem is when “for now” turns into never.

Once you can see the pattern, you can prepare for it. Life will still get busy. The difference is being intentional enough that the small things don’t slide under the rug and pile into something bigger.

Date night talk is good. It is not the same as talking about the little things you’ve been carrying.

More in the full episode, “Am I Doing This By Myself,” on our YouTube channel, The B-Side of Marriage. Link in bio.

How you open the conversation decides how it ends.

“I want to talk about the way you’re leaving me out” puts your spouse on defense before you finish the sentence. Nobody can hear you through a shield.

So name your experience instead of their behavior. I felt. I noticed. Here’s how I read it. Same conversation, completely different door.

Because the goal was never to win the point. The goal was to reconnect.

We break this down in the full episode, “Am I Doing This By Myself,” now on our YouTube channel, The B-Side of Marriage. Link in bio.

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