Episode Description

Couples often reproduce what they witnessed, even when the pattern no longer serves the marriage they are trying to build. Doc and Crystal discuss inherited roles, emotional habits, absent examples, therapy, mentorship, and the curiosity required to build a healthier family rhythm.

What We Get Into in This Episode

• How family patterns enter a marriage

• Inherited expectations about gender and household roles

• Learning what was never modeled

• The role of therapy and mentorship

• Using curiosity to interrupt generational patterns

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does breaking generational chains mean in marriage?

It means identifying inherited habits, expectations, or emotional patterns that are unhealthy or unsuitable for the marriage and intentionally choosing a different way forward.

How do family backgrounds affect marriage roles?

Spouses often imitate what they observed growing up or compensate for what was missing, shaping expectations about chores, emotion, responsibility, and leadership.

Can therapy help couples break unhealthy family patterns?

The episode describes therapy as transformative when couples find the right therapist, language, perspective, and tools for patterns that once felt automatic.

Transcript

Hey y'all. What's up? So, we may or may not have gotten our days a little mixed up. Maybe we got a little busy. I don't know. But hey, we happy we here. We're here. We made it. Mhm. Missed y'all.

Sure did. So, today we're talking about breaking chains. Uh breaking chains, right? Yeah. Breaking chains and what that looks like. I think that I think what happens in marriage or in life in general, particularly in marriage since that's what we're talking about the most is that we typically emulate what we seen or what was done to us. So, it's easy for me to say, well, shoot, my dad did this or or my uncle did this or my mom did this, so that's just what I'm going to do, right? U so and we all know that, you know, love our family to the white meat. um but they don't always get it right and there are some things that um need to be remediated. There are some things there are some habits and there are some inclinations and proclivities that we don't need to keep doing.

Yeah. um you know like I know that um one of the things that I grew up seeing a lot of was um you know the expectation that the woman is supposed to manage the house. um that's not necessarily a generational curse. It's not necessarily a chain, but um it was an expectation that was kind of like subliminally, you know, peppered onto my head and I was like, I don't I don't want to do that. I think we should share. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I was, you know, the whole the man does all the heavy lifting man things, right? Like I remember I got I was upset one day I came home and she was mowing the grass. I like to mow the grass, y'all.

I really like yard work. And I remember thinking like what the hell are my neighbors going to think of me that my wife is outside mowing the grass when that's my job is to do that. So, but again, that's one of those kind of breaking the chains. Well, you just you establish your own rhythms and your own um habits with your spouse. And you know, when it gets to like those emotional things, um right, I like to say you can give what you receive. And if you don't get it, it's very difficult for you to give it because you don't know how what it looks like. um and so, you know, when it comes to like I was raised in a very you going to poop or get off the pot. Yeah. And that ain't the way it was said, you know, like you going to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You going to get it done.

Don't let them see you sweat. And um you know, while those those lessons have a lot of um value and they have really helped me with my work ethic and my drive, my own ambition and my my own expectations of myself, right? The flip side of that coin is that I can run myself into a hole. Like I was like, "Girl, slow down. Sit down. Shut up. Don't touch nothing." Yeah. Pump the brakes. Pump the brakes. Like nobody is going to come and get you if you don't meet your own standard.

Yeah. But you know what? On on the flip side of that, I was the complete opposite where you were this get it done, make it happen. Now, now sports afforded me to have that you kind of was an overachiever a little bit. On Yes. on the sports side of things, but as as it relates to being a husband and doing all the things that the husband's supposed to do, I think I was kind of lazy in that regard. I don't think I was upholding some of the traditional things because one, truth be told, you know, I didn't have a dad in the house, so I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't have an example. So, well, you had examples. I had examples, but not not directly.

So, I saw it from afar, but it wasn't up close. So I think because of that it took me a while to understand what the husband role looked like and it took it took a lot of patience on my part to allow him to grow into that space but to also love him through that learning right like I again I can't it's real dumb of me to be like why you ain't being a husband and it's like well I don't know what husbands really do at the house cuz one wasn't in the house, right? um but but being tender and having a soft spot in my heart for his desire to be that for me, that husband for me and learn to be that place and shout out to all your homies, man. who who have been really just no I do again like this this should be part one because we can continue this because I had a good a good nucleus of men in my life to kind of help and guide me although I directly didn't have a an example in the house but I had a lot of good good counsel from really close friends to kind of help guide and watch me grow and it was a struggle at first but it helped a lot a lot. It was tight. It was It was rough. It was tight. It was rough. So, but um yeah, I mean like if we're if we're going to talk about breaking chains, it's it's just like I mean we can go from like even like therapy. I y'all you know we get the pompoms out and we rah when it comes to like therapy.

um cuz we've talked about how that has been so fauxa in our community. But but that was a chain we had to break. We had to break that chain and it was so transformative in ways that we could not have even anticipated. Like y'all, therapy is a gift. It helps. It's like especially when you get the right therapist, the right it is a wonderful thing. Yeah. And so like just getting past that oh we don't do that. we don't, you know, just like he's like, well, like if you never had the curiosity or the interest or the inclination to be like, how do I husband? And if I never had the inclination or the curiosity to be like, how can I be a better version of myself for me?

Because who I am is who he is. We're one, right? Um, you've got to want to break the chains and you've got to go. Hey, it's been a minute, y'all. It ain't happened in a long time. cookies. Uh yeah, we don't know what we doing. We just out here. um but yeah, we've done the work of being curious. And I think that's where a lot of the chains get broken.

I think that's that's a good that's where you have to start. The curiosity is is a good way to begin to break the chains. Yeah. So So I don't know. We'll we'll talk about this again the next time. I mean cuz there's there's we got kids, we got family members We got the way that we deal with co-workers. Woo. We got It's a bunch of that. Yeah. I say we also have a recommendation.

We'll talk about that next though. Okay. Well, we'll see y'all next time. See y'all. Bye.