016: Making Decisions for Stronger Relationships With Barbara Peters

00:00 Beau Henderson: You know, one of the things that we do here is to give you tools and give you resources to live that definition of a healthy, wealthy, fulfilled life on purpose, your definition of a rich life. And one of the things that I think we’re all going to agree on being really healthy in any area of our life or successful in any area of our life is having good relationships. Now, we’ve had our guest Barbara Peters on in the past. She’s our resident relationship expert here and she’s been a couples’ counselor and coach, a relationship author. We’ve talked to her about her book “He Said, She Said, I Said”, and today, Barbara, I would love for you to tell us what’s a good topic we can dig into to help us have better relationships.

00:43 Barbara Peters: Well, hi, Beau. First of all, thanks for having me. Second of all, the topic that I think is absolutely great is making decisions.

00:53 Beau Henderson: Making decisions. Now, see that’s fascinating because when we talk about one of the key areas to be successful in life and business and anything you do is the ability to make good decisions. So, you’re saying this applies specifically to relationships, too?

01:09 Barbara Peters: Well, it applies to more than relationships. Let me say one cute thing when I was in Georgia State getting my counseling degree, I had a fabulous instructor. He just fascinated me. I used to tape all his sessions and he said something about make a decision and then make it the right one.

01:30 Beau Henderson: Nice.

01:31 Barbara Peters: Think about that. That’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because all decisions require or carry a sense of, “Is it gonna be right? Am I making the right decision?” And so I loved his take on that. Make a decision and make it the right one. So anyway, yes. Decisions affect relationships. Decisions affect everything we do in life.

01:55 Beau Henderson: And, Barbara, I think what’s fascinating, if we really were to break it down, so much is automatic and unfortunately I think a lot of times we just kind of sleepwalk through parts of our lives, and our routine, and our day to day interactions. But if we really were to break it down and consciously make a note, we probably make thousands of little decisions everyday.

02:13 Barbara Peters: Well, that’s where I was gonna go. Think about it. Just today, I just… I made… I had to make a decision to go see a movie with a friend and not do something else. I make a decision of when I should walk the dog. I mean, we make decisions that we don’t even actually label as a decision, but it really is. So, we make all kinds of decisions. The ones that really seem to carry the definition of a decision though are the more important ones, the more decisions that impact somebody’s life, and that means the person making the decision and very often their spouse or significant other, or very often their children. So, those decisions are the ones that we tend to label more as a decision, not so much walking the dog at 2 ‘o clock instead of 10 ‘o clock, you know what I mean?

03:05 Beau Henderson: Well, you did, you said something I think we should pull out. I think you just said a nugget that I think we should make sure people heard, that sometimes we make decisions, but especially when we’re involved, we all have multiple relationships, but a decision goes beyond, “How does this decision affect me?” It could affect your spouse, your family, your kids, your co-workers. So, there’s multi-levels to this. So, it’s a little bigger than it seems at first glance.

03:34 Barbara Peters: Well, absolutely, which is why I brought up the smaller ones that don’t even seem decisional, but in a way are and the ones that are more autonomous that you’re making with yourself like, “Do I wanna go to the movie today or not?” I’m making that with myself. It doesn’t really impact anybody today. But when you make a decision, for instance, I will talk about this to take another job, that may have consequences and on your spouse, on your children, on where you live. I mean, it’s quite… It’s a lot more intricate.

04:10 Beau Henderson: Well, let’s get to this. So, obviously, our relationships, they’re not necessarily easy. I mean, there’s proof of that, especially romantic relationships. There’s just a billions of dollar industry of people trying to connect and get it right. So, what are some tips or some tools that we could have to make better decisions to have better relationships?

04:33 Barbara Peters: Okay. Well, the first tip that I would like to say is that you have to decide how committed you are in your relationship. Because when you’re very committed in your relationship, you tend to take into account the impact that your decision has on your spouse, your children, yourself. So, knowing how committed you are in your relationship is really the first thing that I think we need to do.

05:05 Beau Henderson: Okay.

05:06 Barbara Peters: I wanna say decisions in relationships can be so impactful that a friend of mine many, many years ago was living in New York with his wife and his parents died. They lived in Florida and they left this beautiful house, and I think it’s Delray Beach Club or something, and he wanted to move there. He wanted to retire, move to Florida, and live in that house. And this is a true story. She did not wanna leave New York, Long Island. And I will tell you that that decision caused a divorce. He moved to Florida. She stayed in New York. Now, I’m sure there might have been other things leading up to the, that wasn’t… But that was the ultimate. She wasn’t moving and he was.

05:55 Beau Henderson: That’s fascinating because, two, in the point of the decide how committed you are is you gotta remember a relationship is two people at least, right? So I’ve seen many people, many friends, many relationships in different areas where you’ve gotta make sure it’s not just good enough for you to be all in and committed. You also gotta make sure that other person in the relationship is committed or you’re gonna obviously have mismatches because the decisions aren’t gonna be as important if you have a mismatch on commitment.

06:27 Barbara Peters: And that, probably, did happen, I don’t know the story totally, that there wasn’t that level of commitment because he moved and either one of them probably didn’t have that level of commitment, but that was a major impact on that. Well, back to the tips. The second tip that I wanna bring up is that you have to really be honest about your feelings about what you’re trying to decide or tell your spouse you’re going to decide. You have to know what you really want and be able to admit it, that the other person understands the significance of this decision. So being honest about how you feel about what this decision is, is critical. And maybe some people are afraid of that because their relationship may not be that stable. In his case, I don’t know how the conversation came out, or how it happened, but if your relationship isn’t stable to withstand a big decision, then you might not be able to be as upfront as you should be.

07:35 Beau Henderson: Well in honesty, again, it’s one of those things everybody agrees that’s the way to be, but it’s not always that easy, and sometimes, honesty can take some, maybe insidious forms that seem less nefarious, if you will, such as just omission, which is probably just as bad. So all of this to say Barbara, I’m asking ’cause I know I’ve experienced this and I’ve heard it from countless others, is how do you create… How do you make sure, or what are things we can do to create a safe space so that it’s okay to be honest? Sometimes it might be hard to be honest if you feel like you’re gonna be… Get your head snapped off by sharing how you really feel. So are there things you can do, just to even get to that place, that safe place and space in the first place?

08:22 Barbara Peters: Well, that’s pretty difficult because sometimes, what you have to say to your significant other or spouse is going to be hurtful. And no matter how we wrap it up, no matter how we deliver it, the content is still going to be somewhat hurtful. And so, aside from going into communication techniques, safe space, you have to be able to deliver it without fear. You have to be able to give information. You have to be able to give your spouse time to respond and ask more questions. And you have to be open to… Maybe in his case, he wasn’t that open to listening to why she didn’t wanna move. Maybe he was narcissistic and said he was going and I don’t know all this, okay? So, these things have to come out, and information happens to be a big part, it’s always a big part in communication. What you don’t say can be hurtful more than what you actually do say.

09:30 Beau Henderson: Would it be a good idea… And I’m just… I’m processing as you’re explaining some of these tips. Would it be a good idea, maybe, to buy in an agreement that, “Hey, no matter what, we know that always knowing where each other stands and being honest is gonna be the most helpful in the long run,” and getting that by in a nod before things are in a situation, or heated, and maybe almost having a step back when… This sounds more like your work as, “Hey, let’s get by in on these ideas and these concepts that are gonna help you because it’s a lot harder to keep that… ” What is it? The kind of a logical frame of reference when things are already escalating.

10:14 Barbara Peters: Well, I think in a healthy relationship, the buy in is usually there, but still, a big decision is going to ruffle the feathers a little bit when it’s based on more on one person’s desire… Let’s say in a career position, their boss comes and tells them about this great job opportunity, and it’s more money. Now money is a big thing and you’re the man about that. And here’s a big promotion faced to somebody and here’s a lot more money and a lot more ability to do things in life. And this is very advantageous to the person, but the wife, or the husband whoever it is that’s got the big job, may not value, here’s another important point, may not value the more money, as much as they value the comfortable lifestyle and family life that they have, and living in the geographical location that they are. So they may not value another $30,000-$40,000 a year. So you see where this gets a little bit tricky because you have to know your values. You have to make sure that you can… And that you’re willing to stand on your values.

11:44 Beau Henderson: Got it. So we gotta decide how committed we are in this relationship. We’ve gotta be able to be honest about our feelings, and you just added kind of another one there, is we gotta be clear on our values.

11:56 Barbara Peters: Absolutely.

11:57 Beau Henderson: What else? What are some other tips on how we really make these good, healthy decisions that have a good relationship?

12:04 Barbara Peters: You have to know that you cannot control everything. So, we can’t predict all the time how major decisions are going to affect a couple and an individual. So a lot of this is, you make the best decision with the information that you have at the moment, and then you have to be prepared to go the rest of the way, and as my instructor said, “Make it the right one, if you are gonna make it.” So you get as much information as you can, you look at pros and cons, this is the simple goal, what people do when they wanna have a goal, they have to look at both sides of things and make the discussions open and you come to a decision based on all of that. But you have to be in the end really understanding the fact that you can’t control it all. So there may be things that you haven’t covered, that you haven’t thought about, we can’t think about everything, we don’t have crystal balls and but if the big majority of the things fit, then you should be good to go.

13:15 Beau Henderson: Great information. We are talking to Barbara Peters, one of our relationship experts. She’s a couples’ counselor and coach and she’s written books on couples and how to have healthy relationships and we’ve talked today a lot about this, the importance of making decisions in relationships and some tips, just as a recap. We gotta decide how committed we are in the relationship. We gotta be honest about our feelings. We got to know our values in the relationship. What are our values and, I love that last one Barbara, you can’t control everything because a lot of times what I see, is we get so focused on the things we can’t control that we don’t spend our energy controlling the things we can.

14:00 Barbara Peters: Absolutely, if we have time I have one more example which happens to be a pretty positive example of a young lady who got a different job promotion and she had been working at home, now she was working at home, people work at home don’t have to get dressed up, don’t have to commute and she has a little child, who needs to go to daycare. Anyway she got this job, which would put her now not working at home, okay, having to get out and commuting. A very different scenario wanted this job, her husband, discussed it with her husband, they talked about what changes they would have to make in their lives. Who would take the child to the daycare? Who would pick the child up after the daycare? Would she have hours where she would be not able to make dinner and be home in time? They looked at all the differences from an at-home job to a commuting job and lo and behold they made the decision together that she was going to take this position. She did admit some fear, but again, you can’t control everything.

15:16 Beau Henderson: There you go, and by working together on that, they made a joint decision. I think that seems to be the key, it sounds like when a couple that works is together, they’re coming together on a decision that works for both of them.

15:29 Barbara Peters: Well, he was supportive and he knew her value, that she wanted this job, this change of career, it was a change, and it was important to her. He was able to understand that and he was able to agree that he would like her to do that because he was very understanding in that realm, and they had a great way of communicating with each other and how they came about her making the decision, but it was really, like you said, it was more of a joint decision.

16:05 Beau Henderson: They came, yeah, they came to what worked for the family. So, we all have decisions in our relationships we have to make, right? And you’re giving us some good tips on how to make effective decisions for healthy relationship. Let me ask a hard question, because that’s part of my job too is to… The show and we are all about the rich life, the happy side of things, but when does it come together that there might be a decision that you do go the separate ways? I mean, I don’t think people spend a lot of time on that, but are there circumstances and areas to where you realize the healthiest thing and the happiest thing is for something different than it working out.

16:48 Barbara Peters: Absolutely that can happen. And I actually had that happened to me with one couple, and it ended up in a divorce, and it was the quickest divorce I’ve ever seen and it was the healthiest divorce I’ve ever seen because it was… They needed to go their separate ways, that’s certain whatever decisions made them go there, and both of them were able to see that as the right thing. Now you know, I’m pro-marriage and pro-relationships, that’s what I do.

17:23 Beau Henderson: Absolutely.

17:24 Barbara Peters: I wanna keep relationships together, I’m a traditionalistic and a romantic at heart, but and here’s a big but, I never believe that people should stay together who aren’t gonna be happy, who aren’t gonna have the greatest 1440 minutes everyday that they can and if they both agree that moving away from each other and going their individual ways and following their dreams, that’s what needs to happen. The one thing that I’ve always seen people are afraid of is getting a divorce or going their separate ways because they’re going to hurt their children. That does not have to be. The children can be healthier if it’s done in a healthy manner.

18:09 Beau Henderson: I got it. And I see both sides of that conversation, too, having the family unit intact. But at the same time… How many kids grow up messed up, because they’re in an unhealthy situation that might have stayed together?

18:21 Barbara Peters: Absolutely, Beau, you hit the nail on the head.

[chuckle]

18:25 Beau Henderson: Well, excellent. Well, I don’t wanna end on a negative. I just want us to be real. Because to live that rich life we talk about, you have to be real to live rich, right? So I wanna bring all sides to the story. But let’s wrap up, Barbara, on a real… Maybe in 60 seconds. What would be a good takeaway for all of us to hear about relationships, that we could go home tonight, or make it a priority this week, to apply immediately to have us have these healthier relationships?

18:58 Barbara Peters: I say, be present with each other. Be mindful of what’s happening right now. Be thankful, appreciative and grateful for what you have, because what you have is probably to be cherished.

19:17 Beau Henderson: Well said. And that’s why we love her. Barbara Peters, I hope to have you back soon to talk with us about how to have better, healthier, richer relationships. And guys, we can all do better in this area. And it’s probably the key area to success with life, money, everything we do. Check out Barbara at barbarajpeters.com, and you can find “He Said, She Said, I Said,” and just find out more about her. And Barbara, I look forward to, before too long, having you back to teach us something else.

19:46 Barbara Peters: And I would love to do it.

19:48 Barbara Peters: All right. Thanks, Barbara.