I think two of the toughest challenges a person can face in their life is running their own business, and making a marriage work! I speak from experience because I’ve been a business owner for 10+ years, and I’ve been married to the same man for 31 years. There have been plenty of ups and downs in both of those scenarios. The same can be said for my podcast guest, Laura Doyle. When her marriage was in trouble, she stumbled on some ancient wisdom that saved her relationship, and now she helps other women do the same.
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On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast:
- Learn why marriage counseling often does more harm than good
- Laura shares some common mistakes women make to get their husband’s attention
- Find out the one question you should never ask a man
- Why YOU are the most important factor in making your marriage work
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste and welcome to live love engage. I am Gloria grace Rand. And I’m emphasizing the D because I’ve noticed in a lot of times when I’m saying my name, I don’t emphasize it and it sounds like RAN, but it’s Rand, there is a d at the end of it. So I appreciate all of you for being here watching on YouTube listening to the program, and I’m delighted to have a really accomplished woman who has made it her mission to really help marriages, but I’m gonna I’m getting ahead of myself. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about Laura Doyle. She has a passion for helping women in particular fix their relationships without their man’s conscious effort, so they feel desired taken care of and special, no matter how hopeless it seems. Laura was trying to save her own marriage when she stumbled on some ancient wisdom and wrote a book that accidentally started a worldwide movement of women who also wanted to fix their marriages and make them playful and passionate again. And now thousands of women from all over the world reached out for help. So she trained relationship coaches create online programs, live events. And as if that wasn’t enough and Amazon Prime series to meet the demand, and she had her team of over 40 coaches have helped over 15,000 women with their self confidence and their marriages. So she’s going to hopefully share some awesome wisdom with us today. For those of you whether you’re married for a few years or married for a long time, and how to keep it going. So thank you so much for being here, Laura.
Laura Doyle
It’s so exciting to be here. Thanks for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand
I appreciate you because I, we were actually just talking before we got started. We’ve both been married 30 years, so a little bit over. And it’s not always an easy journey. But I am, it is an accomplishment. So I’m glad we’ve made it this far. And I’ve had two awesome kids in the process. But I wanted to find out from you because I think a lot of times we come up with these ideas to fix things because we’ve experienced some challenges. So I even though you’ve helped, excuse me, 15,000 women, you almost got divorced yourself. So what happened there? What prompted that?
Laura Doyle
Well, you nailed it. This was a very personal journey. In the beginning, I was really happy. When I first got married in 1989. Same year you got married Gloria, but just a few years in, it wasn’t going well at all. And I thought that I was either going to have to get divorced or spend the rest of my life in a loveless relationship. In fact, I remember I was sitting on the marriage counselors gray couch, when it really struck me like I’ve got to get divorced this he’s never going to change and this is hopeless. But the problem was I was too embarrassed to get divorced. So, as a last ditch effort, I decided I was going to ask women who had been happily married for what seemed like an eternity at the time, which was 15 years. That’s a long time to be married. So I’m gonna ask them for their tips. And they start saying things that I didn’t think made any sense. I didn’t understand what they meant. I thought they were going to say, we have to pick the right man. But they didn’t say that actually. They said, there’s other things that had to do with things that I could do. And I thought, well, whatever, but I so I thought, okay, I’m desperate. I’m gonna just experiment with these suggestions. And I’ve been doing that for a little while. Not that long, really. And I remember at the time, my husband and I either had wall-to-wall hostility or we were having Cold War’s where there’s just no talk for days. And I remember I started using some of the things that they were suggesting, and I As I came through the door, his face lit up. He was happy to see me again. And then I’ve been gone. I thought, okay, something is going right here. I mean, maybe maybe they knew something after all. And so then I thought, okay, now I know what to do. And it wasn’t even that hard. It was was new. But I had a problem I couldn’t always get myself to do the things that I knew were going to contribute towards this new playfulness and passion and peace that we were enjoying. And I remember like, not too long after that we had a big old blow up in the car again, that was kind of our own pattern was like some for something some some reason the car made us fight. I don’t know why but so I thought, Oh my gosh, this is awful because now I know what to do. And how tragic would it be to have my marriage get ruined again or just get divorced, even though I know what to do so. So I came up with the idea that I was going to recruit some of my girlfriends, they were also called complaining about their relationships. So I started, I stopped telling my husband what to do. That was one of the suggestions I got, stop telling him what to do. And I started telling my girlfriends what to do instead. And for some reason that worked, like we had this little support group in my living room, and they were reporting miracles. I remember one woman said that her husband won the sales contest at work. And he took on the most romantic getaway of their lives. Right after that, and another one just said, Well, he painted the family room and we’re like, yeah, and she’s like, No, you guys don’t get it. We’ve been arguing about that for months, like, and he just decided to do it today. So it seemed like a miracle to her. And and that’s we were finding and so someone said, Hey, can you write down what we’re doing for my cousin in Florida? And I said, Sure. And that became my first book, which went directly to the New York Times bestseller list and is published now in 19 languages and 30 countries. So it’s like the accidental movement all over the world of women who just really wanted to know how to get that. That good feeling back now how to have the intimacy that they had when they first fell in love. Yeah, I think we all I was just talking to another woman who studies this work this morning. She’s like, I think, you know, I’m a very successful career woman but she gets deep down. I think I also just wanted to be a Disney Princess. And have someone fall in love with me and take care of me.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I know. Well, I tell you, that’s interesting. You said that because my husband and I met through the personal ads. Now. In this day and age of course, it’s all online back in the day it was in the was actually in the newspaper, the physical paper. There were there were personals there. And he wrote a very romantic one of like, you know, he was prince or no, he was a knight in shining armor looking for as his you know, Queen Guinevere or something. And of course, it was like, Ah, so romantic sounding and of course, I responded to that because it’s a It is sort of the way that we’re brought up to expect this knight in shining iron armor to come around and rescue us. And then sometimes that works. But sometimes the reality is not quite the same as what they told us in the storybooks. So, yeah. And and you mentioned, one of the things is that you actually did go to marriage counseling, which I know a lot of people do it. In fact, I actually, my husband and I have done that for a little bit as well. But your say sometimes it does actually more harm than good. What? Yeah, why? Why do you believe that?
Laura Doyle
Well, I just remember. So once again, we’re in the car, having a big fight when my husband said, Fine, I’ll go to marriage counseling. We were on our way to Disneyland – the happiest place on Earth. And it wasn’t very happy in our car. Okay, I let him have the last word on this one. You know, my whole mentality was good. Now. We’re going to go to a professional and she is going to fix him, and then I can finally be happy, because that’s how it works. That’s how I figured it works, and so that was kind of a bad setup because I wasn’t there to look at myself. In fact, I remember her saying, at one point she was like, Laura, I don’t know if you realize that you’re, you’re controlling. I was like, What like the record skipped. “rrrrrrr”, what do you what were you I’m the good spouse, we’re here to fix him, you know. And we were, she diagnosed me with depression and he had this common mental disorder, attention deficit disorder, and there was medicine for that. So I thought, Okay, this is really gonna Yeah, I the medicines hard on your liver. And I’m like, Well, you know, so what? Next, something’s got to be done here. So it’s pretty embarrassing to look back at that. But the other the other structure of marriage counseling, I think marriage counselors are are good people that got in the business to help they really mean well, the structure of it is that you go in talking about all the things your partner’s doing wrong. And so you’re going in front of him to tell a stranger how incompetent he is as a husband, basically,
Gloria Grace Rand
yeah,
Laura Doyle
there’s actually nothing more disrespectful than doing that. And I think we’ve all heard our whole lives like, Oh, you should be respectful to your, you know, your husband or whatever. And I thought I was being respectful except for, you know, the way he drives and the way he dresses and you know, or whatever. So, it was really kind of eye opening. Yeah, to find out. I’m not I’m not being respectful at all. And this is a big part of why I’m getting such a hostile reaction. You know, when I changed how I showed up. It’s just amazing to me like this, the man who wooed me came back. It was like the guy I fell in love with. Was there again. So it Yeah, it was just astonished to find out that so much of the power was right in my hands and I didn’t realize it like even that is great that the counselor told me I was controlling that was eye opening, but I remember her saying, Yeah, just stop being so controlling. And that was no help at all. I was like, yeah, “How am I gonna do that?” I was like controlling because I was the one that knew best how to do everything I thought. And if I wasn’t gonna do it, then how was it gonna get done. So it’s
Gloria Grace Rand
right. Oh, yeah.
Laura Doyle
So now that I have my world famous system for relinquishing control, like, yeah, there’s a little more structure and support for that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s interesting that we get that way. And I don’t know if it’s just something. It’s probably not all women. And maybe maybe it depends even sometimes on how you’re raised. But sometimes it just seemed like, it would be so much easier to like, even though you want them to be able to help it’s like oh, but then they’re not putting the dishes in the right order in the dishwasher. And then they want and then they wonder later why they’re not doing the dishes at all. Well, if you’re gonna keep criticizing how they do it, you’re not enabling them. And yeah, so I i think it’s definitely Something I have learned is that it is much better to pay more attention to me and not necessarily worry so much about him. And so I suspect that’s one of the common mistakes that you know, women make is just they’re trying to fix him. But what what else do people well, and women in particular, when they’re trying to get their husbands attention? What other things are we maybe unintentionally screwing up?
Laura Doyle
right? Exactly. It is all unintentional, right? Because I think a lot of us especially if you’re, you know, if you’re competent in your career, you know, you feel like you’re a good mom. It’s like, What’s wrong with him? That’s got to be the reason and I think you raise a really good point that I know for me, like my life was kind of going by like, like a car just rolling down the street, but nobody at the driver’s wheel really because I was so focused on what my husband was doing wrong, what he should be doing.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah,
Laura Doyle
and It was interesting, you know, when I, when I got the right information about how to fix my marriage, it was a lot about just focusing on myself focusing on Laura’s happiness and, and then my life emerged in a way that was kind of scary. Like, I got to write this best selling book, right? Well, I went on national media like the today show and good morning america and did lots of shows. And that was terrifying. It was much scarier than being the armchair quarterback of my husband’s life. So it took a lot of courage to do that. And you know, I’ve started a coaching organization, the prime show and all that. Each step you take actually requires a lot of courage. But I think that the thing that the other mistake that I was making and I see a lot of this is a really common mistake too is so for me, because I had become such an unpleasant to think of a wife. Kind of a porcupine, if you will, right like is everything my husband was doing. I was criticizing or complaining. He wasn’t doing it the right way wasn’t doing it my way. He wasn’t doing it fast enough, whatever. So he really had become very distant. I remember like, going and standing with my hands on the hips, my hips while he’s watching TV and saying, you know, the average couple has sex two and a half times a week, so and we haven’t had it for two weeks. So I think we should do it. And that was like, not effective at all. Like he was like, you know, he turned up the TV a little bit, I think so he didn’t have to, like hear me complaining. But I think anytime you’re asking for affection or attention, it you know, they just want to get away from us. It’s almost like you can kind of imagine it with a friend like you said to a friend You know, I and this was what all the experts were recommending. By the way, that’s where I got this information is they always say like, you have to voice your concerns you got to speak up. Sounds like I have a deep concern about your, you know, your lack of affection like either What did I think he just had forgotten that I like, you know, he’d forgotten to be affectionate or he didn’t know that I liked it or no, it was because he didn’t want to be affectionate and that hurt a lot and so me saying it just drove him further away like like if a friend was just call and say, You know I’d like to have a deep concern about how you haven’t you know made plans to get together with me for a while or whatever you’d be like oh yeah look at the time gotta go right you want to get away from that person is leaving tire marks on the road trying to get away. So this is one that we see a lot and a much more effective approach is to just become I call her the goddess of fun and light. And she magnetizes him instead of having to say anything right? I mean, when you’re first falling in love, your husband probably couldn’t keep his hands off of you if he wanted to. You would seek out your company call just to say hi what do you doin and right you’d have that that you know silly conversation that new lovers have like hi no, hi no, how are you know, you’re cuter, you know? And that all comes back as you and there it’s all about skills, right? There’s certain skills that feel good to implement and also make you like 10 times more attractive than you are when you’re a porcupine.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s for sure. But have you in working with other women, have you ever had maybe the opposite maybe where, you know, the man is still desirable, but maybe the woman is like, no, I really like please. Yeah, you know, it’s a little bit too much or something.
Laura Doyle
Absolutely.
Gloria Grace Rand
So how does that…
Unknown Speaker
that comes up all the time to..
Gloria Grace Rand
some people. yeah.
Laura Doyle
sure. Yeah. Well, so she’s like, She’s like, he’s not attractive. He’s kind of ewww. I just don’t I’m not even interested. And first of all, leave me alone. Second of all my hormones and right, there’s anything that goes with it. And one of the things that we find is that it’s kind of interesting because my husband was super unattractive to Me, too. When we were having our problems, even though I did try to demand that he had sex with me that not withstanding. It’s also I also thought it was a big loser pants because he just wasn’t doing things the way I thought he should. Right so. So my, my level of attraction him was not very high either. So it really kind of contributes both ways. And one of the things that’s so exciting and interesting that I never get tired of seeing this movie again and again is when women kind of get the skills and this was true for me too. And maybe stop trying to control them stop telling him how to do things. Like I’ll give you an example one woman was her husband was she was trying to get out of the way trying to relinquish control. She’d been pretty bossy with their kids. And so the husband said to her, Hey, is it okay if I take the boys swimming first and then we do the homework after that. And so she used one of our cheat phrases that we we commonly use, which is whatever you think, whatever you think so you’re, you’re saying like, you’re the dad. I’m gonna let you be the Dad, like, I’m not going to try to be the mom and the dad here, you know? So she said, but she in her head, she’s thinking, they got to do their homework, right? That’s important. Just go swimming and not do your homework. So but instead, she decided to just trust her husband that it would all get taken care of. So she said, Whatever you think, again, like, Whoa, they’re gonna get the work done. And they went swimming, had a great time with their dad came back, got all the homework done, got to bed on time, everything was fine. And so she It was interesting. She was like, I really noticed he he just looked so much more attractive when he was that man that could take that job on for her right like she wasn’t having to say no, first you have to do this and you can’t go swimming when it’s too late. Anyway, it’s dark out, right. So so she noticed that he actually and we find this husband sort of, we talked about them getting taller, they don’t actually get taller, but they seem taller, and taller is more handsome in a way right because they they become more proud of how they can contribute to their families. We get out of the way and let them do it. So it’s kind of a sweet thing, huh?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Laura Doyle
And I think
Gloria Grace Rand
At least I’ve, in talking with different people about marriages and relationships I think a lot of times is the fact that men ultimately they really do want to be the caretaker they want to that’s their it’s inbred in them is to be you know, the person who takes care of the family. That’s how, you know going back hundreds of thousands of years. And when we’re always picking at them then it makes them feel less than and so then how can we at the same time expect them to be attractive and and capable when we’re taking them down? So yeah, it’s like
Laura Doyle
Yeah I call it the hero gene you can trigger his hero gene or you can really squash it. And that’s what I was unwittingly doing what so many of us unwittingly did if we didn’t have good training, like, yeah, you were saying your parents are divorced. And my parents are divorced. So where were we supposed to learn those skills? They didn’t have relationships 101 at my school? Did they have it at yours?
Gloria Grace Rand
No, no, no.
Laura Doyle
Right? So it’s just like driving a car or making an omelet. Like you wouldn’t be good at those things either unless someone showed you how to do it. So if you didn’t have the right modeling, and then it becomes a feel like it’s such a hopeless situation, because you don’t have the skills. But really, it’s all just learned.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s, and that’s awesome that you’re able to be able to help help women in that, helping them to be able to learn because yeah, it is, it’s it. You don’t get this unless you are fortunate, perhaps to have good role models in your home. And even then, sometimes, you might still wind up being with someone who maybe doesn’t act like your mother or father and then you’re still now you’re in a new quandary. Like, okay, well how do I handle this relationship? This isn’t what I studied. Growing up this isn’t it. When. So, actually I’m trying to think, what do I want to go? Well, one thing I would like to find out from you though, is that how sometimes though, you know, even in the best of intentions, let’s let’s put it that way that you do you get it enter into relationship, you think it’s great. And maybe you have been doing you did do some work on yourself and and you’re following your steps and yet still things maybe seem like it’s still not working. Are there any potential red flags or something that, you know a wife should be aware of? That would maybe signal you know, maybe it is time that even though I hate the idea, it might be better for us to go our separate ways.
Laura Doyle
Yeah. And I just think it’s, I mean, I remember feeling that way and I’ve met now so many thousands of women, who have also felt that way. In fact, you know, I’d like to have a pie chart of something of like, you know, women who think their marriage is hopeless. And that’d be like, 99.99%, you know, and the ones that are wrong, and that’d be like 99.99%. Because, you know, I guess I guess the big takeaway for me, and, and what I’m privileged to get to see from women who are super courageous and stand for their marriage, even though it really seems insurmountable. They, I mean, they’ve come to me with problems that I didn’t think were solvable, but they wanted to solve them. And then they found out that they were solvable. Like, we have women with a he’s having an affair. He’s moved out, he’s living with the other woman. He’s saying, we’re getting divorced. You know, can this marriage be saved? And, boy, when I first started out, I had no idea. In fact, I kind of chose my fear in some ways over my faith. And I wrote in that first book I wrote like, yeah, if he’s, you know, if he’s cheating, if he’s a chronic cheater, you know, if he’s physically abusive if he, if he’s addicted to alcohol or drugs, you know that you should probably get divorced. Like I’m the expert on her life and I’m really just not, you know, all I have really is my own experience to share. And now, fortunately, the experience of these, you know, my 40 coaches who also started with broken marriages, and and then thousands of women who have also used the skills and one of the big revelations, you know, the big surprise, the end of the day was like, hey, the joke’s on me. I’m the one who’s bringing a lot of the pain that I’m complaining about to my husband is my mirror. And when I look in that mirror I get, I get a really great reflection, just like you do when you stand at the ballet bar, right? You get to see like, you know, I’m bending my leg or I’m, you know, keeping my toes straight or whatever. And my husband was that mirror for me to go on what I consider the best self development program I’ve ever been on. This was me going on a journey to become the best Laura instead of the Laura that’s always focused on the thing that he didn’t do right. You know, I, I developed the discipline of gratitude, which was finding the things that he did do right. And focusing on those, I became more vulnerable, I stopped fighting City Hall, I became happier. I always, instead of always being on that to do list and being exhausted that kitchen elf martyr who was always having to clean up after everybody, you know, I let her I left her. She’s gone. Now. I don’t know where she went, but she’s not here. And that’s good, because I don’t like being around her. And so, I think I guess for me, it’s like, I’ve never really seen that the intimacy skills and the connection framework. I’ve never really seen them fail when women apply them. And it’s like, well, how is that possible? But it’s really like, it’s really like with exercise, like, you know, if somebody could say, well, you know, exercise didn’t work for me. It’s like, whoa, oh, hold on a minute. Right. There might be some, some techniques, there might be some specific blind spots. And this is why you get a coach, right? We all have those blind spots where we think, oh, it really is him. This one’s really him. It’s not me. And it’s just been gratifying to see again and again, when women apply the skills. I mean that to paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, miracles not only happened around here, they happen all the time.
Gloria Grace Rand
Hmm. Wow, that’s, well, that is encouraging.
Laura Doyle
Yeah, yes.
Gloria Grace Rand
Encouraging because, well, I don’t I don’t know what the divorce rate is in the United States, but I know, it’s like, like, close to 50% or something like that. And, and, and I guess it’s, you know, part of, we’ve become this sort of throwaway culture, you know, disposable and if you’re going to invest the time, and the money even too, but it’s especially the time and you investing your heart in a relationship I think you want to be able to do as much as you can to see, see that it can survive and thrive. And but it does all come down to focusing in on ourselves, because I’ve definitely learned that it seems like that’s when I when I have and I’ve just found this in my experience over the last couple years that when I’m being kind to myself, and then it is a lot easier to be kind to my husband than even too because I’m taking care of myself. And I and I do you know, make a conscious effort to compliment him about things because he is he does have a lot of excellent qualities because I don’t think I would have married him otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t have stayed married to him otherwise. And I know that yes, there’s things about him that drive me crazy and I also know there’s things about me that drive him crazy too. And yet he still is willing to put up with me. So, you know, I guess we should put up with each other. At least that’s my experience anyway.
Laura Doyle
I love your humility about that Gloria, because I think I had forgotten that I was not perfect. And that was a big part of what. And I had taken my focus off those wonderful qualities. Like you’re saying I wouldn’t have married him, right. None of us would have married our husbands.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah,
Laura Doyle
we didn’t think they were spectacular, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Yeah, there had to been something that dry. There was
Laura Doyle
something Yeah, yeah. And so, so and I but I think for a woman to get to the place where I was in where I see so many women get it, she really has gone through tremendous heartbreak. There’s been a lot of a lot of pain, a lot of struggle, a lot of suffering a lot of hopelessness. And I just have so much compassion. Because when you don’t know there’s a way out and you just keep hitting your head. Yeah, you know, might be better if I stopped hitting my head, right? It’s just a logical conclusion to come to. It’s not. It’s not that she wasn’t persistent enough. It wasn’t, you know, it’s not that she didn’t, wasn’t committed enough. She just didn’t have those tools in front of her, I mean, we were at marriage counseling. And so many of my clients come to me from marriage counseling, you know, thousands through marriage counseling, and thinking, Oh, that’s the thing that’s supposed to help you fix your marriage. When it doesn’t, it’s really pretty crushing.
Gloria Grace Rand
It is. Yeah, it’s Yeah. And here’s an example we, at the end, before we stopped seeing our marriage counselor, we found that my husband was coming up with better ideas of how to handle what was going on then she was. He would come up with suggestions and and I was like, What are we paying her for if we’re able to do this ourselves. So yeah,
Laura Doyle
exactly. Yeah. So that’s pretty cool that you guys, so it means he was coming up with ideas and you were willing, you were open to those.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes.
Laura Doyle
Which is a form of respect. So you’re pretty good. You’re pretty good. Yeah. I give you props for that. Because it’s hard to even listen to your to your, what do you know, you’re like, you’re the guy that’s not showing up for this relationship, or you’re the guy that, you know, in some cases, you’re the guy that cheated or you’re the guy that’s drinking too much or whatever.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Laura Doyle
seemingly insurmountable challenges, are
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m not saying because I still, you know, every, like, you know, probably like yesterday, would still still have those moments of like, you know, and I do think it is because I have been really doing a lot of work on myself that and I’ve have some good coaches who point out well, you know, Gloria, you know the system You might want to, yeah. Well, you know, pay attention to what you’re doing and how you’re talking to him and, and think about that, and it’s like, okay, yeah, sure. So but it’s it’s all it’s all learning proper learning process and a work in progress. There we go. put those together. But I think ultimately is just don’t lose hope and just reach out, you know, like you said. Reach out to maybe a coach or reach out, you know, to someone like you not maybe not necessarily. I think there are some good marriage counselors. However, I went to a marriage counselor by myself first, and I got really good help from her. And because it was really, it was about me, it really was more about me.
Laura Doyle
yes. you’re focused on yourself. And that’s really, right. The illusion is that you can work on a relationship and the truth is, there’s no such thing. It’s only working on yourself and he can work on him. If he’s not working on himself the way you want him to, then there’s things you can do on your side to have him respond much, much better. Yeah,
Gloria Grace Rand
yeah. One last question. I’m going to ask you because I was in when curious to know the answer to this is you’ve said that there’s like one question you should never ask a man. Besides, and I hope it’s not you know, how do I look in this dress, but I know that’s a loaded one
Laura Doyle
little bit I mean, that’s better than does this make my butt look big or whatever.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah,
Laura Doyle
I asked my husband that all the time. He’s so so sweet. Now like he’s constantly telling me I am and making up little songs and stuff. So I’m not afraid to ask that. But the question that I used to ask him a lot when I kind of used to have like this Junior therapist hat and I’m like, if I can get him to open up about You know, his feelings, then we could have the connection that I really want. And it turns out, men don’t really like to talk about their feelings. And I know this is controversial. And people say, Oh, it’s so sexy would say that, but they did a study at the University of Toronto, actually. And I’m glad you’re sitting down as I tell you the results of this study, because it is shocking, but they found out that women are more emotional than men.
Gloria Grace Rand
No, really?.
Laura Doyle
Yes, I know! There’s some research money that was well spent, right? But what does that mean? It just is that as women, you know, we have this gift. It’s an emotional brilliance that we can bring to the relationship and we bring to the world and without it relationships actually get kind of stuck. And so here I was, like, trying to ask my husband like how he felt and he’d be like, hungry, you know, it’s like trying to get the answer. Right. Right, my hands. And, and really, I was the one you know, it’s like kind of scary to turn inward and just really look at myself and say, gosh, you know, I’m just, I’m really sad, you know about this situation with my mom or, you know, I’m really, I’m really nervous about this talk I have to give tomorrow or, and that was where the beautiful connection came, especially when I would bring vulnerability.
Gloria Grace Rand
Mm hmm.
Laura Doyle
So asking him what he thinks is really kind of like that’s like your department. So you have to, you want to think about, like, how to turn that towards yourself, and ask yourself like, how do I how do I feel and bring that instead? really powerful actually.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I, I 100% agree, because this was and this was I think, even when we were having a little bit of a rocky time, but I was going to do my first speaking engagement out of state. I was going up to Atlanta, and I was really nervous about it. And, and I mean, and I told him that, you know, I’m like, I’m really scared by going tomorrow and he was so supportive. He was just like, you’re gonna knock ’em dead you know, you’re gonna do great and, and I did, I mean, I actually sold from the stage. I was like, and it was a small audience, but I made two sales. So it was like, Yes. So that was that just really, really touched my heart that he was able to do that, and you know, be my cheerleader that day, you know, not even not even asking him to do it. I was just like, you know, just being vulnerable.
Laura Doyle
But you triggered his hero gene. Yeah, that part of him that really wants to just take care of and support and have your back and I love I love your vulnerability and that story, like it’s really attractive to me too. And I can see where your husband would be attracted to it like really? Are you nervous? It’s such a human thing to be to be a little nervous about giving a talk in front of a live audience.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Laura Doyle
So yeah, that’s a great example.
Gloria Grace Rand
Thank you, and is there anything? I know we’ve covered a lot but is there any last bit of advice that you have, that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered? That would be helpful? For women out there listening,
Laura Doyle
you know, yeah, if you think if you think it would be of value, I’d love to just, there’s this, there’s a skill that we have that I feel like is so fundamental to everything else called, expressing your desires in a way that inspires. And so if you think that would be valuable, I’m happy to I’d love to just, you know, I just like everyone, I want to grab like every woman by the… you need to know this!
Gloria Grace Rand
I love it. I love the sound of it.
Laura Doyle
Yeah, it’s pretty fun. So in the old days, like at my house, for example, I used to I would complain about something I could say, john, my husband, john, this kitchen is a disaster. And I thought he was gonna then jump off the couch and start doing the dishes and like clean up and so weird that never happened. That never happened. And now I look back and I realized, like, I don’t think men can even hear us when we’re complaining. I think they just heard, “john blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Laura Doyle
So but a while later, as part of this process, I was in I learned about expressing my desires. And that was a little bit of a burden on me as well as like, instead of just complaining, I had to really think about what I wanted. And so I started to say, so when one day I said to him, I would love a clean kitchen. And mind you, we’ve been battling about who did the dishes, like freaked out, you know, that was a time honored tradition to just battle about that. And I said this, I would love to have a clean kitchen and my husband did jump up. He goes, Okay, I’ll clean it. And he did. He did the dishes. Yeah. And he’s been doing them ever since. And that’s been like, a long time, like 18 years. 18 years. I don’t ever do the dishes at my house anymore. Because once my husband knew how happy it would make me that he would do the dishes. He just wanted to please me. So it’s a pretty exciting skill to have. I had a student Tell me the story the other day, she and her husband were totally estranged. He’d already said he wanted to divorce. There was no talking in their house whatsoever. She said she had done some cleanup about being disrespectful. She’d apologized for that. And then she said to him, she just said to the air Actually, I would love a leg massage. And he just looked at her and there’d been no touching nothing. And he goes, would you like it right now? And she goes, Okay, and he gave her a leg massage. And that was like the beginning of them reconciling. Yeah, her whole process. So anyway, yeah. So expressing your desires in a way that inspires now you now you’ve got the formula I would love and then the final,
Gloria Grace Rand
that really just sounds like an awesome magic formula that I can’t wait to try myself.
Laura Doyle
You’re gonna love it.
Gloria Grace Rand
That would be nice. Yeah.
Laura Doyle
Yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
He did. He did. used to do them for a while and hasn’t hasn’t done them in a while, so maybe I’ll have to try it.
Laura Doyle
Yeah. Let me know how it goes.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, before we end off, I always ask my guests if someone wants to Be able to get to work with you find out more about you what is the best way for them to do that? How can we get gonna get in touch with you?
Laura Doyle
So I have something really great for them right now which is the adored wife roadmap. So it’s just really lays out all the steps to becoming an adored wife like Disney Princess I think we all secretly want to be and they can get that right now at Laura doyle.org. And there’s a little more to it, but just Laura Doyle dot org, they can get it there. And and then it’s also got like some of the mistakes, you know, really common mistakes. And they can also join my free adored wife Facebook group from there if they want.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, awesome, very good. Okay, I’ll make sure that I have that in the show notes so people can find it. And I really, really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you so much for being here and learned a lot and I can’t wait to try out that formula. So say it again. It’s the Express,
Laura Doyle
express your desire. A way to inspire
Gloria Grace Rand
A way to inspire. Okay, I like that. All right, thank you so much Laura for being here. And thank you. Awesome listeners and viewers. And I appreciate you all for being here and I can’t wait to bring the next guest. So make sure that you’re stay tuned for that and until next time, as always, I encourage you to live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
