263. Have You Ever Just Wanted To Start Over In Marriage And Hit The "Reset" Button? You Can! How To "Reset" Your Marriage For A Fresh Beginning

Have you ever felt like your marriage has gotten to a place where you never imagined it would be? Maybe you've made some bad financial decisions that have hurt your marriage, or your intimacy isn't want you want it to be, or you've done something that has caused you or your spouse to loose trust in the relationship.

Do you wish you could just hit a "reset button" or “start over” button in marriage? You are not alone. The truth is, there was a time we felt this exact way before, and it is common in the journey of marriage, because there are moments when the road gets rocky, and the connection with our spouse feels strained. 

The good news is that a marriage reset is not only possible, but can also be incredibly transformative, paving the way for deeper connection and renewed intimacy. That was the case for us in our marriage as well, so join us for this podcast episode where we discuss HOW to reset your marriage for a fresh beginning.

If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 700,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!

WANT AMAZING PRODUCTS TO SPICE THINGS UP? YES PLEASE... CLICK HERE

The Ultimate Intimacy Sexual Intimacy Marriage Course can be found HERE

The Intimacy and Adventure Marriage Retreat to connect on a deeper level as a couple! Find out more at https://ultimateintimacy.com/retreats/

Follow us on Instagram @ultimateintimacyapp for app updates, polls, giveaways, daily marriage quotes and more.

If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship. We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life. Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun. The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.

Speaker 2: 0:41

How to Reset your Marriage for a Fresh Beginning. It's the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with your hosts, Nick and Amy.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Hi, hi, we're glad you're here, we're glad you're here.

Speaker 2: 0:55

We're glad you're here, that's right.

Speaker 3: 0:56

We should, you know we should start this one with a. Would you rather question?

Speaker 2: 1:00

Would you rather?

Speaker 3: 1:01

Would you rather? Alright Should we, we can do that.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Let's start it out. Yeah, you gotta give me two seconds to pull it up on my phone.

Speaker 3: 1:08

Hey, if you guys have not used the, Would you Rather conversation starters on the Ultimate Intimacy app? Yet go grab them.

Speaker 2: 1:17

They're fun.

Speaker 3: 1:18

They're awesome. They're awesome for, like date nights We'll go on, or date nights, just have a conversation starter, like things that you would never have thought about asking each other. But even just at night, me, nick, will go on a nightly walk with our dogs, just the two of us, after our kids are asleep, and sometimes we'll grab a question and we'll start talking for an hour well, some of these, some of these questions on the, would you rather, some of them are deep and some of them are just funny, right, and today we'll do a silly one.

Speaker 3: 1:46

So oh, please no please no, please no.

Speaker 2: 1:49

All right, okay, let's see just kidding, I don't care you what you don't care?

Speaker 3: 1:56

I said something about the toilet.

Speaker 2: 1:57

I don't really want to talk about that wow, no we're gonna do that one. No, we're going to do that one.

Speaker 3: 2:02

No, we're not.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Let's see.

Speaker 3: 2:12

I think we've already done some of these you should have asked the last one.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Okay, would you rather skydive out of an airplane or deep dive in the ocean?

Speaker 3: 2:25

Oh my gosh, we were talking about this last night at our big family dinner. Skydive, scuba dive, or skydive or scuba dive. Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm so scared of deep ocean water and I am so scared of major heights.

Speaker 2: 2:40

But you have to make a decision. Oh my gosh, because that's what we're going to do.

Speaker 3: 2:44

Do I get a professional jumper with me out of the airplane?

Speaker 2: 2:47

Yeah, Okay, whatever one you pick, we'll do for our project, I think.

Speaker 3: 2:52

I literally no, I literally think I would rather jump out of an airplane. I know a lot of you are on there. I do scuba dive all the time, but I'm like there is something about deep dark water that I just and the stories that we talked about last night yeah, I don't think I can do it yeah, learning that the lake, they've never found the bottom, and yeah yeah, I did not anyways yeah, anyways, ask your spouse that I'll, that'll start. What about you? What's your?

Speaker 2: 3:19

oh, I'd much rather skydive for sure, no question about it really yep, so I don't think that would even bother you I mean, I just learned what we're gonna do for our 30th anniversary yeah, right so anyways I'm excited about this podcast episode.

Speaker 2: 3:34

I think this will be a good one. Um, I think we've all well maybe not all of us, but I know in our marriage there's been a time where I'm just like man. I would just love to like start over, like I did some things in our relationship that made Amy lose some trust, financial infidelity, got us in debt and I remember thinking so many times like I wish I could just completely start over and just have a reset button, start this marriage over to where we just had a fresh beginning and I think a lot of marriages have felt like that, maybe like us. Some bad decisions were made and you lost trust with your spouse, or you went through some difficulties or or something, some rocky times in your marriage to where you're just like how do we hit a reset button, start over, a fresh start, um, and get rid of all the negative that maybe has happened in the past.

Speaker 3: 4:35

So oh, I'm pretty sure, like every marriage has been there and I even if your marriage wasn't like really really, really rough. I think we've all gotten to our point, even where it's like, okay, our marriage is fine, but it's not great or it's not passionate anymore, like even that can be a reset, like how do we reset it and take it off a level, right yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Reset could be any, anything you want to like, just a fresh start. So you're exactly right and I think this is doable, like I really do, and we'll talk about the things today in the podcast episode as to what a couple can do to have that fresh restart, or almost just hit the reset button in their marriage where like, all right, let's put that crap in the past behind us, let's move on, reestablish our relationship Almost just like we started dating again, or you know what have you Absolutely. I wouldn't say it's an easy thing to do, because a lot of times hurt feelings, things that are in the past, can really be destructive. You hold grudges I mean, again, that's happened to our relationship but I think if you approach things the right way, put a game plan together, I really believe you can hit the reset button for a fresh start.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So that's what we're going to talk about today. So I think number one is a couple needs to. If you want to restart or hit the reset button in your relationship, you need to reflect on your relationship. You need to understand what happened. Why did things go wrong, why did we or why did I make the decisions that I made, and how can we keep from having that repeat itself? Because I mean, let's face it right, Look in your life or look in your marriage. Oftentimes we have weaknesses and we continuously make the same mistakes over and, over and over again.

Speaker 1: 6:35

A lot of us right, Right.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Like you know, whether it's based upon the way we were raised and the perceptions we have of life, the way we look at things. We just, for whatever reason, we have weaknesses and often those weaknesses tend to just happen over and over again. So, again, you need to sit down, you need to understand and realize what happened, why did these things happen, and you need to be honest with each other. Right, and I would say a good thing to do is write those down, kind of put them on paper, so that you can look at those and say, okay, here's what we did wrong, here's what I did wrong, maybe here's what we can work on. And you know, again, it's kind of like you hear people say that go to AA, you know alcoholics or things like that. First thing you have to do I believe I've never been there but you have to admit or identify that you have a problem and recognize that Right and understand why you have that problem.

Speaker 3: 7:38

Absolutely. If you don't think you have a problem, you're probably not even in this point where you're trying to fix anything right, yeah Right. So recognizing is like key.

Speaker 2: 7:46

Yeah, exactly what would you say? The second thing is why do we often make dumb mistakes or things in life?

Speaker 3: 7:58

I think a lot of couples get to a point where they're either at a breaking point or something has happened in their marriage because they did not set boundaries.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 8:09

Like there's so many boundaries that we've talked about in previous episodes, whether it's around social media, it's around how you treat each other. It can be simple things like how you argue and fight together, just setting boundaries like we're not gonna say certain words, we're not gonna use the word diverse, we're not gonna name, call those simple kind of things, or even I mean there's even bigger boundaries. Right, we could go on and on about boundaries, but oftentimes we make mistakes so that we don't get into areas that are going to harm our marriage, right?

Speaker 2: 8:44

wouldn't you say in our marriage, if you? If we just look at things from our own marriage, maybe I can honestly say that some of the mistakes that I made is because we didn't have boundaries in those areas because I didn't really it was like, you know, we hadn't really talked about it and I just assumed certain things and, and you know I'm the man of house, therefore I gotta take care of this. And you know, there really maybe wasn't boundaries in those areas.

Speaker 3: 9:12

Now, since then, we've obviously set boundaries and I think that that's common in marriages, because sometimes it takes things happen for you realize that you need boundaries around those things, right, like a lot of couples are totally innocent and go into marriage and don't think they need to set parameters around social media or hang out with the opposite sex or all these different things. And then something happens. They're like, oh, we probably should have talked about that, right, like yeah, when it's too late or I didn't know, I didn't know that that was wrong.

Speaker 2: 9:41

I didn't know that I shouldn't do that because I'd never talked about that. Where, again, one spouse might think you know, a great example would be after you're married, let's say, following someone on facebook or friending someone of the opposite sex, right like.

Speaker 2: 9:56

For one spouse it might be like not a big deal not a big deal, and the other spouse might feel like, oh my heck, how you know that's wrong. How could you do that? Well, if you haven't talked about that and set up those boundaries together, um, really no one's in the wrong. I mean, I would say that that's probably not the appropriate thing to do, but, uh, no one's in the wrong necessarily. But because you hadn't set those boundaries and talked about it.

Speaker 3: 10:22

Um, you know, you didn't, you didn't know right, absolutely yeah, and, like I said, a lot of couples things have to happen in their marriage to cause a wedge or cause that barrier for them to even realize that was probably something we need to talk about and that's okay if you I mean, we've been there, right, we've been there with our finances, we've been there with social media kind of stuff Like sometimes things do have to happen for you to sit back and step back and reflect, like we just talked about reflecting right, like it's okay and it's natural sometimes for things to happen. And then that's where vulnerability, communication and coming back together and being like this isn't working for our marriage. We need to talk about this and set healthy boundaries around this area.

Speaker 2: 11:02

Well, think of how many issues and I'm just thinking of our own but think of how many issues or problems that maybe we've gone through, that if we would have set boundaries, maybe we wouldn't have had to go through, or maybe they wouldn't have been so severe, right?

Speaker 1: 11:18

So now.

Speaker 2: 11:18

Amy and I talk about everything and we definitely set boundaries and say, okay, this is what's acceptable, this is what's not acceptable. We have boundaries in the bedroom. We have boundaries with social media. We have boundaries with pretty much everything, yeah, a lot of stuff right now.

Speaker 2: 11:35

That doesn't mean we have a list a mile long and we we have to okay each other for every little thing. That's not what we're saying at all. But like the big things, like they're just some common sense things, they're like okay when it comes to spending money. You know what?

Speaker 3: 11:49

what certain amount do we need to talk about?

Speaker 2: 11:51

yeah, if amy wants to go spend a thousand bucks. Is that something we need to talk about? Obviously, if she wants to go spend twenty thousand, you know whatever like I'm gonna go buy a car every marriage is different, right, every marriage is going to be different. So, 100, you have to set the boundaries together, and I would bet too, if you're putting a reset on your marriage, just like we did, I would bet again that the boundaries weren't there, and that's the whole reason. You're putting the reset on your mirrors.

Speaker 3: 12:21

So I think it's also important to remember that boundaries create trust. Like setting boundaries together, even if they're little simple ones, and then fall. Both people following those. Watching your spouse, like set a parameter, like this is I'm going to follow this because I love you and I respect you and I'm committed to you and then watching them do that years and over, like you get to a point where, like I have so much trust with you in that area, Like I don't even doubt that anything had happened.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Right, Like that they build trust, and boundaries are almost like a fence around your house. Right, they're there to protect you, to keep the outside influences from coming in and and hurting you and your family. So boundaries so many people. It's amazing we do videos on this. So many people are like, oh, you just don't trust each other boundaries that's the stupidest thing ever. But like boundaries because you trust each other Boundaries that's the stupidest thing ever.

Speaker 3: 13:13

But like you set boundaries because you love each other, yeah, you set boundaries.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Because you love each other and because each of you come from different backgrounds and experiences, you're going to perceive things differently, absolutely. I might look at spending money or saving money totally different than Amy does, right, so you have to talk about those things.

Speaker 3: 13:30

Absolutely. Which leads us?

Speaker 2: 13:32

into. The next thing, which I know we always talk about, is open up communication. Now again going back to Because it's important If you're to the point where you want to reset your marriage, like we were. I would say our communication lacked Right, because our communication lacked in certain areas. That caused the problems that we had.

Speaker 3: 13:55

This is where it gets. Tricky is when your relationship gets to a point where it usually needs a reset. It's because of lack of communication. Yes, but a lot of the times it's like. I've already tried to talk to you about that. I already came to you about that. I tried to talk about it. You dismissed my need. You dismissed talking about it. It caused a fight, so now you don't want to talk about it. That's a lot of. The issues with communication is that if one person is coming to you with something that's important to them, it's because it's important to them, and if it's important to your spouse, it should be important to you 100%.

Speaker 3: 14:28

I don't care if it's little or if it's big If your spouse needs to talk about something it's important to them.

Speaker 2: 14:34

Well, lack of communication doesn't have to be both of you. Like Amy said, it can be one spouse right Right. If I want to talk and just get everything out and Amy's like, no, I don't want to talk about that. Well, you're probably you're going to have issues right.

Speaker 3: 14:48

It's probably something that needs to be talked about.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah, exactly. So when we say open up and communicate, it has to be both ways right. It has to have those conversations and say, all right, sweetie, what do we do about this Right and having that conversation?

Speaker 3: 15:04

I think we forget that commitment in marriage means you have to communicate. You have to be willing to communicate about hard things. That's what commitment is. Commitment's hard right you signed up to commit to your spouse. That means when they come to you with something that's hard or something that's bugging them, that you're going to listen and you're going to try and work through it. That's what commitment means.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3: 15:26

And so going back and reflecting on your marriage like why has it gotten to this point? Why do we need a marriage reset comes back to we have to re-establish how committed we are. I mean, that's what that is right, like when we had really hard times and we got to a point where we're like what's happening? Why are?

Speaker 2: 15:46

we disconnected.

Speaker 3: 15:47

Why does our marriage? Not suck, it sucks, or maybe it's just not even the level that we want, like what happened. You have to really evaluate what does commitment look like to you, what does commitment look like to me, and how do we get on the same page and take that to another level?

Speaker 2: 16:03

For sure.

Speaker 3: 16:03

That takes communication and I really like.

Speaker 2: 16:05

The next one too, which is setting goals together, like if you're going to reset your marriage and you say, okay, we, you know that didn't work or or we didn't like where we were at there. Now we want to get to here. Well, you kind of have to have goals and establish what those are Like, what is here, what is where we want to get to. So those goals could be short term, you know, a week, a month, a year, five years, 10 years, so short term and long, long-term goals. Set those goals about where you want to get to, how you're going to get there, absolutely Working together, and then really reward yourself when you hit those certain goals.

Speaker 2: 16:45

So you know whether your goal is to pay off your house or maybe you want to go on a vacation or whatever those are. Have those goals and then also set rewards for those goals when you accomplish them. That setting I love the rewards thing because that really gives you more of an incentive to work together and say, oh man, we're almost there. Once we get this done, we get to go on a vacation together. We get to do this.

Speaker 3: 17:12

I almost think too, like Nick's talking about big things. I almost think we need to bring it down a level and this needs to be in your weekly marriage meeting. What are our goals for this week? Well, the wife might just be like I just really want you to plan a date night this week. I just really want you to put some intention into date night. Or the husband be like I just want you to initiate. I want to feel desired this week. Those could be simple goals. If you want a real relationship reset, start with the small things Talk about. Do you think maybe we could work on the way that we speak to each other this week, the tone that we use when we're upset? Maybe we could try not to be so upset and try to understand each other's perspectives better.

Speaker 1: 17:51

For sure.

Speaker 3: 17:51

Maybe if you could just initiate one night, just a day that you know, just to make me feel desired Like I know you have a lower drive, but that would mean a lot to me.

Speaker 2: 18:01

I will make you feel desired what? But that would mean a lot to me. I will make you feel desired what do?

Speaker 3: 18:04

you want. Sorry, that was the opposite way in this marriage. My point is is like, if you want a relationship recharge, it's about doing the small things in your marriage. It's about sitting down together like we just started communicating, but setting goals that are, there's something, that are not unachievable.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:20

I think that's what relationship restarts really take is is the little daily things that we do to be like. Let's take this level, this level of our marriage, from just kind of mediocre to passionate step it up, baby.

Speaker 2: 18:34

step it up well, and and you, that goes right into the next one, which is connect again emotionally, and you think, well, if you're talking about it, we're connecting emotionally. No, that's different. So I'll bet you too, if you're like us, if you look back and reflect on when things maybe weren't going well or the mistakes that were made, I can promise you that you probably weren't connected emotionally like you needed to be, and that means having date nights, doing the things that you did when you were dating going out and doing weekly date nights and having fun and connecting emotionally. It's amazing how doing those things really like just covers up so many other issues, because those other things are now less important as you're focused on your relationship and and you know, staying in love, so to speak, or even growing your love, so to speak absolutely I'd say after 22 years, like I literally fall more in love with amy every single day, I am more in love with amy now than the day I married her you put a lot.

Speaker 3: 19:40

We both put a lot of effort in though that's what I mean. We have to add that To me, emotional intimacy and emotional connection to me means effort on both sides, Like I feel emotionally connected to him when I see effort, when I feel effort, when I feel loved.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Right yeah, so many people just think, oh, we've fallen out of love, like it's something that just comes and goes and nothing you can do about it. No, staying in love requires a lot of effort and hard work. Like, yeah, you're going on date nights, you're prioritizing sexual intimacy and different things, you're talking, you're listening, yeah, yeah. You're having good conflict resolution. So, after reconnecting emotionally, I think the last one is get professional help if needed, if you need it, absolutely, if you need it.

Speaker 3: 20:36

We never did that's a really big regret on me.

Speaker 3: 20:39

I think that we could have saved a year. We were prideful, we're like we can fix our own relationship, we don't need anybody to help us fix our relationship. We had somebody come to our marriage retreat our first year that we did one, and they were newlyweds. We're like that's so great that you're here. And they're like yeah, we have a fantastic marriage. We haven't been married super long, but we're here to learn tools to make our marriage even better when things do get hard. And I always had the attitude and I know we've said this before, but I always had the attitude you go to marriage counseling, you go to marriage therapy when you're on the brink of divorce, right Like when everything's falling apart and you're just a disaster.

Speaker 3: 21:18

That was totally wrong thinking, and I'm not like running at a therapist for everything Like we never went to a therapist for everything that like we never went to a therapist. I think that could have saved us a lot of heartache, for just having that third person there to help you talk through some stuff that wasn't if you didn't feel listened to.

Speaker 2: 21:33

And there's a lot of reasons for it and I think, but I think you need to be a little bit careful, as we've talked about in the past, as to who, who you pick, who you're putting your trust in, because and I I hate to even say this, but oftentimes we've seen that therapists will create or bring up other problems and we've seen people go to therapy for a long period of time and, of course, the therapists love that because they're making money for sure. I'm not I'm not at all saying that's the way it is. I'm just saying be careful about who you put your trust in, who you use to get that help that you need, and make sure that they're someone that have the same values, the same goals and things like that.

Speaker 3: 22:16

And want to see you heal.

Speaker 2: 22:18

Yeah, exactly Want to see you heal.

Speaker 3: 22:20

Anyways, we brought this up before, I don't want to repeat, but we deal. Anyways, we've brought this up before, I don't want to repeat. But we do maintenance on our cars, we do maintenance on our house, we do maintenance on ourselves, right? I think it's important to realize that that can be like maintenance, right. Like if you, if you need some help, if it's really gotten to that point, like invest in getting that help to turn things around quicker, yeah, like I don't think we should be against that.

Speaker 2: 22:45

So, if you're one of those couples that would like to do a reset on your marriage, follow these things that we shared. They are things that we did. They worked for us. I really think it can help your marriage as well, and we have some amazing products.

Speaker 3: 23:01

We do have some amazing products.

Speaker 2: 23:02

We have some amazing products.

Speaker 3: 23:05

We do not sell anything in our shop that we do not.

Speaker 2: 23:07

100 approve right oh, absolutely tried and tested and loved so so if you need some good products to spice up your intimacy, or you're maybe a wife that feels like you, just you have a hard time getting there, if you know what I mean, check out some of the amazing products we have. We just have a new vibrating ring that we just started using and promoting and it is amazing.

Speaker 3: 23:35

It is amazing. I'm just going to say it it's it'll make your orgasm better. It'll make foreplay better. It'll make it last the arousal lasts longer. So many benefits. It's only used together. No replacement, Just an aid. I don't even want to call a toy literally an aid.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:55

For both of you, it makes everything better.

Speaker 2: 23:57

Yeah, so shopultimateintimacycom, shopultimateintimacycom. Email us with any questions you have at amyatultimateintimacycom, and, as we always say, until next time. We hope all of you find ultimate intimacy in your marriage.