Creating Love Together Tim & Jamie Holloway

Bibles, A$$holes, and B!tches

Creating Love Together is back!  Well rested and with new mics, Tim and Jamie are ready to dive into some serious topics.  If you’ve never seen anything starring Mariana van Zeller, Tim and Jamie say you’re missing out.  Van Zeller is a Portuguese journalist known for her hard hitting pieces about current world problems.  Last night, Tim and Jamie watched a documentary about human trafficking. The people doing the trafficking are smooth and know how to sell the lifestyle.  Even more surprising is that the same control and manipulation can be found in marriages with, sometimes, neither partner even realizing it.  Control and manipulation have no place in any type of relationship.  Learn to recognize the signs of an unhealthy relationship and know when to walk away.

Today, we are talking about Tim’s communication issues and how it caused friction for us when I was just needing Tim to listen to me. ~ Jamie

Today we discuss how Jamie needs to work on her communication skills. I, myself, am fully in the right, and she knows that she was wrong. ~ Tim

One of the hardest aspects when it comes to communicating effectively is patience and thinking before you speak.  People won’t always meet our expectations, and we can’t get bent out of shape.  When we’re in an argument, our walls go up, and we go into self-defense mode.  Our initial response is often to attack the other person.  It’s so important to learn to pause and think before you speak.  Beyond not saying things you don’t mean, you’re taking a moment to truly understand what's being said.  People will interpret things on how it makes them feel, not on facts.  Be self-aware enough to ask the other person to clarify what they mean before you react. Don’t always feel like you need to fix the problem, sometimes we just need to be heard.  It’s so important to listen, not to reply, but to understand.

Tim and Jamie have been trying a lot of new things in the name of adventure lately.  Jamie says one of the most thrilling things she’s done in a while was cryotherapy.  Tim prefers to call it freeze-your-ass-off therapy.  It wasn’t just a crazy thing to do, though, it had quite a few health benefits.  One being your body goes into fight or flight and, not being able to flee, its first response is to protect your organs.  It’s a great clean out for your organs.  Jamie says it was exhilarating and had her on a high for hours.  Some other recent experiences were foot mapping and eating at The Melting Pot. The moral of the story is to do something new.  Don’t fall into the mundane with no excitement.  We need unpredictability just as much as we need predictability in relationships.

White knight syndrome or being a savior, whatever you want to call it, it’s codependency, and it’s not healthy.  It doesn’t matter if you’re the one doing the saving or the one always needing to be saved, we’re taught these roles from a young age.  Just look at the cliché princess in some sort of trouble and the white knight has to come save her.  The biggest thing in any relationship, whether it be husband and wife, parent and child, or boss and employee, is the presence of interdependency.  Healthy relationships are both give and take.  A lot of parents try to rescue their children and shield them from any ill consequences.  Tim admits he’s more likely to jump in and ‘save the day’, while Jamie will ask them what they think or tell them to figure it out. Which role do you play?