Brilliant Ideas
If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “What if this idea could work?”—you’re in the right place.
This is the podcast where I chat with solopreneurs who’ve taken their ideas from “hmm, what if?” to “wow, look at this!”—and turned them into digital products people trust, understand, and feel excited to buy.
I’m your host, Alyssa Bellisario, Founder of Yes Lab, where I help service-based business owners create offers that feel clear and credible. I find the hidden gaps that are costing you clients—like unclear messaging, trust leaks, buyer psychology blind spots, and design issues, so your offers connect.
Tune in for practical insights on offer clarity, digital products, messaging, and smart strategies to grow without the overwhelm.
Whether you’re starting fresh or ready to rebuild an offer that isn’t working, you’ll find clear steps here to move forward with confidence.
Brilliant Ideas
#33: Monica Tanner’s Secret to Strengthening Your Marriage While Growing Your Business
Ever felt pulled between your entrepreneurial ambitions and your marriage? That tension is exactly what we explore in this candid conversation with relationship coach Monica Tanner, who drops this game-changing perspective: "Your partner can be passionate about YOU without being passionate about what you're passionate about."
Drawing from her upcoming book "Bad Marriage Advice," Monica reveals how conventional wisdom like "never go to bed angry" can actually damage relationships. She shares how she lost countless hours of sleep trying to resolve conflicts with her exhausted husband before discovering a better approach—addressing issues after both partners are rested and thinking clearly. This one shift alone transformed their communication and deepened their trust.
For entrepreneurs married to non-entrepreneurs, Monica offers a toolkit of practical strategies. Over-communicate during intense business periods, share your wins (even small ones), and express genuine appreciation for their support. She emphasizes the importance of differentiation—being able to stand firmly in your vision even when your spouse expresses doubts, while still honoring their perspective. Remember, their concerns often stem from love and protection rather than a lack of support.
Perhaps most valuable is Monica's "3% rule" for keeping any relationship strong through life's busiest seasons: dedicate just 20 minutes daily to emotional connection, three hours weekly for a date night, and one weekend yearly for a getaway—just 3% of your time for an extraordinary return on investment. These intentional moments of connection don't require elaborate planning or excessive spending; they simply need your full presence and commitment.
Ready to transform your relationship while still pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams? Listen now and discover how small, consistent actions can create the foundation for both a thriving business and a fulfilling partnership.
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Your partner can be passionate about you without being passionate about what you're passionate about.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Brilliant Ideas, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of some of the most inspiring digital products created by solopreneurs just like you. I'm your host, alyssa, a digital product strategist who helps subject matter experts grow their business with online courses, memberships, coaching programs and eBooks. If you're a solopreneur with dreams of packaging your expertise into a profitable digital product, then this is the podcast for you. Expect honest conversations of how they started, the obstacles they overcame, lessons learned the hard way and who faced the same fears, doubts and challenges you're experiencing, from unexpected surprises to breakthrough moments and everything in between. Tune in, get inspired and let's spark your next big, brilliant idea. Welcome back to the Brilliant Ideas podcast.
Speaker 2:Today, I'm thrilled to introduce Monica Tanner, a relationship coach and host of the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. Monica is on a mission to transform marriages by teaching simple but powerful strategies for effective communication, meaningful connection and conflict resolution. As the author of Bad Marriage Advice, she helps couples break free from the pitfalls of resentment and the dreaded roommate syndrome to rediscover true intimacy. In this episode, we're going to focus on the central theme of her new book and dive deep into the unique challenges that entrepreneurs often face when they're married to non-entrepreneurs. Get ready for a conversation packed with practical insights that can help you build a happier the unique challenges that entrepreneurs often face when they're married to non-entrepreneurs. Get ready for a conversation packed with practical insights that can help you build a happier, more fulfilling relationship.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in. You, you, you, you, you. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, I'm so happy to be here, Of course, and so I want to give my listeners a little context here. So I want to step backwards for a second and talk about your upcoming book, bad Marriage Advice Now, if you want to also introduce yourself a little bit more. But what I really want to ask you is what inspired you to finally sit down and write this book? And then also, can you go into, like, what common themes came up for you that you thought were important to include, based on your experiences working with couples?
Speaker 1:Oh, I love this question. Thank you so much for asking. So the book was actually inspired by my oldest son, who's getting married in just under three weeks from today. So I had a deadline. I've been wanting to write a book forever and ever and ever. But when he started telling us about how he felt about his girlfriend and that he wanted to propose, I went into panic mode. I'm like, oh my gosh, does he know all the things he needs to know about marriage? Because he's very. They're both very, very young. They're getting married while they're still 21. And I, they're both totally ready.
Speaker 1:But I just knew that they were going to get so much advice as a new young married couple and I remember when my husband and I were getting married, I clung to that advice because I thought if somebody older and wiser and had been married for a long time was giving me advice, I better pay attention, because I wanted to make my marriage really special, and so a lot of the advice that we followed for years in the beginning of our marriage actually made us miserable.
Speaker 1:So that is the whole kind of premise of the book.
Speaker 1:It's called Bad Marriage Advice and it's literally, you know, 23 years of my own marriage experience, mixed with working with couples and the things that really keep them stuck, mixed with interviewing marriage experts and couples who have been married over 50 years, for years and years and years. So I kind of compiled a list of the worst marriage advice that I felt like my son is about to get and I wanted to just debunk it and it's kind of like a love letter from me to the new couple and just saying, like here is a cautionary tale meets a beginner's guide, like here's what you're going to hear. Here are some very common misconceptions about how to do marriage well and here's how to do it better. So that is the whole kind of premise of the book, and I have a very important deadline, which is I want to get it done so that I could give it to him on his wedding day oh, that is so sweet, which is also, by the way, my 23rd wedding anniversary, so they're getting married on the same day.
Speaker 1:My husband and I got married on 23 years ago. Cool right, was that on purpose? You know they just it was like the Saturday after school got out. It just happened to be the same exact date. Wow.
Speaker 2:Is that like the?
Speaker 1:universe aligning Well. It's going to make it a lot easier for me to remember his anniversary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then, so bad marriage, bad, sorry, bad marriage advice. So can you share like an example that you've heard that you would think is bad marriage advice, like an example that you can share Because I've gotten it too, like on my wedding day too, and you know, yeah, if you want to share like something from your book, um, what could be considered like a.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm happy to share a ton, but but let me start with this what do you feel like is the worst marriage advice you got?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a really tough one, um, cause there was so much of it there's, so you know what it's. Well, I mean, they give an advice of like you know, don't get up, don't go to bed angry with your spouse, like you know, like those things no that's good, so your don't go to bed angry.
Speaker 1:Definitely made it into the book. That's a very common one, and it's this kind of common sense. But I tell you, I lost so much sleep in the first few years of my marriage because of this terrible advice, because my husband would be exhausted and we would just nitpick at each other because we were tired, right, and so we would start fights about nothing and he would turn over and want to go to sleep and I was up like no, no, no, you can't go to sleep right now. We've got to talk. I'm still upset. And so, like I would like I tried everything, I would like jostle him awake, I would write my journal, I would like cry and like wake up and be like why are you crying? You know, like all of the things. Until I finally explained to him that like him going to sleep while I was still upset, a went against this advice that we got, but also it kind of triggered all my abandonment issues. Like to me I would spiral and think, oh my gosh, like it's going to get worse overnight. He's going to wake up and be like what am I doing here? Like I got to get out of here and like my brain would just take a nosedive.
Speaker 1:And so when I explained this to him, we worked it out to where he would say you know what I love you, but I don't have enough energy or like brain space to be able to talk about this right now. Let's get a good, nice rest and we'll come back to it in the morning. And he always did. He always would roll over in the morning, give me a big snuggle and be like I'm sorry, I was a jerk last night. I was just really, really tired, or I don't even remember what we were upset about last night.
Speaker 1:Can we start over Like we would always talk about it in the morning? And that built so much trust and also I felt better because I was getting a better night's sleep. So that's what I talk about and recommend in the book. It's just you're never going to be able to come up with great solutions or, you know, think rationally and be able to problem solve together when you're both exhausted at the end of the day. So just take a break, sleep on it, come up with a little you know statement that's going to help both of you feel easier about it and then get a good night's rest and your perspective, your ability to talk through things, is going to be so much better in the morning.
Speaker 2:That is true. I've been that person. I'd be like I want to talk right now and it's like we got to get this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my husband is like, you know, he's not, he's an electrician, he works shift work. He does the graveyard shift like. He works overnights and so and usually I'm up with a lot of energy during the day and I'm just like trying to talk to him and he's like I just got off nights I cannot talk to you right now and it's like, but it's like and then he'll be like give me like a couple hours and then I'm like okay so, but I'm just so excited to tell him things, but he can't process those things because he does like those overnight shifts. And so just knowing I like what you said, just you know, just having that communication to say like and being safe to say those things as well, and that like I need a minute, like I'll talk to you in the morning, I love that, because you know when you're tired you can't really process those things, those conversations anyways. So it's better to just leave it for the morning, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely and take it at face value. I mean when you you know you're building trust, when you're able to say and I use the HALTS method so hungry, angry, lonely, tired or stressed, and if your partner is feeling any one of those things and says, hey, I'm actually feeling too stressed in this very moment to talk about that thing, can we go to bed or can we, you know, take a break for a couple of hours and then I'll feel better and we can talk about it or whatever. So, like it's just a good idea to be able to create that type of communication where you can say now is not the best time, but I promise we'll, we'll come back to it when I'm feeling better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and so how does it work with? So, with your bad marriage advice book, what chapters would you recommend for people who, um, I would say like, are married to non-entrepreneurs like for myself, for example, like I'm a business owner, um, but then I'm, but I'm married to an electrician who doesn't have his own business, he works, and so that could also create its own challenges. Being an entrepreneur who works a lot and then also battling time with my husband, who also works a lot as well, you know, you know, with my husband, who also works a lot as well, what kind of chat, like? Which chapters would you recommend in?
Speaker 1:the book for people who kind of fall into that category, yeah, so one of the things I'll say about the book is the common through line that goes through all of the chapters is basically learning really good communication techniques, because your marriage is very different than my marriage or any other person or couple who is going to go through that book, and so you know being able to discuss topics that are important to you that aren't important to your spouse. So, for example, you're kind of a visionary. You have this idea of this business that you want to create. You're going to have to put in time, energy and financial resources without knowing the actual outcome yet, and if your partner doesn't see your vision which usually they don't, if they're not entrepreneurs then they might have a lot of objections to what you're actually doing. They might have a lot of concerns and fears. And for you to be able to talk about your vision and for them to be able to talk about their concerns, it takes a level of skill that you're going to have to practice and you're going to fumble through at times, so for you to be able to hear their objections and not take them personally, not let it crush your dream, but also honor them like thank you for bringing that up. Yes, you actually do have a great point. We're just going to have to step out in faith here because I feel like it's all going to work out, like those types of conversations are really important and ongoing right, because there's always going to be new things in your business.
Speaker 1:The other thing I like to tell entrepreneurs who are married to non-entrepreneurs is you, your partner, can be passionate about you without being passionate about what you're passionate about, about intimacy on the internet, right. My husband kind of freaked out because, a he's very private, b he's not passionate about relationships and intimacy. And C he was genuinely concerned that I was going to get a lot of criticism from family and friends for talking about these types of topics so openly. And he was right. He did have a point. He was very justified in his fears.
Speaker 1:I have gotten a lot of criticism in different periods of time where I've talked about things in certain ways and you know I've made even some mistakes in talking about me, even though he will very readily be like I don't know if you should be talking about that or you know, I don't want you to use that story or whatever. I know that he is passionate about me without being passionate about what I'm passionate about, and so being able to not take those things you know personally and you know still, respectfully. So this is a big I think it's chapter one or chapter two where I talk about differentiation and I talk about, yeah, when I started my coaching business and he was like, ah, he was like really concerned for me and I had to stand up for what I knew to be true and what my vision was, even though he was unsure about it, and so that takes a level of being able to own your own thoughts, stand on your two feet in the face of your partner being unsure.
Speaker 2:That's great to know. I also do think it's noting that there's going to be seasons of, like, where you feel like your business is really thriving and you're so busy and you really need that extra support from you know, from your husband. Just be, just put your, put your concerns aside and just, you know, just to help, you know, just to be supportive of, like, the scaling of your business, cause I've also have heard from clients who it's, you know, it is very challenging. Um, you know, when you're growing a business, you're putting all this, these hours and this commitment and that the last thing that you need is to have another, another thought of, like, another piece of criticism or concern that they're not doing it the right way.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, even even for myself, like I've had, you know, friendly you know I would say like friendly criticism from friends and family. They're just concerned that, no, is this really really like something that you're going to do for the rest of your life or is it something temporary, like they they're. You know the things that I talk about. I mean I don't talk about intimacy and sex and things like that, but you know I do put myself out there and you know my friends and family, and even my husband's. So it's so private and so it's like how do I navigate that without upsetting my family, friends, my husband?
Speaker 1:And so Well, the reality is you probably are going to upset them, I know, Right, and you have to be able to be respectful while still doing what you know or what you feel guided and led to do. But here's another like scenario that's really, really common in entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial couples that I work with and, again, it requires a lot of communication. So a lot of times what will happen is we've got our business idea and we're maybe in a launch or a push, or we're working really hard on something, and here comes our spouse at our office door and is like hey, just wondering if you were planning on participating tonight, right, Like like they're upset that you're holed up in your office and maybe they're doing dinner or bedtime, or and they're not being very nice about it either Right, and so I talked to my entrepreneurs about seeing through the bad delivery. So your partner is probably not like being super unsupportive and a big jerk, and they're probably noticing like, okay, my wife or my husband, whichever one, is spending a lot of time on this thing that doesn't include me or the kids, and I'm feeling abandoned, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling, you know, like I would love to spend some time with my wife, but she's unavailable, and so that is something again that requires a level of skill in your communication, and so sometimes I call this over communicating, where you know, at the beginning of the week maybe you look at your schedule and you're like, hey, I am going to launch my podcast this week and that means I'm going to be in my office for more hours than I normally am. That means I'm probably not going to have dinner on the table this week and that means I'm going to be in my office for more hours than I normally am. That means I'm probably not going to have dinner on the table this week. Maybe we can do takeout a couple nights and cereal for the other couple of nights. Probably the laundry is going to pile up and I'm just hoping I can get some extra support from you this week and I promise at the end of this week, you know, after this launch is over, you know we'll do double time with you know all the chores and dinner and all of that stuff, Right, and it helps if you can say you know what.
Speaker 1:From the hours of nine to seven I'm going to have to be in my office, but I would love to spend time with the kids from seven to eight and then, if you could handle, bedtime so I can go finish up some loose ends, and then at nine o'clock I'm going to come out of my office and I would love to spend some undivided. I'd love to give you my undivided attention and spend time with you. Like, if you can still give to your partner but be very communicative about it, that will help. But I always recommend, like, share those wins with you. Like with them, you know so, like you're in a launch and you're you're say, you're launching a podcast and you, you know, after the first day you are fifth on the charts and you're really, really excited about it. Make sure you're sharing that with your partner. Like, come out at nine o'clock, when you said you would, and be like hey, guess what? I'm so excited I hit this milestone. It's not exactly what my goal is. I would love to hit number one, but today I hit number five and I'm really excited and I really want to thank you for, you know, picking up the slack with the kids, doing dinner and bath time and bedtime. I really feel supported and I really appreciate you. Right, Like, all of those things are so important and eventually you're going to get better buy-in. Like for me.
Speaker 1:Now my husband has seen like A sometimes we go places and I get recognized Like people are like oh, I listen to your podcast, right and so. Or like people will send in like, after working with you, like my spouse and I we are connecting so much better emotionally or whatever right. And sometimes I'll show those to my husband and be like look at this couple, I've been working with them for three months and they're seeing so much success. And so now he like after seven years, he's like okay, I can see that you love what you're doing and I can see that you're actually making a difference.
Speaker 1:And even though I still like always I'm like, I'm like he talks about retiring, what was he going to do when he retires? I'm like you could help me. And he's always like nope, never going to happen, Right. And I don't take it personally. He's just not passionate about what I'm passionate about, but he's passionate about me. And I have to remember that in those moments when I'm pushing and he feels neglected or something like that and maybe he's not handling it very well, I have to, you know, stay in the state of mind where I can be like hey, I can tell you need some attention from me and I would love to give it to you. I'm just going to finish this podcast recording and then I'll be right out to hang out with you.
Speaker 2:I love that. So the three things that I got from you here is over communicate, yes, that's great. And then sharing those little wins, even when you get a new client, it's like, hey, like a new client, you know. And um, being grateful, appreciation, and you know, I do think I do agree with that. No, he can be passionate about me, but not necessarily what I do. But if I ask him to help me out with something, he would 100% do that. But would I include him in my business once he retires? No, he's going to be playing golf. That's his real passion, right.
Speaker 1:And you don't have to be passionate about golf, but like you can say like, hey, okay, go play golf for four hours and I'd love to spend some time with you when you're done. Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so shifting gears a little bit. Now for couples who are kind of in this. You know they're in that season of life where they're incredibly busy with children. I can relate I have a little toddler and oh my goodness our lives are so busy right now. But you know, for those couples or entrepreneurs who are married to non-entrepreneurs, they're working a lot and they kind of find themselves in this roommate awkward phase where it's like they're working so much but you know they're not really, and that's why we talked about over communication, things like that. But what other practical tips do you have for couples who want to stay connected, even if they're in that?
Speaker 2:season that life is kind of overwhelming right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about honestly, because it's so important and it's so underutilized. Well, I will tell you if you think your life is busy with a toddler right now, wait until they're a teenager. It's not going to get less busy. And that is literally my message to all of you Life is never, ever, ever going to get less busy. So that is a chapter in my book. I can't remember which one. I should learn the chapters, but anyways it's.
Speaker 1:It's this idea that you'll make time for your relationship when dot dot, dot right, when we're making more money, or when my business is more established, or when my children are older. And the reality is is that your relationship is not going to wait until some undetermined set of circumstances in the future. What's really important is that you make time for your relationship now. So I would recommend three things that every couple commit to, and it may have to. You may have to, as the entrepreneur if you're listening to this, you may have to lead out Like you just might have to say okay, I'm building my business and it's really busy and we've got these kids and there's all this stuff going on, but I'm going to schedule this in. I'm going to make time for this. I'm going to make sure that these three things are happening, and the first one is daily connection. So I love talking about this because, in reality, what I'm going to tell you is literally just 3% of your time, and I've done all the math behind it. So we get, as humans, 1,450, 40 minutes in a day. Nobody gets more, nobody gets less. It doesn't matter how much money you're making, how many important friends you have, how much you can bench press at the gym. You only get 1,440 minutes in a day. Everyone does. It's how you choose to use those minutes. Okay, and what I'm recommending is that every single day, you slot in 20 minutes and if you have to set an alarm on your phone, put it in your calendar. It's like a dentist appointment you are not going to miss it, but you're going to use that time to connect emotionally with your spouse.
Speaker 1:So that means you're asking questions like what are you most excited about right now? What's stressing you out? Who did you talk to today that really, like, got you thinking? Are you learning something? Are you reading a book or listening to a podcast that really, like has made you think? Those are the types of questions. You're mapping each other's inner worlds so you can be talking about something, maybe, that you figured out in your business and your partner can be talking about maybe something with the kids or something that they learned or who they talked to at the gym. It doesn't really matter. You're just mapping each other's inner worlds, like what's exciting you, what are you learning about? And this changes from day to day. So it's not like we've been married for 30 years and I know everything there is to know. No, every single day is different. So how are you supporting each other? How are you learning about each other? How are you? You know, I think it's fun to talk about. Like we can have a whole conversation about me just telling my partner who I worked out with this about. Like we can have a whole conversation about me just telling my partner who I worked out with this morning, like who I walked on the treadmill next to at the gym and what we talked about. So 20 minute daily connections every single day non-negotiable.
Speaker 1:The second thing is three hours of date night at every single week, so once a week. So there are 168 hours in every single week. We all get the same amount of hours. Nobody gets more, nobody gets less. You can't buy more, but if you will spend three of those hours going on a date, now, these don't have to be expensive, elaborate or far from home.
Speaker 1:My husband and I, one of our favorite date nights is literally taking a walk on the path that's just down the road from our house. It's free and we love it, but the idea is to do things that are fun, and I like to think about it like this when you're an old couple and you're swinging on the porch swing and talking about your life together, what are the things you're going to remember? Like? I'm not talking about like skydiving, but I'm talking about like you know, did you buy a kayak and go kayaking on the lake? Or did you, you know, have some cool picnics? My husband and I have this story about how we walked around the neighborhood. We walk everywhere. It's like our favorite thing to do, but we like there was this house that was being built, that had a slide in it, and we like not broke in because it was like kind of open, but we like went down the slide for like a couple of hours and it was so fun. And we both remember it and we laugh about it. That was years ago, probably five years ago, but we still on our walks. We'll talk about it. Remember when we were like found that house with the slide and we were sliding down right. It's the remember whens.
Speaker 1:So do something fun together. Do something that kind of reignites that dating energy where you're like I love to be with this person. We do fun things together. It's going to take a little bit of creativity, but not a lot. Like. I literally have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of date nights ideas on my website that you can download for free. So there's lots and there's tons of people like me out there in the world that love to come up with creative date ideas that don't cost a lot of money. In fact, I used to have a membership where I would give you expensive date night ideas kind of expensive or reasonable and then free date night ideas every single week, because I think it's so important to make that time for each other. Just like when you were talking about like mommy and daddy mode. Like you're not in mommy and daddy mode. That is when you put pause on mom and daddy mode. You're teaching your kids so much, but there's other adults out there that can handle things for you while you work on your relationship. So it's really important to have a standing sitter, or there's creative ways to do this too.
Speaker 1:We used to have when we were super young and we didn't have a lot of money for sitters we had a group, like a date night group, with four couples in it and we each had kids that were around similar ages, and so one weekend of the month we would have all the kids at our house. We would. It was chaos. We would turn on a movie, we would feed them hot dogs and just like let them play outside or whatever. So that week was stressful. But then we had three other nights of the month where we could go out on a date and our kids were taken care of. Later in life we had a teenager that lived down the road and she would come over on date nights and she would take care of our kids. Right, but we always made sure that we had three hours every week where we could go, be footloose and carefree and husband and wife like giddy lovers doing something that we enjoyed. So that's date night.
Speaker 1:And the third and final thing that I would say this is how you stay connected through all the busy seasons is go on a yearly weekend trip. Again, it doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate. You can go camping. You can camp in your backyard even, but you go to a local hotel for a few nights, send your kids to grandma and grandpa's and just stay at home.
Speaker 1:If you want to, or you know, save your money year round so that you can take a cool trip, like you can do it any way you want, but I just want you to spend one weekend out of every year, so one out of 52 weekends, and this is where you're going to reconnect intimately.
Speaker 1:You're going to dream together, you're going to talk about what's happened in the year and what you're hoping for in the next year. You're going to take walks together and you're going to, yeah, make plans, get to know like what make your five year, you know, forecast of what things are going to look like, like it's so important to take. And then again, you're spending 20 out of 1,440 minutes, so that's literally leaves you 1,420 minutes to do all the other things. You're spending three out of 168 hours of a week and you're spending one out of the 52 weekends of the year, and if you will do that, I promise you will be able to stay connected through the busiest seasons of your career, of building a business, of raising your children, all the things. But you've got to commit to those things and you've got to be like a tiger about them. Don't let anyone steal your daily minutes, your weekly hours or your yearly weekend.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. I love that advice. It's so true and I relate to that so much because just last year my husband was like we need a vacation, but like without the kids, and I was like, oh, I don't know. You know, because I was so like unsure of like leaving my 18 month old at the time, and he was like, no, we're going.
Speaker 2:So we booked like a last minute three day vacation to Bahamar and Bahamas and I have to say like I was dreading the trip. But then once I got there, it was like we had the most fun I have ever had, like three days with just my husband and I. We went, we I felt like a kid again, like we were going on on the slides and like everything it changes. And you know what I have to say like our relationship after it was like we need to do this again. We need to make this a routine that we do three days like or you know, just a short time away but every year like without the kids, and it's it makes so much sense because it it kind of invigorates you, it makes you excited and you get to look forward.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And you come home better parents and think about the blueprint you're giving your kids Like listen you, you are fine, you are resilient, other adults can take care of you for a short period of time. We focus on our relationship because it's so important. This is the blueprint, this is the legacy that you're leaving them, like we love you, but eventually you're going to grow up and then we're just going to have each other, and so we've neglected our relationship for the 18 years you lived at home. That's not good for anyone yeah, and so it's funny.
Speaker 2:I like that my husband takes the initiative for us. Like I'm like usually the slow one to be like, oh, maybe we should go on a date. He's like no, we should go, we should go go bowling or go do something fun. Like we have like an arcade around the corner. We're just like why don't we just go to an arcade? Like why does it have to be like this expensive outing? And so, yeah, like just little things, like that.
Speaker 1:It just makes a huge difference because it makes you feel like, yeah, you're in like that dating stage and it's so nice to feel that way, you know you know what, when in the busiest like seasons of our life, I can look back and be like my husband and I bought these vests that we wear walking, and like we would have weekends where it was like a wrestling tournament and a volleyball tournament like all weekend long, and we're like how are we going to get our date night in? And so what we would do is we cause they're usually at like a high school or a middle school or something, and so we would take our weighted vests in the car and our water bottles or whatever, and on a break, cause wrestling tournaments I don't know if you know how they work, but you wrestle for like a minute and then you have like a three hour break and then you wrestle it again, you know, and so and same with volleyball, like they'll play a game and then they're off, for they're off and then they're roughing and then they're playing, and so you get these chunks of time. And so it's not like we just went for a walk, it's like we planned for the walk, like we put on our weighted vests and we had our walking shoes on and we had our water and we went and we walked around the track and that was our date night. So you will have to get creative, but I guarantee those will be lasting memories. Like I love those memories. In fact I'd like recreate it now, even though I don't have to anymore.
Speaker 1:So you know, it's those types of things that will stick in your mind. It's not the expensive again, like skydiving dates. That would be cool. I mean, I don't desire to do that, but some people might. But it's like that. Remember we used to walk around Bora High School track and just chat in between wrestling matches Makes a difference.
Speaker 2:And it's yeah, it's such a great thing that you can do right now that you don't really have to plan for or make fancy reservations, so I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because hopefully their wrestling coach is watching them in there and you know the kids are fine, everything's good.
Speaker 2:And yeah you're connecting? Yeah, so where can my audience connect with you and find you and buy your book?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for asking. You can find all the information about me and working with me on my website is monicatanercom, and then the book is called Bad Marriage Advice and you can get on the wait list right now, but eventually you'll be able to buy it on bad marriageadvicecom.
Speaker 2:Amazing, and that's right. And so you can find all of Monica's links in the show notes. So make sure to follow her on Instagram and check out her new book, bad Marriage Advice. Thanks so much, monica. Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:This has been so fun, I know, and thank you so much for listening today, everyone, if you resonated with anything that we've said in today's episode, I want you to head over to my Instagram and send me a DM. I'd love to hear what you thought about the topics discussed, because it is a different topic. I think this is the most unique. You've been the most unique guest we've had so far, and so I would love to hear your thoughts and what you thought about today's episode. So make sure to head over to my Instagram, alyssa Belisario OBM, and let me know what you thought. So I hope you found this as insightful as I did, and I will catch you next time on another brilliant idea. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Brilliant Ideas. If you love the show show, be sure to leave a review and follow me on instagram for even more insider tips and inspiration. Ready to bring your next big, brilliant idea to life? Visit elissavelsercom for resources, guidance and everything you need to start creating something amazing.