Let the air out of the balloon to prevent resentment in relationships with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger – Love Vitamins for Relationships
Sammi & Nathan Jaeger are the Co-Host of The Date Forever Podcast. And they are on a mission to empower couples to create thriving relationships. Because with better relationships we can create a better world. Sammi & Nath fell in love as housemates and have now been married for over a decade and love sharing relationship insights from couples and experts on their show.
Why they got married
Saami and Nathan were around 23 and 24 when they got married in December 2012. And the’ve been together now for about 15 years, just celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations! At LoVita, we’re always curious as to why people get married. Everyone has their own reasons, and I really wanted to know why they decided to make that step after 5 years of being together in their relationship. Sammi mentioned that’s something she had struggled with herself in the beginning and shares their wonderful story of how she ended up eventually taking the name Jaeger.
I really love that you’ve asked this because I did not wanna get married. I didn’t really believe in the institution of marriage. I didn’t really understand why anyone would wanna involve the government in their relationship. , I didn’t really, put a lot of value on having the piece of paper. And at the time, like I was like 20 when I had those, Opinions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and there are a few things that really changed my mind. Like my, for reference, my parents were together for quite a long time, like 20 years, but they never got married. So I have a different last name than my brother, despite us having the same biological parents. My parents, my, my mom was quite fiercely independent. She. Had me at 21. She worked in a very heavily male dominated field and a lot of my resistance to marriage was like from a feminist point of view of like, I do not want a man to feel in in any way that he owns me. I want to have an adult relationship where we both agree. Mm-hmm. , and I’m not exactly. . There wasn’t one thing, there wasn’t one thing for me that changed the idea, but a part, a big part of it was that it was important to Nathan. And I was really challenging his view of the world by saying, no, I, that’s not something I want to do.
Nathan adds that one of the biggest real benefits that they saw was of creating that family together and creating a milestone moment creating their family together which gives a feeling of “this is us,” co-creating something new together, rather than having a level of separation while they weren’t married. Saami adds on to that
but it was interesting for me cuz I kind of went through that evolution of like, no, I don’t wanna do that. Hold on. I’ve met somebody and it’s really important to them and it’s how they see the progression of a relationship. And then it was like, okay, I’ll get married, but I’m not changing my name. Like, no, that’s. , I’m keeping it. And then in the time that we got engaged, I really wanted us to be united front. I had connected with this idea, like Nathan saying about being one nurse and creating our family. Mm-hmm. . Because I believe that, a couple can be a family without the dogs, without the kids. Nathan and I are family. Yeah. but there was, this sounds so corny, but I saw on Pinterest. Someone had set up a photo gallery in their home and right in the center of it was their last name, and it was surrounded by all of these beautiful family photos. And I just thought, gosh, I want that. I want Nathan and I to run out onto the field with the same GK ons. And he had a cooler last name than me,
They also mentioned that they had even considered a separate last name. Although, things turned out differently at the end, their relationship is a true testament of holding the space to be able to go through all of those layers of change. Initially they had very different ideas of what it meant to get married, but by the time it actually came around to the special day, their ideas had changed. And the fact that both of them approached those conversations with this sense of togetherness, is such a valuable concept that many relationships kind of find themselves struggling with.
Challenges
Nathan talks about how they didn’t really consciously work on solving disagreements early on in their relationship. They had some pretty bad fights but their willingness to work things out keeps them in this relationship where they can date forever.
probably the first 12 months or two years of our relationship, I feel like that we were very much scoping each other out and working out each other’s boundaries and, and a lot of those sorts of things. And so we did have a lot of arguments or disagreements or like real deep conversations kind of in that, in that early stage of our relationship. And then I think once. We kind of got over those initial hurdles of, of yeah. Feeling each other out and, and working out how we can actually work together and co-create together.
Sammi adds on how they got to a point where they figured out that this pattern wasn’t really suitable for a long-term relationships and spending their life together.
Nathan and I were like already in love when we got together because we’d been living together for a year as housemates. So I think a lot of the teething issues that people go through, we had sort of done that as friends, so we like our, our real honeymoon. The, oh my gosh, this is all really brand new kind of stage was probably kind of short. Really? Yeah. And then we entered like a power struggle sort of phase for what, what I now know is like this sort of power struggle phase. And then we went into a don’t rock the boat phase. Like, he’s so great. He’s so amazing. I don’t wanna lose him, therefore I’m not gonna. call him out on that thing that I didn’t like and I’m just gonna ignore that need that, oh, it doesn’t really matter. And then somewhere from there we fig, we started to figure out that that was not a long-term sustainable way to be doing our life together.
Weekly Check-in Conversation
We wanted to learn some exercises or practices that they use to keep fueling their love tank. They had so many things to share on this. One of the first things they talk, which I loved how they phrased it “let air out of the balloon”. It’s a weekly check-in conversation to help prevent resentment in their relationship. On what they do to build a healthier relationship, Sammi starts with saying they put goodwill into our relationship all day, every day
And that’s not to say that we don’t ever make withdrawals from that, but we’re having a really good conversation a couple of weeks ago about what are some of the things that we do to prevent resentment in our relationship. We have a weekly check-in conversation every week where we ask, is there something that you want me to apologize for? , is there something that I’ve done that maybe in the heat of the moment it wasn’t right to talk about or it was so it felt insignificant at the time, but then when you reflected on it, it did actually hurt and there was something, something that might build resentment there. So we’ve got this weekly opportunity to like let air out of the balloon.
Nathan adds on how their practice is makes it much easier to break free of patterns that are not healthy, while not building resentment from their partner’s side as well.
So rather than like, yeah, the same thing potentially occurring like week after week after week. yeah, it is turning into a much bigger kind of repeat behavior type of thing. this, this. Question that we do weekly does really give the opportunity to, yeah, air any of that dirty laundry or air, anything that you might have been hanging onto for a little while, and chatted out before it actually becomes a big thing. And I think that helps from both sides as well, because like if I’ve done something to upset Sammy, and it’s something that. Integrated or that I’ve been doing for quite some time, like it’s probably a habit that I’ve actually trained myself to be doing, which then becomes a lot more difficult for me to then try and undo when Sammy does finally bring it up. And also on her side, it’s been building this resentment over time because it’s been this long-term repeat behavior. Whereas if, if you’re able to see the behavior once or twice or whatever, and then have the conversation. . It’s not something that’s embedded into my behaviors or habits or anything like that
Connect with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger
- Website: https://dateforever.com.au/
- Instagram: dateforever
- Podcast: Date Forever