Same Team with The Freemans

As the holidays arrive, we wanted to set you up for success. We see it every year: this is a make it or break it time for couples. The stress piles up, patience runs thin, and couples end up fighting like opponents instead of simply arguing like teammates. We want you two to stay on the same team. So we wrote out a list of reflective questions that will stick with you and leave you both feeling more love and connection as you go into the new year. In this episode, Jocelyn walks you through four of them to ask yourself, and to send to your partner. Are you being a source of encouragement or being critical? Are you jumping to negative conclusions or assuming the best? Are you interrupting and saying things that hurt, or taking turns and saying things that help? Are you modeling division or unity for your kids? You'll get a quick dose of motivation, a few perspective shifts, and a clear sense of what to change before the new year instead of after. New book SAME TEAM: How to break cycles, grow closer, and model a loving marriage for your kids. Pre-order now and get 2 bonus gifts plus an entry into our couples getaway giveaway. You can find all of our best resources from guides, webclasses, to coaching sessions with this link: Best Resources

There's a key distinction between taking a "pause" and a "power pause" when it comes to downshifting your career after having kids, and our guest, Neha Ruch, explains exactly what it is. Neha is the voice behind the movement that reframed stay-at-home motherhood for a new generation of ambitious women. As founder of The Power Pause (formerly Mother Untitled) and author of the USA Today bestseller of the same name, she has helped hundreds of thousands of women see time in family life as a purposeful chapter, not a detour.   In this episode, we also dig into the ever-changing expectations in marriage as you move through milestones like having kids, how to keep resentment from building, and how to navigate money as a couple, all while staying on the same team. You'll walk away knowing how to bring up this conversation without it feeling like a threat, what each of you needs to feel respected and seen, and how to keep a big decision from turning into resentment later. Whether you're considering a pause, already in one, or supporting a partner who is, this one will give you words to use at your own kitchen table.   📕 Pre-order our book SAME TEAM and you'll instantly get two guides, the 10-Minute Nightly Check-In and 12 Same Team Phrases to De-Escalate Tension, plus an entry to win an all-expenses-paid couples getaway to Scottsdale, Arizona for every pre-order before January 26: meetthefreemans.com/sameteam   👉 Find Neha's book The Power Pause and her free Sunday newsletter at thepowerpause.com, and follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/neha_ruch/   👉 Our big dream is to get this book into 100,000 homes by launch. If this episode speaks to you, we would love your help sharing it with the people you love.  

Every time you disagree, it turns into a fight. Or you've gotten so afraid of the fight that you stop saying what you need at all. Either way, old hurts show up, you talk over each other, and you end up feeling more distant than when you started. Most couples don't have an arguing problem. They have a fighting problem. In this episode of Same Team with The Freemans, Jocelyn and Aaron break down the 5 differences between arguing and fighting, so you can tell which one you're in and get back on the same side. You'll learn how to keep today's issue from turning into a trial about the past, how to take turns so you both feel heard, how to ask a clarifying question before you assume, how to stay honest without getting hurtful or reactive, and how to measure an argument by whether you feel closer when it's over. You'll also hear a real story from our own marriage about a big decision where we disagreed and still stayed teammates. 👉 Join our free webclass, How to De-escalate Conflict and Navigate Emotional Triggers: onlinecouplesworkshops.com/deescalate 📕 Pre-order Same Team: meetthefreemans.com/sameteam More resources: meetthefreemans.com/links

You bring something up and hear "I'm fine." So you stop asking. Or you're the one who goes quiet and hopes it blows over, then wonder why the tension never leaves the house. Either way, it starts to feel like you're walking on eggshells and nothing ever actually gets resolved. In this episode, we explain why the partner who avoids conflict often ends up creating more of it, and why that's not the same as being the "anxious" one in the relationship.  Jocelyn shares what she could sense every time Aaron said "I'm fine," and Aaron opens up about what was really going on for him. We also walk through a study on what kids pick up on when parents argue and when they go silent. You'll walk away knowing how to take the space you need without disappearing on your partner, what to say instead of "I'm fine," and how to stop pushing issues down until they blow up later. 👉 Register for our upcoming web class on how to de-escalate conflicts and navigate emotional triggers: onlinecouplesworkshops.com/deescalate 📕 Pre-order our book SAME TEAM and you'll instantly get two guides, the 10-Minute Nightly Check-In and 12 Same Team Phrases to De-Escalate Tension, plus an entry to win an all-expenses-paid couples getaway to Scottsdale, Arizona for every pre-order before January 26: meetthefreemans.com/sameteam

Do you ever have the experience that a simple conversation with your partner can all of a sudden can create tension? If that has happen to you more than once, you know it makes you less likely to even want to bring things up agian. In our marriage coaching with couples, we can often predict whether a conflict will escalate into more disconnection or bring them closer, and it comes down to one thing: the level of emotional safety the feel. Though that may sound obvious, the "how to" for creating this level of safety usually isn't. What we've noticed is that most couples have never actually defined what emotional safety means, so they don't know what they're building or even when it's quietly eroding. In this episode, we define emotional safety, and show you how to tell the difference between normal tension and actually feeling unsafe, plus what to do in the moment when a conversation starts to spiral. You'll learn the everyday habits that make your partner shut down, withdraw or stop bringing things up, and the simple steps that help you both stay open, even when you disagree. We share honest moments from our own marriage, and why this matters for the kids who are watching how the two of you handle hard moments. Whether you tend to react fast or go silent, you'll leave with language and steps you can use at your next tough conversation.    👉 Want to go deeper? Join our live marriage webclass on November 3rd, How to De-escalate Conflicts and Navigate Emotional Triggers. Register at onlinecouplesworkshops.com/deescalate 📕 Pre-order our book SAME TEAM and you'll instantly get two guides, the 10-Minute Nightly Check-In and 12 Same Team Phrases to De-Escalate Tension, plus an entry to win an all-expenses-paid couples getaway to Scottsdale, Arizona for every pre-order before January 26: meetthefreemans.com/sameteam  👉 Our big dream is to get this book into 100,000 homes by launch. If this episode speaks to you, we would love your help sharing it with the people you love.