Communication in Marriage: Decision Making

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Sis. Myrtle Alegado (Host): When your alarm goes off, you wake up and think about whether or not you should press that snooze button, right? Multiple times, every day, we make decisions. They could be small or inconsequential, and then there are those major ones that could be life-changing.

On the website www.goroberts.edu, it states that an adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. And as surprising as it may sound, as a matter of fact, we make 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone, according to researchers at Cornell University. For me, I start my day by choosing between maybe a coffee or cappuccino, and whether or not I’ll have toast or cereal, or if I’m actually going to eat breakfast at all.

Now, those are just some examples of the small decisions we make on our own. What about when we get married and have to make decisions with our spouse— especially big decisions? Could it be that much different? How should married couples go about making decisions?

Welcome to Happy Life, the newest podcast brought to you by INCMedia that helps newlyweds navigate through the first months of marriage. I’m Myrtle Alegado and I’ve been married to my husband, Paul, since May of 1999.

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Inspiration to make your marriage thrive, you’re listening to Happy Life.

Myrtle: According to www.tonyrobbins.com, in an article contributed by David Hilton of Life Marriage Retreats: In a relationship, the number of decisions we make on our own may decrease significantly, not because every decision must be made together, but we now consider the impact of our choices on the other person. Now, why is it so important that we give great care to the choices we make as a married couple?

In an article “Decision-Making In Marriage” written by Dr. David Isaacs on www.familylifeinstitutes.org, it is usually said that bad decision-making is one of the leading causes of problems in matrimony. As part of our ‘Effective Communication in Marriage’ series, in this episode we’ll learn about decision-making as a newlywed couple.

And to share with us their experiences as a married couple for three years now, here with us today from Calgary, Alberta, Canada are Patrick and Zandrhea De Guzman. Welcome to Happy Life, Patrick and Zandrhea! How are you both today?

Zandrhea De Guzman: Hi everyone! It’s so great to be here.

Patrick De Guzman: Hey, we’re doing good!

Myrtle: Good to hear! We’re happy to have you here. So, it’s normal and common for newlyweds to face a lot of firsts, new beginnings, different opportunities, and big decisions as a couple. So, Pat and Zandy, can you share with us some examples of major decisions you’ve made together, and how you went about them?

Patrick: Sure, I could start with our wedding. I guess that probably was our first big decision that we had to make. Knowing that we wanted to pay for our wedding ourselves, you know, we had to make cuts, right? And so, some of the things we were considering were how many people could we invite, what is our budget. As grand of a wedding we wanted, we also wanted to make sure that it’s within our budget. So, I want to say, yeah, maybe the wedding planning alone. Also, really, where do we choose where to live?

Zandrhea: Definitely, yeah. That was one of the big ones. I mean, I guess from my end, both of us, we’re both working so it would be possibly our careers, what we want to do in life—if that affects either of us—what we think of, our dreams, our aspirations when it comes to our careers. So that’s… Yeah, those were big ones for us.

Myrtle: Can you share with us what your careers are currently?

Zandrhea: I’m currently a legal assistant at a law firm.

Patrick: And I’m a multimedia developer.

Myrtle: And then you’re juggling your careers and trying to adjust to married life. And do you also have hobbies on the side?

Zandrhea: Yes, I like to take photos. So I guess you would say I’m sort of an amateur photographer. So, I kind of chase that when I’m not working. 

Myrtle: That’s awesome.

Patrick: I feel like there’s no shortage of hobbies. I’ve recently gotten into filmmaking before that. I’m still doing it. I like to paint. Yeah, so there’s a lot of stuff there, and I guess Zan just picked up a…I guess she’s a plant lady now? I don’t know.

Zandrhea: Oh yes.

Myrtle: [laughs]

Zandrhea: Now I’m also a mother of plants. [laughs]

Myrtle: All of those things factor into deciding, right, how you’re going to juggle, how are you going to make time for everything. And then, you mentioned deciding where to live. Did you have that discussion before you got married, and how did you come to a decision on that?

Patrick and Zandrhea: [laughs]

Patrick: There’s a lot there. Because the thing for me is I’m very logical in a sense, and Zan is a…

Zandrhea: I’m a free spirit. [laughs]

Myrtle: [laughs]

Patrick: There we go. That’s a good way to put it. On the moving part, that one’s kind of interesting. So, I like to stay in one place. Zan doesn’t. Well, that’s not true.

Zandrhea: No.

Patrick: She likes different things.

Zandrhea: I like experiencing different areas of the city, apparently. [laughs]

Myrtle: [laughs]

Patrick: Right. Obviously, after our wedding, one of the bigger questions that we had was, you know, ‘where would we live?’ Initially, we lived downtown, and that’s primarily because that’s where we worked and that’s where, I guess, everything is. Within like first two, three years, we probably moved three times.

Myrtle: Oh wow.

Patrick: It was fun.

Zandrhea: Was it three times? I think it was two.

Patrick: I want to say four, but I’ll give you a discount.

Zandrhea: [laughs]

Myrtle: [laughs]

Zandrhea: Okay, three times, whatever. It’s fine. [laughs] Yeah, and you know what though? With that, I feel like it was hard for me to convince Patrick when I wanted to move, only because when you’re a newlywed, you don’t really know what you want in terms of space. And again, with the whole budgeting thing, we’re like, let’s maybe live downtown but go to a place that we can afford. With… when we’re newlyweds, because we’re learning how, I guess, to split our budgets, and how much space do we really need? We didn’t really know that at first. We just thought, ‘Oh this is a great location. It’s within our budget. Let’s go here.’ But, within, I think, within six months I was like, “We bought way too much stuff and I think we’re going to need to move.” So…

Myrtle: And you needed a bigger space already? [laughs]

Zandrhea: Apparently. Well, I mean, I think if you go from a 550-square foot house or a condo, and there’s two of you, and one of them likes to paint—and I’m not blaming that on you. [laughs]

Patrick: You know, I’ll take it. It’s fine.

Zandrhea: It was a lot of our stuff that we accumulated in our first year of marriage. It was kind of, we outgrew it really quickly. So, yeah…

Myrtle: So, you obviously convinced him somehow, because you said you did move. So, how did that discussion go and, you know, what did you do to convince Patrick that it was a good decision for you both?

Zandrhea: Maybe I’ll talk about our third move? I wanted to live near my parents, my family. I have a small family, so they would occasionally come visit us and it was too far for them at times because of church. We would only see each other on church days, so I thought it would probably be best to be in the neighborhood closest to my family. So, I had to really convince him. Aside from the fact that, you know, of course we’ll be near our family and we’ll be able to see them more often, I had to be more specific in the reasons why I thought that it was a good decision. As Pat mentioned, he’s a logical thinker, so he’s the type of person who likes to see what you mean by ‘this is a good decision.’ So, I just made it seem that we were saving money and we would spend less on gas. I made a…I guess I’ll let Pat talk about that. [laughs]

Patrick: Okay, so here: Is it further away from work? Yes. Did we save money? Actually, no. But for some reason we’re happier and, I mean, I’ll take that over anything else. Like she said, we’re closer to her family. If they need something, we can be there and vice versa.

So, this is how she really convinced me. I like numbers, and so she decided to put together, I think it was an Excel spreadsheet with literally everything from, ‘hey, this is how big our tank is, this is how far our travel is everyday, this is how much gas is between now and I don’t