Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
Navigating Marital Challenges with Jill Savage
What if embracing imperfection is the key to a truly fulfilling marriage? Join us on the Pivotal People podcast as we host the insightful Jill Savage, who shares her secrets to experiencing genuine relationships through her new book, "No More Perfect Marriages: Experience the Freedom of Being Real Together."
Jill is an author, speaker and host of the "No More Perfect Podcast." She has experienced the challenges of marriage and the pain of infidelity. Married for 40 years, Mark left Jill for another woman almost a decade ago ... Jill was faced with divorce but through God's grace, they were able to reconcile. Now they've dedicated their lives to helping other families and couples have 2.0 marriages.
Jill shares her personal anecdotes and heartfelt counseling stories, challenging the dangerous "perfection infection" that plagues many marriages. Discover how understanding your partner beyond superficial stereotypes and addressing deep-seated insecurities can pave the way to a happier, more authentic connection.
Connect with Jill and Mark
https://jillsavage.org/
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I'd like to welcome Jill Savage to the Pivotal People podcast because she is going to be very pivotal for anyone who's listening to this, who is married, and the reason I say that is because she's the author of a book which I've just read and loved, called no More Perfect Marriages Experience the freedom of being real together. Let me tell you about Jill quickly, before we get to hear her enlighten us on marriage. She's an author and speaker who's passionate about encouraging families. She has actually authored 14, perhaps more books. She has more coming out, we'll talk about that, but she's written about motherhood. She's written about family budgeting, living with less so your family has more. I love that.
Speaker 1:No More Perfect Moms, no More Perfect Marriages. She's written a book called Empty Nest Full Life. Most of my friends we want to be reading that book. She has been featured on Focus on the Family Crosswalkcom, family Life Today, today's Christian Women Magazine. She's the founder of an organization called Hearts at Home, which encouraged moms, and she and her husband know what they're talking about because they have five children, three who are married and eight grandchildren. And what I think is funny is that the theme of her books is all about not being perfect. They live in normal Illinois. I love that, so, jill, welcome. Thank you so much for taking your time to spend with us. To enlighten us on marriage, let's talk about that, thank you.
Speaker 2:It's good to be here and to have the opportunity to share with you.
Speaker 1:Well, she also has a great podcast that has well over 200 episodes, so we'll talk more about that later. Let me start with this quote, jill, this quote in the description of your book, which I loved, which is a real marriage isn't perfect.
Speaker 2:A real marriage is two people being perfected, and I love that that is the heart of really our book no More Perfect Marriages because I think a lot of times the media, our own ideals, set us up for disappointment in marriage, because it's like we are comparing the insides of our marriage to the outsides of other marriages and then we feel like we're either failing or our spouse isn't measuring up to what we thought, or our marriage isn't measuring up to what we expected, and so we really need to normalize the struggles of marriage and the struggles of relationship, and I think that that is, you know. That's why Mark and I really wanted to write this book. We wanted to talk about not only our crisis that happened 12 years ago but we wanted to talk about all of the lessons we learned for everyday marriages as we healed from that crisis, because we all struggle to some degree.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I will say Jill's book Jill and Mark, they wrote this together is faith-based. It's a Christian book and what struck me, what I appreciated was sometimes you can read a book about marriage that says Sometimes you can read a book about marriage that says you know, this is what men are like and this is what women are like, and you come away from that feeling like, okay, I need to be. Or you also have books that say this is what men should be like and this is what women should be like. But what I heard from Jill and Mark's book is you know what? Let's take a little time to understand what our spouse is like and let's not pigeonhole them into gender stereotypes or expectations and let's go from there. So you talked about the perfection infection. I so love that. I'd love for you to elaborate on that and how you've seen that impact marriages your marriage and other marriages, because you counsel people.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I first introduced the concept of the perfection infection in my no More Perfect Mom's book, and that's where we have this tendency to compare our insides to other people's outsides and we unfairly compare our life to other lives. And then I wrote no More Perfect Kids and we talked about how does the perfection infection invade our parenting? That's when we have unrealistic expectations of our kids or we unfairly compare our kids to others, maybe their siblings, maybe other kids in their class. And so then we took that concept into no More Perfect Marriages and said well, all right, what happens when the perfection infection invades a marriage? And it will invade a marriage in one of two ways. Either we will have unrealistic expectations of marriage and we will unfairly compare our marriage to others of marriage and we will unfairly compare our marriage to others.
Speaker 2:We see people at church on Sunday and we go oh, they have the perfect marriage. Oh, look how he put his arm around her during the sermon, and while we're sitting there wishing that our spouse would do that. Or the perfection infection can invade our marriage by comparing our spouse, so having unrealistic expectations of our spouse, or unfairly comparing our spouse to others. And so what happens when we do those comparisons is it breeds discontentment. And when it breeds that discontentment, we stop seeing what we have and we only start seeing what we don't have and it begins to rob us of joy, it begins to rob us of contentment and it becomes a really dangerous place where our hearts get pulled apart and we don't even realize it, but it's happening on the inside of us. Now we would say it's because our spouse isn't doing X, our spouse isn't doing Y, but in reality it's because of our discontentment, our expectations that are often unrealistic and not true to the person that we're married to.
Speaker 1:I'm nodding. You can't see this, but I am just nodding. I'm like, yes, yes, because I've been married 33 years and I have many friends who've been married and we take walks and we talk and sometimes people talk about their marriages or their husbands and sometimes I think that it is less about the marriage and more about our own issues of are we feeling like we're living our purpose? Do we have an engaging project? What are our insecurities? What are we striving for? Because the easiest thing to do is to blame it on the person who's closest to us. My husband always says do you need a little project? It's amazing how great my marriage is when I'm engaged in a project I enjoy.
Speaker 1:I think my marriage is the same the whole time. My husband's the same the whole time, but he's like honey. Maybe you need a little project, and he's generally right about that. And then the whole issue of oh gosh, I love it, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I adopted this feeling probably 10 years ago. It's like you know what? What if I just water my own grass?
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. Well, the grass is greener where you water it, period, that's where the grass is greener, and so when you have your eyes set elsewhere, then you're watering elsewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, perfection, affection, I think, and that applies, as you said. What comparison is the thief of joy? That applies in every area of our life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I find, as I it also. It also is correlated to how much we care about what other people think. So Jill has and I'm going all over the board now cause I loved her book so much she has questions in the back to really try to not in the back in one of her chapters to try to understand your spouse better. And I told him I was going to tell you this. So I'm just going to tell you my husband is not. He's a thinker, but he's not a deep chatter. He doesn't want to. That's why I take walks with girlfriends. I'm not going to ask him a deep question and get him to really open up about that. He's going to say something funny and it's going to end.
Speaker 1:But I thought I'm going to try a couple of Jill's questions. So I said to my husband I'm doing this podcast, this author, this great book, she has all these questions, but I know you probably don't want to answer any. He's like, oh, I don't know, try a couple. I said, okay, the question was ask your spouse what do I do that you would like me to do more of? Next question what do I do that you would like me to do less of? Now, these are pretty. These are questions I don't even want to ask because, jill, what could he say? Probably something I don't want to hear.
Speaker 2:Well, what did he say?
Speaker 1:This is why I love my husband. He's not going to go too deep. He said oh, that's easy. I would like you to do the grocery shopping more often and I would like you to stop making me go to parties I don't want to go to, which is every single party on the planet. So I actually like grocery shopping. I thought he did too, so that was new information for me. Jill, thank you, and I already knew about the party thing, but he still has to go to some.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess my point is you might think these questions are scary. It ended up being kind of fun. I loved it. That's great. One of the things I really got from your book was this whole idea of the seven slow fades. So anyone listening would say you know, I've got a good marriage. You're talking about how to go from a good marriage to a great marriage. By the way, I've got a good marriage. I don't need this. But when you start reading the seven slow fades you can see how easily content can creep up on us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, exactly, and that's why we felt like it was really important to identify the ways that our hearts get pulled apart one little quarter inch of a time. So we like to think of the slow fades as like erosion in a marriage. So a beach erodes by the waves come in and take a few pieces of sand, and then the waves come in and take a few more pieces of sand, and in general you don't really see that happening. But if you look at that beach five years later, you're going to see erosion, you're going to see a change. Well, that's the same thing that happens when the slow fades come into our marriage. They carry just a little bit of connection away, and then a little bit more and a little bit more over the years. Then it becomes that our hearts aren't a quarter inch apart, they're 10 inches apart, and then, if you wait long enough, they become miles apart.
Speaker 2:And honestly, this is one of the biggest things that contributes to what we call silver divorces. And a silver divorce is a couple that's been married 25 or more years and you know they've put in a lot of years together and then they get divorced and people are like, why would they do that? Well, they've been experiencing the slow fades for a long time and I think they probably don't have hope that you can close that gap. But you can. And so where we start is by knowing where is the erosion happening in our marriage, and then, after we can identify that, it's like all right, well, let's work to stop that erosion so that we can begin to close that gap and really begin to experience connection again. That's why the slow fades are so very important.
Speaker 1:And what are some examples where you see in marriages the most erosion and how could someone start working on closing that gap?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, one of the big ones is the slow fade of unrealistic expectations and so unrealistic. The gap between unrealistic expectations and reality is discontentment, and when you are, this one was a big one, particularly for my husband. So he was always disappointed in our marriage, always disappointed in me, and it was because he had a picture in his mind, and to give you a little bit of his history is, he grew up in a very dysfunctional home, very violent home, and so he was like, if I get out of here alive, I am going to have a really different marriage than this, I'm going to have a really different home than this. But he had a picture in his mind that wasn't real, and so we didn't match up to that picture. And he was like he kept looking for us to match up to the picture. That's why we would call it unrealistic expectations. We had a good marriage, we had a good marriage, we had a good relationship, but it wasn't matching up to the picture in his mind, and so it was never good enough and I felt like I felt that, like I felt like I was never enough, I was never good enough and so nothing was enough. Sex wasn't frequent enough. I mean, it was just like there was never enough.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that happens is when you sit in that discontentment day in and day out, day in and day out, it moves to disconnection, disappointment, discouragement and, eventually, disillusionment. And so we don't want that. We wanna begin to identify. Where do I have unrealistic expectations? And a lot of times people go well, how would I know that?
Speaker 2:I think it's realistic to expect my husband to do X or to expect my wife to do Y, and it may be that it's a desire for you, but it may not match up to who they are, or it may not match up to where they are in their own personal growth journey. And so if you can accept the reality of where they are like you've really learned this in your marriage, stephanie, as you were sharing about your husband, like he is never going to be the one that's gonna go on walks with you and just chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat. That's never going to be him. But if you constantly want him to be that and he is going to constantly disappoint you, right, and so that's what that unrealistic expectation. So a lot of times I'll say to people where are you constantly disappointed in your spouse. Where are you always hurt in some way? That maybe that is revealing where your expectations are unrealistic and that really, when people can bring their expectations in line with reality, it's a gift to themselves and it's a gift to their marriage.
Speaker 1:I agree it's taken a while to learn that. I'll tell you a lesson we had in our marriage that I did not realize this until I read Jill's book, and that was that sometimes we come into marriages obviously with different childhood experiences and then we expect our spouse to do it the way we did it, yeah, or even when we train them on how to do it our way, we expect them to understand how we feel. Well, that's impossible. We all have different worldviews, we all have different experiences, and it wasn't until in our in our family it's about birthdays when we were first married, I was very disappointed at how my husband handled a birthday and that would be the understatement of the century and since that time he has a mental checklist of all the things you're supposed to do on your wife's birthday, because he's very good at checklist and he's very responsible and he does all of those things every year. And in my head I'm like, yeah, but do you really mean it? I mean, isn't that so awful? Stop it, he's doing his best. He is going through the checklist.
Speaker 1:In my family growing up, your birthday was a big deal. My mother made everyone's birthday a big deal and I just took that for granted. When I went away to college, I went very far from home. My mother had a birthday cake delivery service deliver a birthday cake on every birthday to my college dorm room. Here was my husband's experience that he had a brother and his two parents and his father brother the three boys in the family. Their birthdays were 10 days apart. The father's birthday was in the family. Their birthdays were 10 days apart. The father's birthday was in the middle of that 10 days.
Speaker 1:So for my husband's entire childhood, his mother said I am not making three cakes, and so she made one birthday cake and they celebrated all three birthdays on his father's birthday. Wow, don't get me started. So is it any wonder? So when it comes to my husband's birthday, I always want to do big things. It's your, let's do a big party, it's a big birthday. And he'll say, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't. Yes, we'll all get together, but let's not make it about me. It's always that and I'm always like, could we make it a little more about me? So so now I understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh, you're so true, you're so right, and here's what I want you to also. There's a little piece in there that I want to pull out, and that is when you were saying now my husband has a mental checklist of what's important to me for my birthday, and then you question so he does those things right, but because he has to have a checklist, you questioned his authenticity in that.
Speaker 1:Which I was kind of joking because that wasn't nice. But yeah, you can see, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:Well, it's normal, stephanie. That happens to a lot of people and we I have a story as well as well. So my husband loves when I text him and flirt with him by text. He loves that. Okay, I don't love that A, I don't need that, I don't love that and it doesn't come easy to me.
Speaker 2:And so, literally because I knew it was important to him, I determined and I'm also a checklist person, just like your hubby and so I was like I literally did some work and I wrote down like 60 different texts, flirty texts that I could send him. Okay, so I typed them up and then I put a note on my phone, an alarm on my phone every day that says send Mark Flirty text. And then I would go pick something off the list and I would send it to him. And of course he loved it, until he found out that I was doing it with an alarm on my phone and that I had written those out. And then he was like you shouldn't have to do that, like it should just come natural. And I'm like it comes natural to you.
Speaker 2:It doesn't come natural to me, but I am doing the most loving thing I can do is figuring out a way to make it happen for you and that made so much sense to him, like he started to see that so differently and he was like the most loving thing Jill could do was take the time to create the list, put the alarm on her phone and follow through with it. So a lot of times I think this happens in marriage, stephanie, is because the other spouse. It doesn't come natural to them, and again that would probably fall even into unrealistic expectations. It might come natural to you, but it doesn't come natural to them, and again that would probably fall even into unrealistic expectations. It might come natural to you, but it doesn't come natural to them. So if they're willing to step into your world, no matter what it takes to do that, let's be grateful instead of judging what that feels like to us.
Speaker 1:What a good point, what a good lesson. Thank you for that. My husband really appreciates that too. So one of the things we all know, if anyone's been married five minutes, is that you cannot change another person. And yet, and yet, we still try. Oh, my gosh over.
Speaker 2:and over again.
Speaker 1:Could we talk about? You asked this question, no, or you make this claim that your book will help us know what to do if your spouse just won't change. Now you've given examples. You don't have to give examples from your own marriage. You could also give examples of married couples you've counseled. But I do love examples, because do you have examples of someone who came to you and said this is intolerable, my spouse has to change, and we're not talking about physical abuse or anything really awful here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, interestingly enough, just last night I had a coaching client and we were having a discussion about this. You're right, we cannot change another person. We can invite them to change. We can make requests, which, by the way, most of us don't know how to do. That. We complain, we criticize, we comment, but we don't make a direct request. And kindly, gently, and usually we complain, we criticize and we comment with some heat. Well, that doesn't exactly make them want to step in our direction.
Speaker 2:So we were talking last night because her husband really struggles with follow through on things. So he will say that he will do something, and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't, and so, and it just I mean it just fries her, like she just is so angry at him that when it happens or something will happen Like, for instance, they had determined that they would get up and have time in the morning about a half an hour before she had to start her remote job at work, and so they were going to have this time Well, he's not a morning person and he struggles to, you know totally like, settle in for them to have time. So, so that particular morning they had had 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes, and so he sat down with this cup of coffee and by that time she was so angry that the remainder of the 15 minutes was a complete waste because she was just all worked up on the inside. And so we talked about the fact that, yes, it is disappointing that he missed the first 15 minutes of your time together, but it's also equally disappointing that you completely wasted the other 15 minutes that he showed up for. And so what could be changed here? What could be changed here? And so we talked through that and she said, well, maybe I could expect that we might not have the whole 30 minutes, but if we got any amount of it, I could value that. And I said, yeah, that sounds like that might be a more realistic expectation for where he is in his journey, and I mean, he has a lot of issues with self-discipline. This isn't just in their marriage, this is in his life. And so it's like, yeah, if you actually brought your expectation to better match reality, then you might be able to appreciate the time that you get. And I'm not saying that you can't grieve that you didn't have the other time, it's okay, that's a sincere disappointment, but you also missed the 15 minutes that you got, and so that really that changed it.
Speaker 2:And the other thing we worked on with her is we talked about that in her thinking is and so I said why were you so angry? And she said because he needs to be held accountable. And I said where do you see it? As it's your job to hold him accountable? I said where's the best change going to happen? And she said inside his heart, from the inside out. And I said yeah, not from the outside in, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't have conversations and talk about things like, hey, it would really mean the world to me if you could work more to give us the full. That's okay, she can do that.
Speaker 2:But she was really using her anger to try to control him and she was like I just need to step out of the way and let God work on his heart. I said yep, because right now the focus is on you and your anger and it can't be on him and his not showing up. And so she was like, oh my gosh, I had not even thought of that way. So a lot of times when your spouse won't change, one of the best things you can do is change what you bring to the party. Change what you in fact I told her. I said if you guys get 10 minutes together and he's not dealing with your anger, he wants more. He wants more, so he's likely to show up earlier. But if you spend 10 minutes together and all he's doing is dealing with your anger, he don't want any more. He's not gonna show up until five or 10 minutes because he doesn't wanna deal with you. So you're not even helping your case.
Speaker 1:Right, and so much of it you talked about in your book is really understanding our spouse's temperament. Yeah, so, for example, you started out by saying he's not a morning person. That reminded me my husband's not a late night person. So if I have something serious I want to talk about, don't do it then Don't bring it up after 9 PM. It's just useless. He's really good in the morning, we can talk about it over coffee, but just don't even try.
Speaker 1:It took me a while to learn that. But the whole idea of temperament. So you know extrovert, introvert. It took me years to learn. Extrovert doesn't necessarily mean that we're outgoing or not. What it means is where do we get our energy? So I joked about him not wanting to go to parties that I make him go to. Well, the truth is that he's an introvert. He's very personable. This always confuses people because if you talk to him at a party, he is going to be very engaged in you and he's going to ask you interesting questions and you're probably going to like him. But it exhausts him, yep. Whereas I go to a party and it just is. I can be tired on my way to a party and it just energizes me and I'm wide awake, I can talk to you know, I love discovering people to me that.
Speaker 1:So when we have people for dinner, I always know I have to stay up and do the dishes because it's going to take me a long time to settle down. He has to go to bed.
Speaker 2:Yep, that is so true, and he's not rejecting you and he's not being mean to you. You're recognizing this is how his capacity works and what a gift you've given to your husband and to your marriage to understand that and not take it personal.
Speaker 1:And I will not take credit. We did not understand that until maybe 20 years ago when we did a little exercise at a Sunday school class where they had a marriage expert come and talk. This is why it really is helpful to read marriage books. I have to read books, no matter what they're on. Because of the podcast, I don't know that I would pick up a marriage book because I think it's going to tell me to do things I don't want to do. I'll be honest with you, but I had to read Jill's and I was like, oh my gosh, thank you God for sending me this book.
Speaker 1:And I mean, this is so helpful, it's so not judgy, it is so practical. And I, you know, the whole thing about my yoke is easy. My burden is light. This is it. Marriage doesn't have to be so hard, you know. It can be, allowing each other to be who they are. And boy, isn't it nice when you're allowed to be who you are.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, it's a gift you give to yourself, your spouse and your marriage in general.
Speaker 1:So I am going to strongly recommend this book, but it's not our only book and it's not our only resource, so one of the things, jill, I'd love for you to share. I've been on your website briefly and you and Mark have this great free no More Perfect Marriages, echallenge and video. Could you tell us about this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, if you go to our website, markandjillorg, we'll get you there, markandjillorg, and we have right on the front of the website we actually have a free marriage crash course. So it's right on the front of the website. We actually have a free marriage crash course. So it's right on the front, you can't miss it. So you can take our free marriage crash course and it also on our website.
Speaker 2:If you click marriage at the top, like in the navigation bar, you'll see a dropdown and it'll say it has, like, different sections of our website for happy marriages, for hurting marriages, for marriages where only one partner wants to get better, for marriages recovering from infidelity, for marriages dealing with broken trust. So then you click on the category that applies to you and you're going to find curated content. So that's going to be our blog posts, our podcast episodes, our books and resources that apply to that category, and so it's a great way for you to tap into those resources. And then you can join us on our podcast, which is the no More Perfect podcast I host it, but my husband joins me a lot and we do a mix of guests and then talking about different family relationship topics.
Speaker 1:I love it and I love how you organize the content on your website. What a good idea to put it by category, because marriages are so different and we all have different issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have the same way for moms. So if you click on moms, it's for young moms, and then for moms of grade schoolers, preschoolers, high schoolers, and then empty nest. So I do the same curated content for that, and so, whether you're a mom looking for marriage resources, you can find it on our website.
Speaker 1:I'm going to empty nest because, empty nest, your house might be empty, but your mind is not. I'm going to empty nest because, empty nest, your house might be empty, but your mind is not. I'm like, oh no, I'm still somehow taking responsibility for their life issues. So, anyway, I have a lot to learn from you, jill, and I love it, I said before we started recording. I said what I love about this podcast is that I get to read these great books, but then I get to talk to the author and you all get to listen to the author, and then I've discovered a new author and with many authors and Jill's one, I go back and I order the previous books and I start you know, pastors I haven't met or speakers I haven't met, and it is such a gift.
Speaker 1:So I always have the information on the show notes where you can find Jill's books, where you can find her website. People don't always like to go to the show notes, so it's markandjillcom, markandjillorg, markandjillorg Don't listen to me, markandjillorg. And also, is it jillsavageorg?
Speaker 2:Okay, jillsavageorg, it'll take you to the same place. Both of them will take you to the same place, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to thank you so much for your time and your commitment to your ministry. I mean, who puts out this many books? Oh, I did say you have two more books coming out in January.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us what they are? Yeah, January of 2025, we have 199 prayers for your husband and 199 prayers for your wife.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they will be out in January 2025. We are super excited about that. They're more than just a little devotional or prayers, but we actually give you an action to take every day to invest in your marriage. So it's really kind of an active devotional. So we're super excited about it.
Speaker 1:I'm getting it and I'm giving it to my son and his wife, great, great idea. They have a special bookshelf of books I've given them. I don't know if they've read them, but I'm like, oh, could these be more prominent, please? Thank you so much for your time. I can't wait to have you on with your next book. Thank you.
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