We wanted to find out what the top 10 most common complaints from spouses are when it comes to marriage, so of course, we polled our audience. The results were very close to what we thought they would be, with the husbands most common one's being wanting more physical intimacy, to be desired, and have their wife initiate, while the wife's wanted more emotional intimacy and connection.
So what we learn is it comes back to the emotional intimacy and physical intimacy balance. In this episode we share the poll results and answers from our questions, from you, the audience, and talk about how couples can do a better job at at identifying, and fulfilling each others needs.
If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 650,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!
WANT AMAZING PRODUCTS TO SPICE THINGS UP? YES PLEASE... CLICK HERE
The Ultimate Intimacy Sexual Intimacy Marriage Course can be found HERE
The Intimacy and Adventure Marriage Retreat to connect on a deeper level as a couple! Find out more at https://ultimateintimacy.com/retreats/
Follow us on Instagram @ultimateintimacyapp for app updates, polls, giveaways, daily marriage quotes and more.
If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.
We wanted to find out what the top 10 most common complaints from spouses are when it comes to marriage, so of course, we polled our audience. The results were very close to what we thought they would be, with the husbands most common one's being wanting more physical intimacy, to be desired, and have their wife initiate, while the wife's wanted more emotional intimacy and connection.
So what we learn is it comes back to the emotional intimacy and physical intimacy balance. In this episode we share the poll results and answers from our questions, from you, the audience, and talk about how couples can do a better job at at identifying, and fulfilling each others needs.
If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 650,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!
WANT AMAZING PRODUCTS TO SPICE THINGS UP? YES PLEASE... CLICK HERE
The Ultimate Intimacy Sexual Intimacy Marriage Course can be found HERE
The Intimacy and Adventure Marriage Retreat to connect on a deeper level as a couple! Find out more at https://ultimateintimacy.com/retreats/
Follow us on Instagram @ultimateintimacyapp for app updates, polls, giveaways, daily marriage quotes and more.
If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.
You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship. We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life. Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun. The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.
Speaker 2:Today's episode is the top 10 complaints from both husbands and wives in the poll that we took. Welcome to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with Nick and Amy and we don't want this to be an episode where we're negative. We're always talking about ultimate intimacy and how to find ultimate intimacy in your marriage. We don't want this to be a negative episode, but we want to point out what the top complaints are from husbands and wives so that if you know what your spouses or typically the spouses are complaining about or frustrated with, then you can fix it Simple as that.
Speaker 2:So we did get a lot of people answering this poll, didn't we?
Speaker 1:We sure did.
Speaker 2:Amy is smiling at me. Why are you smiling at me? Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, all right.
Speaker 2:We're just going to say this. So this last week I got a hair transplant surgery and my face is like six sizes too big right now.
Speaker 1:I can't even look at it because it doesn't even look like the same person. I'm like wait, who are my podcasts?
Speaker 2:So if you hear Amy laughing at me during the whole entire podcast. At least you'll know why you're going to be. Like what in the world is? She is wrong with her today.
Speaker 1:Every time I look at her, I'm like who are you? I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you.
Speaker 2:I am so jacked up, so messed up.
Speaker 1:He's got like hey like it looks like he gained 200 pounds overnight. Yeah, I love you, no matter what.
Speaker 2:Well, for most of you that have seen our pictures, you know that I have kind of a narrow and long face. Let's just say that my face if you measured my face now, it's wider than it is in I guess height.
Speaker 1:He does not even look like the same person, like at all. I was like wait, who are you Anyways? Yeah, so I'm not laughing at him, I'm laughing with him. We look in the mirror like every hour and it's changing, so we know it's temporary.
Speaker 2:I'm laughing at me because it is crazy.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be funny, okay, anyways, I'm still podcasting with my husband. You're still my husband, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, you were just looking over and wondering who is this guy sitting next to?
Speaker 1:me, it sounds like you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyways, jumping in, jumping in, like Nick said. This is kind of. I guess this kind of shows what the needs are for husbands and wives, right, except for we've already done that. So we wanted to pull and just say, hey, what are your biggest complaints in your marriage? So what we did is compiled them all by votes, what everyone said, and kind of put these lists together.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we'll see. If you think they're accurate, they're not necessarily in order. So as we read down these, don't think that, oh, number one is number one and number three is number three. That's not the case.
Speaker 2:But, you're going to see a lot of correlations with what husbands are complaining about and what wives are complaining about. And again, if you open up honestly and listen to this and say, hey, it sounds like here's some of the things that maybe I need to work on, or some of the things I'm falling short on in our relationship, the whole point of this is to help make your marriage better. When husbands and wives are sharing these frustrations, it's not that they're saying their marriages are horrible. They're just saying, hey, here's the things that kind of frustrate me, that I would like to work on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, which is important. I think what's interesting is when I look at these two lists so we wrote them all down and isn't it interesting how different they are. I mean, obviously the husband's top complaints are about more intimacy and the women's are more emotional intimacy.
Speaker 2:But how easy it would be to fix this, fix both of these lists, if they would just talk about it, or if the husband provided more emotional intimacy and the wife was more sexually interested, it would problem-solve for the most part.
Speaker 1:It would literally be the problem-solve, but I guarantee it comes down to they would rather take the survey and write down what the issue is instead of go and talk to their spouse about that, which is why we did our last episode on how to master the art of having intimate conversations right, Because having these conversations is literally what fixes both of all these problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you can have those tough, intimate conversations, I mean, you pretty much can solve just about anything.
Speaker 1:But it really comes down to caring, like you literally have to care that your spouse is suffering in a way, for it to be fixed right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, so jump in. Let's read the poll from the audience.
Speaker 1:Okay. So to start the poll out, we ask husbands what is your biggest marriage struggle? And, like with the poll on Instagram, I can only give four topics, so I just put in lack of communication, lack of intimacy, phone addiction and everything else is a higher priority. Those were the four options that I gave before I asked the question what is the biggest complaint? I bet you can guess what the top answer was.
Speaker 2:Oh, lack of sexual intimacy for sure.
Speaker 1:About 58% said lack of intimacy. I'm guessing for men, since sexual intimacy is usually what they think about when they think of intimacy. I'm guessing that's what they were kind of referring to. But that can I mean. That's sexual intimacy is what is emotional intimacy, Intimately connecting, for most husbands. So it kind of goes hand in hand.
Speaker 2:Correct, yeah.
Speaker 1:So 18% said everything else is a higher priority. The next one was 13% phone addiction, which I thought was pretty low.
Speaker 2:That is.
Speaker 1:I mean those can cause lack of intimacy. So I mean I guess that's kind of a hard question.
Speaker 2:But I think the most of them were probably answering they'll say what's a bigger deal like in our relationship? And obviously they're. You know, you could have several of those things. All be true, but it sounds like they were listing what the biggest one was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got a lot of comments say that, say I can't really pick one because these kind of all correlate right. But 12% of the husbands said lack of communication. So you can tell that with 58% it's the probably the sexual intimacy that is lacking and that's their biggest complaint. But the lack of communication, the phone addiction and everything else being a different, higher priority, is what causes that.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think too for most men, if the sexual intimacy was a priority and it was good, those other things wouldn't matter really as much.
Speaker 1:Probably yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it's like oh okay, she's spending some time on the phone, that's okay. At least she's making time for me, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, that's kinda how it works in our marriage.
Speaker 2:It's like, okay, this is still prioritized, so it kinda like erases those other issues being a problem, right, yeah, like if Amy wasn't prioritizing intimacy in our relationship, then all of a sudden I would be looking at everything like, oh, she's too addicted to her phone, she's this, she's this, she's this. But if that connection is there, then all of a sudden that phone issue doesn't become an issue because I'm like oh, she prioritizes me, you know, she prioritizes our marriage. Therefore, I'm not looking at that as being an issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So I'm not gonna get into the biggest complaints. We'll do the lists in a minute. So then we ask the wives what is your biggest marriage struggle? Same answers lack of communication, lack of intimacy, phone addiction. Everything else is higher priority. And I'm pretty shocked because when we started the poll, lack of communication was like over 50%, like the first 12 hours of the poll it was super high. Lack of intimacy, phone addiction and everything else being a higher priority was lower. But with the poll ending after 24 hours they're actually really even. It's 30% said lack of communication, 25% said lack of intimacy, 24% said phone addiction and 22% said everything else is a higher priority.
Speaker 2:So let me ask this, and maybe we don't know fully, but I think when you ask a man what intimacy is and you ask a woman what intimacy is you're gonna get two different answers?
Speaker 1:It's true because, like I said before, the women are probably thinking lack of intimacy as emotionally connected.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Right, so probably should have been. I wish I could have given more answers, but that just gives you kind of a general idea that the husbands are more focused on the sexual intimacy and the women are more focused on the communication and the other things that are not making them feel loved, which I think proves everything we constantly talk about all the time, which is emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy really go hand in hand. And that's how they both feel loved right.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. If a wife is getting the emotional intimacy, she's more likely to wanna be physically intimate, and if the husband's getting the physical intimacy, he's more likely to wanna be emotional intimate. And that's what these show us. And that's exactly what these show us.
Speaker 1:And they always do so. Why is it keeping a problem? Because it is hard to find that balance. I think that comes down to the big question concern problem. We're always discussing how to find that healthy balance, right, yeah, that's hard.
Speaker 2:I mean, how many podcast episodes we're on what like two, 40 right now? How many podcast episodes have we done on talking about something similar to this?
Speaker 1:Just balance. Yeah, yeah, I mean we've done.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Because this is the biggest problem.
Speaker 2:Quite a few of them and I think a lot of times we have to present them in different ways, because what makes sense or clicks for one couple or spouse might not click for another. So you know, we always have to be presenting things in a different way because that's the way people learn, sometimes, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just like going to church, right, Like you could have 50 lessons talking about faith, for example, and 48 lessons don't really resonate with you. But then you hear an experience that's maybe life changing. You're like, oh my heck, that just changed my whole perspective and maybe it's the way it was presented or something that was shared, and so that's what we you know obviously constantly are trying to do is to help everyone, including us, have better marriages.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. So let's start with husbands or wives.
Speaker 2:The husbands list.
Speaker 1:Let's start with the husbands first today.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Women are always first. Let's start with the husbands.
Speaker 2:And you're going to hear a theme, but you will hear a theme Like I said these kind of are in order, but not. I mean, it's just obviously it was easy to identify certain ones, because this is what everyone was saying, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went pretty quick through all the comments and just kind of okay, that one definitely is number one, that is definitely number two, et cetera, because it definitely stands out when they're all like saying the same things, right? So yeah.
Speaker 2:So first is lack of intimacy, I mean, just like we've shared. Pretty self-explanatory.
Speaker 1:But like you said earlier in the actual comments, where they commented what is the biggest issue or complaint in the marriage, yeah, intimacy they listed sexual intimacy. It wasn't just, it was sexual intimacy.
Speaker 2:So when we say intimacy for husbands, we're primarily talking about sexual intimacy.
Speaker 1:Because that is where husbands feel emotionally connected. We've done enough surveys on that to know that when husbands want sexual intimacy, it's because they feel loved and emotionally connected through sex right.
Speaker 2:So listen now, a lot of these are kind of going the same. I guess basket, so to speak, a lack of initiation. That's a big frustration among husbands. My wife just won't initiate with me. I'm always the one initiating.
Speaker 1:Which we put as number two because of all the responses lack of initiating sexual intimacy which, after all the polls we've done, that is literally what husbands want more than anything, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Because it takes us to the next one, which is kind of hand in hand.
Speaker 2:Last priority.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say not feeling desired. They were kind of equal. When a wife initiates sex, it makes the husband feel desired and wanted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're exactly right, and that goes hand in hand with the other one, which is priority, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you feel like you're prioritized.
Speaker 2:Being a priority? Yep. And then we jump to phone addiction, which we've seen from previous polls that we've done and did a podcast episode of how prevalent that is, especially for women, more so being addicted to their devices.
Speaker 1:Actually, well, that's what I thought, that's what I thought till we did this survey, and on the women's list phone addiction came up as number two. So I mean, obviously then we would have to pull thousands and thousands and thousands of spouses like over a week's amount of time to get like super accurate, but just going off 24 hours and a couple thousand people. It was interesting to me the phone addiction was higher on the complaints on the women's list.
Speaker 2:But here's the reason why. Again, if you and I have a good sex life, that phone addiction even if it is an addiction is probably not gonna be an issue for me. Because I immediately am thinking she's making time to be intimate, right, so you could spend the exact same time on the phone. And if we're making love and I'm being prioritized, that doesn't, that doesn't bother me. That's true. If you're not making love and prioritizing me, then all of a sudden I'm looking at that saying, oh my heck, she's always on her phone. That's why we're not making love. That almost becomes an excuse for one of the excuses as to why we can't be intimate.
Speaker 1:And after? That's so true because after we go through the women's list, you'll see that it's all more emotional stuff, and so what you're saying goes hand-in-hand with that, because if a wife is not feeling emotionally connected, they're gonna look at their husband and be like you're on your phone again. You would rather be on your phone than talk to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1:Okay, still talking about the men's.
Speaker 2:Yep Failure to change. After talking We've had several men say yeah, I try to express to my wife how I feel and, you know, nothing ever changes.
Speaker 1:You guys keep telling me that I need to communicate with my wife. So I do that. We try to have these conversations, but a week later the conversation did nothing because my wife just goes back, or husband just goes back to doing the same thing before, like the. The conversation never really changes anything, and that's the whole problem is, yeah, you can go talk about something, but unless you genuinely care to do better, the conversation's not gonna do any good. Right? Exactly Like, because it's just like in January when we set goals it's great to set goals, but unless you turn those goals into habits, those goals do you know? Good, right, you just stop. So that's what we're trying to do with conversations, and that's why the weekly marriage meeting is so important for marriages because you're turning in these conversations into habits. Like we're gonna talk about this every Sunday or whatever the day is. We're gonna talk about this every single week until it no longer becomes a problem in our marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right Habits. The next complaint is inconsistency. Men are complaining that I just want that consistency from from my spouse. I don't know, you know what it's gonna be like day to day.
Speaker 1:Oh, a husband did make a comment for this one that said some days I feel super loved and appreciated and desired and sometimes the next day I feel like I don't exist. And I'm sure there's plenty of wives that have been in that same situation where they just they want that, they want to feel loved all the time, like that's a really big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just trying to be consistent in whatever you're doing, like whether it's you know how you treat your spouse daily, telling them you love them, giving them a hug, you know, just just being consistency, regardless of what it is, is, I think, a big key to happiness.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I did a post one time that said what does effort look like in a marriage and the number one thing was consistency. And this brings us back to husbands feeling like they're only good for a paycheck. If you ever listen to that episode because a husband doesn't want you just desire him and be like oh, you bought me something or you paid the bills. Or a lot of husbands express like I, my wife, is like all over me and romantic and sexual on paycheck day but the rest of the month.
Speaker 1:I just feel kind of blah, like that's what we're talking about here, like consistency shows love in your actions, your daily words, your actions, your quality time. Just trying to be more consistent, oh, literally change. That one word really can change your marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really can. Number nine is under appreciated.
Speaker 1:That should probably be more up in the top three. I'm I'm gonna say that most husbands would probably vote that, but it wasn't really thrown out on the poll. But I think that also falls onto the lack of intimacy. When a when a wife really appreciates her husband, she probably prioritizes his needs higher, and I would think a lot of husbands. This would be a big one that would be up in the top. But maybe husbands just weren't thinking about that, maybe. Yeah, I agree. During this survey, because I think that was pretty high up.
Speaker 2:Then the final one for top complaints about husbands or top complaints from the husbands, excuse me is lack of quality sex.
Speaker 1:Not just sex. We have lots of comments about quality sex, like I want my wife to enjoy it and want it and be desired like.
Speaker 2:A husband doesn't want to just have sex and have his wife completely disinterested. That's the last thing he wants.
Speaker 1:He wants her to be excited about it, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So quality, I don't want to say of her quantity. Quantity is important, but husbands would rather have quality. They want you to be excited about, to be into it, to be enjoying it, like that's what exactly I want, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So as we wrap up that list, you can see that a lot of it is tied to sexual intimacy.
Speaker 2:feeling desired, appreciated, wanted, feeling like that is how they feel, yeah almost everything, regardless of you know, I feel like on the last priority I don't feel desired inconsistency and or appreciated. Everything falls under that, falls under that umbrella pretty much.
Speaker 1:It really did, it really did.
Speaker 2:Alright, let's dive into the latest.
Speaker 1:Top 10 complaints for the wives. I was really shocked by number one not enough foreplay, and I want to like say a couple things on this. I don't think the number one complaint is comes down to foreplay. I literally think a lot of the wives are talking about like foreplay starts in the morning.
Speaker 2:Emotional foreplay.
Speaker 1:These are the foreplay to a woman is all the little things that you do during the day. It's not just the physical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not the sexual foreplay, it's the emotional foreplay. I think is what they're talking about. They're not saying oh, you know, I I mean it. Obviously, if we were talking about sexual foreplay, it wouldn't correlate. The list would not correlate.
Speaker 1:Yes, phone addiction was number two. Like we already kind of said, number three is not a priority.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of women.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like that is husbands too? I think that one's kind of equal on both lists.
Speaker 2:Alright. So again, we've said this before. We got to throw it out again If if a husband is not getting the sexual intimacy, he's a lot less likely to provide the emotional intimacy. So Again, when women are saying I'm not getting enough emotional foreplay, my husband's on his phone, he's not making Me a priority. That's all happening probably because he's feeling like he's not a priority. It's so simple. These things are so simple to solve.
Speaker 1:And yet so hard yet so hard. I think it's human nature that when you're not feeling prioritized, you just kind of disconnect, I feel. Do you agree? Like you're like fine, I, I've tried. I'm tired of trying, like it's always trying.
Speaker 2:I mean, we get that yeah, I get that long, I'm not gonna do this.
Speaker 1:I'm tired of always putting in all the effort and all the attention and I get nothing back like that what does fast starts feeling like that. They do just kind of disconnect.
Speaker 2:It's natural agree and it's the first way to kill your marriage or your intimacy to yeah, because then it gets almost like a game, like well, I'm not giving them first, well, I'm not giving in first either, and it almost just causes a wedge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a big wedge. Number four my husband always has to be right. I got lots of that answer. That's goes back to our episode on pride in marriage. Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? I think it's important for husbands to realize that Just because you're the man, you're the masculine, doesn't mean you're not still an equal partner. I think there's a really healthy balance there To where, yes, you're, you lead the house, but that doesn't mean that you get the right to be right all the time. And my, how do I say you?
Speaker 2:know what I'm trying to say. I think you're right on.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to say that, yeah, go back and listen to that episode on. Would you rather be right or rather be happy. That's a good one. Number five I was gonna say this one should go as number one Not helping enough with the house or kids. This. We just did a big Post on Instagram and got like I can't even tell you, like a couple million views or whatever, and lots and lots of comments, which we love, all the comments, because then this helps us Be like okay, this is a obviously in big issue. And then we start seeing both sides of this issue because people start commenting. Anyways, we always say that your partners and no matter if your wife stays home or if she works, the house and the kids are still yours together, and a mom, no matter what her role is in your household, is Still never done at 6 pm or whenever yeah, you're both living there.
Speaker 2:You're both sleeping there. You both are. I mean.
Speaker 1:You both have everything to do together with the house well, even if she's home all day, she's still dealing, loving, nurturing her kids all day long, like and that doesn't stop you don't get a check out at a certain time. That's 24 7, so it's about not keeping score. It's about helping each other, serving each other and being a team, and I think the quicker that couples realize the more we partner together, the more intimate we get to be, and I think a lot of husbands Maybe don't realize that they're like well, that's her job, we got to fix that. We got to fix that. It's both of your jobs. Talk about it.
Speaker 2:And instead of just assuming all that's her job and that's his job. Talk about it, because our house Amy's of my house probably looks different than some other people's house. I know the roles and responsibilities or things that we do Because our jobs, we work together, so every every house is gonna look different. You have to sit down and talk about and say, okay, what are the expectations on on your side and whether the expectations on my side and how do we find a balance?
Speaker 1:I get a lot of husbands will that say well, why do I need to help in the house? I'm the one doing the yard work and the maintenance on the cars and fixing this and fixing this like I'm not saying I just put, just talk about it. Say, you know what you do all this. I'll take this on. You take this song, like it's called working as a teammate, like it shouldn't cause a wedge at all.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't cause a wedge. Number six we're gonna move on. Number six is no appreciation. I think this is really easy. I struggle at this, we all struggle at this. We, we kind of get in our roles you do this, I do this and we forget that. Thank you for doing that, because we think, oh well, there, that's their job.
Speaker 2:The appreciation is still huge and it's amazing how far appreciation goes. Just the fact that you're showing how thankful you are like that changes everything. It makes a spouse feel Does, makes it so spouse isn't gonna feel resentful or underappreciated.
Speaker 1:Just something as simple as like thank you so much For all you do like that changes everything well, I find myself guilty of this one, because I'll do the dishes like three or four nights in a row, which is fine, I don't mind and then Nick will do it one night and I'll look over and I'll be like I should tell him Thank you. And then part of me is like wait, I did it the last four nights, why do I need to thank him for?
Speaker 2:that it's a contest, and do you?
Speaker 1:know, I'm winning 3-1 do you know what I'm saying, though? Like as a human, we just kind of think, oh, it's their turn. But it's so easy to just say thank you for doing that, even if it is their job or it's their turn.
Speaker 2:Just saying thank you is is big and the biggest, the worst thing you could do is keeping score. When you keep score, it's virtually impossible to be happy. Happy, and it show appreciation, because you're always Wondering, you know, is everything equal, so to speak?
Speaker 1:for sure.
Speaker 2:So throw that out the window and just show appreciation for each other and what each other does. And it's not always gonna look exactly fair, nor does it need to, but if you're trying your hardest and you're serving each other, that's what is really all about and if you don't feel appreciated At your weekly meeting every week, say, hey, could we work on appreciation a little more?
Speaker 1:like I do a lot around the house, I would just like you to notice. I would like you to just be like, hey, thanks for the great dinner or thanks for cleaning up this, or just just talk about how you can do better at it.
Speaker 2:And moving on to the next one, is lack of emotional intimacy, which again these are not in order, but that should be number one.
Speaker 1:That was the biggest complaint that should have been put as number one our bad lack of emotional intimacy. Husbands, if you don't know what emotional intimacy looks like, go back to our podcast on what Emotional intimacy looks like. Right, so many ways to show emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is how your wife and husband feel loved, connected, listen to, appreciate it. It's, it's little things, it doesn't take a lot of effort. Number eight was lack of communication. I, that was the biggest, that was the, that was the 30% that was lack of communication.
Speaker 2:It's easy for husbands to close up and again, I think we've all, we've all done that like when we're just like oh, my wife doesn't care, she doesn't Appreciate me, she, you know. When we feel that way, we're just like uh, you know why try why try?
Speaker 1:so that that's Easy to understand where that falls in there and we all get exhausted by trying and trying and not getting anything back. Right number nine was addictions. This could be lots of different things, could be the pornography, drinking, video games. That could be more simpler.
Speaker 2:TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's gonna wreck your marriage. And number 10 goes with addictions, which a lot of wives expressed that my husband's career Is more prioritized over me, and this is easy to happen.
Speaker 2:I happen in our relationship. I Totally did that.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm kind of a workaholic too, so I have to be careful too. So, career over spouse that's hard because for a lot of husbands and this is what this is the wife complaint. But for a lot of husbands are like I'm being a good provider, I'm, I'm providing A lot, my work is very important for a family. This is how I show my family love. Right, like that's a lot of a lot of men were grown up. Just, you know, you're the provider. This is how you show love to your family.
Speaker 1:Um, when we just did our video about putting food on the table doesn't make you a good husband, oh, it went crazy, because so many husbands are like I was taught that that Was a good husband, but there's so much more. That is part of it and hopefully you're appreciated for that. But there's so much more to being good husband than just providing a paycheck there. A wife needs to feel prioritized and feel loved and and be listened to and heard, like those are. It's very important so. So finding that balance with career Career is super important, yeah, but so is so is your family.
Speaker 2:So I think our challenge for you this week is sit down with your spouse and have have a good, a good talk and ask each other what are maybe the top complaints that you have in your relationship, the things that you feel like you need to work on, and have a good discussion about that and really, you know, try to find that balance that you need to have in your relationship.
Speaker 1:I really think it's important. I know a lot of people will say this is going to cause a fight and I just I'm going to avoid it so it doesn't cause a fight. But you made a quote the other day that says if it causes a fight, it's probably something.
Speaker 2:It's pretty important.
Speaker 1:It's pretty important. So if you can go, sit down with your spouse and say, write me five things, five complaints of our marriage, and you're worried about it causing a fight, that's probably something that you need to do and you need to get through that.
Speaker 2:That's all the all the more reason why you should do it.
Speaker 1:All the more reason Because I feel like we've finally gotten to a place in our marriage where, if I said, nick, what are your five top complaints in our marriage? And he's going to say I wish you would initiate more, I wish you would say thank you more often, I wish that you would do this or this, and I have to, we both. But I have to be able to look at that and be like, instead of getting mad about it and freaking out about it, and saying you're just pointing like you have to get to a mature place in your marriage where you can, you can ask these kinds of questions and be like you know what. You're right, I'm going to try harder to do better at those things, because that's important to you and I can see that those things are kind of hurting our intimate life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you feel like you don't want to use the word complaints, maybe you don't use the word complaints, maybe it's hey, what are the? What are the five things that we could work on in our relationship? What are the five things that are maybe, maybe that I could do that I'm not fulfilling, and vice versa, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So, oh yeah, you can totally reward that.
Speaker 2:Yep. So we challenge you to do that this week and hopefully you can have a great discussion and, you know, get on the path to a happier marriage.
Speaker 1:And if you need some help with these conversations, you can jump on the app and use the intimate conversation starters or the regular conversation starters. Or, if you're in a really good place, you can still have these conversations by playing the Truth or Dare game, which is still conversation and some fun. And if you're really struggling with these kind of things, then we really challenge you to check out our emotional intimacy blueprint or the sexual intimacy blueprint, which is like a step by step kind of like not workbook, but questions and discussions and topics to figure out what barriers are keeping you from having all the intimacy.
Speaker 2:Love it, so we'll look forward to seeing you next time on the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast.