Still Becoming One
Still Becoming One
The Stories We Bring to Marriage- With Steve & Lisa Call
What happens when past wounds collide in marriage? Steve and Lisa Call, co-authors with Dan Allender of The Deep-Rooted Marriage, founders of Reconnect Institute, and married for over 35 years, reveal how childhood stories unconsciously shape our most intimate relationships. Through vulnerable personal examples, Steve shares how his response of "I'm fine" masks deeper feelings of abandonment stemming from an emotionally unavailable mother. Lisa explains how these patterns remained invisible until they began exploring their stories together, creating a profound transformation in their marriage after decades together.
Ready to transform your relationship by understanding the stories you both bring to marriage? This conversation will help you recognize patterns, build emotional safety, and cultivate the curiosity needed for genuine connection.
Welcome to the Still Becoming One podcast. We are Brad and Kate.
Kate Aldrich:In our more than 20 years of marriage, we've survived both dark times and experienced restoration.
Brad Aldrich:Now as a licensed marriage counselor and relationship coaches. We help couples to regain hope and joy.
Kate Aldrich:We invite you to journey with us, as we are still becoming one.
Brad Aldrich:Let's start the conversation.
Brad Aldrich:Hello everyone, Welcome back to Still Becoming One. Welcome back. We are really glad that you're here today. I think we've got a really excellent show for you.
Brad Aldrich:I think we've got a really excellent show for you.
Brad Aldrich:We're excited to talk to our guests Steve and Lisa Call. Steve and Lisa have been married for more than 35 years. They have three adult kids and they are the founders of the ReConnect Institute that are focusing on offering resources and tools for cultivating meaningful connection in marriage, and Steve and Dan Allender wrote the book the Deep-Rooted Marriage. I understand, Lisa, you helped quite a bit as well in some of those insights, so we want to hear more about the book and those resources. It's actually something that we really enjoyed in seeing. Well, we often end up criticizing some marriage books sometimes because they go to techniques versus actual anything of repair.
Brad Aldrich:I think it's hard to find real marriage books that actually bring about, like some, learning that's going to move people into a deeper relationship. So, I just want to start even. Can you tell us a little bit about how it came about, how the book came about?
Steve Call:Sure Well. Thanks, brad and Kate, for having us and really appreciate your work with couples as well.
Lisa Call:Yeah, we're really glad to be here.
Steve Call:Yeah, it's a deep passion for us and obviously a deep passion for you guys, so thank you. You know, writing the book was, I would just say, a long-term process. Dan and I have taught at Seattle School of Theology and Psychology for 20 plus years and I would say probably over the last decade, as we taught a particular class called marriage and family to therapists or grad students becoming therapists. Uh, that that was the beginning place of bringing in some of the material, but I but I also say much of what we bring in the writing is through a reflection on our own marriage and our work with couples therapeutically.
Steve Call:Dan and Becky and Lisa and I do these intensives with couples and I think we just found some really common themes throughout most of the couples that either we work with or we come alongside with that that might be struggling in their marriage, and it was a. It was a real joy to write. I'll have to say that, and part of the reason there was joy for us as we, we got to do it together. I got to do the writing together and we were on the same page with being able to integrate our own story and our own story of marriage, but also our own family of origin story into the writing, and so it. It was a fun journey, grateful for to be done.
Lisa Call:I don't know if I'd call it a fun journey, but it's definitely maybe rewarding.
Brad Aldrich:It was.
Lisa Call:It was a struggle, you know, and but I think for us, Probably about 25 years ago, is when we began to dive into our our stories a little bit more. And you know, Steve's been doing this work as a psychologist and a professor and I was just not as involved in that part of it. But then, as we began to dive into our own stories of origin, we found the impact on our marriage just so incredibly profound that it just became so obvious we want other people to experience this, because this isn't rocket science. This is like we're putting our stories and we're making sense of things and it's coming out daily in the way we interact. And it made such a profound impact on us that it just it just became we need to do this with other couples.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, I love that, that's awesome and I think that that has been our journey as well. I mean, I think you know you were saying about the tools like tools have their place, but Brad and I have found for ourselves and working with other couples, the tools only take you so far and the tools are very behavior modification sort of bent. But the real success we have is when we understand why we're doing what we're doing. And then how do we enter in as a married couple, like how do we hold that? How do we empathize? How do we enter into that story in a way that the cycle doesn't just keep continuing, that we just kind of do the same thing and hit these same spots, and I don't. I mean we had come a long way before. We did story work.
Kate Aldrich:However, it's just made it so much different so much more powerful and solid, and I don't know it just. It impacts it in a way, like you said, lisa, that has been different than anything else we've ever worked with. And so, again, we share the same like and we see it with couples as they're talking. They're like so you know, help us figure this out. And it's like, well, there's actually more to it than just the tools I could give you, and so it's exciting to see people actually pick that up and run with it.
Brad Aldrich:I know you guys share in the book. I would love to kind of hear some of the stories of how you recognized that, like your stories, your childhood stuff was showing up unexpectedly in your marriage. I think a lot of times I liked how you shared. I think we think about these like big stories showing up in big ways in our marriage and it's not sometimes that? Marriage, and it's not. Sometimes that happens, but it's not always that.
Steve Call:Yeah, I think for so many for us but also for so many couples the hesitancy or the ambivalence to even integrate story can feel really overwhelming or consuming. And I think that's often the caution, you know, for some couples is we. We, I mean our sort of mantra is the past is always part of the present. It may not show itself up fully and clearly, but I think it's just a consistent part of our dynamic and, as Lisa said, and as you guys have said, that that has been really helpful and hopeful for us and for other couples.
Steve Call:For other couples, one of the keys for us has been the word awareness, just being aware, just being aware of how something of the past is being played out in the present. And I, like you just said, brad, it doesn't mean that it has to be these really significant. Sometimes they're traumatic events or experiences from our past and they're not always that, but sometimes they are. And I think the awareness of what's happening for us in the moment how is that connected to the past is one of the most helpful prompts I think we could ever ask ourselves. It's a prompt we ask other couples, it's a prompt we ask ourselves. Last night, lisa was we haven't talked about this.
Kate Aldrich:Great we do this all the time.
Steve Call:Last night Lisa got to go out and play with some friends. I had had a particularly difficult day with some interactions, as I'll say, with a particular family member. Sometimes it's difficult for me when Lisa leaves, primarily because I just had a mother that really wasn't available. Emotionally, she was very distracted. My parents when they were home, they weren't home, meaning there was something else that was more important Hobby cocktail hour, friends. And so I have this, I'll just say vigilance around being left, being misattuned or unseen. I have strategies. We all have strategies in how we cope with the past, and my strategy is two words Well, two and a half, I'm fine, I'm fine. Lisa is very attentive. She knows sometimes that can be difficult for me. Are you okay? How are you doing? I know you had a hard interaction with this family member. I'm fine, I'm fine. That that's a strategy I use from the very beginning, not the very beginning of time, but when I learned to be try to be okay. And so Lisa goes away and she's gone for a few hours.
Lisa Call:And this is after like 30, almost nine years of marriage and when you say you know small needs like this is a very hard one to to like, even name or understand, right, because early in our marriage it's like well, you're leaving or what's the big deal, like I'm just going over here, you know, and you just don't know, and you just go round and round about why are you being this, or why are you being possessive, or why do you not want me to? And it's so hard to articulate because you don't even know you're experiencing it, right, until you begin to put, oh okay, this was my family story and it's such a subtle sense and we and we both actually have this kind of a sense of wanting to be noticed and and not being able to have needs, and so you can just see how they play in, but they're just so subtle that it's really hard to name them without going back and understanding your story.
Steve Call:So sometimes, like when Lisa goes away and when she comes home, like last night, I, I, I mean I would say I, I hate that, I'm bothered, I hold contempt that that has that kind of impact. I have two to three hours on my own, which on one hand, is beautiful. On the other hand, it's a nice day, a nice night. Lisa's not here. I was really looking forward to being with her. She comes in the door and I basically I mean initially ignore, I don't engage, I, because I can't bear what's being remembered. Now, that's not conscious, though, right, I think sometimes we believe we have to remember all the details of the story or have a conscious memory. But I feel something when lisa goes away, I feel in some way left and, and I mean, I'm, I'm a pretty, I would say, fairly secure person, but when I get disrupted by lisa leaving, when she returns, I create distance and I, I would say for so many couples that's the not that that's the strategy, but we have the strategy that somehow is difficult in our reconnection.
Lisa Call:And I think what made it more complex too, is that there was this particular interaction and there's been other things going on. So it wasn't just every time I leave this happens, but it just was this particular interaction that, and I knew that that was going on and so we were aware of it. And, um, it's also where shame begins to really creep in. So then shame, you know, hijacks the whole thing. Because now which I think is what it's at play, when I come home and maybe you feel like ignoring because you want to hide from the shame, like no, I don't feel like that, I don't need that, you know.
Lisa Call:and so that's another like complexity that's playing out, and so it's another like complexity that's playing out, and so it's hard to tease these things out.
Steve Call:We've spent a lot of years getting to this point and I don't know what was my response. Well, the beauty of where I think we are landing more frequently is that there's an attunement to being disrupted, like you had kindness. There was a kindness toward my distance. It wasn't personal, what's wrong with you? Like you had a distance, so it wasn't personal what's wrong with you?
Lisa Call:like you had a sense that something wasn't quite right, it's more like I know what's going on here I have a sense of. For a minute we might be like oh, no but then, okay, I can see what's going on, like we're beginning to recognize that look on each other's face like, oh, that looks like shame, you know yeah, I think it's the awareness that word, just the awareness that we build over time is really helpful.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah.
Brad Aldrich:And I love that there there's. There's some hard parts in that where like, and I think we talk about, you talk about in the book, the, the rupture and repair kind of cycles and how important obviously repair is, as you're talking about, how do couples or even how do you guys, go through that rupture and not have it either become an explosion or the silent drift can happen, cause Steve, you just named it Like she came home and my tendency is to drift. Steve, you just named it like she came home and my tendency is to drift. Yeah, how do you guys do that and not allow ruptures to keep growing?
Steve Call:I think, for for us, and I think for many couples, um, the rupture is usually connected to something of the past not always and that past can be between the two of us. It can be part of our own story, if and when we can develop that kind posture toward the impact of how that story is being played out. I think that's what's at play is that Lisa is not my enemy, lisa is not against me, lisa is for me, and yet I can interpret her choices or decisions as something other than that. And I think for many couples and this has been true for us is we, because of the harm that we have endured, sometimes we want to make the other pay for the harm that we've endured, and I think that we're really conscious. It's not a conscious thing.
Steve Call:I think it took us a few decades to get to the mountaintop, if you will around, being able to look around and say what's happening, what's going on for us, what is that connected to? That question, I think, is one of the most beautiful questions we can ask each other is what's going on? What's happening? What's what's going on for you? Not not out of blame or accusation, right, but out of a curious curiosity, a curious posture, yep. So I think the rupture, in a playful way, where we've landed with it, is almost being kind to the reality of rupture. That, yeah, I love that. I think I see you. Oh sorry, go ahead, lisa.
Lisa Call:I would just say I think for me, when it began to shift was really just as we, as I began to understand my own story. Um, because you know, we can't understand the other story until they tell it to us, and you can't tell it until you understand what it is, and we're so unaware of it. It's just the water we swim in when we were children. We don't know that anything's wrong or different or you know happening. And so when we begin to make sense of it, um, and and usually we need another, you know another's eyes on that, whether it's a group or another person um to begin to make sense of our stories. And so we really encourage couples to begin to tell each other, tell, tell your stories. What was it like when, when you know, you got in trouble when you were a kid? What happened? What was it like when you went on vacation? What was it like when your parents were finding Whatever stories?
Lisa Call:that are coming to your mind and sharing that and then wondering what the impact was. And so, as we began to make sense of that, there are very specific stories that I remember about his childhood, that he remembers about mine, that we will name. In the moment, you know, they become so familiar that we almost don't have to name them anymore.
Lisa Call:It's just because of the work of knowing because there are, there's just a few major stories that have impacted Right, and so, as we begin to see, this is what's happening right now, and then we can remind the other, because a lot of times, like you do get flooded in the moment you're being triggered and then all of a sudden you're turning away and you're knowing, oh shoot, I shouldn't be doing this, but you can't. It's just a response, and when the other can draw you back and go, okay, I feel like something else is at play here right this is new, though this is in over the last 10 years, like this was an early in our marriage.
Lisa Call:we were, you know, defensive all the time because why are you right? So you're saying I shouldn't do that? You know there's just like you go round and round.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Kate Aldrich:I was just going to say, you know it was interesting, interesting that you said um, sometimes we want to take it out on each other. I thought that was an interesting perspective. Brad and I've well, I think I've always sort of understood it too, that we these things are not conscious, but they are the strategies we learn to use as kids and teenagers and into our adulthood, and they worked well in our family, right, whether it worked well to get us seen, whether it worked well to keep us safe, like all the different possibilities. And I think I always equate it to like we then get into a relationship with someone from a totally different family, totally different experience, and the strategies don't really work anymore and but we don't know what else to do. Like, our body and our brain is like. This is what I do in this situation.
Kate Aldrich:This is how I keep myself safe, this is how I, and it just doesn't play out well, and then it's like then we find ourselves in a circle and we just keep doing it, and so I think that's a really interesting point, though I'm going to ponder that Like that, it is an opportunity for that energy, for that like what we've experienced in our home, to come out on somebody else.
Kate Aldrich:On somebody else which we're talking to our we talked to our kids, who are now mostly young adults all about like if we don't work through our emotions, we'll leak them out somewhere. Right, they got to go somewhere.
Steve Call:Yeah, I can't get away from the reality of that. That has become more and more apparent. I would say each session, each intensive, is how the other makes the other, how one makes the other pay.
Kate Aldrich:It's really interesting Because of the harm that they've endured. Yeah.
Steve Call:Like that and the humility it takes to recognize that is profound, like that. That's the hope for many couples that's where they are stuck or embedded yeah Is to continue to reenact, replicate the harm in some way, because the other is the easy target, and I think that's one of the hopes of this world of work. Relational work is that is, that couples would begin to pay attention to how do I make Lisa pay for the harm that I've endured? How does this make me pay for the harm that she's endured? It's a really risky, courageous question to ask ourselves.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah for sure I think this goes into what you guys were just talking about in this. You know, there are these ruptures, we feel them, they're tense there and I think I'm hearing you say, hey, awareness of your story makes repair easier, makes it start better, but there's still this thing that's hanging out there. One of the things that we've run into is couples starting on this path of learning their stories can tend to use each other's story as a weapon rather than as a place of awareness and sensitivity and repair. How do you help couples go oh that's not just your story talking, but going, oh, I get why that happened and let's actually repair? How do you balance that?
Kate Aldrich:Well, let's be clear. They don't do it with you and I. They always come back and report that they did it when they weren't in front of us, like one of them will say, well, that's just your story and it's like, ooh, that's not, that's not exactly how we use story to help our marriages, but it you know, it's a default and it's it's again as you said. It's reenacting the punishment, just with a different tool, essentially. But I'm curious, yeah, if you guys have seen that play out as well.
Steve Call:Absolutely. I think, when you asked, that part of the prompt for so many couples is paying attention to literally their posture, their posture of how are they turned toward or against the other. I think often couples and we do this at times we use data of the story again to harm the other. We will take this, we will minimize their own harm by by somehow saying, well, that's just your story yeah but?
Steve Call:but how do we? I think the bind is is how do we help ourselves pay attention to, how are we willing to collude with the harm?
Steve Call:We are colluding with harm by somehow minimizing the impact of their story, so that that that word harm, I think, is such an essential part, is I. It's not like I wake up and I want to harm Lisa, but when I am unkind to her story, that is a form of harm. I am. When I disregard the impact of her story, that's a form of harm. When I disregard the impact of her story, that's a form of harm. So I think helping and encouraging couples just to be aware of the impact of when I minimize your story or I somehow hold contempt toward the other story.
Steve Call:That's a form of harm. And how we own that are invited to own, that pay attention to that, I think helps shift the posture toward it.
Lisa Call:And it makes me wonder that pay attention to that, I think, helps shift the posture toward it. And it makes me wonder when they're telling their story, are they just giving the information or are they actually having sorrow for the other over their story? Are they grieving? Yeah, because I think once I've we've grieved for each other in these stories. There's just a different awareness, like you don't want to collude with that harm, like there's like a grief, there's a sorrow. It's just a different awareness, like you don't want to collude with that harm, like there's like a grief, there's a sorrow, it's your sorrow is my sorrow, your grief is my grief. So it wouldn't cross my mind to want to use something against him in that story because it would grieve my heart too. So I think you can tell part of your story and well you know and not really get into the depth of it where you're actually experiencing the grief and the sorrow.
Kate Aldrich:So I think maybe oh a hundred percent of it as well, yeah.
Brad Aldrich:I mean that goes into some of the stories that Kate and I have have talked about. You know, there were absolutely some stories before we did any story.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, before we.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah, because for sure, we were high school sweethearts. We grew up together in many ways. So we knew all of each other's stuff and there were stories that just kind of came along and yet my interpretation of them was totally void of most of the emotion of the childhood experience of those stories, right Like. So I knew the facts but I didn't actually know what it did.
Lisa Call:Yeah, yeah. I think that's really key because you can stay in the facts. Yeah, right, right. And that's not really what it means to do story work. It's not about facts, because even the facts aren't even that important really. It's about the experience of it. You experienced it.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, exactly, it's about the experience of it.
Lisa Call:You experienced it.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, exactly, and we both did that for sure, of course, because we, yeah, we didn't know how to process, and I think you know us telling those stories. We didn't know how to actually go through the experience in what did it right on my heart, not just what happened kind of thing. So yeah, absolutely.
Steve Call:Beauty about your naming is that you have become curious about the other story and the way it impacts him or her, but also the two of you yeah. That's the beauty of what you're naming.
Lisa Call:Yeah, yeah, because you can see things that the other can't see. So. So I can name even areas of grief and harm that he wouldn't even notice, like, oh yeah, I guess. So Like that just happened to us the other day where he was talking about we were talking about my story and there was another component that I hadn't even noticed, and and so to be able to not just tell these stories once, one and done, you know, it's like we're constantly filtering them and wondering what part of your story now is getting activated and did you ever think about this over here? And we just we spent a lot of time talking about that.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, for sure yeah.
Brad Aldrich:I'm curious. You know we're kind of boiling down story work and story work in marriage here in like 40 minutes I'm sure there's couples who are listening to this who are just going wow, that sounds really good that you have this wonderful curiosity for each other and when Steve does something that annoys you, you can just go. Hmm, I wonder what story is coming up and like, so how does this work out in a practical sense?
Steve Call:Hmm, I, I think for many of us the practicality is being willing to say well, what is informing the current dynamic? Just the practicality of what is that connected to? And it can feel like a foreign language, it can feel clunky, it can feel awkward. It took us years to get to a place where there could be that posture of curiosity. I think the unaddressed trauma for so many couples is what blocks the capacity to be curious.
Steve Call:So it's not just, oh, put on your curious hat and ask these questions. That's helpful, but what's informing the curiosity is the desire to know and to be known. So when I said I do and we said I do, we're saying I do to being the safe other. So the safety of being willing to pursue and engage it, it I. It's too easy to say practice, but it is practice. But it's also, again, the posture of. I don't want to be defined just by what happened to me.
Lisa Call:I, I want this dyad to be the story that we are rewriting and re-editing and I think we can't get there until we have a kind posture to our own story yeah of course, yeah, um, it's it.
Lisa Call:Just if we and so many couples are like, oh, I can do that for you, but like, until we can actually see that childlike part of us or wherever you know our trauma or our harm had occurred, um, and and everybody has it, because I mean even misattunement, misattunement we get our trauma. So if people say, oh yeah, I didn't really, I had a great childhood, everything was fine, I had a great life, like there, there are things in there because we're just human and we are hurt and I work with pre-schoolers and I can see it on their faces.
Steve Call:Like you know so we all have something.
Lisa Call:But until we can go back and really have a kind posture toward ourselves, then whatever level we have gotten to in, that is what we bring to the other. And so I think doing your own journey and navigating whatever stories that you have, to come up and have a kind posture toward that I think is really helpful before we enter into the other.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Aldrich:How do you guys in your ministry and your work, how do you help couples to kind of when they're coming in with very present disagreements and hurts and wounds, with very present disagreements and hurts and wounds, how do you help them moving from blaming each other into that being curious about each other's story?
Steve Call:It's a process. I was working with a couple two days ago in a one-day intensive and a few months ago we did our three-day intensive. We have eight, eight couples come in and we spend three days together and and I I think, I think the the hope that we hope for on behalf of them is what's their vision, mission statement that they hope to create with regard to their marriage. Uh, if they were to write a vision or mission statement, what is it that they hope for just having again putting into words? What is it that they hope for Just having again putting into words? What is it that you actually desire? Hope for long for Sometimes reduces maybe the tension, the conflict, the contempt that they might hold toward one another.
Steve Call:We are all about emotional safety, one another. We are all about emotional safety and creating a context where a couple can develop a sense of being emotionally safe with each other is is. Without that we really can't work. We really can't work toward change. So how emotional safety is cultivated and developed I think that's the key for so many couples that are struggling is working toward a posture of safety. What creates safety for us? Boundary containment, predictability, being able to say I think I need to pause and come back to this in an hour or so that there's this reassurance of return to something that's difficult to talk about. So just some relational strategies, if you will. That cultivate emotional safety, I think, helps diffuse some of the tension that they hold in their body.
Kate Aldrich:It's really good.
Lisa Call:Yeah, I mean, if you were thinking I'm just thinking even the simplest mission statement would be like being known, like I just want to be known, I want to be loved for who I am, like it can just be as simple as that, cause I think that's what we all long for. Yeah Right, we were created to long for relationship. We were created to want to be known. Kurt Thompson says you know, we're born into this world looking for someone that's looking for us, like that's just innate. And so we find somebody that you know we feel safe with, and that's where the journey begins. And we, we want more of that, and that's that's where the journey begins. And we, we want more of that, and that's that's where the intimacy is built. So if we, if we know that's what we want and that's what our goal is, then all the other things he said the imagery of our book, like when we we wrote the deep root of marriage.
Steve Call:Like that imagery, the deep rooted there. Sometimes we don't flourish because of our root system And's part of for many couples. I think what you just asked about, brad, is sometimes the lack of flourishing is connected to the root system. So there's work, we dig out and we add amendments and we, we toil literally we toil, so that something can flourish from what we have planted and that that's not just imagery.
Steve Call:I think that, as you know, it takes hard work. It does. Marriage is hard work and marriage is a setup. It's a setup for failure. We fail, and I mean that that that is the bind of marriage and for many of us we might have this. You know this disillusionment, especially if we married early, like, oh, you're going to solve all my problems, it can all be bliss, and we were pretty disappointed from day one. How we honor the disappointment, how we honor the failure, I think is a significant part of a couple's journey.
Brad Aldrich:Wow yeah, for sure. I think I'd love that you named that, because I think there's so many couples who got marriage, got to marriage, with that kind of hope yeah they are going to fix all the things that are wrong.
Kate Aldrich:I don't know, that's always conscious, but yes, I think that is I think many of them are conscious.
Brad Aldrich:It's the. I get to spend life with my friend who's going to always love me and meet my needs, and then, very quickly, that doesn't happen.
Lisa Call:We're already disappointed, right. It's like, that's not working out.
Kate Aldrich:Absolutely. I love it. We're already disappointed, right, it's like that's not working out Absolutely. But I also think there's a lot of unconscious things that go into who we pick and how that plays out. And so I think, yes, there's a lot that we know, and then there's a lot that happens under the know, and both lead to all kinds of confusion and disillusionment.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah all kinds of confusion and disillusionment and yeah, and yet it is also that place for redemption and healing and, to be truly like, as you were saying, lisa, it is that one place where we can be truly pursued and known by somebody who says no, no, no, no. I want to get past the that all of that surface stuff and I want to truly deeply know you.
Lisa Call:And I can grieve on behalf of the brokenness and the harm that has occurred. I mean, that is where I have felt the most intimate. Intimately is when you can grieve on behalf of even places. I can hardly grieve because it's like, well, that was just normal, that was just my family, they just didn't you know, and. But he can grieve and that's like, wow, that is just so, and on. And I also wanted to add that the book also includes play.
Lisa Call:So there's hard work, but there's also play and creating beauty and goodness and creating imagination for, like hope and what can flourish and what can grow. Like yes, there's a hard work of a garden, but then there's also the fruit of a garden. Like we don't just do it because you know it's just work, but there's a beautiful game, like we get to have beautiful fruits and have imagination and play.
Kate Aldrich:So that's all part of the deal. Yes, for sure.
Brad Aldrich:Guys, you guys have been married a long time. You guys got married younger, like we did. If you could go back to the first couple of years of your marriage and whisper something, tell yourselves a lesson. What is it that you would want that young Steve and Lisa to know?
Steve Call:That's a good question.
Lisa Call:I would have wanted to listen to this podcast.
Kate Aldrich:There you go. I like it.
Lisa Call:We had no clue, we had no awareness, no idea.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah.
Lisa Call:We do get envious sometimes when we have young couples come in. We're like you guys are so ahead of the game, like this is awesome. But sometimes it takes a certain age and a certain true dissatisfaction in your marriage to where you're like well, maybe we maybe do need some. There's a lot of pride at the beginning.
Steve Call:There's a lot of pride. There's a lot of pride, I think, in a both playful but honoring way. I would have, I would have hoped somebody could have said something like Lisa is not your enemy, that she is for you. I think when I felt hurt and when most of us feel hurt we turn against the other or we turn against ourselves. That was our struggle very early on is when something didn't occur that I hoped would occur. Maybe I made a bid for sexual intimacy, maybe I made a bid for play. Maybe Lisa didn't come home at nine o'clock Like I thought she would. I, when I felt hurt, I used it to harm either myself or her, and I think that's that's part of what I would have hoped for. Somebody in the first couple of years would have said you know, there's something being triggered and activated for you. When this occurs, it's not just about Lisa, lisa's for you, it's something. The reminder of. This is where your past is being part of your present.
Kate Aldrich:Wow.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah.
Kate Aldrich:I love both of those so good.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah, and I think we've had this same conversation of, like man, the young couples who are starting this now, who are open to hearing oh wait, I brought things into this marriage that are you know in a real way and in depth way and being willing to really get to know their spouse's story and hold that story. Well that's just going to be amazing as they keep growing.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, for sure just going to be amazing. As they keep growing.
Brad Aldrich:Yeah, for sure. So it has certainly been life-changing for us, and that's why, we get passionate about it, and I hear from so many couples that have tried to figure out understanding and holding each other well in this way and it does change things for sure it does.
Kate Aldrich:Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Aldrich:Wow, matt, this has been really great to get to know the two of you. Tell us a little bit how people can find you, sure?
Steve Call:Uh, we have a website. It's called the reconnect Institute. Uh, it has all our resources and uh links for books and also for our intensives that we offer for couples. Uh, it also has a link for our podcast that Lisa and I have done over the last four years or so maybe.
Lisa Call:Yeah, Our favorite. Our favorite is the intensive. So we do a story intensive for eight couples. We do it three times a year.
Kate Aldrich:Okay.
Lisa Call:It's in person and we do it with Dan and Becky Allender and we each take four couples, and so it's a little bit of a group experience and we love it. It's just awesome. They come out to our barn and we spend three, two and a half days together. We eat, we work hard, we laugh. It's just um, it's a really fruitful time, yeah, so it's awesome.
Brad Aldrich:And do the couples kind of all share, like, their stories together in a group? Is that how you've?
Steve Call:done it? Yeah, we do. We call it the marriage story intensive, so they share a particular part of their story.
Lisa Call:We actually have them each write the same story without sharing it with each other prior to the intense right, but the same story. So then that's how we start off. Is they bring that story in? Okay, and it's?
Steve Call:it's just a beautiful interchange between you know, people you've never met, that can speak amazing truth in each other's lives I think for so many couples, the fear that they hold in their body and in their diet is that they're alone in their journey, and when they have some kind exposure to other couples that are in the process of some some level of redemption, I think that's so encouraging, and so I think that's what we found it to be, a helpful part of it.
Lisa Call:Right. We become so isolated, especially in marriages and especially like in the church, or it's just not like you don't want to share those things with people and I, you can just see it dawning on people as they begin to share like, wow, we're not alone.
Lisa Call:but there's stories worse than ours you know, and so then, there's this, the shame level goes down because everybody's like, wow, we all have different things and we all have, you know, some similarities in our families of origin, but there's just this common good and it's. It's just beautiful to be able to share that between one another and have that connection. That's amazing. Yeah, that's very cool. That's amazing.
Brad Aldrich:It would be really fun to visit out in Washington State and to do some amazing story work.
Kate Aldrich:So that's awesome.
Brad Aldrich:It's a great opportunity. So, yeah, I hope some of you listening might check that out and certainly check out their podcast as well. I hope some of you listening might check that out and certainly check out their podcast as well.
Brad Aldrich:We'll have links in the show notes for all of you to be able to follow along. Wow, this has been really, really insightful. I can't recommend the book enough. The Deep-Rooted Marriage by Dan Allender and Steve Call and both of their wonderful wives and you know, I think it was a great resource to kind of take this conversation of story work. We talk about story work often on the podcast. We had Adam Young on a couple of weeks ago and talking about his book but this one actually takes it to that next place and go how does this go deeper into your marriage, which I love and just hearing about I feel?
Brad Aldrich:so encouraged just by what you guys hearing about it. It really encouraged me.
Lisa Call:I feel so encouraged just by what you guys are doing, because it is very rare what you guys are doing, so we don't often we're not able to speak the same language, but it just feels really like we're speaking the same language and I'm so glad you're on that side of the coast and we're on this side of the coast and so we'll do what we can, but it's really been encouraging to hear what you guys are doing.
Steve Call:I'm grateful for your work and your commitment to marriage.
Brad Aldrich:Thank you, thank you both. It was great talking to you both and, yeah, until next time. I'm Brad Aldrich.
Kate Aldrich:I'm Kate Aldrich. Be kind and take care of each other.
Brad Aldrich:Still Becoming. One is a production of Aldrich Ministries. For more information about Brad and Kate's coaching ministry courses and speaking opportunities, you can find us at aldrichministriescom For podcasts, show notes and links to resources in all of our social media.
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