So why should I have recorded quite a few podcasts on romance and sex and intimacy with young kids and all of those things but it has been a while since we've done one and in the season or the in the mood I guess a Valentine's day and love we decided to jump on here and do another one and I think the thing with marriages that are really good isn't necessarily that they have a ton of secrets it's just that they get good at doing these basic foundational simple things.

They get good at it and they do them very very well and so it's something that maybe we've mentioned some of these things before maybe these aren't going to be new to you you've heard them from somebody else but I think it's so good that we go back and revisit the basics and just remember that yeah maybe romance is the icing on the cake but it also is one of the biggest reasons we chose to get married it was one of our biggest motivators to get married and I do think romance is one of the most important things that keeps us

in love and I put that in air quotes but it's fun to be in love so why not? Anyways I hope you guys enjoy this episode I know that we're not a fun time recording them.

Well here we are talking romance love once again and as you said already Katie in the intro it's kind of in the name or in the mood as you said in of Valentine's Day

and this is one of those episodes where Katie and I thought it's best to each come up with three points because I think something like romance you can just talk and talk and talk about and you can sometimes Katie and I will both be so excited to talk about a subject we'll talk over each other or we'll take their point we'll be like no I wanted to say that point and then the episode will go way too long or maybe in fear of it going too long one of us will refrain from sharing our point and so Katie's got three points

I don't know what they are and I've got three points and I don't think you know what they are although we've probably heard each other talk about them before.

Yeah so if you guys aren't familiar with us maybe you're a new listener then election I have been married well this this podcast episode actually is coming out on the day we got engaged February 16th and we will have been married 60 years or 15th yeah the 15th May I think we got engaged on the 16th also two days after Valentine's Day.

Yeah okay got it I should never remember that but you do remember anniversary so yes that's what's important I always get that one I always get that one right you know well the problem the reason I never forget the day that we are engaged on is because I always thought growing up the Valentine's Day was on February 15th yeah you mean the day that the reason why you do forget yeah the reason that I do forget what day because I always thought we got engaged the day after Valentine's Day but it was two days after Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day always sneak stuff on us so we we have had quite a few of our babies the first week in February or shortly after and so we have been like postpartum through a lot of Valentine's days and Valentine's has kind of been an afterthought so it's not like a huge holiday for us but I'm excited to talk about this we did want to mention top five Tuesday though before we dove in.

Really because you when I was talking about the points that just get you thinking about that three point it got me thinking about it because it's legitimately the highlight one of the highlights of my week well I just

sends me the top five Tuesday email which is basically like our family newsletter of things that we don't share on Instagram or here on the podcast it's it's exclusive you are getting it or you don't

and every time he sends it to me to read through I just die laughing wow it's so good he's such a comedic writer and so yeah it's it's things that we're reading it's things that we're learning it's funny things the kids say

but it's also just really entertaining so nice thanks for the plug it's like a yeah it's one of my personal plugs there yeah you're one of my personal pluggers I like it

I love it I love when new people subscribe to the email us because I do enjoy writing the weekly newsletter and it's um it only gets seen by people that are on the email list like there's no other places for people to find this where you're like if you come out with a blog and maybe not as many people read it as you are hoping for in the first week you're like oh well it'll be there forever you know and so maybe you'll get it'll pop again and people will be able to read it down the road whereas with this is just on the email so like if you if you're not aren't subscribed

on that Tuesday then you're not going to ever see that email ever again so yeah you can go to now that we're a family dot com and you can see the see where to sign up there or we'll have it linked in the show nice love it wanted to talk about that before we got started there's also one more thing I wanted to talk about let's hear it this is one more like preface thing little pre yeah little preface thing is that all marriages go through times that aren't romantic and you don't live at a 10 so a 10 the 10 I'm referring to is like on a scale of one to 10 one

being you're at total odds with your spouse it seems like there's this huge divide between you and 10 being like were in Cabo by ourselves and it's just romantic and fun and Cabo was probably the wrong place to say I thought Cabo was the biggest fight of our career so we had some of our highest highs and lowest lows and Cabo so anyways but you know just a very romantic destination and you're having the time of your life and you forget that your parents and you just feel like kids again

so that's a 10 and none of us live there all the time so even though I do feel like election I have a very romantic fun marriage we've talked about here on the podcast seasons where maybe physical intimacy hasn't come easily for us or we have had to work to strive towards that 10 I do think it's always we're striving for so episode 88 on the podcast is where we kind of talk through a season where I had a really low sex drive in our marriage

and how that affected our marriage and and we talked about it very real time so anyways if you if you find yourself in that season and you aren't in a season where marriage is real sparky and fun don't feel like we haven't had those seasons to yeah that's certainly just almost like a prerequisite I feel like for healthy marriages is it they go through a season of not feeling that 10 out of 10 you know the movies are made and books are written oftentimes about the 10 out of 10 and it not just enrollments in any aspect of life

like the you know that when you get when you reach the goal that's what we all of hearing about when the missions accomplished we love seeing that but it's usually years and hundreds and thousands of hours that go into that and in that time there's so many highs and lows but I think that even in those highs and lows Katie you've done such an incredible job of keeping our our marriage fun and romantic and playful even if we weren't like you said really feeling it at the time which I think that's really cool.

So that's actually kind of leads to my first point so maybe all or dive it in all steal the first point here and this I'm my second two points are a little bit more like pretty practical maybe painfully practical but this one's more consceptual a little bit more big picture and that is you know we've all probably heard the phrase mood follows action but I love thinking about that in regards to romance because for most of us we experience romance early on

we first meet and then we date and then we're engaged and and we think that this romance is something

that just kind of happens to us where you meet the person you've got these feelings that

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