Building Unity in Cross-Cultural Christian Marriages

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Warm greetings to everyone. Your welcome to Health Fact Podcast. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Pesa Shayo, author and co-founder of Live Your Best Marriage. Pesa has [unclear] cross-cultural Christian couples build stronger marriages by improving communication, [unclear] boundaries, and facing life's challenges together. Welcome to the show, Pesa. Thank you very much, Adewale.

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Firstly, could you tell us about your journey and? and what inspire your passion for strengthening marriages? Thank you. Yes, thank you for having me. I've been a husband for more than 20 years, and as a father of four girls, I work with couples, and this is all because of my marriage, had problems in the beginning, and I helped cross-cultural couples, couples from different cultures, who came together with loving each other, but due to different cultures, they are finding that they're having more problems than they love they thought that they were going to spend.

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So that is what I do. And basically my story is when I started my marriage, I thought all I needed to do as a man is provide, work hard, provide, and that's all I needed to do. Pay the bills, make sure my family is well taken care of.

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But I also found out that through this process, my wife's emotions, emotion needs were not being taken care of and she was feeling more and more alone, which nearly got us to a divorce. But that brought us, when I started realizing this, I started changing my ways and being more listening, listening more to her concerns and not only provide financially, but also being there emotionally.

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Yes. That makes sense. Supporting her emotionally, physically and socially. Yes. What are some of these biggest challenges cross-cultural couples face? You know, for cross-cultural culture, couples, most of the time is they get married, but they don't know that a lot of expectations that they come with them. And most of them, they don't talk about this. For example, one person might have expectations from their family, their family of origin to support their family, pay school fees for their brothers and sisters, and help build something back home.

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While the spouse that they are married to does not even understand the importance. importance of something like that. So when they get married, now that will bring a lot of conflict because one person is thinking, why are you sending our family money away? While this other person who's sending money feels like I have to, because these people supported me, I need to help them again.

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So something like that, which might not be an issue to other families, might be a big deal breaker for a cross-cultural couple. How can relationship conflicts affect mental and emotional health? Yes, that is a big problem because the marriage should always be a place where you feel safe and you feel relaxed.

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But now because of these tensions, these constant tensions, it becomes that your marriage becomes like this place where there is so much stress. You can't relax. And instead of coming home and relaxing, now you are finding that there's a lot of control, criticizes. you are being criticized, you are being shamed, things that you did not expect will be happening inside a marriage and all this will increase your stress and the stress will make it that you are more likely to get sick with other sicknesses. So it's very important to realize that

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just the increase in stress in a marriage can make you more likely to increase your blood pressure and get sicker. Why is healthy communication important for overall well-being? Very, very important. When you are having a healthy communication, which is basically you are speaking the truth, you are accepting the other person's part of you, that they are actually making sense, and at the same time, you are willing to compromise.

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When you are doing that, at the same time, you are helping yourself and also your spouse be more relaxed and more calm down. You are just taking away that anger and constant fighting that some couples will do all, the time, which basically just builds up the stress. How can couples protect their mental health widely with in-law pressure, and family expectations? Yes, that is very important. In-law pressures and family expectations.

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Being aware that where your loyalty lies, first, you have God and then your spouse, and then your children, and then now you're in-laws. When you mix that up and you have your family of all as first, you will always have these conflicts because there's constant fighting. So having, just being aware that how do this, how do we have the hierarchy?

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We start with God and then we go to my family, my in, and then eventually my kids and then my in-laws. With that, being aware with that, that is very important. And then being, making sure that all times when I'm making decisions, I am involving my spouse, but it's okay to get advice from in-laws and family.

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members, but eventually, and this is very important, eventually the last decision has to be made as a couple, because with this, you'll reduce a lot of the stress when somebody feels like they're living a life, but decisions are being made about them outside their house. And yes, so that's, and what else I've learned, especially couples when they're trying to get a new health routine, it's very important to make sure that they're reducing some of the stress, because even if, let's say somebody's trying to lose weight, but they are not getting

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support from in their house, it becomes very hard for them to do that. So it's very important for your spouse to be your support, the fast support system before you even go to friends and extended family. Now, this doesn't happen a lot, but that's the best way. What healthy habit can couples practice to strengthen their emotional health? Listening. Listening, and don't be judgmental.

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That's a big one. When your spouse or your wife tells you something, sometimes the best thing is just to put down your phone and listen. You might not understand, and it might not even be something that you like, but just letting her know that you can listen to what she's talking about.

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That's very important. Okay. What are the most communication mistake couples make? The first one is not listening. Another one is being very defensive. When somebody tells you something, when your spouse says something, instead of just taking it the way it is, you start becoming very defensive. I did not do that.

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And it's constant you are always defending yourself while, and some of us were, we were raised to always defend ourselves. But sometimes in a house, in a home where you're supposed to be safe, we need to put down that barrier of constantly defending ourselves and say, you know what, yes, I made a mistake.

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and also be okay to apologize. That will really help with your mental health. Being okay to apologize and less defensiveness. How can couples create healthy boundaries without damaging family relationships? That is very important. And I like what you said, without damaging family relationship. Because what we teach is we are creating a boundary, but at the same time we are being very respectful.

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And the first thing is for the couple first to know that they are the ones who are going to make, make decisions as a couple. So when they are saying, talking to their in-laws, they need to say, we decided, instead of saying, he decided, or he made me do this, or she made me do this, no, we decided that this is what we're going to do.

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And then once they already create that unity as a couple, now they can go and say, now put a boundary, say, let's say they are talking to their parents, they can, in a nice, very nice way, say we, let's say if it's something about like coming for the holidays, they can be very clear that this year we are not coming or this year we are coming for Christmas, but we are not going to be their new year's. But you are being very respectful and you are saying we decided not to do

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this instead of saying she made me do this. Because once they, once in-laws realize that there's once the in-laws realize that there's an opening, that the couple is not united, they will start pressuring you. But once they know that this couple makes decisions together, it's very hard to come in between.

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Yeah, I like that response. It's very difficult for the family members to break their bond. Yes, yes. What does it mean to be the United Front in marriage? So it means, United Front does not mean that you are being rude, and mean to everybody else. No, a united front in marriage means that you as a couple are always making decisions together.

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You are looking at each other and spending time and making decisions together before going out so that when other people, and this happens a lot in cross-cultural couples, when other family members are trying to get in between you, they know very well that this couple cannot be divided. So united front means they are together, they're united, they are making decisions together, but at the same time, that does not mean they are rude to everybody. They're still nice, but they know where the boundary is. Okay. What advice do you have for newly married across

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cultural couples? Yes, that is very important. First, if they haven't, if they are not married yet, I will tell them to ask each other these questions. Number one, when our families expect different things from us, how will we be deciding? So if our family expect, if your family expects this from me and my family expects this from us, how will we decide to move forward?

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What system are we going to be using? Two, they need to also ask and talk to each other before they get married to know what expectations each one has with the family, the siblings, and or extended family, especially financial responsibilities. So before you get married, you need to know that my husband is expected to build a house or my husband is expected to pay school fees for his brother and things like that before you get married. So that it's not a surprise when this is happening while you're married. Another thing is to also ask, how are we going to have a situation? If we have a situation, if we

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have a situation where you and my family disagree. How can I stand with you, but at the same time being respectful to my family? Because we are not trying to break families apart here, but we need to know how are we going to have, show respect to my spouse, but at the same time being respectful to the family. If you have these questions ahead, can really help. But if you're already married, these are things you need to deal with now. Another thing is don't be defensive. If you've a mistake, just apologize. Now, because the more you don't apologize, the more people hold grudges

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for years. I mean, it just goes on and on and something that could have already been apologized and we figure out the best way to move forward. But people will hold grudges for many, many years. So if you can apologize so that we can find a way to move forward, it's a great thing.

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But ask these three questions before marriage so that you at least understand what you are getting yourself into. Okay. How can faith help couples navigate conflict and strengthening their relationship? So, with the conflict, and I talk a lot for men, don't be afraid to apologize. Don't be afraid to tell the truth, especially if you're coming from a place where telling the truth means you're weak.

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Don't be afraid to do that. And at the same time, don't be as defensive. Be okay to try to solve things in your house before things get out of hand. And it might sound like I'm just talking about men. It's the same thing with women. Taking responsibility is also very important.

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Yes. What is one marriage lesson you believe every couple should know? I believe that every couple should learn to communicate. I think learn to communicate the way you are doing right now, being okay to listen to somebody else without jumping in, and also learning to tell the truth.

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Another thing is learning to manage money. Don't just assume you know how to handle money. just from how you are raised by your parents, just learn the best way to handle money because money we're also finding that's also a big problem. And then also learn to set respectful boundaries, not just boundaries, but respectful boundaries.

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We are not trying to cut off family here. We are trying to be respectful, but still set up a boundary. Yes. Where can our listener connect with you and learn more about live your best marriage? Yes. The easiest way is if you're on Instagram, you can find us at Live Your Best Marriage, which is L-I-V-E, Your Best Marriage.

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Or you can also go to a website, which is liveyourbestmarriage.com. It's L-I-V-E, yourbestmarriage.com. There, they'll find, we have a quiz, we call it United Front Quiz, where they can take the quiz, and the good thing about the quiz is it takes less than three minutes. They'll be able to find where they really stand when it comes to boundaries, in-laws, pressures, and all that.

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They can find in less than three minutes where they stand and then we'll give them ways to fix that. So we are literally helping them. They'll answer some questions, helping them know where they stand and how to fix this so that they are not having the same arguments every day and they don't know how to take care of this.

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Pesa, thank you for sharing your radical insight on building stronger marriages. The advice when community, communication and faith can help couples overcome life challenges together. I'll appreciate you on this episode for joining me on this episode of Health Fact Podcast. Thanks to our listeners for joining us to stay healthy, stay connected, and we'll see you in the next episode.

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Thank you very much. Have a good one.