The Real Fight Isn’t Between You: Dealing With Family Pressure in Marriage with Pesa Shayo

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to Mind, Money and Medicine. Well, this is a podcast we will talk about health, personal growth, money, careers, relationships, and also the choices that just make us who we are. So, I am your host, Favour. So, today we're going to be talking about marriage, family pressure, and cultural differences and what it really takes for couples to just stay united when outside influences just start putting pressure on the relationship.

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So our guest today is Pesachayo. He's an author and the co-founder of Live Your Best Marriage. So through his own cross-cultural marriage and his work with couples, PESSA helps spouses navigate in low pressure, loyal conflict, loyalty conflict, and cultural differences and also the communication challenges without just losing their own sense of unity.

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So PESSA, welcome to Mind, Money, and Medicine. We are so happy to have you here today. Thank you very much, Favour. I'm very happy to be here. All right, PESSA. So before we get into marriage and family pressure, what do you want listeners to know about you and the journey that brought you to marriage today?

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Thank you. Basically, originally I'm from Kenya in Africa and my wife is from the United States. And when we got married, we at that time believed that as long as we loved each other, everything will work out because we believe love can fix everything but after more than 20 years of marriage for girls for kids, we have realized that actually sometimes we need more growth and more understanding on what's really happening and the fact that we came from two different cultures, two different countries actually was a big it played a big part on some of the

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problems we were having as couples. And that really is what helped us create the Live Your Best Marriage, LIVE your best marriage because we are helping other couples who are from different cultures cross-cultures couples to deal with United Front and not going to have any problems. What we are saying is husband and wife, they need to face the problems together instead of making each other the problem because sometimes we don't even know that we are making each other the problem. And it doesn't mean that they will always agree but what

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we are saying that the important decisions need to begin inside the marriage, they need to have these discussions inside the marriage and then they will be able to come up with a system to address problems. Let's say, they're dealing with in-laws. Let's say they are dealing with even their own kids. Sometimes the kids will be the first ones to know when mom and dad are not on the same page because the kids will know if I ask dad he might say no but if I go to mom she will Yes, the same issue. So they already know that the parents are not united. So for us, United Front is just saying that they will face problems together and not fight against each other.

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Thank you for that Pesa. There's this thing, a whole of couples they usually experience. They experience this outside pressure from parents and also in-laws And it can become so powerful that a husband and wife, they just eventually start fighting each other instead of dealing with the issue on ground.

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Yes, that is a… that we always say sometimes you might be having the same problem with in-laws or the same problems with extended family and sometimes it's just it shows us that it's a symptom. So we're talking about medicine here, it's a symptom of a problem and the problem we think is is the fact that the couple is not on the same page.

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They haven't had this conversation before and they haven't agreed on how to face it. So, because sometimes, and we had this problem in our marriage where my wife would talk to have a conversation with my mother and my mother will say, hey, it's okay but I'll wait for my son.

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My son will tell me because she even knew that we were not on the same page and she's going to get a different answer when she talks to me, the answer that she wanted. And when it comes to in-laws or just any outside pressure, it's very important and we repeat very important to already have an idea what are we gonna talk, we're gonna say about it, and talk to them about. Now, sometimes we might be on the same page, tell them what we think, but still they might disagree.

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And now that's another issue. But at least we come from the same…we're on the same page when we are talking to them. And also we just working as a team. Sometimes we might forget and each one is doing their own thing. Remember to work as a team. Thank you for that Pesa. So there's also a difficult line between honoring your parents, as you say, and also protecting your marriage.

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How does the couple know when respect for family has actually crossed their line? And it's now coming into aligning families who have too much influence on the marriage. Yes, so just a simple issue when we are setting boundaries. We always and we believe in this that yes, we are setting boundaries but at the same time we want to honor our parents or we want to honor our relatives but sometimes it might be hard because they might be…we set a boundary, we say hey, we don't think this is a great idea for you guys to do this but they still break the boundary

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so now that's where we need also to be very clear that if you are breaking the boundary we will not either we don't want to say like communicate but we will not do what we were For example, we had a situation where, and this happens a lot, parents were sending kids to their grandparents to be babysat. But there, there were smoking cigarettes. And the mother was saying like, I don't want to expose my kids to the smoking. So it can't be anything, she just felt like smoking was not a good thing. Now she set the boundary, grandmother said no

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it's my house and we can smoke we can do whatever we want because it's my house. So now all of a and she set the boundary and there was a pushback. They're saying no don't tell us what to do in our own house. So at that point they were having a hard time.

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How do we respect our parents who are also saying they'll continue doing whatever they want? And I was saying hold on. At that moment it's okay to say we are not going to bring the kids. We can continue having a conversation, but we are not bringing the children to see you until we fix this issue which is the health issue of smoking in the house.

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Now she has a right to make her own decision on what to do in her own home, but at the same time we also have the right to make our decision in a respectful way. Thank you for that piece. So in cross-cultural marriage now, there are two people from…

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They genuinely love each other but they have different family backgrounds They have different ideologies of marriage and gender roles, tradition Like in the African tradition it's okay to be a child Why in America now? They don't be children So they come from different family background So how do you have this conversation without just turning the culture into the enemy?

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Yes, and I like what you brought up because even just the word beat the children for somebody in America will take just that word beat. They would be very offended but I totally understand where you're coming from because you are basically saying like it's a spank But they will be using the word spanking which they believe is not as bad as beating So just that one little word can show you how hard it can be in cross-cultural marriage because just the fact that you are in a different country and you are translating what you're

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thinking, in your own language to English or whatever language you are in there. And you might be using words that they would find very offensive and they feel like you are abusing their children. But if you had used just a different word let's say instead of beating to spanking now Now they are able to listen to you, now they think okay, that is spanking, it's a spank not a beat.

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And that's like something very important. That in cross-cultural marriages we're having the same problems other couples are having but because we have these different cultures underneath everything starts to have different meanings. So let's say to a couple from the same culture, somebody asking for money they just think in terms of a budget.

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Is it going to work for my budget? How much money are they talking about? But if when you're dealing with someone from another culture maybe it's not just about their budget. Maybe when family asks about money now it's are they loyal to their family? If you say no, now you'll be seen as you're not loyal.

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If you say no, now you are giving up your duty as a son in that family. All of a sudden the money becomes totally different. Somebody is thinking about budgeting, somebody else is thinking they will be disowned. For example when we're talking about parenting, one person might think oh it's just how we raise kids.

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The other one will say, no, grandma cannot…it's okay for grandma to give advice on how to raise the children because if I say no, I'm disrespecting her. Somebody else would say, no this is my child, I can make my own decision. So things like that. Even just holiday.

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Christmas has different meanings in different places. Some places, like for me, I thought Christmas has to involve a lot of family members. and when I say family, it means father, mother, uncle, cousins, aunts, nieces, nephews, neighbors. I still call them family but in America they call husband, wife and kids the family so even just say we'll invite family you have to be very careful who are inviting because they might be when the word family they might think of it a certain way while you are a friend and the idea that you met a few days ago from your same city might be a brother now.

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See? And those are things that can really put a lot of problem, pressure inside your marriage. Oh, I mean thank you for that, Pesa. Thank you for explaining that. So also setting boundaries it can be really uncomfortable mostly increasing families because people don't really tend to associate boundaries with a sign of disrespect or dishonor.

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So how can couples, how can they set healthy boundaries without just still living out there and still living with their feet? Yes, and I like that because sometimes even just the idea that you can sit down in some I always say that if you are coming to the situation with a lot of love, you can always have this feeling of love.

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And when you come back from a place where Christians believe that they will honor your parents, honor your mother and father so you can live a long life, they will see that as a very disrespectful thing. But I always say that if you're coming to the situation with a lot of love, You can always have these conversations. You might not have it directly.

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Maybe sometimes you might have to talk to your mother and then she might go and soften him a little bit and talk to him on the side instead of just saying let's have a meeting because they might say okay what is this child of mine coming and tell me that we need to have a meeting?

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That might be seen as the worst disrespect but maybe you can talk to your mother and then the man can talk to the father. Sometimes even just an uncle can be able to soften things more than you going and doing it directly. So those are just being a little bit creative, finding ways to set the boundary without being seen as very disrespectful. But also we have We have something that we teach and we call it decisions, like decision baskets.

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What we mean here is there are some decisions that a couple will need to make alone. So which house are we going to live in? What kind of food are we going to eat? There are some decisions they will make as a couple. They don't even need to ask their parents, they just make them themselves.

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There are some decisions that they need to inform what they did. They can say we are moving to another city, we are informing you that we are moving. But they don't have a say in making the decision. And then there's some decisions where the family, the extended family has a say Like for example, during a funeral and we are planning a funeral they might just tell me what I need to do Even in that situation I still have my say that how much I can maybe I can afford, maybe I don't have enough money

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Maybe I don't have enough money so How much I can afford is still my decision But they're making decisions like in a funeral Thank you so much for taking care of parents who's gonna cheap in to buy medication for a parent, things like that. But so having an idea what kind of decision this is can really help when you're even having a conversation with the extended family because some conversations you don't even need to have them because you've really made the decision yourself.

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All right. Thanks for that. Okay, so let's talk about loyalty conflicts. So what happens when like one spouse when spouse they feel like you always tend to choose your family members over me. So how should couples deal with this kind of situation without forcing some the other party to abandon their own family? Yes, that is very important and some people even take it that if somebody is always choosing their family over them they will even… I've had couples say I felt like he's cheating on me. He's always siding with his sisters, he's always siding with

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with his aunt. He's always saying, so it feels like one person is not even part of that family because the husband or the wife is siding with their side of the family and we call this, this issue we call it that you haven't transferred loyalty. It's a problem with loyalty transfer and the issue here is you haven't transferred loyalty from your side of the family which which is your family of origin to the family that you are building, your new family.

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And as long as this loyalty has not been transferred, you will always have these problems and a new family they're building is not really their family. They are not related by blood, so they cannot go all out for their wife or their kids over their aunts, their uncles, their nieces and nephews. So until this happens, the transfer of loyalty from the original family, family of origin to this new family, we will always have these problems because they don't believe that they will stick with their new family over their original family and this happens sometimes like for example in a WhatsApp group

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someone might be making fun of their wife or she doesn't know how to cook she doesn't whatever they want to say and the husband might be in there and not say anything because he still believes that it's important to stick with blood.

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Thank you. Thank you for that, Pesa. So if a couple are listening right now and they just realize that they have been allowing family pressure or creates like this distance between them, What is one conversation they can start having this week to just help rebuild this sense of unity? They are actually lost.

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Okay, the first thing that they can have and this they don't even need to go to therapy or anything is start remembering that if they're even having this conversation that means they want their marriage to work. So good! Remember that you guys are friends and you're not enemies because if you still have that friendship, we always say the friendship is what connects us as lovers and also us as a couple that can be able to function in the world, take care of kids, go to work, pay bills like do all these things as a couple but at the same time we are lovers

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and we need that friendship. So if they are listening to this right now, they just don't they need to remember that what can we do to remember that we are friends and we are not enemies? Some of the things just remembering when they were dating there was a lot of excitement during Thank you so much for today and thank you for bringing such a practical perspective like to a part of marriage and many couples they just keep struggling with but they don't always know how to talk about it and relating it to their spouse sometimes

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it tend to lead to conflict and then create a distance between them and they keep having this issue over and over. So your message is actually a powerful reminder that loving your family and protecting your marriage you don't really have to be a choice Like, it does not have to be something you have to choose one and neglect the other.

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You can actually make it into a goal. So the goal is actually learn how to stand together when outside pressure just comes in. And Pesa, how can listeners that would like to know more about your work and want love to connect with you to have a discussion with you?

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What's the best way for them to do this? Thank you very much. What they can do is come to our website which is liveyourbestmarriage which is L-I-V-E, yourbestmarriage.com and we have a real treat there. There is a United Front quiz where they can come, take the quiz, it takes its free two to three minutes and they will be able to see where outside pressure may be weakening their own teamwork. After that, they will know what to do about it And again, they can always find this information and these resources for free at our website, liveyourbestmarriage.com

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I mean once again thank you so much Pesa for being here today and I really do appreciate it Thank you very much, Favour. And to you listening if family expectations, cultural differences or loyalty conflicts has actually created a tension in your relationship don't just assume the only solution is choosing sides Just as i said earlier Sometimes the first step is just learning how to face the problem together doing things together instead of facing and fighting each other. So if you want to understand via outside pressure maybe affecting your own marriage, Pesa has actually created a free three

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minute United Front Marriage audit so you can find it at unitedfrontmarriage.com as he said earlier and thank you for listening to Mind, Money & Medicine until next time take care of your mind Invest in your marriage, be intentional about your marriage and also be intentional with your choices and never just stop becoming who you are, who you believe and who you really enjoy becoming And I'll see you guys in the next episode and bye-bye. Thank you.