Honoring Family Without Sacrificing Your Marriage || Pesa Shayo

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Wisdom Movers Podcast. Today on the Wisdom Movers Podcast we are going to have the conversation about one of the most important and sometimes the most difficult questions in marriage, which is, within your team, when does that pressure enter the relationship? Our guest for today is Pesa Shayo, he is an author and the co-founder of Live Your Best Marriage, where he helps cross-cultural Christian couples navigate in low pressure, loyalty conflicts, cultural differences, communication breakdowns and boundaries. What makes PESAS perspective especially interesting is that

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it is not just theory, it is what is shaped by its own cross-cultural marriage and by helping couples recognise how easily the external expectations can turn couples against each other. So in today's conversation, we're going to explore what it really means to build in the United States from a multidisciplinary period, a botany culture, and a compromising fate. Hello, Pesha, and welcome to the We Don't Move Out podcast. It is great to have you here.

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Thank you very much, Ferdinand. I'm very happy to be here, and thank you for having me.

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Thank you very much, Pesha. So now, let's begin. Let's hear the idea at the heart of your work, Now, a united front. Now, when you say a couple is your pretense between, what does that actually look like in everyday marriage? Thank you. So, for a couple to have a united front, what that means is that does not mean that they should not have any disagreement. What we are saying is their marriage, they should be able to have conversations in marriage first before they talk to their in-laws, children or outside people in their marriage.

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And what I mean is let's say let's talk about children. Sometimes children will know when parents are not on the same page. So what happens is children will say, okay you know every time I ask dad he will say no. So they always go to mom because they know mom and dad are not on the same page as long as I shop and I pick the right parent I can get what I want so when it comes to kids that can be very funny but when it comes to external family people outside like a family of origin

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they can know very well that, you know, as long as I wait for my son he's gonna give me a different answer. So I don't even need to listen to his wife or it can also happen like that today with the in-laws. They can say, you know, as long as I wait for my daughter I don't need to hear to listen to my son-in-law. He is going to give me…I don't want to hear his answer. The answer that I want and the one to hear is from my daughter because they know very well that that couple is not on the same page.

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So we say first have this conversation, know what you believe in as a couple so that when you are getting asked or when you're having these conversations both of you are on the same page all the time. Yes. Hello? … … … Okay, thank you very much. So moving on, now let's talk about cross-cultural couples.

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So Vishal will go into the question, what are cross-cultural couples? So cross-cultural couples, when we talk about cross-cultural couples, we mean couples who are from two different cultures. Now, it can be from the same country, can be from the same country, but they are just having two different ways of thinking or two different.

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ways of doing things because we call it they have two different rule books. Or they can be from two different countries which can also make it difficult because they might also be seeing a lot of things from two different perspectives. We call that that having two common sense in the same house.

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What you think is common sense where you come from might not be common sense with your spouse. So now, that brings up another issue because when you're having cross-cultural couples, the problems that other couples have in their marriage, we say that culture can multiply the problem. problem. And from that point, you need to be very careful because the culture can be a big multiplier because now you're dealing with more people, different meanings towards different languages.

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Somebody's talking and the other one is trying to translate in their brain what you are saying so there's a different language difference also different ways of who's an authority and just It just gets very complicated, very quickly.

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is very, very deep one. So why do you think it becomes such complication after marriage? You see, that happens to us too. When you're dating, you have all this excitement and chemicals moving through your body and it seems like everything can be solved. It seems like as long as we love each other, that's it.

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But now when you're married and you're living together and all that, The problems that other couples are having, you are also having those problems, but now you are adding other issues, which is now you have the culture problems. And now when you are dealing with culture problems, now you're adding another layer to the problems that every couple is dealing with.

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So for example, when we talk about different languages, I was speaking my language. Yes, I learned English but most of the time I was translating English to my language for it to make sense. So there's a loss of translation, in translation Also we might be arguing, like for example, let's say we are arguing about money I'm trying to send money home, back home In my mind I am thinking My parents need help, I need to send money And that is very important for a son to help their parents That's what I hear

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But my spouse might be thinking, okay money is leaving our house. We did not agree on this and why are you helping people without making sure money stays in our house? So the argument if it was just people from one culture we will be just talking about budget. Let's make sure this budget is fixed.

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But for now, I'm thinking, I don't want to be called the son who doesn't want to help. I'm thinking, I don't want to be the one who's the one who abandons his family, family of origin while she is thinking, hey, don't mess up my budget. So we although we are talking about the same thing called money, we have two different meanings. We are not actually talking about it. We are talking about two different things. I don't want to be seen as as the son who abandoned family.

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She doesn't even think about it, about it that way. So those are some of the things that cross-cultural couples can be dealing with but on the surface, it just looks like what everybody deals with which is money problems. Going underneath the surface, it's a different story. Okay, thank you for sharing that information with us.

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So talking about cross-cultural marriages, now apart from the issue of cross cultural differences, there's also the issue with in-laws and family pressure. So the question is at what point does honoring your family close the line into allowing family expectations to witchy your marriage? Okay, so the family expectations are always there.

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And we go back to in-laws, most couples will deal with in-laws issues. So somebody might say, okay, so what's the big deal? In-laws are a problem in any marriage. But now when we go to the cross-cultural couples, we find out that when we are talking about in-laws, there is more number one, more people might be involved.

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More people have a say, okay? So it's not just in-laws. So we're talking about uncles and aunts and nieces especially if there's a WhatsApp group where people are also putting their, they're also discussing these things. So there's more people who have a say. And the thing is we might not talk about the expectations.

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Somebody might come with the expectation and that although there is this, my family of origin, I still need to be helping them. So what we teach, we say okay, although that's your family of origin, we need to start putting more attention to the new family that you are creating because the two of you, the two become one to create a new family.

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At the same time, we are saying don't forget to respect your parents, okay? Respect your parents. We're still saying you can still respect your parents but at the same time put more attention to your new family that you're building and that can help you navigate some of these problems that you might be dealing with when it comes to in-laws because now it's much easier to set a boundary if you are on the same page with your spouse, you are still respecting your in-laws but at the same time you can say no we are not going to go for that or let us think about

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it and things like that. So still on what you just said how can couples have that conversation without speech results in you to argument and conflicts? Ah, so especially… So the first thing we say, okay, how can you before you even have these conversations with in-laws because we believe that if somebody is always coming and telling us that they're having too many problems with their in-laws, we say hold on. That just tells us that that is a symptom of the problem.

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That's not the problem. We believe the problem is you and your spouse are not on the same page because if you're on the same page, you can easily know that there are some things that we decide as a couple. There are some things we tell our family. We tell them because we are just informing and there's some things, let's say, then there's some things we need to talk and work with them because they're making the decision.

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For example if it's about deciding where their kids are going to school that is something that we make the decision ourselves. If it's something about, let's say we are planning for a funeral you see that now everything has changed. The family decides, the family already decides because we are all trying to take care of a parent Now the whole family decides because now we're trying to see who is gonna do what But if it's saying okay where my kids going to go to school or which city am I gonna live in

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or which church I'm going to go to. That is a conversation that needs to be had in the home, our home. And for that to happen we need to be on the same page and sometimes it becomes hard because somebody will be going and talking to their parent asking for advice and they way they frame their advice is they're asking, they want to be told what to do.

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They are not informing them. ask, they are saying okay tell me what to do and that might not be the right thing to do.

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Okay so now talking about what we just talked about if there is a situation that comes to you where one of the first or remember the union talking about the marriage now is saying that you You always choose your family over me. I think this one may have come up in your crisis.

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Now, when a member of the union says that you always choose your family over me, what will you advise the other person in the union? How would you advise the other person in the union to go across this very, very delicate matter? So that, what we this happens and for some couples this has it has even be we've had couples who even say he chooses his side of the family over me so much that the wife even thinks it's take the wife is even taking this as it's like he's cheating on her because it's

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it's like betrayal every time. It becomes such a big problem and sometimes some of these things is happening in Aida. A conversation is hard in the marriage, so something is talked in the marriage and then maybe the son takes it and tells his mom. There's always that there's no secrets in the family they are always going and telling their family or if we've had situation in a situation where maybe an aunt is making jokes in our Wassap group and the husband does not protect his wife, if he doesn't say, okay no Spect You Manhattan shame me?

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Okay so what we are saying is that it's just a sign of what we call incomplete loyalty transfer and those are big words but basically you''re saying that you haven't transferred loyalty from your family of origin to this new family that you are building here. And when we bring the issue, some people will say yes because blood is thicker than water I am gonna still stick with my family of origin because if anything goes wrong I don't want to

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have made my family of origin upset so what we can tell them is just we need to work with that and you need just to remind them that at the end of the day they need to move their loyalty from their family of origin to this new family. It might be hard because they might still believe that they can have both things at the same time, they can be loyal to their family of origin And at the same time, enjoy this new family they are building. But the truth is, they also need to

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remember that even their parent, their dad, their father, there was a day their mother came into this new family. Their mother came to a family and a family was started. It might be 50 years ago, 30 years ago, but that's what happened. So what you are doing right now in your family is what was done many years ago to create a family that you call your family of origin. So, I would tell them, and there's no easy answer here, because if someone has decided that they don't want to put energy into this family that they are building, their new family,

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It might be hard but that's the problem. The problem is they haven't transferred loyalty from the family of origin to their new family, that they are saying that this is my family.

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Okay, that was interesting thank you so now I read in your bio there was something that cosmonautism and our level system of houses, I saw something called loyalty conflicts. What's the loyalty conflict? So loyalty conflict, that is basically when somebody is looking, is loyal to their family of origin.

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And so there's a conflict constantly. They believe that they don't want to choose one over the other. And we are saying to avoid this loyalty conflict, you need to choose. and what we're saying is choose the family that you are creating which is your new family and then it's much easier to make these decisions we again we are not preaching that you need to disrespect your family of origin we are just saying what is your priority that is the difference here if your priority is the family that you decided to start and to build, you got to take care of it. And sometimes

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when we are talking to some of these couples, they are saying that maybe they are afraid that they don't have what it takes to actually work on their marriage. So they believe like, so they are just hedging their bets. So that's why they have that loyalty conflict. If you want to believe in your family and go all in in it, because that's the only way you're you're gonna make it work.

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But there are a lot of people who just have believed that, nah, blood is thicker than water and I'm not going to be loyal to my new family that I'm building. Okay, so we've just talked about the loyalty conflicts and the conflict between your family you are trying to create and the family you came from. So thank you very much for that.

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Very wonderful answer to that particular question. Now if we have a couple of people having arguments about the parents or about a illo several times every time you have this argue, the arguments arguments. It results in fights for the love of each other and how would you help them to identify a real issue on the initiative's arguments? Okay, if they're always fighting and arguing about the in-laws so that just tells me and it's always the same. If they are saying they love each other and they want their marriage to work, I would say okay decide what the values that your in-laws are

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crossing. So maybe let's say I can give you an easy answer like an easy scenario. Maybe every time the kids go to the in-laws maybe somebody is smoking in the house. That's just an easy one. Somebody's maybe father-in-law is smoking in the house and maybe the couple believes is past that you love each other, you're already on the same page now the issue comes how do we address this?

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We always teach that the child of their family involved so let's say if it's my side of the family I should go and talk to my side of the family just to make it easy for my wife in the same way if it's her side of the family after we've agreed she should be able to go and talk to her side to make it easier for me.

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But sometimes, just on the talking part, she might need backup. I'm not just going there and start yelling and things, but I might just be in the living room, the sitting room sitting there as she's having this conversation. We can do it that way or she can just go and talk to them.

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But the issue comes where you might set boundaries and you might be very gentle and very respectful but also remember they are also humans. The in-laws are also humans, and they might say hold on this is my house and I have…I'm gonna set my own rules in my house so now you'll have a problem.

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You've set your boundaries, they have also saved their part and now you have a conflict. The best thing is to already think about this ahead of time because if they say no, what are you going to do next? If you have the post, you might have to say okay that's fine and we can continue having this conversation but the kids are not coming too. The kids are not coming to visit.

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That does not mean we have closed all their paths of communication but the kids cannot continue coming to see their grandparents. Now, somebody might say this is too hard because I don't have daycare. I don't have anybody else to watch my kids and that's fine. You are basically telling me that you are not ready to have that conversation because sometimes if you're having these adult conversations you might also need to be ready with a plan B and if you don't have a Plan B, maybe it's time to get that Plan B ready before you have this conversation

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because some people are having the in-laws pay for everything. So maybe they helped you buy a house, they help you buy a car, they help you pay for your kid's school fees and now you're upset when they tell you which school for the kids to go to so now that might be like…

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If you're accepting all this money from them, maybe it might be harder for you to say no when they are telling you whatever they want to say. So it's very important to know sometimes the help they might be giving might also come back later and become a problem. It just depends who Who the people are?

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Okay, thank you very much for that. It just depends on who the people are. So that was a very nice answer talking about arguments, the house we do, in-laws, the appearance or the time. Now talking about boundaries. Now boundaries can be very difficult in Christian families because a lot of people associate Say no, the ability to say no with you being disrespectful or you dishonoring your parents or your in-laws or as a case may be How can couples establish healthy boundaries while featuring love and respect through their parents?

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This is hard because some people, for a lot of couples, they might just view it like, okay, the Bible says we're gonna live and cleave and the two of us are going to become one. That's in Genesis. We're gonna live and cleave and the two of us become one.

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Okay, so most people will view that. That means we need to cut off everybody and the two of us become one man The two of us become one. Okay, but also in the Bible we talk we learn on on respecting your parents so that you can it's one of the commandments So now honoring and respecting your parents. So that is also a commandment that's there and

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Okay, so we have three buckets. So there's the first bucket, we call it Kapos decision. These are decisions that only us can make in their marriage. So things like how are we gonna spend money in our house? How are we going to raise our kids every day? How where are we gonna go for holidays and vacation?

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How are we gonna handle pregnancies and medical decisions which things like that and also we call them couples' decisions. And then there's another thing we call informed decisions, which are the second bucket, which are still couple of decisions but we can inform other people. We're not asking for permission, but we are informing.

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So for example, we can say, you know what? This year we are not coming for Christmas or this year we are taking a kid to another school This year, we are moving from this part of town to another part of town. We are just informing, but we have already made the decision. So that's the second bucket. And the third bucket is when we say these are family decisions, like let's say if there's a family reunion, and now the family is helping us decide. The family is already helping us decide, or if we are taking care of a parent,

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and now some brothers are chipping in, sisters are putting in some money, so everybody is giving their part. But even if it's a family decision, we still have to make our own decision on how much we will participate. So once you know how to deal with these decisions, now it becomes easy to have a conversation with the parents because now you know if they are telling you what to do or not because you already aware of what's going on and sometimes it might mean when you're trying to be respectful in different cultures, maybe in my culture I cannot just call my dad and say hey we need to have a meeting

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see that's gonna be seen as disrespectful but maybe if i talk to my mom my mother and then he's she's going to talk to him that is a nice way not to be disrespectful or i can talk to my uncle and then my uncle can't talk to him. That way we are still respecting him but at the same time and the same time we are also saying these are the things we want. So it's just a fine balance we are playing, but at the same time we need to know exactly the three buckets of decisions and where everything is falling because sometimes we might not know and everything just gets all mixed up.

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Thank you very much, amazing reply. So I talked about boundaries and how it's very very important for us to set boundaries at the same time setting boundaries and featuring love and respect to our parents. Now from my experiences what are some communication mistakes that we seek or would make during cultural clashes that only intentionally makes this situation worse?

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and the same thing that you do in your life. I think one of the things they make is they don't appreciate how much they have different meanings, like how many different meanings that they have when it comes to…when they're having a conversation. So when somebody's saying family, the word family might not mean the same meaning, might I know have the same meaning in different places.

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So where I come from, family might mean father-mother kids, uncles, neighbors, nephews, all these people, I can still call them brothers, sister, cousins, I can have so many cousins but we are not really related by blood but for some reason we are cousins maybe because my father and their father were friends and now they're my cousin.

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So just because I'm saying this is family, in some other places the word family might just mean father, mother and kids. So I'll just say a big problem is not appreciating that we might be talking but we are not talking about the same thing. So when somebody is constantly translating, the conversation might not be communicating about the same thing because different words as they are translating from one language to another, they may not be using the right, the same words.

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So the conversation just is a different conversation. So being curious and when you say curious I say like ask, okay so what did you mean by that? In a nice way. What did you mean by that? Can you explain a little bit better? And also remember that your spouse is not your enemy.

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So when you have that in your mind you can always ask, okay what did you mean by that? And give them the benefit of doubt. They might not really have meant it that way but that's how it came out to you. Thank you very much, and beautiful. So now we just talked about communication mistakes that couples make during classes that community situation or wars. Now talking about your own cross-cultural marriage and how it has not influenced your work What I did really with anything, radical private, also marriage taught you, or what are the marriage taught you about knowing the difference between being right and being united?

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Thank you. So when I was newly married, I was always thinking about being right. And the issue there was not only that I think about being right, but I knew I was right. So I would have a conversation and I was constantly trying to show that I'm right And I could not see how I would be right And my wife Whitney could also be right Because we were just looking at something from two different angles and when I go and ask my friends who are coming from my country, they would just remind because we were thinking the same.

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They will just either remind me how my wife is ungrateful, how she's ungrateful or how we are right and how she's so wrong but when i stopped asking how am I right and start asking like what's the best way to handle this situation? I would now get so many ideas because I'm getting ideas, she's giving me ideas So now we are moving forward. It's much easier versus constantly trying to say you are doing it wrong You're doing it wrong. You don't do it right Back at home. We do this back at home. This is how we do it

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You are not giving me respect back at home and constantly back at home And that wasn't helping so basically eventually just Just realizing that there are many ways of doing something, and the more good ideas we have, the better to help us.

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So, okay, now still under our question, how important is it being about being united or just being united? I think being united is more important, because as long as you are united and you are working towards same thing to make your marriage better, you might not be doing things the same way they were done or the way you think that they should be done because sometimes when you're saying Sometimes when you are saying you're right, it's just the information you have at that moment.

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But you don't have all the information that exists in the world so you might be missing something. And sometimes also if you show your spouse and

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Talking about sweets. Feat is a very important part of your approach. How should Christian couples think about marriage, conflicts, family loyalty and boundaries through the lens of their sweets? Yes so what the faith helps us, the Christian faith helps us it actually helps to be more humble. So now you become more humble and you are more willing to work with your spouse because now you remember that she's a child of God too. She is not just a thing that is in your house, it's…that's the child of God and you're more likely to work with her if as a Christian

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and you are more humble, you're more willing to listen. You're more willing to take her point and see where she's coming from. So that's why the faith comes in. It brings you, it makes you more humble and more willing to work with her. Also, you feel like you have more responsibility because now with your kids, you are also teaching them how marriage is and they are learning a lot from the way I handle my own marriage.

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So am I teaching them that there's only one way? Am I teaching them to be disrespectful, to call each other names and things like that? So I feel like when you bring faith into this situation it makes you more humble and better. Okay, it makes me more humble and better at talking about faith.

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So thank you very much for that. So as we go towards the complete segment of the show, for a couple that is listening right now and realizes that we have been fighting each other when we should have been facing the problem together What is more practicality in addition to this week? To begin to rebuild our sense of teamwork Okay, so one practical thing and this can be used by even if you are not a Christian is remember that you are friends. So you need that friendship and someone might say hold on we

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don't have that friendship. Yes, remember when you are dating getting ready to get married there was a lot of friendship I mean that's why you got married to begin with. You didn't You didn't need me when you were getting married because you knew this is the right one. This is a friend.

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So if you can bring that friendship back and sometimes couples will say, I don't even remember but you can look at old pictures Because all those old pictures that you guys were taking If you save the text messages from 10 years ago or something, if you can look at them If you can look at, but just basically what you're doing is reminding yourself when times were good Because what you are doing is start to see her as the friend that you wanted to be with That's an easy one Once you do that and then also there's a lot of things you can do like for example

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if she calls and You are looking at your phone Don't just be like, oh here we go again. She's calling me. What does she want? What does she want? No Just look at our phone and be happy like literally be this be happy and smiling and hey What's up be happy and smiling when you are answering every time she calls be happy Because that also will transmit some energy across and she will feel that you are happy too Another thing is when you walk in the home. Let's say you were so upset from the drive

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before you got home or from work. Maybe work was so frustrating that day, but when you get into the house put a smile, put the phone down and put a smile and actually be happy that they have been waiting for you and now you are home and they're happy for you even if it's gonna take five minutes Hey, those little things can add a lot of connection and it will make it easy for you guys to get back to where you guys were which is a fun happy place. It's never all lost especially if you remember that

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you can be friends. Okay so are you saying that friendship in marriage is very important? Yes I'm I'm saying friendship in marriage is very important and friendship, I believe it's what will help you When you have that friendship, it will help you when you are dealing with let's say you are raising kids And all the things that go on raising kids, school fees Paying school fees, all these things that if you're dealing with a friend that makes it so easy But also this other part of intimacy and being lovers because the fact that you have a friend, it's a friend, it makes that part also much easier.

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So we need our friendship to bridge this gap. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much for that. So before I let you go, the final question that has for you is if you can live just one step where those maricapos can have a more fulfilling marriage life and enjoy their union together, what will it be? So if there's just one thing other than pray together I would say remember that she or remember that he is not your enemy. They are your friend and start viewing them that way. He's not your enemy and just actually

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your friend. I want to say very big thank you for getting in Northland. It's Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking your time to give me an opportunity to speak to your audience. Thank you very much. I just want to let you group because I would like you to give us where we should come connect with you and stay some more distance you do.

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So if somebody wants to connect with us, they can always come to our website which is Live Your Best Marriage. It's L-I-V-E, yourbestmarriage.com and they can also go to there They'll do what we have. We call the United Front Quiz and it's just a two three minutes quiz that's going to help them be able to know where they are, where they have a gap when it comes to their unity as a couple and what they need to work on in their marriage. So they can come to our website liveyourbestmarriage.com and they can take the United Front quiz.

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All right thank you very much so I want to say very big thank you once again and I wish you the very best of your good form.