Are you operating in silos and feeling disconnected from your husband? The hustle of life makes it feel like there isn’t any time or energy left to pour into your marriage…I get it! But if you truly want to be successful in motherhood, keeping house, AND your business then you have to prioritize your marriage. I’m about to give you my best advice on how to have a healthier marriage with one hour a week. It all comes down to one simple system called the Sunday Sit Down.

Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast

It is my hope that you and your husband walk away from today’s post knowing exactly how to utilize one hour a week to begin to have a healthier marriage. But, before I dive in and give you steps to this system I am going to tell you why we do it.

The Sunday Sit Down for a Healthier Marriage

If asked the number one thing for a strong, healthy marriage, I’d say good communication. That is is what this system is, it’s a communication system. It’s a way for you and your husband to be in sync with each other without constantly arguing.

It is a system that will help you stay on the same team. We started this system early on and called it Sunday Sit Down. It’s an hour-long weekly communication system that has in fact strengthened our marriage and has made it so much healthier.

We led separate lives before getting married. I came into our marriage as a single mom, with a job, and a side business. Blaine had his own schedule and business as well so this system was born out of necessity.

It is a tool that has allowed Blaine to respect the life that I want to have as a wife and mother and for me to respect him. I was determined not to get lost in the sea of things that society expects women are supposed to do. I don’t know where we would be without it.

The Systemize Your Life Academy: Systemize Your Marriage

Find the Sunday Sit Down and much more in Systemize Your Marriage, a tier in the Systemize Your Life Academy. I found that high-performing husbands and wives that are committed to raising a family together, instead of going their separate ways to follow their own passions, did a system like the Sunday Sit Down.

It can be really hard. Each family has so many moving parts. You need to know who is picking who up from school and sports, and jobs and a home to manage so it’s very important to stay connected throughout the week. This system will help you nail down all those moving pieces so you two are working together.

So let’s dive into how to get this done. I’m going to give you four things to include in your Sunday Sit Down. The first two are absolutely necessary, the second two are a couple really awesome add-ons.

“That is is what this system is, it’s a communication system. It’s a way for you and your husband to be in sync with each other without constantly arguing.”

Google Calendar

This one is a non-negotiable if you want this system to work for you. So the first thing we do with Sunday Sit Down is open up our Google Calendar. You can use whatever calendar app you’d like. We utilize Google Calendar through our iPhones, setting it up with our Gmail/Google account.

So we sit down and first go through our appointments for the week. These are the things that if you don’t show up to there will be a consequence. We put our kid’s schedules in too. Setting up softball practice as a recurring event in the calendar, we just delete it if it is not happening that particular week.

Your Fundamental Needs

After putting those things in, we move onto our Fundamental Needs. Your Fundamental Needs are the other non-negotiable part to the Sunday Sit Down.

You then put each of your Fundamental Needs, or Great 8, in the Google Calendar

I know many of you have these for yourself and if you don’t there is a free workbook for you to get them. I hope at some point you’ve talked to your husband and he wants these too for himself.

This is going to help you to do marriage together. It will help you stop living these divided lives and strengthen your marriage. This is really black and white and so practical. It works really well for how men’s brains work.

The Sunday Sit-Down is one of our Great 8 that gets put on the Google Calendar. Here are the other seven:

• Workouts: This used to be something that we did very very heavily but lately, we have peeled back on this and it is kind of up in the air.
• Family time: We pick a day to have a family activity together. We usually schedule it on Monday, but sometimes we switch it around.
• Meal planning: That includes the grocery store. Typically we like to do that before we go into Monday.
• To-do list: This is a one or two-hour time block where we tackle the to-do list we create for the week together. We keep that down in the notes section in our Google Calendar and write it on our communication board .
• Cleaning: We write in which zone we’re going to clean within a two-hour block.
• Date night
• Personal time: This is actually the time when we work on our businesses. It is our responsibility to come to Sunday Sit Down with how many hours we need in our business that week. I typically need 15-20. We do this together to make sure we each are getting the time we need.

Going over your Google Calendar and your Fundamental Needs together are absolutely necessary for this simple system that I’m calling the Sunday Sit Down. If you just do these two things they are going to take you really really far. But let me give you a third and fourth.

“How Can I Support You?”

There are six questions that I got from Nancy Ray from the Work and Play podcast that Blaine and I used to go through on our Sunday Sit Down. I talk about them in this Podcast episode. But, the six questions really boil down to “How can I support you?”

She has several other questions such as “How can I improve next week?” and “What did I do well this week?” I loved them but they were very overwhelming to Blaine. He works at a fire department which is basically a frat house and lives with two girls and a very emotional wife. It’s very difficult for him to talk about his feelings so we compromised and talk about the one. Maybe you can do the 6 questions in your marriage.

But, having him answer that one question was very easy for him. His answer to me is sometimes that he needs me to be conscious about my spending this week or mine to him will be that I need him to really respect my work blocks. Whatever it is, it opens the door for communication in a safe and healthy way.

So these are things that have strengthened our marriage in just one simple system that we do over the weekend. Here is the fourth thing that you can talk about and probably should talk about that really has helped strengthen our marriage and keep it healthy..

Your Finances

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m so lousy, like I’m terrible with finances. I knew that I was looking for a husband that was going to help me be more fiscally responsible and financially wise.

Blaine’s amazing with finances. Some of you are wishing your husbands were amazing. But it’s ok, there’s going to be two different types of people in a marriage.

Even though I wasn’t good with finances, I didn’t want to be the woman that was clueless either. I didn’t want to be put on an allowance, I wanted to be involved in the conversation and have my opinions and ideas heard. So that is why talking about our finances once a week became very very important.

When we first got married, we hardcore stuck to Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar budgeting app, but it just didn’t work for us. When we moved to the paper envelope system he teaches, using paper bills, it was amazing, and that’s when I got really invested in our finances. So on Sundays we used to stuff the envelopes.

Now we use a hybrid budgeting system we created, which you can find inside the Systemize Your Life Academy.

Bottom line, you shouldn’t leave anyone in the dark about your finances, as it creates opportunities for bad things to happen when both of you are not communicating.

Four Things You Need to Go Over Once a Week With Your Husband

If you do this, I promise the amount of improvement you will see in your marriage will blow your mind.

• Go over your Google Calendar
• Schedule your fundamental needs in your calendar
• Ask “How can I support you?”
• Communicate about your finances

If you think your husband isn’t going to sit down with you on Sundays to go through these four steps, just ask him. Say, “Will you please try this for two weeks? Can we do this for two Sundays in a row? If it makes our life worse than what it is right now we don’t have to do it anymore.” Just be patient if he still says no.

If your marriage is on autopilot, you guys are winging it, and you’re operating in silos, come find out more details about the Systemize Your Life Academy. This whole post is the fourth tier inside the Academy. This partnership with your spouse is the missing piece in your life to stop making you feel like you’re being pulled in all directions in motherhood, business, and marriage.

It’s so important to get some systems in place to get you and your husband connected, healthy, and to stop living in these separate silos. If you just have more questions and are looking for some extra support right now pop any questions over inside the Facebook group, it’s an amazing free community. I can’t wait to see you over there, thanks for joining me!

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I learn more about fitting this into my week?

Seriously utilize our free Facebook community as much as you can-we’re all here for you and your success! Additionally, time blocking may be a really great way for you to lead a more productive and intentional life. You can check out my free time blocking workbook to create time blocks that will set you up for success in your day to day life-and in turn make time for you both to be able to have a Sunday sit down! I wish you and your partner the best of luck, you got this!