The Foundations of OUR Relationship with Shaun Reynolds

Well, this is a pretty special episode to me, because I got an overwhelming response from my audience to hear how Shaun Reynolds, my amazing fiance and I, do life together to achieve health for ourselves, each other and our family.  I can’t tell you how much I loved recording it with him too.  Shaun is a really private person.  He does not do social media, he does not work in health, but is a corporate lawyer, working in Mergers and Acquisitions, so we couldn't have more different careers. And even though his colleagues listen to my podcast he was really supportive of my mission and agreeable to the interview.  What a guy!

Now, Shaun and I are in no way perfect, but we do share that too.  What we do have, I know for sure, is a real team effort and collaborative process that ensures health in our family.  From cooking, shopping, housework, finances, time management, careers and parenting.  We are 100% a team and that flows over to health and happiness in all areas of our life.  

We do not always agree and hit a huge bump in the road and did some couples therapy last year, but we talk about that too.  We also have no idea what we are doing as parents, so we regularly seek help and advice for that too.

This is our relationship.  Yours will be different and unique to you and your personalities, values and goals, but I hope this inspires you to create a healthy life together, no matter what that looks like for you.  And to my single listeners, when I was single, I would spend lots of time hanging out with couples who I wanted to have certain aspects of their relationship in my future relationship.  So, I hope this inspires you too, to find a partner who supports you and creates with you.  I LOVED recording this with Shaun, so I hope you love and enjoy it too.

In this episode we discuss:

• How we met - ofcourse!
• Knowing your own values
• Having relationship values
• Setting Goals together
• Working through your past
• Your partner’s stuff is not your stuff
• You can’t “fix” your partner
• Your greatest strength is often also your greatest weakness
• Holding Space for each other
• My negative patterns
• Shaun’s negative patterns
• Love Languages
• How we live life according to our goals and values
• Being discerning and cutting out stress
• My health and how Shaun has been with that
• Being on purpose and supporting each other through that
• How we got through isolation and what it meant for our careers, relationship AND finances
• Budgeting, managing finances and setting goals as a couple
• Mine and Shaun’s negative money habits that we both agree we need to work on
• Life is never fair or balanced and the weight constantly changes
• How we budget, plan, shop and cook food
• How we manage all the household chores 
• Why we went to therapy and what happened
• Parenting is the hardest thing we have ever done and what we’ve learnt from it.

I do mention a couple of podcast episodes that you might like to listen to.

Mindful Money with Canna Campbell

https://www.leilalutz.com/podcast/episode/23d26f90/mindful-money-with-canna-campbell

Raising Independent Children with Ferne Van Zyl

https://www.leilalutz.com/podcast/episode/223d5d46/raising-independent-children-with-ferne-van-zyl

Our relationships therapist - Suzi...