What Marriage Teaches You: Quirks, Closeness and Honest Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Name what you notice. Ashley said out loud that she had been needier lately, and that opened a conversation with her husband instead of a quiet frustration.
• Small habits change slowly. A pet peeve about sharing drinks softened over years of marriage and parenting, though not completely.
• Laugh at your own mistakes. Adam took the teasing about hitting a curb in a borrowed golf cart with good humor.
• Imperfect faith helps people. Adam told Ashley that women tell him her honesty has helped them as mothers and wives.
• Rewards can build habits. Adam's advice for getting kids who run on reward to stick with a workout plan was a calendar and a Friday payoff.

A last episode before a break

This episode of Beyond I Do was the last one before a summer pause. Adam Mesa explained that the team will rebuild the set, replace the green screen with a real wall and a small table of keepsakes, and move the show from 1920 by 1080 to 4K. The crew needs three to four weeks to wire, cable and test everything, and Adam expected the show to be off for about five to six weeks.

He said it takes an army to produce the podcast, and that this army is five people. In theory the show could have kept going, but the ministry does not have a team dedicated only to it. All of the content is free to watch, with no ads, and it relies on the generosity of people who give.

Adam also took a moment to thank his co-host. While he was not preaching one weekend, he drove a golf cart around his church picking up people who were late. Many women told him they watch the show. As Adam told Ashley, "you've normalized that it doesn't take a perfect person to be a Christian." He added that people can have doubts and struggles and still work through them. Ashley's reply was practical: once her schedule is set, she said, it stays set, which she credited to her ADHD.

Adam versus the curb

The team had a surprise ready. Andy and Phil had followed Adam in a second golf cart that weekend, with Phil watching out for his safety and Andy filming, and they had caught Adam driving over a curb.

Adam admitted he had missed it. The cart was a six-seater with a longer wheelbase than the four-seater he normally drives, and he had borrowed it from a friend. He went fully over the curb, which was part of a planter, with a family on board. He said he hit it two or three times because he kept taking the same route. In the middle of that, a dad's phone flew out of the cart and smashed on the concrete while his daughter was showing Adam her Pokemon cards. When Adam asked if the phone was okay, the dad said no, but that was what he had insurance for.

The room did not let him off easily. Adam blamed his Tesla, whose sensors beep at every curb and have made him lazy behind the wheel. Ashley piled on with her own driving stories, including a rental car in Tulum that ended up with a flat tire. A taxi driver stopped, changed it for them, and they gave him some money for it. Everyone had a story, and everyone laughed.

Ashley's honest reflection

Midway through, Ashley asked Adam a question she had been turning over. "I feel like I had a reflection the other day that I've been, like, really needy with you." She wondered if he had noticed. She guessed the reason might be that he has traveled less alone this year. Last year, looking at his calendar full of days away, she said she was in "mommy mode." Now she is in what she called "us mode," and she asks whether they can do things together.

Adam teased that she had become a little more annoying about it, and he gave examples: texts while he is working, reels she sends that she wants him to click right away, an Apple Cash request sent at 6:59 while the boys wanted tokens for arcade games. He also said plainly that he does not mind. Neither of them treated it as a crisis. They treated it as something to say out loud and laugh about.

Earlier in the show, Adam had described how what we carry inside shows up in how we treat the people closest to us. Ashley's question is a small, everyday example of that. She noticed a pattern in herself and said so.

The Friday dinner that did not happen

Adam gave a recent example. Aaron texted him and a couple of other guys about dinner that night. Adam told him he would check with Ashley. She said they were not available because of the boys, that a sitter would be hard to find on short notice, and that she did not want to put the boys to bed alone. Adam said it was a guys' dinner and not a couple's one. He did not want to fight, so he texted Aaron no.

Adam admitted that to him the reason seemed thin. It was around seven, dinner was local and would take about two hours, and Ashley needed help getting the boys to bed. Ashley walked away saying she did not care what he did, and the dinner ended up rescheduled.

Adam also explained how these groups work. When one friend says no, he said, "it just opens up the door for everyone else to be like, oh, I can't make it." The reverse is also true: when one person says yes, others follow. In this case his no became everyone's no.

Quirks you grow out of

The conversation turned lighter when Ashley talked about how Adam has changed. When they first dated, he would not share any food or drink, and he would get a fresh straw as if she had cooties. Not long ago, sitting on the couch after dinner, she asked for a sip of his soda. He said sure. "And I was like, man, you've come a long way."

Adam said their youngest, Thomas, deserves some of the credit. Thomas knows it is a pet peeve, so he grabs his dad's soda when Adam sets it down and takes a sip, laughing. Adam used to throw the drink out and get a new one. Now he just takes it back and drinks it. He says he is not fully over his germaphobia, but he is over it enough. Matthias, their older son, is another matter, because he drinks with his whole mouth on the bottle. Adam has coached him to keep his lips inside the opening so there is no backwash.

None of this is deep theology. It is a small picture of how a family slowly wears down the edges of habits and fears over years.

A summer boot camp and a reward calendar

Ashley closed with a question about her summer plan. She wants to run a morning boot camp with the boys twice a week, a thirty-minute workout. She said she wants them to learn how to be physical. The day before, Thomas had done ten burpees and two solid push-ups, which Adam called phenomenal.

Matthias is the harder case. Adam said he is more like his father: creative, with ADHD. "We process based off reward." He told Ashley to put the plan on a physical or digital calendar. If Matthias does both days that week, then on Friday he gets a set amount of Roblox money or Takis. If he skips, he gets nothing, and she should hold to it. Adam expected Matthias to test the rule for a week or two and then catch on, especially if Thomas is earning the reward and he is not.

Ashley asked whether making kids work out was too extreme. Adam said no. He pointed out that the grown-ups in the room all grew up in the nineties, when parents sent kids outside and did not want to hear them indoors.

What this means for you

This episode is mostly laughter, and the lessons are modest ones that apply to any home. A few questions you might ask yourself:

• Is there something you have noticed in yourself lately, like neediness or distance, that you could say to your spouse in a light, honest way?
• When a plan falls through, as the Friday dinner did, do you each get to say what is going on for you, without letting a quick no settle it?
• Which small habit of your spouse's have you stopped minding, and have you told them?

Adam and Ashley are not offering a formula. They are showing that a marriage can have room for teasing, honest reflection and a calendar with a Friday treat on it.