#93 - In Love After 33 Years (Life Goals) | Roger & Daniela Wetherall
We all have our own image of our ideal spouse. We have different preferences in choosing the person we believe is best for us. That ideal individual might also be the one we ought to marry.
Despite those characteristics, traits, and looks we often see first, it is up to God whom he has planned for us to marry. We ask for His guidance to send us the right person in our lives, oblivious to his plans for us.
Whatever the cause or circumstance, whether we are praying to God for it in preparation or out of desperation, we all have one thing in common: our faith in God's ability to provide us with our hearts' desire of a so-called "ideal companion" or "our forever."
In this episode, we are joined by Roger and Daniela Wetherall, a blessed couple who have been married for 33 years. They are conducting a free webinar program called The Marriage Course designed to help couples invest in their relationship and build a strong marriage.
If you’re interested to learn about how a God-designed relationship or marriage works, be inspired and listen to Roger and Daniela Wetherall talk about their marriage and how they trusted God to understand the purpose of their family's journey. Listen to Episode 93 for more!
How Roger and Daniela met
The idea of commitment
Daniela’s maternal instinct as her saving grace
A difficult time in their relationship
Importance of praying to God
Significance of relinquishing expectations
Healthy way of interpreting “making your husband”
Falling in love again after 21 years of marriage
Roger and Daniela Wetherall’s journey of marriage
A good trajectory for the future
Importance of being proactive in a relationship
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love
Welcome back to Love, Life and Legacy, the podcast dedicated to helping you navigate these hypersexualized times of ours. And in today's episode, we have a couple that I really admire. That's why they're on the show, is I hand-selected this couple based off of how they communicate with each other. I've known them from afar. We've collaborated on a few things here and there. But I don't know them deeply personally. But I've always admired their relationship because they overtly love each other. And even on social media, the wife is constantly hitting on her husband and talking about how good-looking he is. And I'm always like, this is so cool. It's something that I would love to have in my future. And I'm sure you would too. That's why I invited them because I felt like, why don't we plug into their couples so that we can understand how to build a clear vision for what love looks like at that phase in our lives. They've been married and blessed for 33 years now. And if you're already married for many years yourself, then you can gain a lot of tips from them to find yourself in a better situation. Because in this episode, we go into some dark nights of the soul that they've been through together as a couple. But also, what they've been doing right to build this romance that they have because truth be told, it sounds like based on their story. They weren't really in love in the beginning, but they are deeply in love now 33 years into their marriage. So what are they doing? And how can we learn from them, regardless if you are single, newlywed, or have been in a relationship for a long time? We can all learn a lot from this couple. So please welcome Roger and Daniela Wetherall.
Andrew Love
Hi. Welcome back, everybody. So we really do have a wonderful couple. I've scouted this couple personally throughout the entire interwebs. I've found this couple because there's something very special about a couple who publicly flirts online with one another. And they're always complimenting each other, and it's very admirable. And this would definitely fall into the category of life goals because no couple is perfect at all. And everybody goes through their trials. And we will get into that. But this couple, in particular, I've noticed has invested a lot into their marriage and into themselves. And I feel like they have something special. It's something that I admire. And so I wanted to plug into them and find out what magic we can coax out of them that you can plug into formulate your vision for how to create an ideal situation for your marriage, for your relationship. So we have Roger and Daniela Wetherall, and they are from Bridgeport, technically. But they're also both from very far away. So respectively, where were you born? And then collectively, where did you meet?
Roger Wetherall
Well, I was born in Australia, in a mud hut. No, I'm just kidding. I grew up in the countryside in a farming community in Australia. And it was a very rural kind of upbringing. So I lived on a dairy farm for a while, and we owned our own little hobby farm of about 17 acres. That's small for Australia. And then my wife, on the other hand...
Daniela Wetherall
I was born and raised in Milan, Italy.
Andrew Love
Fancy.
Daniela Wetherall
The fashion capital of the world. And I actually was raised in a very open-minded family. When I was six years old, my parents decided that I should be a linguist. And they sent me to a British school in the afternoon. I would go to an Italian school in the morning. And the British school in the afternoon. Then at age 10, I studied French. At age 13, German, and so on. So until I learned about six languages. And because of that, I travel a lot throughout the world.
Roger Wetherall
So she was the sophisticated city-dwelling lady, and I was the crocodile wrestling Australian. If you've seen that movie, Crocodile, that describes how we are.
Daniela Wetherall
You are much more handsome than that.
Andrew Love
I can definitely see the fashion influence on you. There are so many accessories on your beautiful wife. She's got a lot of fashion still going on.
Daniela Wetherall
Mine's jeweled from within. Just kidding.
Roger Wetherall
She knows how to dress. She knows how to put things together. And some of that has rubbed off on me over the years.
Daniela Wetherall
Yes, he just knows how to undress.
Andrew Love
That's important too. We allow such things. So your context for life, I'm sure it's very different. And at some point, you met. And did you meet? Please let us know how this happened.
Roger Wetherall
When we were matched personally by Reverend Moon in 1989, January 9, 1989. So some of our listeners probably know about this matching process. But just to quickly explain it, Reverend Moon at that time called for people from all around the world to come to Korea if they wanted to receive a spouse recommended by him. So I was working as a missionary in Australia at that time. I joined the church 10 years earlier. And my wife was in Italy. And we both separately received this invitation, so we turned up in Korea. And we were all in a big room together, and Reverend Moon basically picked us out of the crowd for each other.
Daniela Wetherall
He actually picked him out for me, because he came over. Came and looked at me really intently. And I knew that a search started a lot of trepidation. But I just completely relinquish all my fears. And I felt that he knows better than I do. We were both 28 at that time. So I just knew. I left a very privileged life behind. And so at that point, I was open to really embracing what his choice was, and complete trust. So when he actually stood between Roger and me, we were sitting in front of each other. And he was staring at me, and I was so annoyed with this man looking at me like, hello?
Roger Wetherall
Because she was the most beautiful woman.
Daniela Wetherall
Yeah, yeah, right. That's not true. When Reverend Moon stood between us and he motioned us to stand up, I don't know, the idiot. But actually, I had this incredible feeling that we were like two hearts coming together. Two halves of an apple, of a fruit, perfectly matching each other.
Andrew Love
Was that an intuition, that you had this feeling?
Daniela Wetherall
Reverend Moon asked me to get up. And then he asked Roger to get up. And he looked at us and smiled. And so when I saw that he was the person who had been staring at me, I was really conflicted. But I left it on the side. And I had this feeling of two halves perfectly coming together. And that was about 30 seconds that I had that feeling for, and then it totally disappeared when reality hit. And Roger looked at me and said, we bow and went out and he says, do you speak English? Because my name tag says, Italy.
Andrew Love
So you had some time to get to know each other? At this point, you weren’t troves. You were just, the proposal was on the table, so to speak.
Roger Wetherall
Yes. So we went downstairs into another room and we talked for a little while. And I think for about maybe two hours, an hour maybe.
Daniela Wetherall
It was maybe 30 minutes.
Andrew Love
Time is relative. Time is very relative, apparently.
Daniela Wetherall
Yes. He said to me, I'm so tired and jet-lagged. I'll see you tomorrow. We decided to give it a try. So we went and signed the records. That was a book that you had to put your signature on.
Roger Wetherall
We really took it on faith. I think we really agreed to this out of our faith in God, and trust. In my experience, when I first saw Daniela sitting in this room full of people, I saw in her something really special. It was like a glow that was coming from her spirit. It's like most people in a room are just sitting there passively receiving, but I really felt like she was giving. There was this energy that she was giving out. And I think that's something I've always perceived about her. I also felt at the same time, as I saw that, it would not be easy to be married to somebody like that because it would be a very intense experience. And so I had that kind of intuition right from the beginning. And that has very much proven to be true. So after we first got married, which happened three days later, after we received that matching, we actually committed to each other in a marriage ceremony. But then really, we started to get to know each other after that point.
Andrew Love
Okay, so there's a couple of things there. So one, just note is that she thought you were staring at her, but really, you were geeking out on her aura, on her spirit. And then she was just creeped out by you or annoyed by you, as she said. But there's this whole notion. And also, many people that we deal with that we talk to young people, there's a lot of pressure to really focus a lot of your energy and attention on this process of being in love. It seems like you completely did not go through that phase. You went straight to being married. And so it sounds like, through your own words, you said you did it on faith. But were you at any point worried that you were missing out on something because you were not going through this? I forget the term. Like googly eyes, just totally puppy love. Were you worried about that at all? Or was that completely not a factor or whatsoever?
Roger Wetherall
Well, for me, it wasn't a factor. My perspective on that is that I don't really know myself. We think we know who we are, but actually, we have very little idea about our faults and our character, flaws, and this kind of thing. Then I know the kind of person that I would perhaps like to be married to, but the person that I would like to be married to is not necessarily the person who is going to be the best for me in terms of my spiritual growth and my ability to learn how to love. So when I went into this marriage, I was really thinking, God, I want to put this into your hands so you can choose the person who is going to help me to grow the most, and who I can also help to grow the most as well. Because I really saw love as a growing thing. It's not just a feeling, it's not an emotion. For me, love is a commitment. My wife asked me once in a heated argument, what is love for you? What does it mean? And I said, commitment. And she was so upset with me because she's Italian.
Roger Wetherall
She wanted something more romantic than that, maybe.
Daniela Wetherall
Actually, for me, it was really a question of faith in God because I could have gotten married many times before. And I made the choice that marriage would have to be for love, not because of privileged situations. And I really had to marry somebody whom I deeply love. And I love God at that point more than anything else. So I thought to myself, if I love God more than anything else, then the expression of God's love in a man will eventually come through. So it was totally out of faith. But the more I got to know him, the more I started doubting that. I really felt, well, somebody says, I'm blessed. But that's not exactly how I feel. I felt cursed. I felt cursed actually. What were my limitations? Because Roger was exactly everything I disliked in a man. Everything.
Andrew Love
Do you mean from a deep character standpoint or personality, or all of the above?
Daniela Wetherall
From everything, everything. People tell me, oh, your husband is so handsome. I was saying, who are you talking about? It's just like, do you really know what handsome is? And this idea of commitment, for me, was at the very bottom of my list. For me, actually love is making sure the other person is happy, fulfilled, to bring joy to somebody. That was what I felt and had experienced love to be. A commitment was a part of it, but definitely not on the top list. And I could feel that he had no clue. He was clueless. He was clueless in every possible sense, just like we would go out to eat together and he would eat his meal. And by the end of the meal, he would say, oh, by the way, do you want to try something, when he was completely full. He would say, would you like to try some of my food? That's something that you actually offered to your spouse at the beginning, not when you are satiated. To the world it's like, where's this guy coming from? Which planet is that? I really had to go within myself and find out who I am, because I can't change him. The only thing I can change here is myself. And that's when the puzzle started coming together.
Andrew Love
I have so many questions. My brain is lit up right now. That puts you in a very difficult position at that point because you don't see the value of this person. You don't understand why they're in your life. They don't feel like a good addition to your life. They feel like a negative addition to your life. And at that point, you don't value commitment. So what kept you in the game? Honestly, we deal with a lot of couples, and that's where many couples are at. And a lot of people don't make it out of that dark place where you just feel like, I don't think that we can negotiate this. I think this is beyond my ability. I just can't like this kind of person. So how did you move on from that difficult place? And also, at some point, I like to hear Roger. You have a wife, at that time, who completely thinks you're a goofball or does not appreciate you. Was she very vocal about this fact? And was that really hurtful to you? I just want to talk about this time because the couple that I see in front of me right now is not at all like this one that you're describing from the past.
Daniela Wetherall
One of my strong suits is being very maternal. I'm an extremely maternal person. At age four, five, I remember my dream was to get married. And I had targeted a little classmate in my kindergarten class, and I took care of him every lunch. I made sure he would eat, make sure he would have his drink. And I had this incredible feeling of, oh my goodness, marriage is the most beautiful thing. And I come from a very loving family. My parents, my father, were totally in love with my mother. They loved each other and their children. So it was my dream to get married and have children. That came to play a big role because I saw Roger as my child. And as my child, I felt a responsibility towards God. And I felt, what if I abandoned him? He's going to be lost. It's just, there's no hope for him. And that sense of maternal instinct constantly working on me was my saving grace, and it lasted a few years actually before I was able to switch. I really feel that this is my child. It's my responsibility. And also the understanding, at one point, listening to Reverend Moon, looking at us sisters, women saying, you create your own husband. You create a husband you want. And that was like, the little light bulb went into my head like, okay, if I don't particularly like what I see, what can I do to help my husband become the ideal person? But I took responsibility for that, too. So it really, really made a big difference in the way I was able to deal with a very unfavorable situation, at that moment.
Andrew Love
I have more questions, but I do want to hear from the other half.
Roger Wetherall
So from my perspective, this was a very difficult time. We would have discussions. And it was very clear to me from our relationship that there were many things about me that she didn't like. In general, I really was very much in love with my wife this time. It was a hard experience. But part of me could always see the vision in the future of what our relationship could become if we could get past this. And I had a tremendous sense of, I guess, almost doing a mission or sense of purpose in trying to build that relationship together. I remember once, my wife asked me, we went on a little trip together. And she took a sauna and she said, why don't you leave? Why don't you just give up, and go and find somebody else? And I said to her something like because I see that one day, you will love me so much that all the pain and all of the suffering that we're going through will just disappear.
Daniela Wetherall
I think I got off the bus.
Andrew Love
That sounds like some Jedi mind trick. You will love me.
Roger Wetherall
That's what it was. Yes. I remember she was really upset.
Andrew Love
It's so funny because hearing that from a man that you love would be probably the most romantic thing that you could ever hear. But if it's somebody that irks you, it's probably the most annoying thing, because you're like, I just want you to leave.
Roger Wetherall
So I think from my perspective, a lot of it was just perseverance. Just to hold on and never let go, and to just keep on coming back. There were many times that we had the discussion like, this is not going to work. And I just prayed, I brought God into that discussion and I asked God, what do you want? And the answer was always, just hang on. Just keep going a little bit longer, and things are going to get better. That's what we did.
Andrew Love
So this is very important information. So I'd like to dig a little bit more because that's analogous to many people's situation, whether it's with their own recovery from some addiction or whatever. It's like the dark night of the soul situation, and there's this desire to just go another five feet like, okay, I'm just not going to give up. But it sounds like for you, what drove you was a vision. And so I'd like to ask a little bit more clarifying questions about, how clear was your vision? Or are you saying that it was just you felt deep in your heart that there would be some inevitable future where you did love each other, and you can see it, or was it very fuzzy? Or you just felt like somewhere in this fog over there that there's going to be happiness? I'd love to hear about this vision more because we're big on vision.
Roger Wetherall
Sometimes it was clear and sometimes it was a little foggy. But I think it was always there. And sometimes I'd have these very clear ideas about how I could see us in the future with a family, with kind of relationship that we would have where we would really support each other, and our differences could really be the strengths that we could support each other in these different areas like her vitality and her sense of culture and brightness and my practicality and my down to earth-ness, or wherever you want to call it. So I could see the value in our relationship and how that could work. But other times it was, I have to confess, it was a little hard to see that vision.
Daniela Wetherall
I had to really resort to God because I came to a point actually where I asked God, you gotta show me. What do you love about this man? I want to feel what you feel for him. And that was my prayer. At that point, we had already started family life. And we had come to an agreement, we found each other in the midst of all this suffering, and it took us over five years. There was still something that wasn't clicking. So I just went to God and said, I want to feel what you feel for him. And when God listened to my prayers and responded, it was like, wow. If you feel the love that God has for somebody, there is no way that you cannot love that person with the same love. So that was really a magical moment because I felt we were actually on the bed. We were joking with each other. And suddenly, the room filled up with this warmth, energy, and love that was just like, well, where am I? What happened? What's going on? And he was completely ignorant about my prayer, and what I was going through. I just felt this love coming through me for my husband. And it was really like a profound experience. So who am I not to love somebody that God loves so deeply? So I surrendered. I surrender all my resistance. And I remember we started tickling each other, we started being like two little kids playing with each other. And it was like the most beautiful and pristine existence because I tapped into the origin of what love is.
Daniela Wetherall
It was like night and day between before that point, and afterward, it was really just from a transformational experience that we had together. Because she could surrender to that love and to love me. And then I could transition from being her child to being her husband, and being her father and being her brother. And we could have this completely different flexible kind of relationship from that point on. So it was no longer enemies. We actually started to really experience those different kinds of relationships.
Andrew Love
That's amazing. And so, this idea that you brought up before, Daniela, about making your husband. I wanted to tap into that. You said that Reverend Moon, at some point, said that you need to make your own husband or something like that. And that really stood out to me, because that can be interpreted in a couple of different ways depending on where you're at. One is like, I'm going to mold this person into something that makes sense to me, whereas what yielded these amazing results was you relinquishing this desire to mold him, and just in fact to let him be himself and to love him as he is in a sense. So how do those two things work coincidently? This idea of making your husband but also loving him for who he is.
Daniela Wetherall
I think one of the most important things is to relinquish expectations because expectations are like a boomerang. You throw and it comes back to kill you. Once you have expectations on anything or anybody, you will always be unexpectedly unhappy because your mind is going to gear up, your heart is going to gear up to a certain level and then reality hits you. So you relinquish expectations and you start looking at somebody the way God looks at that person. So like Roger loves to turn on all the lights for instance, and he never turns them off. So I would leave little notes that "God created the lights, and Roger never turned it off." And I haven't put it all around the switches. So instead of being irritated constantly by what this man was doing, I started looking at things that he was doing and seeing the fun side of it, started to decide, and chose not to get irritated. I chose not to be turned off. And above all I chose, I chose to love this man which was something that I thought that if God exists and God is true, and Jesus is real and what we believe is real, there is no way that we cannot love somebody. So I switched my lens and saw, I was filtering everything that was coming to me. So I threw away those lenses and just looked at this person and said okay, there must be a diamond in there. Right now, all I see is the black of the call. There must be a diamond. I could feel this man was a pure diamond. That was like, there's something inside of me. God had made that clear to me. The question was, how do you chill away? I will go with a hatchet like, oh, with a hammer and all you learn at my level of polishing until what is not needed sheds. Where he himself feels like well, maybe if I want to make my wife happy, I will turn off the lights. What if I'll close the drawer, or I will do certain things because there is eagerness in and coming towards the other person. And really try to embrace and understand where he was coming from, and the fact that we were coming from completely different places. And coming to a point where I envied actually where he was born, how he grew up. Something for me, rural Australia, oh my gosh, that's a horrible place. Instead of feeling like, wow, that's amazing. He was driving a tractor at six years of age. My parents would not have even brought me anywhere close to a tractor, let alone that six years of age. So learning that he loves science, I love history. I learned how to love science. Just going constantly out of my comfort zone, cutting out those expectations and seeing, what is there that can shine even more beautifully? And the more I do that, and it's never-ending because you never come to a point where that stops. Perfection and completion are constantly in motion. Constantly. The moment you'd say, well, we have achieved that. You're that. You're basically that. So for me, every day when I wake up, it's a new beginning. A new way that we relate to each other. It's a new way of expressing my love for him. Appreciation, it's just like, let's renew it every day because the only time we have is now.
Andrew Love
Would you say that a healthy way of interpreting that of making your husband would be, you're creating that husband with the stories that you're telling about him, meaning the way that you feel about him, the things that you're reaffirming in your mind about him, either you're creating him to be a monster by reaffirming these stories that are going on in your head, or you're looking for that diamond, like you mentioned? You're trying to find out who God sees him as, and tell yourself that story because, in that sense, you're creating a relationship with the person that you see. And that person can be interpreted in many different ways. And in the beginning, it seems like based on this resistance that you were talking about, you're resisting really truly looking at who he was, and you were just reaffirming the story of who you saw him as.
Daniela Wetherall
I think that I came into this marriage with luggage. I was engaged before I decided to break this engagement to embrace something different. My idea of man, I will say, I traveled around the world extensively. But I always thought I would marry an Italian man. There will be no other possibilities. We actually have a saying in Italian that goes [foreign language] which means you choose your own spouse the same way that you choose your cows. They have to be from your own herd, from your own country. So that was very much inculcated in my mind. So the idea, and I told my dad, don't worry, I'll never marry in Australia. So it's just like because we're in Italy, Australia is at the opposite end of the world. So I really had all these ideas of what a husband would be like. It was part of me. And to deal with this completely opposite idea, I had to really choose to focus on what was good. It's a choice I make with everybody because unless you choose goodness unless you really concentrate and have given and receive with goodness, you start looking at all the frailties and all the other things. There's no way that you can find happiness, no way. So by discovering all the goodness in him and making sure that his insecurity was taken away, it was like, don't be insecure, I'm here. I'm here to stay. I will love you, and we'll go through all difficulties together. That really creates a completely different background in the relationship you're in, completely different. But it's a choice, and it's a choice that you make every day even with your children, with your neighbors, with anybody.
Andrew Love
Yes, and part of the reason why I decided to reach out to you both is because of a recent post that you put on Facebook about how handsome your husband was. So at the very beginning of this conversation, you were saying how you couldn't even see that. He hasn't gotten younger, but he's somehow become more attractive to you because of how you see him. And so this is truly inspiring, because you're telling a story about him, and you are affirming that he is handsome to you. And that's creating what he is. It's like manifesting what you insist is true. So that's really admirable. And I do have questions about what saying about five years in, you had this mystical moment. You're given the opportunity to truly love this man that had been in your life for five years up until that point. And so since then, have you been doing a lot of intentional work on your marriage as well? This is for any couples out there to understand that, because some people might hear that story. And we have a lazy mind that's like, oh, so if I just pray then everything goes away. And then I'll be okay. But I'm sure there's been some effort that you put into your marriage since then.
Daniela Wetherall
Actually, we had that experience, and then we started having children. And they happen very quickly. We gave life and love to our children. And so for me, it was like, nothing counted anymore. I wouldn't even put weight makeup on because I had to be able to kiss my kids anytime I wanted, and that kind of situation. Ten years of total devotion. Day and night, the children slept in the bed with us. We have a humongous bed. We made all the sheets because there was nothing that was fitting them. My mother and I, we're sewing the sheets together. But we realized at one point that we had a wall. And that as the children started growing older, I remember at one point feeling, who is this man? He's the father of my children and we created this, but always he really. I actually felt ready to walk out.
Andrew Love
Again?
Roger Wetherall
Yep. It wasn't just smooth sailing. Actually, it was a little longer than 10 years after. That was maybe 12-15 years or something.
Daniela Wetherall
This happened after 21 years of marriage. I really felt that this whole thing doesn't make sense. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life with this person? And it was a shocking, shocking, shocking, shocking feeling. And I think that there was a lot of turmoil in our relationship. But I realized at that point that we had not built a life together. Everything was about the children, everything. And I wanted the children to have the best father, who was the one who would do things with them. But we were missing out on our togetherness. And we really had to make an effort to build our relationship like going ballroom dancing, doing yoga together. We did line dancing. We came out with all sorts of things. And we discovered that we actually could have a lot of fun together. And it was fantastic to suddenly discover that, well, not only is he my husband, he's also a tremendous companion and partner. We can have fun and laugh. And we had to completely rebuild our relationship on a very different level.
Roger Wetherall
She discovered I could actually dance where she thought I had cerebral palsy before.
Daniela Wetherall
I discovered that you couldn't learn how to dance because every time we danced before it was like, no, thank you.
Roger Wetherall
You're stepping on my toes. Get off my toes. Yes, I know.
Daniela Wetherall
But we had so much fun.
Roger Wetherall
Yes, it was also about learning to communicate with each other as well. And sitting down and having long conversations about things that mattered.
Andrew Love
Would you say that you were falling in love for the first time at that point in your marriage, about 21 years into your marriage?
Roger Wetherall
No, it was the second time.
Daniela Wetherall
I think that what changed for me is that for 21 years, I said yes to an idea. I had entered this covenant not because of him, but because of God. And after 21 years, I had to choose him. And that was really what made a huge difference. It was like I had to say, I choose you, Pikachu. That is exactly what happened. We had a recommitment ceremony in which we involved our children and had them read pieces of the Bible, our scriptures. And I felt and I feel today that if I could go back in time, I would say to God, please, please God, give me that man as my husband. That's where I have fell. Where I would say to God, he's the only husband I ever want to have. Wishes me an incredibly beautiful experience every time, because it's very real. It's very real to have come to this point. We've been blessed almost, in January it's going to be 33 years. So to have that feeling of asking God, he's the only man I want to marry and be married to. For me, it's fantastic.
Andrew Love
So do you feel that the entire journey was really necessary for you to be able to get to this point? Or do you feel like you could have saved some of that suffering off? Or do you feel like it all had a purpose?
Daniela Wetherall
When I look back, I think that the chances of our marriage to be successful were very slim, honestly speaking, knowing myself. Now, because of him, I take full responsibility for the way I felt. So for me, this is an incredible victory that Rogers says to me, I tamed you. It is wild. In a way, I was a very wild person within the limits, but a very independent person. Really on my own, not to be molded in a certain way. So I had to come and make the decision I chose. I had to choose, not decide. I decided to follow God's path, but I had to choose in the end. A decision is very reversible, but a choice is something that gives you full responsibility, ownership. When I choose, I have ownership over my choice. So being able to tell my husband, I choose you, I choose you. Of course, with God's blessing is something that was very, very, very powerful. And can I say things could have been better? Yes, sure. I could have been a much wiser woman, but who knows? Who knows what we carry with us? Who knows what is behind us and around us? And who knows what we are "restoring" in life, or fixing in a sense to speak in what common language? We don't know.
Roger Wetherall
Yes, perhaps there were decisions that we could have made or things that we could have done earlier on in our relationship to avoid some of the difficulties that came up if we had only known, or if somebody had told us or educated us about these things. But on the other hand, I also feel that because of the experiences that we've had, we are now in a position to really help others who are struggling with those issues as well. Or to hopefully prevent them from going through those issues. And we're really thinking about preventative measures. What can you do to help a couple avoid suffering, avoid the crisis, avoid getting into those situations where they're talking about divorce?
Daniela Wetherall
I just came back from Italy, and I'm in touch with my childhood friends, high school friends. I am the only one who was married once and has three children. The majority of them are in their second, third marriages. Hardly anybody has any children. Maybe one has one. One has two. They always tell me, you raise the average of the Italian population if you have three children. But when I look at my friends, I am shocked. Shocked at what I saw, because that could have been me. They laugh at me. They say, you're a true Catholic. It's, I guess, a compliment coming from them. But it's a reality that people just go through hell and back, and they don't know what they're doing. They're lost. They are so lost that it's frightening. And so Roger and I feel that we really need to help people. We need to help people from going down that narrow valley of death because you die every time you go through those experiences. Every time you go through a divorce, every time you go through a failure in a relationship, you're dying. There's a part of you that dies. And that's really sad, really, really sad.
Andrew Love
Let's talk about that we have a bunch of people who listen to this, who are in the early phases of a relationship. They just got married, they just got blessed perhaps. And you just said that if they don't know what they're doing, your friends in Italy and I would agree that a lot of people have no idea what they're building. They're just going by their feelings. They're just going day-to-day, not much intentionality. So if you could offer some just very brief words of advice for a young couple, let's say, to avoid a lot of pain. Is there some basic thing that they can do now at the beginning of their relationship that could put them in a good trajectory for the future?
Daniela Wetherall
For me, communication is number one. I am a communicator, and he wasn't. I would ask him a question and he would say to me, I'll tell you in three days. But I'm asking you now...
Andrew Love
Like the government.
Daniela Wetherall
Yes. That used to drive me insane. So to learn how to communicate and to be honest and sensitive in your communication is very important. Because if I let him know how I feel, and he's able to develop his listening skills and understands, and I do that there is less possibility of misunderstandings. Because when you start misunderstanding each other, you make decisions that are not accurate. So really learning, being proactive, and even just doing things together, even just praying together and sharing. We go on a walk almost every day, and that is our communication time. If we have something to discuss, we do that while we walk. Finding time to really spend together, one-on-one. These are not just the intimate moments, but really moments outside the intimacy where you are intimate on a very different level. But that really helps. And even just doing things like the marriage course, what is it, the 10th time, we're going to be doing it now? We're still learning. It's amazing. Sometimes I think, oh my gosh, is it possible that we're doing, we're learning this course again? And yet, every time we learn something special.
Daniela Wetherall
The little boxes...
Roger Wetherall
I think being proactive in your relationship is really important. The tendency is to become complacent. And to think that everything is going to work out or everything is okay, especially as a guy, in their little world and they're working away, and they're doing everything and they think everything's fine...
Roger Wetherall
In the early years and in their comfort zone, but actually, a woman's world can be completely different. You can drift apart through inaction, and that happens in so many couples. it's not that they hate each other. They argue and they fight all the time. But because they're not proactively working on their relationship and investing in it, then they wake up one morning and they're separate. Because a relationship is a growing thing. And a growing thing means that it has to be fed, it has to move, it has to change constantly. Otherwise, it will die. So if you're not feeding your relationship, it's going to die. It's really important to do the courses, to read the books, to spend time talking with each other, to spend time doing things together with each other in order to build that relationship.
Daniela Wetherall
And doing things for others too. Doing something that is real for others like taking care of your neighbors, taking care of friends together. When we started working together with the same mission in mind, it brought us closer and closer and closer because that we can actually bring in a higher source of love power that unfolds us both in a deeper way.
Andrew Love
Yes, thank you so much. I personally took a lot of notes. I just think it's a really important conversation. This is a part of our world that is presently not working well, which is that a lot of wisdom from people who've been there, been through their thing, and come out the other side is not being connected to the next generation just because there's this generational disconnect presently in society. I think throughout the world as far as I can tell. So I find this extremely valuable. And I know a lot of people will. And I appreciate you not just for being on the podcast, of course for that, but especially for all your hard work because you are making it easier for the rest of us because you do have that wisdom that is not even remotely theoretical, it's etched into your soul. Because you have to go through these lessons time and again until you really got them. So I appreciate every couple that can go through that and survives. If everybody quits, then it would make it a lot easier for everybody else to quit. You guys didn't quit, so I really appreciate all of your hard work. It hasn't gone unnoticed or unappreciated. So thank you.
Daniela Wetherall
I think it is much more than surviving. Surviving always keeps you at this level. We've been thriving, and that is when you know, yes, we made mistakes, but we are thriving. We didn't just say, okay, let's keep going. We took whatever failure and turned it into gold. And I think that is something that is yours forever. You'll own forever. And can only build on it.
Andrew Love
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