Episode 225 - Your Relationship Bank Account

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I’m Back From Sabbatical — and It’s Time to Build Your Relationship Bank Account

After seven months away, I finally unpacked my microphone… and I’m starting with one of the most powerful concepts for your marriage: your relationship bank account.

In this episode, I share why the best time to invest in your marriage is when things are going WELL. You’ll learn how small, positive moments build emotional resilience, why conflict feels so intense early in marriage, and how to become a calming, steady presence in your relationship even when life gets stressful.

We’ll talk about:

• What your “relationship bank account” really is

• Why regular deposits matter more than big dramatic gestures

• How women and men connect differently — and why that matters

• Why now (this calm season of the year) is the perfect time to rebuild momentum

• How to start showing up as a more positive presence in your marriage

Free resources mentioned in this episode:

🎁 13 No-Prep At-Home Date Ideas — simple, Niddah-friendly ways to build connection with no babysitter and no planning: kaylalevin.com/datenight

🎥 Free live webinar: How to Add More Lightness & Fun to Your MarriageJoin me for practical tools, real-time coaching, and a marriage reset you can feel: kaylalevin.com/webinar

There is no reason you can’t walk into Pesach feeling lighter, clearer, and more connected in your marriage — and this episode is the perfect place to start.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, my friends. Kayla Levin here. I'm back. I'm so happy to be back. I just unpacked my microphone and set it back up after seven months. I can't believe it. It was like a little bit surreal. It's one of the first things I did when I started the sabbaticals. I took the microphone off my desk because. Who has a podcasting microphone on their desk if you're just a mom, you know?

[00:00:20] So anyway, it's back. I'm so happy it's back. I'm excited for today's podcast.

[00:00:24] I wanna talk to you about your relationship bank account. This is an idea that's come up on this podcast before, but I'm just feeling very, very strongly that this is just such an amazing time to be focusing on this and prioritizing this. So let me tell you what's going on.

[00:00:39] So first of all, it's January 1st. Like it or not, people are starting to think about goals, right? Especially if you're like me and you run your own business. So goals are definitely, you know, on your mind. But you know, if sometimes I feel like we, we set our goals in ELL and we kind of just like go underwater a little bit for the winter and then we come up and the whole world starts doing like New Year's resolutions and we're like, Hey.

[00:01:03] I did those, but also this energy feels really good. And so that's one of the reasons I think this is a great time to start thinking about what's going on in my marriage right now and what could I be doing to bring it up a level. But the thing that I think we always, always underestimate, and this is why I'm always talking about how do you get your marriage back on the front burner.

[00:01:24] And I'm actually gonna have, I have two amazing resources for you that I'm gonna share with you at the end of this podcast. To help you do this, but I want you to be putting your marriage on the front burner as much as possible. You know what? It can't be the first priority every single day. Sometimes it's just choosing between managing and making it through the day.

[00:01:44] And you guys are like giving each other a high five, you know, as you head to bed and that's basically all you can handle. 'cause you are just so packed and busy. But it can't be like that all the time. And I wanna tell you why, even if your marriage is going really smoothly. This is why, because life does get stressful or things do come up.

[00:02:08] Maybe you've never had to make a huge financial decision before, or maybe you're starting to enroll your kids into schools and you realize you don't see eye to eye. As we go through life with our spouses, with our husbands, new things are always coming up. And most of the time, hopefully those things are things that we can kind of see eye to eye or we can hear the other person's perspective and it allows us to be curious and open.

[00:02:36] But sometimes those things create conflict and sometimes the stress of life creates conflict and sometimes the habits that you kind of just. Put up with for a long time, but now he's still doing it and you kind of thought by now maybe he wouldn't be doing it and he's still doing it and it's kind of driving you crazy and you feel a little resentful creates conflict.

[00:02:58] Okay. Being married to someone means there's going to be conflict. And our ability, our resource when we're in conflict with our husband is how much cash do we have in the bank? And this is the emotional bank. Okay. So this is a concept I learned first from Steven Covey. He talks about this in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

[00:03:22] This is something he talks about that is true for all relationships. So we're talking about marriage day, but this is true for your coworkers, for your boss, for your children. The longer you're in a relationship with someone, if you've been taking advantage of opportunities to have positive, connected experiences.

[00:03:39] Now women, I'm gonna take a small aside here. Positive, connected experiences does not have to mean you are staring into each other's eyes and having a deep, meaningful conversation. That is how women like to connect. Men. Go fishing. What did they talk about? Nothing. How long were they fishing? Eight hours.

[00:04:00] Did they enjoy themselves time of their life? They love that guy. They're great friends. Okay. I know our husbands aren't going fishing for eight hours, but like it's a great example. Men. Bond over a shared experience. Okay. So I just wanna make sure to make that aside because a lot of times when women are wanting to do something to invest in their marriages, they're like, let's have the deepest, most intense conversation ever and your husband is running, okay.

[00:04:28] Bake chocolate chip cookies with him. Okay, that's a, that's what I'm talking about. Okay. You can have conversations. I'm not saying conversations are off the off, off limits, but just know that that is your version of connecting. It's not his. And by the way. His version's really good for us too. Sometimes we gotta get out of our heads a little bit.

[00:04:45] Just go and do something. You'll find it's really enjoyable. Okay, so that's my aside. I wanna come back. The more times I have taken advantage of opportunities to put, think of it as cash in the bank. Okay? You guys bake cookies together, $200 in the bank, just straight to savings. Okay. And I'm doing that on a weekly basis.

[00:05:05] I'm making sure that every week we have something positive and connected. It's not heavy. We're not pulling out the budget, we're not discussing the children. We're not, whatever it, it could be something fun like an actually productive, like a, you know, DIY, home improvement project. It's at your jam, but it's not tactical and it's not heavy and it doesn't include anything he could do wrong.

[00:05:29] Okay? You both of you just get to win in this activity. What I mean is with each other, right? It's okay if you're playing a board game and one of you beats the other one. I'm just saying there's no like, oh, well, you, you played the game in a way where now I don't feel connected to you, and so now it's a negative.

[00:05:44] Okay, we're, we're looking for positives. Everyone's set up for a win. You are putting in $200 every single week. Every single week. That's in your savings account. It's building. It's building. I think it might even build interest. I'm not sure. Probably the more frequently you're making a deposit, the better the interest works.

[00:06:01] This is how my bank works. Okay? Then something yucky happens because life, and you know what you gotta pull out like it's like $400. You know, either you mess up majorly, you say something, you're trying to just kind of help him understand why you're struggling and you realize it came across as a huge insult to who he is as a person.

[00:06:25] And you're like, Ugh, yuck. Okay. I knew it would be like a hundred dollars withdrawal. 'cause I was like, you know, kind of saying that I needed him to be a little bit different. But like actually the way that came out, it was like a $500 withdrawal. Like that was a big one. Right, or you don't keep, um, an expectation or a promise, you know, you forget something that was important to him.

[00:06:47] You, you know, maybe even just have to have like a really negative conversation, even if it's not blaming him. It's just, you know, life kind of sometimes brings up things that we have to talk about that are kind of negative. These are withdrawals. Relationships have to be able to withstand a withdraw. By the way, this is why.

[00:07:08] Fights are so stressful when you're in Shauna Resa and Shauna Resa. We're gonna extend that, you know, for however long it takes you to feel like you're not in Shauna. Resa. It has to do with the fact that I just opened my bank account. I haven't had a chance to put in any deposits and I don't really know if your deposits from dating carry over.

[00:07:29] By the way, it seems like it might not. The deposits of just, we live together. Hey, I, I was making a coffee so I made one for you too. Little deposits work too, by the way. They don't only have to be big, you know, activities together. These little moments where you're just creating positive feelings between the two of you.

[00:07:49] You're giving him a big smile, you're putting down your phone and listening about his day. You welcome him when he gets home, right? Whatever the thing is, you're just adding positive, positive, positive little deposits all the time. And again, newlywed, they haven't had enough time to really build it up. So here's the thing.

[00:08:05] Let's say the newlywed actually does have enough to cover the The withdrawal. Okay? So they get into a fight. Usually with the newlyweds, a lot of times it's like misunderstandings, right? So he says something, she takes it to mean something else. She responds to the thing that she thought it meant, and now he's becoming defensive because why is she attacking him?

[00:08:20] And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now it's, you know, dissolved. Remember those days? Those of you who aren't newly ones anymore, right? So there, let's go with that as a classic newlywed example. So what happened? Let's say she's. They've both been like really sweet and like really conscientious. And their parents are saying, don't forget, you know, like her birthday's tomorrow, do something nice.

[00:08:40] And she's just like making all his favorite dinners. Deposit, deposit, deposit, deposit. But it's only been three months. So let's say she saved up, don't, don't connect all the numbers that I'm using from one example to another. 'cause who knows? But like, let's say she saved up $2,000 in the account and now something kind of gross happens and it's a $500 dollars withdrawal.

[00:09:04] Look, she has enough to cover it, but that's a quarter of her entire savings and it's a brand new account. She doesn't really have the confidence, even in her ability to continuously be able to contribute towards this account. Right? So even though she's able to cover it, it's, it's just very dramatic. It feels really huge.

[00:09:31] But let's go 10 years out, and she's really trying to just stay, like she just wants to be a positive presence in his life as much as she can, which by the way, that sounds like such a simple throwaway, but just stop and think about that for a second. How could I be a more positive presence in my husband's life?

[00:09:50] I don't know about you, but for me, I love that question because it totally reframes the way that I'm just showing up in my relationship. Okay. So she just, she's been trying to do that. She, she knows his favorite dinners. I keep coming back to food examples, but whatever. Um, you know, she's, she's paying attention to important things.

[00:10:04] She's reflecting on his values. She's being maca, she's doing all the things. Okay? She's got like $20,000 in the account, so she has to make a $500 withdrawal. She's gonna feel it. But she's not panicking, right? It's not a fundamental threat to her entire system. She's gonna be good. She can ride that. Okay?

[00:10:26] So we have to keep in mind this on the times when life is easier. So right now we're in this, those of you who are listening, you know, while sort of on time or whatever, like not like way later, right now we are between Hanukkah and Per and Pesa, right? So we kind of have this like little stretch of time.

[00:10:46] Where a lot of us are not necessarily dealing with a lot of extended family dynamics, which can be withdraws for people. Um, things are just kind of a little bit more in a, some kind of regular routine. There tends to be like maybe a little bit more. You know, Shabbas is very early, so that means you have longer Friday nights available.

[00:11:08] Like there's more opportunity right now at this time of year to be focusing on not just adding to your bank account, because that's a great thing to do, but what I really want for you is to become a person who habitually is adding to your bank account, right? Becoming a person who is. Yeah. That is just the way you are.

[00:11:31] That is the way you show up in this relationship. It's a shift. Okay. I know it's a shift because what we are deeply complex spiritual thinking, feeling emotional beings, and that tends to mean that we can sometimes get very caught up in what we need because we know that if we get it all worked out correctly, then we could show up the way we wanna show up, but then we sometimes get stuck because we never get out of the what we need.

[00:11:57] And we get so buried in the what we need that we forgot that like actually we're, the whole goal was to show up for other people Right. In a certain way. And not to say that I don't want you to feel great. What I'm saying is that when we, when we dive so deeply into what will make me feel better, we actually often feel worse.

[00:12:15] So I want this to be a season for you of a reframe, right? Of like, we're just gonna like. Become investors. Let's just all become emotional, relational investors in our marriages. And by the way, let this spill out into all your other relationships. Why not? So many of these things don't require, they don't require sacrifice.

[00:12:37] That's where I think we go. We're like, oh my gosh. Well, how come I have to be the one? Right? I'm not talking about sacrifice. It's not sacrifice to be present for a conversation. It's deeply satisfying to be present for a conversation. It's not sacrifice to smile more in the course of your day. It is deeply satisfying to be a person who smiles over the course of your day, right?

[00:12:58] These aren't sacrifices, these are life improvements, and they will have a huge payoff in your relationship. Okay, so I promised you two amazing resources. Forgive me if I completely geek out. These are some of the like two most things, like, I'm so excited. Okay, this is the best freebie I've ever made. This is a free, um, download that I designed that I'm obsessed with.

[00:13:20] It is 13 No prep at Home Date Ideas. You can get it on my website, kaylalevin.com/datenight. These are, you do not need a babysitter. You do not need any prep whatsoever. You sh most people should be able to do any of these dates with the stuff you already have in your house. Okay. Um, I did include a couple with like minimal prep ideas at the end that I just came across and I was like, you just have to like include these, okay.

[00:13:48] They're also all niddah friendly and this is, I specifically did that because of my newlyweds. So many of you have a really, really hard time figuring out what to do, how to stay connected, you feel, um, very, very disconnected during niddah. So I wanted to give you ideas of fun things you could do together. That, you know, they just aren't requiring you, you know, like spa night and I left off spa night.

[00:14:08] It's a cute idea. If you wanna do spa night, do it, but it's not there. Okay. So, um, this is, it's just, I just am so excited to offer it because I think so often when life circumstances mean we can't go out on a date or even, it could just be like. I'm just kind of like tired of just going to restaurants, like that's not quite cutting it for me.

[00:14:28] Right. That again, eating together, it's kind of experiential, but it is a lot of just talking and we're looking for things. This is going back to what I was saying before. I'm looking for shared experiences, so you'll notice that my date nights are not all conversation starters. Okay? Because that's what you want for day night.

[00:14:46] But again, what's good for both of you is the shared experience. Okay? It just might not be your natural go-to. Okay. Um, so download that. Go get it. Download it, take it, enjoy it. I gave you a bunch of different ways you could play with it. Like, you could do it as like a bucket list. Like, okay, in 2026, we're gonna do all of these 13 date nights, which means one month you're doing two.

[00:15:09] Okay? It could be that you do, you cut them up and you put 'em on a cup and you draw them. I think if you want, you might wanna offer yourself like a certain number of vetoes, like. Okay. If I, you know, if I hate the first two, it's okay, and then I, but I have to do within the first three that I pull. Or you could say, I'll, you know, pull two and choose one, whatever.

[00:15:25] If you're like, or if you're more daring, you don't get any vetoes, you know, you just have to do whatever it says. Um, I'm trying to remember the other, oh, you could just like, scroll through it, you know, just look through it and, and just take whatever idea jumps out at you and take it and, and run with it.

[00:15:39] Okay. Because the idea is really, I want you to be able to, to have more. In your bank account and this is the way to go. Okay? This is gonna be a big deposit for you every single one of these date nights. The other thing I'm gonna offer you, um, that's coming up again, this is only if you're listening sort of time in a timely way, is I am doing a webinar next Tuesday.

[00:15:59] January 6th at one 30 Eastern, eight 30 Israel time, 8:30 PM Israel time.

[00:16:06] I'll be doing a webinar on how to add more lightness and fun to your marriage. So this is gonna be amazing for two reasons. Number one, we're gonna dive even deeper into everything we talked about today. Okay? So I gave you the why today, why it's so important. The webinar is going to be the how. This webinar is totally free, okay?

[00:16:23] It's just I'm back. I wanna reconnect to you all. I wanna see your gorgeous faces. I wanna hear your questions. I wanna just help you all to use this season to uplevel your marriages and just get a really yummy, strong boost.

[00:16:38] The other reason this webinar is going to be amazing. It's actually two more reasons. One is there's going to be time for questions and open coaching. So those of you who have been in my coaching programs. And they went away and you are craving some coaching. So come on, because I'm leaving lots of time for coaching and those of you who've experienced know that like that is where the magic happens.

[00:17:00] These ideas are amazing. But I don't want you walking off the webinar. I mean you don't walk off a webinar, but I don't want you leaving this webinar with any open. Open circuits, is that what it's called? Like something unresolved. If you don't feel like you can implement something that you heard, you raise your hand and you come on for coaching, and sometimes the reason is tactical and then we'll work it out.

[00:17:21] But sometimes the reason is more emotional. You've got a block, there's a pattern in your relationship. There's something that's holding you back from being able to put in those emotional deposits. We are gonna work that out before you get off the call. So you go off the call and it just happens naturally.

[00:17:36] That's the magic of coaching. You switch from like, okay, I'm gonna be a good wife and I'm gonna work really hard and work on my marriage. I don't know about you, but that sounds like I just put on a 20 pound backpack instead. It's. Oh my gosh, of course I'm gonna do this. Like, you're not even thinking about it, you're just smiling at him.

[00:17:57] You're just finding fun things to do because when we go down to what is blocking us and we clear those blocks, that just becomes our natural way of being, and it takes nothing from us, and it feels amazing. So that is what I want for everyone who's gonna be coming to this webinar. I probably won't be able to coach every single one of you, but I'm hoping that we're gonna cover any of the blocks that are coming up for people.

[00:18:18] So that will all be resolved and ready to rock. Okay, the last reason this webinar is gonna be amazing is I will be telling you about the only way to be working with me between now and Pesach, um, which will of course be a continuation of what the webinar is about, meaning we're just gonna take this idea and we're gonna flush it out.

[00:18:35] So if you're like, oh my gosh, what she's saying is so speaking to me, I so wanna be doing this. This is definitely the time for me. This all just sounds like bells are ringing in my head. Then come onto the webinar because those of you who are signing up. I actually, I know some of you aren't gonna be able to make it live, and so what I'm doing is I'm offering instead of like, you have to do it during the webinar, I'm gonna offer you 24 hours.

[00:18:56] I have a really, really fun bonus for people who are going to join my next program. And who sign up within a short period of time from the webinar. Okay, so that's what I got for you. I'm super excited. I'm excited to be able to offer this to you in so many levels, right? You've got the date night. That's one piece.

[00:19:11] You've got this podcast. That's another piece, right? You've got this webinar. We're gonna go even deeper. Those of you who are ready for like really the most, I've got an amazing workshop program, group coaching thing coming up for you. Okay? So just there's so many options. There's so much support available for you.

[00:19:26] There is no reason you can't be walking into Pesach feeling. Yummy and light and clear and connected in your marriage. I want that for every single one of you. Okay, my friends, I will be back. I'm hoping to get these to you twice a month. That's kind of my thought for the podcast, but honestly, I'm giving myself space to figure it out and.

[00:19:50] So that's where we're at, but it's, it's back and I'm back and I'm so happy to be back and I'm so happy. I was like so grateful to just get all of your emails and your welcome back and everything. It's been so lovely. If you're not on my email list yet, when you sign up for date night, you will get there and I am sending out a weekly shell and bias challenge.

[00:20:08] Okay. I've challenged myself to send out a weekly Sean bias challenge. We'll see. You think I could do it? I'm wondering like, how long can I go right before I like run out of ideas, but I haven't yet, so should be fine. Um. So over there, I'm gonna be giving you believe neither a weekly shall and bias challenge, something specific you can focus on in your marriage.

[00:20:25] So if at the very least you have not signed up for this date night freebie, and then you're also getting that weekly boost, that weekly refocus, definitely make sure you go there kaylalevin.com/datenight. Those of you who wanna register for the webinar, it's gonna be kaylalevin.com/webinar. Alright. Trying to keep things really simple for you.

[00:20:46] All right, my friends, I'll talk to you very soon and looking forward to hearing all your messages and feedback and everything that I get every time I send out one of these podcasts. All right, have an amazing week. Bye bye.