Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast

Episode 176 | Does Your Marriage Have Seatbelts?

• Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger

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Cars drive themselves and airplanes have autopilot. The amount of technology it takes to keep a plane in the air and a self driving car on the road boggles the mind! Yet, in the middle of both of those is one of the most low tech pieces of equipment that was orginally developed in the 1800's. It's one of the most important pieces of equipment and that's why it's still used and mandated today. The seatbelt. Simple, yet it will save your life. So, what about your marriage? Does your marriage have seatbelts that keep it safe and keep you and your spouse in the driver's seat?

Join hosts, Travis and Dawn Rosinger, as they share about a recent experience while flying across the country that reminded them about the seatbelts they have in place for their marriage. As they share examples of their marriage seatbelts, you will be challenged to determine and write down your own seatbelts for your marriage. This is an episode you will want to listen to with your spouse and share with your friends!!

Travis and Dawn Rosinger are the Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast Hosts and Authors of the books, Verbalosity - 7 Steps to a Verbally Generous and More Fulfilling Marriage and their newest book, Gripping -  What Matters Most | A Life and Relationships That Hold on to You

For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight

Travis Rosinger:

Alright, here we go. Welcome to the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast. My name is Travis and I am sitting here with my wife and my best friend, Dawn Rosinger.

Dawn Rosinger:

Hey everyone. One thing that you missed to say, travis, is that you missed to say that I was your pickleball partner and co-host.

Travis Rosinger:

And co-host? Yes, absolutely, I missed both of those.

Dawn Rosinger:

I love the co-host part, but yesterday we got to play pickleball and that was a blast and we dominated. Okay, we did. No, we won.

Travis Rosinger:

We did, we did. We can officially say that we won. We won best of three out of five, but maybe we should have played seven out of ten, right, I don't know? And it was a windy day and we won, we won. It was so much fun, it felt good.

Dawn Rosinger:

If you guys haven't tried pickleball, I would recommend going out and grabbing two paddles, because it's something that you can do with your spouse and you can either play singles or you can get another couple and you can play doubles. And man, it's just a fun sport.

Travis Rosinger:

And what made yesterday so much fun was this is a couple that's crushed us before a few times, Right yep. So somehow we were on and we beat them.

Dawn Rosinger:

Is that gloating to say that we won?

Travis Rosinger:

Or just excitement. It's probably not great, let's say it anyway.

Dawn Rosinger:

We did win. We're not that competitive oh my no, I'm a little bit more competitive, but I like to be on the underdog team, not saying that you're the underdog.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh, thanks, you just threw me under the bus. I can't help it that you grew up in an athletic I can't even say athletic family that's how unathletic I am, I can't even say the word. But I grew up in a musician, actor kind of family.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, but you have other skills. You have the creative brain, the brain you know there, but I don't have that so much.

Travis Rosinger:

You sounded like you said creative brain, which is like a pig or something. Creative brain. I know our comments are getting tied, which is weird because we just came back from vacation, right? Yeah, we had a great time.

Dawn Rosinger:

In the wonderful week. Well, you know what, when we were on vacation, we actually had to come home. So this is a great segue into our podcast episode today. Well, we had to come home and we had to jump on a plane, but for some reason we were flying Delta and they had gave a separate seat, so you were like a row 23B. You have the middle seat, oh my. And then I had like 36C.

Travis Rosinger:

No, I had the like prisoner of war seat. The small middle section, the middle seat where you feel like you can't lean to your left and fall asleep because you'll drool on your neighbor, and the middle seat because you can't even lean to the right because you know if you want to get up and get to the aisle, you're going to wake up the person next to you.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yes, I don't like the middle seat and it's just a prisoner seat, but I was excited because I know you had the middle seat and then I had seat C, but like in row 36, so we were like 13 year olds apart. So you went up to the desk when we got to the airport and you asked them. You're like hey, is there any way that you have some seats open so I can sit next to my wife?

Travis Rosinger:

So we can swap, yeah, because we wanted to sit next to each other.

Dawn Rosinger:

We like each other, and that way, if we crash, you know, we can at least die together.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, that's a good thing.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, when you went up there, you actually heard the person in front of you before you asked your question if they could move seats and they said no. They said the plane was actually full, like overbooked full, and so it was your turn. You asked the question.

Travis Rosinger:

Same question, but I wanted to be sure that I heard the right thing. Yeah, why not?

Dawn Rosinger:

try right, and you knew you would have to come back to me. I'm like I don't know. Like did you at least ask? But yes. So you asked and you got the same reply. But then you looked at him and you said what to him?

Travis Rosinger:

I said well, you don't happen to be looking for people to bump from this flight. Do you like to take another flight? And he just started to lose his mind. He got this big smile. His eyeballs got really big, this very stressful man who was absolutely. He looked like he was ready to have a heart attack. All of a sudden he's at Disney World and he's happy. And he's excited that I asked that question.

Dawn Rosinger:

I must admit, when we got to the gate, there was people everywhere. There were so many people. I was like how are we all going to fit on the plane? So I wasn't shocked when you said that it was overbooked, but it's interesting that you were there in line at the exact time and asked him, and all of a sudden we became heroes to him, right.

Travis Rosinger:

We did Weird.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, I want you to explain why we became heroes to this gentleman and we saved the day.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, so well. Anyway, when I asked him, you know, if he needed to bump people, and he, right away he's like why are you interested? And I said, well, my wife and I don't work tomorrow. It's possible we're going to maybe, you know, get bumped and take a different flight, maybe a morning flight. It was, I think, in the evening, about five, six o'clock in the evening. And immediately he was like, are you serious? That's incredible. And I said, well, what would you give us if we, you know, jumped off this flight, if we allowed ourselves to be bumped and took into the next flight? And he said $800.

Dawn Rosinger:

And I was like oh my my jaw hit the floor.

Travis Rosinger:

I almost had a heart attack at that moment it was like he it went from him and bounced to me. And then I had this weird idea. I looked back at him and I said each and he goes oh yeah, absolutely. Wow, it's not my fault, they oversold the plane. You're going to get $800 a piece, do you want to do it? And I was like, are you serious? Are you kidding me? Did I just win the lottery? Like how did this happen to me? I didn't even hand over $2 and get the scratch off lottery ticket. I mean, I'm just winning, of course, winning.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yep, and I know it's funny when you said, you came back to me and you said, hey, would you be? Oh no, you texted me really quick. You're like hey, come up here. Run up to the gate and not only did they offer us $800 each, for a total of $1,600, they paid for a nice night in a really nice hotel. They shuttled us there and they gave us money for supper and, you guys, we had the best supper because we had almost an incredible budget for our supper.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh, we did, and it was on Delta. Piles and piles of food. They paid for it. Thank you, delta. Yeah, and you know what's crazy, you guys.

Dawn Rosinger:

We only paid $160 for our air flight.

Travis Rosinger:

Should we tell Delta that?

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, and we got $1,600. We got paid to go on vacation. Oh my, we got more money coming home than we did. I mean the trip costed.

Travis Rosinger:

And we're not bragging like the pickleball bragging. That was bragging, by the way, but this is not bragging.

Dawn Rosinger:

This is sharing, a blessing, an unexpected blessing, oh my that we got honestly, we really literally did pray. We're like thank you, jesus, for this massive blessing. Absolutely Because it wasn't even vouchers, it was $1,600 in Visa gift cards.

Travis Rosinger:

That we could download right away and start using Immediately.

Dawn Rosinger:

So we could have honestly jumped on Amazon and bought a computer or bought whatever for $1,600. It's crazy.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and the moral of the story is we're pretty frugal with our travel because we want to travel often and we only paid, like what? $1,400 for our entire trip to. Florida. So we essentially, by sleeping in a nice hotel having a great meal, we ended up getting paid. We made money. We did make money.

Dawn Rosinger:

We made like $100, $150. And then next morning we flew out and they put us right next to each other, yay. So the whole moral of the story is ask, right, ask if you can sit together. And it may not be immediate, but eventually you might be blessed in the process.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh my, that was super, super fun. Ask to be bumped yes, super cool. Well, hey, after we finally boarded the plane, that next day was about 6th of the morning, we were only about two hours into our flight home when I I don't know why, but my mind was just kind of wandering and I suddenly started looking around the plane. And then I looked down at my lap and I'm like wait, this is so weird. Like the most outdated piece of equipment is the. You know this, this belt, this seat belt that's holding me to this chair, this airplane seat, and yet I'm flying at 600 miles an hour using insane technology, like the plane flies itself. Right, the plane could probably take off and land by itself, but I was just thinking of the irony of it all. There's this cheap little seat belt that maybe costs five bucks to make, right, yeah, and it's.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's like outdated technology but it's holding me in place. It is, and you know what it does. When I buckle my seat belt, I just, I feel comfort. I do, I'm like I'm gonna buckle my seat belt. I like I gladly buckle that seat belt because I don't wanna fly out of my seat Me too, I feel the same way.

Travis Rosinger:

It's like, oh okay, I'm safe again.

Dawn Rosinger:

I'm good to go.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and so seat belts are super important. And I realized that because, you know, if you have all this technology in 600 miles an hour and incredible airplane, and you still have this old, you know low tech piece of equipment a seat belt and they still use it, it must be really important. Now here's a crazy story about seat belts. I don't know if you guys have ever heard this or not, but this actually happened. Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was able to land safely even though it lost a huge portion of its roof on April 28th 1988. Oh wow.

Travis Rosinger:

By the way, this is according to the Washington Post. They said the twin engine 110 seat Boeing 737 jet was halfway into its 40 minute flight when it suddenly lost cabin pressure. And this is the crazy part, don. This is the part why we say we relax when we sit in our seat and click our belt. According to them, they said that the ceiling of the Boeing 737 at that moment was torn off and a large section of the fuselage then followed, exposing passengers to extreme winds, and at 24,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. For those of you that are listening to this story, you got to look up the pictures.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yes, oh, my word On the internet. That's crazy, it's wild. I mean, they just had that one plane where the door flew off.

Travis Rosinger:

They did.

Dawn Rosinger:

But this is the whole entire roof of the plane.

Travis Rosinger:

The roof, really the top half, oh my word. So when you watch the look at the pictures, it's like are you kidding me? These people are dangling out the plane practically and it's the seat belts right that are holding the men. But they continue. They say disaster struck when flight attendant Clarabel Lansing, who was serving the passengers, was sucked through the opening that's horrible she died.

Travis Rosinger:

That's crazy, and the rest of the crew and the passengers were left screaming in horror and were convinced that the plane was going to fall apart before the pilot could land it. Why? Because it didn't look like there was much left holding it together after the roof flew off. Now the last piece of that story is, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, the captain actually took over the controls from the first officer and he began emergency descent to Maui, successfully landing there 13 minutes after the incident.

Dawn Rosinger:

That's absolutely crazy. What an absolute miracle that they survived.

Travis Rosinger:

Incredible Like how, how did they do it? And thanks to that captain. I mean, at 24,000 feet you're going to freeze to death pretty quickly too. So fortunately, he did what he needed. He got it landed Again. Look up the pictures. But, guys, here's an important question what allowed those in the plane, when the roof ripped off, to be able to live once the plane landed? Obviously they're seatbelts. It's that simple. Something that is so low-tech, but if you use it it will save your life.

Dawn Rosinger:

I mean, not many people fly, or maybe not as often, so we do wear our seatbelts when we fly. But there's also other seatbelts that we wear every single day, or should wear every single day, every time. And that's our seatbelts in our car. Now, seatbelts in cars have been around for what feels like forever. I just always remember jumping in a car and buckling up, or even those cars in the past where it kind of was automatic and it just kind of strapped over.

Dawn Rosinger:

I don't even know if they make those cars anymore, but seatbelts have been around for a while. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, seatbelts are the oldest form of occupant protection, with Volvo patenting the first seatbelt in 1889.

Travis Rosinger:

That's a long time ago. That is a long time ago. That's crazy.

Dawn Rosinger:

You know, however, it wasn't until 1968 that the federal government required seatbelts to be installed in all new passenger cars, so that's when they became. I remember you picked me up in 1957, chevy, when we first married 58, chevy, oh sorry, 58.

Travis Rosinger:

58. And I don't think they had seatbelts. Well, I think they were there, but they were buried. You're right, I don't think they were there.

Dawn Rosinger:

I don't remember buckling up. Yeah, I borrowed my dad's 1958 Chevy.

Travis Rosinger:

I was buying it from him and drove up there.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, you know, this article goes on to say US seatbelt use rates have steadily increased over time, and in 1994, the observed national seatbelt use rate was 58%. In 2019, seatbelt use had reached 91%. Yet, despite these gains, too many drivers and passengers are choosing not to buckle up and are paying for it with their lives in 2020. Of the 23,824 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2020, 10,893 of them were unrestrained at the time of the crash, or 46%.

Travis Rosinger:

Wow, that's so crazy. I mean, that's just weird. I mean, thinking about it, all they had to do was click yeah, put their seatbelt down and it feels like a huge chunk of them may have lived and not died. Oh my gosh, it's crazy.

Dawn Rosinger:

Seatbelts are simple, yet they probably help keep most of us safe, right, if we actually do what they say and buckle them. Ultimately, if we're in a car crash, they're going to keep us safe In a car. The passengers in the car are moving at the same speed, so when the car experiences a sudden stop due to an accident, the passengers continue to move at that same speed, and that's why seatbelts are so needed. The seatbelt stops the passengers from their forward movement. I know sometimes, travis, you mess around and you slam on the brakes.

Dawn Rosinger:

I do I think just to see our heads go up, are you? I usually scream.

Travis Rosinger:

when I do that, you scream, and then you've got that to our kids. Just scare everybody.

Dawn Rosinger:

Now they know when they drive with you, that you're going to scream and slam on the brakes.

Travis Rosinger:

But they still scare them.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, our bodies just move forward, right, that's just when you hit the brakes, but the seatbelt keeps us in place. They don't need electricity or technology to use, which is cool because you don't have to plug them in. I mean, they're already connected to the car.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, they're just there.

Dawn Rosinger:

But seatbelts, ultimately they save your life and they can save the life of many others if they just choose to click that seatbelt.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, crazy Low tech equipment been around since what? 1880, or whatever you said, don. But here's the key you have to use them or you don't.

Dawn Rosinger:

You have to pick up both ends and connect them.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, connect it. So why are we asking the question in this podcast Loving the Fight Marriage podcast, or this episode? Why are we asking the question does your marriage have seatbelts? I mean, why would we do that In a marriage podcast? Well, it's because your marriage needs them. Your marriage needs things that keep you in your seat and keep your marriage alive. So the question does your marriage have seatbelts Really means what holds your marriage in place and keeps it safe.

Dawn Rosinger:

I remember when we were on the airplane Travis, I could tell that you were thinking about something and then you got out your phone and you opened up your notes and you started typing away. And that's exactly what you were typing in that moment, as you were thinking in the plane, looking at your seatbelt and then just thinking about marriage and how we need marriage seatbelts.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and part of it was because I, you know, looking at my seatbelt and then, like you mentioned, that door flew off that plane not that long ago, a couple of weeks or a month ago, and I thought, man, if we need seatbelts this badly, what are people doing to keep their marriage?

Dawn Rosinger:

safe Right, yeah.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, so we want to take a few moments and just share with you some of our seatbelts that we use to keep our marriage safe, and these may or may not work for you guys, but these are important to us. So before we do that, though, there's one thing to remember about seatbelts is that they actually hold the driver in, not only when the driver's hitting the brakes, but also when they're hitting the gas pedal.

Dawn Rosinger:

True, because if you hit the gas pedal, you're going to go forward as well.

Travis Rosinger:

You are, or maybe if you're a racecar driver and you know they have seatbelts that hold them in place and when they hit the gas pedal, they would literally fly out of their driver's seat. And so it's just the idea. You know that there are different kinds of seatbelts for different kinds of things some for hitting the brakes and some for hitting the gas. Well, it's the same for marriage. There are two types of reasons why you need seatbelts for your marriage. So let's take a look at that. The first one again, we would call them a gas pedal seatbelt. When you hit the gas and you want to go forward again, they hold you in place. So what does that look like in marriage? Well, these seatbelts allow you to grow your marriage and hit the gas pedal on your relationship. Things like values, other words, you know, knowing what you believe in as a couple.

Dawn Rosinger:

This is something that we go over quite often to make sure that we are in alignment with our values. We want to make sure, but we have values because from our values comes our mission and our goals and how we live life and our values are seatbelts for our marriage, just like our goals.

Travis Rosinger:

Like you mentioned, don, our goals are knowing where we're headed. It's being on the same page in key areas like finances, health, education, learning, relational investment into others and spiritual growth, to give a couple examples. But those are some of our seatbelts for our marriage, our gas pedal seatbelts, like the Bible, reading the Bible daily and listening to messages from other churches and pastors. Don, you got home from work today and I told you I was like, oh my gosh, I listened to a pastor today. He a guy by the name of Robert Medu.

Travis Rosinger:

I just like his style of speaking, but he gave a message on being thankful and I was just like, oh my gosh, this is incredible and to be able to share that with you and say, hey, this is one you're gonna wanna listen to. And so those are some gas pedal seatbelts for us.

Dawn Rosinger:

I think a few gas pedal seatbelts that come to mind for me are just praying together. What we do every morning before work, when we eat, and having extended times of prayer when we're just like, hey, we just need to sit down and pray about some things more intensely.

Travis Rosinger:

It's so good.

Dawn Rosinger:

Or rules for living or lifestyle rhythms, things like just working out, eating right, holding no grudges, maybe just treating everyone with honor and being a positive person instead of a person who sucks the life out of others. Again, those are just our gas pedal seatbelts. Those are the ones that we want to wear. And, honestly, how about rules for marriage? Things like being quick to forgive, show in respect, trying to always meet the needs of each other, having great communication, which includes being a great listener Again, those are just some of our gas pedal seatbelts that we choose to put on and we wanna hit the gas pedal.

Travis Rosinger:

We don't want our marriage to be stuck in one spot, not moving forward, and so these are some of the best kind of seatbelts, and again they work for us gas pedal seatbelts. But what about your marriage? What about your relationship?

Dawn Rosinger:

There is a marriage seatbelt passage in the Bible At least that's what we feel when we read it in Hebrews 13.4. It says this marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer in all the sexually Immoral. So the honoring of the marriage is actually the seat belt for hitting the gas pedal. That's the type of seat belt you want to wear, but the keeping the marriage bed here is actually the seat belt for just hitting the brakes and stopping, making sure that you're staying in Place yeah, and so, in other words, what we're saying is, when you hit the gas pedal, it's like, hey, that's something we want to do that's something we want to practice in marriage, but hitting the brake kind of seat belt that holds you in place is like oh no, no, stop, we don't want to do that.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and so we want to hit the gas pedal by honoring each other, but we want to hit the brakes by keeping the marriage bed pure.

Dawn Rosinger:

No, we're not gonna let that into our marriage, whatever that might be so we talked about hitting the gas pedal seat belts, but what does it look like to put on the seat belt for hitting the brakes? What do they hit the brakes seat belts actually look like? Well, hit the brakes seat belts is just saying no to spiritually Compromising situations. It's honestly having accountability of your time, of your money and your electronics. It's not having apathy about your relationship, honestly, just not allowing it. We want to make sure that you have the attitude that we fight for each other and for a marriage is no apathy allowed. Yeah.

Travis Rosinger:

I think the important thing here is that we are talking about. You know Examples that work for our marriages, that we would call hit the brake seat belts that keep you and I don't in our Marriage driver's seat. We're not flying out through the window, right yeah? Instead, we're still able to move down the road in this marriage that we've been hauling down the road of life for what? 31 years, soon to be 32 in the fall.

Dawn Rosinger:

I think you should just honestly close your eyes and get that physical picture in your mind of slamming on the brakes. And what does your body do?

Travis Rosinger:

it wants to fly forward through that windshield, and we want to make sure we're wearing those seat belts so we're not flying yeah, and one way that we hit the brakes is we just say, hey, no, alone time with someone that we're attracted to of the opposite sex. That's, we're just not going to do that. We're not going to be alone with somebody, and maybe even just not at all, you know, whether we're attracted to them or not. No, we're hitting the brakes and those are the kind of seat belts we want to hold us in place, or Selfishness. This is not going to be a marriage built on selfishness or bad or negative attitudes, and we also don't want to use any kind of addictive Substances or have addictive behaviors. We have hit the brakes, seat belts for that, and we're just like that's not welcome in our marriage and especially Independent lives or lifestyles. We are gonna be the two that became one flesh.

Dawn Rosinger:

We're married. Why live independent lives?

Travis Rosinger:

That's absolutely true. We want to do this thing together. Well, seat belts here's a key in a car are so important. I said this earlier. You have to use them or you will die. Remember what we said earlier Out of in 2020, out of the 23,824 passengers that were killed in 2020, 10,000 of them 893 didn't have seat belts on. Wow, and it makes you wonder if that 10,000 would still be alive right.

Dawn Rosinger:

46% of those people died and it all they had to do was honestly, just put on their seat belt. So in the same way, seat belts for your marriage will not only keep you and your spouse in the driver's seat, but it will also keep your marriage Alive. You know, seat belts are kind of like insurance in case something goes wrong. Yet seat belts aren't just insurance to keep you safe, they actually work. In an accident they do over and over again. We know people who they said man, they had seat belt. You know Bruises, but it's saved their life. But when your marriage has seat belts, it can have a collision, with bankruptcy, medical conditions, job loss, family faults and many other things, but the marriage stays in place and strong. And when I say those things Honestly think of the people around you or maybe your own marriage. You have gone through some of those things, but you were able to stay in place and keep your marriage whole.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, I think that's the reality. We're all headed towards a collision At one time or another. We're gonna hit a bump in the road, we're gonna slam into a wall, there's gonna be something coming at us, and so, yeah, having those things in place will keep our marriage strong.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, you know, let's just give you guys a challenge today. Maybe sit down and ask your spouse if you can just write out your gas pedal seat belts and you're hit the brake seat belts. Marriage takes work. It takes time, but that time, that energy put into it is so worth it. I know we have seen couple after couple who didn't think they needed to work on their marriage when things were good and then when the roof of their life just got ripped off, kind of like in that airplane, they had a head-on collision and they lost their marriage, like their marriage did not survive.

Travis Rosinger:

It's happened again and again and it's like no, no, no, no, be careful. You've gotta do the hard work, you gotta take the challenges, you gotta sit down and write it out.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's worth it to get on the same page you guys, we just don't want you to fall into that trap. Don't fall into that trap, Don't fall for that trap. Write out what will keep you in a marriage driver's seat so if you suddenly hit some tough spots in the road of life which you will, that's one thing that we're promised actually.

Travis Rosinger:

It's going to happen.

Dawn Rosinger:

But you won't lose control and ultimately lose your marriage Again. Whenever we talk to you guys, when we're on it, we're talking to ourselves as well. What seatbelts, travis, do we need to have in our life to hit the you know, hit the gas pedal seatbelt and hit the brake seatbelt? We need to figure this out.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and we just went on vacation, and on our vacation, we wrote out a list, didn't we we? Did yeah, of some new gas pedal seatbelts for our marriage and maybe some hit the brake seatbelts for our marriage, but it's so important we need it. Boy, we think you guys need it. Take the time. We want to challenge you. Your marriage is worth it.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, we want our marriage to survive. We want your marriage to survive. With that, I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Loving the Fight Marriage podcast. Remember, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight. We'll see you next time.