Episode 116: Understanding Your Personalities to Transform Your Marriage—with Linda Goldfarb
If you’re married, you don’t need us to tell you that differences between spouses can sometimes collide. In our relationship, we experienced this recently when a concert was coming to our town.
What sounded like a fun date night to one of us sounded like a miserable night to the other. In the end, we each walked away feeling a little misunderstood and frustrated. The truth is, mismatched expectations and preferences affect every couple when they share life together. And if they aren’t addressed in a healthy way, they have the potential to drive a wedge further and further between us.
This is why taking the time to learn your spouse’s personality is so important to growing a close and supportive relationship, and our guest for this conversation, Linda Goldfarb, is here to show us how.
Linda is an author, speaker, certified personality trainer, life coach, and the co-founder of the LINKED® Personality System. She is passionate about helping individuals discover their God-designed personalities.
In this episode, Linda shares:
- Each personality type and its motivations
- How our differences bring value and personal growth
- Advice on approaching our personalities with the intent to encourage
- And much more!
We hope you enjoy this conversation!
Links:
- [BOOK] Linked for Couples: Quick Guide to Personalities
- The LINKED® Personality System
- [BOOK] It Takes So Little to be Above Average
- Connect with Linda on her website, Facebook, or Instagram
Our Takeaways:
1) Learn HOW your spouse is different. You and your spouse were each created uniquely—and you often approach life in very different ways. But when you take the time to understand how you are different, you can begin to see all the ways those differences can be beneficial in your relationship. Instead of resenting one another’s unique approach to the world, you can start to see those differences as an asset.
2) Gaining a better understanding of ourselves and others benefits all relationships. In this episode, we mostly talked about how understanding our personalities applies within the context of marriage. However, gaining an awareness of how we think, what we value, and how we operate is beneficial with friends, siblings, roommates, and within the workplace, too. Even if the other party in the relationship doesn’t have an interest in learning about their personality style, you can still change the nature of the relationship by learning about your own personality.
3) Start with yourself. The temptation can be to point out all the ways that your spouse’s personality is “bad” or how they are operating out of the unhealthy parts of their tendencies. However, rather than analyzing our spouse, let’s start by gaining a better understanding of our own strengths and, more importantly, our weaknesses. In what ways has our own personality type been hindering growth or causing conflict in our marriage?
Meet Our Guest
Linda Goldfarb is an author, speaker, certified personality trainer, life coach, and the co-founder of the LINKED® Personality System. She is passionate about helping individuals discover their God-designed personalities. Linda has been happily married to her best friend, life partner, and golfing buddy, Sam, for over 30 years. Their home base is in San Antonio, Texas, where they spend time with their four children, grandchildren, great-grandchild, and their three furry friends.
