“We just talk it out, whatever it is, we talk about everything,” Lambert tells PEOPLE of her marriage to the former police officer, whom she married in 2019

Miranda Lambert is all about talking it out!

On May 15, the country singer, 40, spoke exclusively to PEOPLE at the Lone River Collective event about the one rule in her marriage to her husband Brendan McLoughlin.

“It’s communication. We just talk it out, whatever it is, we talk about everything,” Lambert tells PEOPLE. “And I think communication is super important, especially because women, we expect men to know what we’re thinking and they don’t. We got to tell them.”

Lambert, who has partnered with Lone River Ranch Water, has been married to the former police officer since January 2019. The pair tied the knot just three months after meeting on the set of Good Morning America. While Lambert was performing on the ABC show, McLoughlin had been working as security.

The couple then kept their romance quiet before Lambert announced that they had wed in a Valentine’s Day post in 2019.

“I feel like I’ve been through enough in my life to know what I don’t want, so when I know what I do want, I snatch it right up,” she later told PEOPLE in October of that year.

Meanwhile, Lambert, who released her new single “Wranglers” earlier this month, also opened to PEOPLE at the Lone River Collective about her animals being her “downtime.”

“Animals are great,” she says. “That’s my downtime. I have a house in Austin, so I’m there a lot. That’s where we’re headed for a couple of weeks to do some work stuff and see family.”

She adds, ”But my animals are all in Tennessee outside of Nashville and so that’s where I sort of go recharge my batteries. But everybody’s good. Yeah, there’s no downtime. We’re working right now, but it’s good. It’s a good thing.”