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Duty vs. Desire: The Hidden War Inside Your Marriage · The Virtual Couch

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Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch.
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I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist,
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a certified mindful habit coach, and creator of the Magnetic Marriage Program.
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Let me just start with this. I want to ask you something, because I just came
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out of a session right before I'm hitting record.
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Have you ever had a conversation with your spouse that somehow turned into a
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disagreement? I was going to go with fight, but a disagreement about a disagreement,
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maybe even about a disagreement that happened many, many years ago.
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And it comes up over and over again.
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And it feels like this circular questioning problem.
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And it feels maddening. And you just feel stuck and misheard,
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misunderstood. Because if you have had that experience, you're perfectly normal
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and your relationship is experiencing things that relationships experience.
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I find that so often connection has faded into just talking about logistics
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and sometimes you'll say the right words.
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How was your day? But is it just to check a box? And I love this phrase from
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putting the first round of the magnetic marriage course together years ago.
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Does it ever feel like your roommate's running a daycare with somebody that you used to date?
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I've been a therapist now for over 20 years and a couples therapist for most,
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if not all, of those 20 years.
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And at this point, I've worked with well over 1,500 couples.
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I can say that I know that you love each other.
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But somewhere along the way, most likely you stop feeling connected and you might even not know why.
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That's why I created the Magnetic Marriage Program in the first place.
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I think it's for couples who do know that they love each other,
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but they just can't seem to connect like they used to.
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Or honestly, like they never really even had the right tools in the first place
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because I know that they don't come from the factory.
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They're things that you have to go and get and find. And often couples don't
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even look for the tools until things have gotten in a pretty challenging place.
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The next round of the Magnetic Marriage course is not open yet,
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but the wait list is. And as has been the case in previous years, it feels fast.
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So head to TonyOverbay.com slash magnetic and grab your spot on the wait list.
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Your marriage may not be as bad off as you think it is. I just think you need
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new tools. And I have those tools.
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Let's at the very least help you learn what you don't even know that you don't
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know about how to reconnect.
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And on that note, follow me on Instagram at virtual.couch,
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TikTok at virtualcouchsubstack at substack.com slash the virtual couch or sign
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up for my newsletter at tonyoverbay.com and prepare to hear a lot about relationships moving forward.
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Let's get to today's episode. Imagine this. You are drowning in responsibility.
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You feel like you're managing everything and you're holding your entire life
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together with duct tape and willpower and sheer determination.
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You're grinding it out, as the kids say. And your partner, bless their heart,
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may seem oblivious, checked out, living like they are still in their 20s.
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Or you can flip it. Maybe you feel like you are the one that's constantly failing
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and nothing that you do is ever good enough.
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So you retreat into things like video games or hobbies or anything to get through the day.
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And you're trying to make it through the day to get to the next one.
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And then hopefully the weekend will be better.
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If any of that sounds familiar, I think today's episode is going to be for you.
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I've been working on this one for quite a while. And I'm going to share a story
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about a fictional couple based on a very, very real situation.
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And they are navigating a very real struggle. And we're going to call them Sarah
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and Michael. And I truly believe, and they will now attest, that they were weeks
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away from divorce when they first reached out and we started working together.
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Sarah had become pure duty without any kind of desire, desire for life.
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She was just working herself into exhaustion within the home and outside of
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it. And what came with that is a lot of resentment.
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And her husband, Michael, had become just pure desire, but very little discipline,
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escaping into what he dubbed as freedom while his marriage was crumbling around him.
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I believe that both of them were suffering from the same wound.
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So today we're going to explore why your marriage might be this battleground
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between what you think you should do and for the sake of today.
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I know that no one likes to be should on, but we're going to use that word because
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that's the right word today.
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But things that you think that you should do, but what you actually want.
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Even if you know what you want anymore or ever really knew what you wanted,
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you just thought it would be better than it is.
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And we're going to look at how these patterns show up across all kinds of family
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traditions, spiritual traditions, cultures throughout history.
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While I don't want to say that your problem is as old as time, what if it was though?
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Because if that's the case, you're not doing it wrong. It's just,
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this is where relationships get.
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So I want to take you through the exact framework that I use with couples to
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move more from a place of combat to connection.
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And I also plan on getting pretty vulnerable about my own therapy work and why,
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even as I'm talking about duty and desire, I realized why I sat on this episode
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for a while, the word duty, I didn't like the way it made me feel.
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It kind of made my chest tighten. And what I'm discovering about discipline,
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and apparently it is a necessary thing.
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But also we'll talk about values, personal growth, and one of my favorite concepts,
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It's called Impermanence, about how accepting that nothing is permanent,
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including your current beliefs and hopes and thoughts and dreams,
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and how that might sound scary.
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That also might be the most liberating thing that you ever truly embrace.
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Let's get right to it. We'll call this the email that started it all.
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It had a subject line I couldn't ignore. It was titled, Need Help, But Skeptical.
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This is what Michael wrote. He said, Dr. Overbay, which I love that because
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I'm not a doctor, but that does get my attention.
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I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, not a clinical psychologist.
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I don't have my doctorate in psychology, so I am not a doctor.
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So he says, Dr. Overbay, I found your podcast through a friend.
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My wife and I are struggling, and I think we need couples therapy,
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me, but I'm honestly not really sure what to expect.
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She seems really checked out lately. She's angry a lot. She won't go do things
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with her friends, even when I tell her that she can.
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We do fine financially, but she's always on me about what I spend my money on or how I spend my time.
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I feel like she's become my mom instead of my wife. She just seems so anxious
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and angry, and I want to fix this, but I also don't want to spend a bunch of
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money sitting around with somebody who just says, tell me more about that for an hour.
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I need actual tools. Can you help or should I look elsewhere? Okay.
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First of all, tell me how that made you feel, listener. Before I tell you what
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happened, let me point out what this email reveals because it is a goldmine
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for a therapist. First, notice the language.
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She seems checked out. She's angry. She won't go do things. She's always on
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me. So everything's about what she's doing wrong.
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Not really a single sentence about his own experience beyond feeling like she treats him like a child.
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Second, he says, I tell her that she can go out with her friends.
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Guys, if you're giving your wife permission to have a life, I think we've got a problem.
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That's parental language, not the language of a partnership.
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And third, he says, I want to fix this, but I also don't want to spend a lot of money.
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Translation, fix my wife quickly and cheaply so I can get back to the things
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that I want to do. Maybe here's the kicker.
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I don't want somebody to just ask me how that makes me feel.
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Michael, my friend, feelings are literally a giant part of relationships.
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And if you don't want to talk about your feelings, you're looking more for some
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sort of mechanic, not a real couples therapist.
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So I could have easily said, hey, probably not your guy and moved on or not
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responded. But something told me that Michael genuinely didn't know what he didn't know.
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And I have a strong desire to help guys learn the things they didn't know because
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I did not know the things that I did not know.
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And I'm so grateful to continually learn things that I was not aware of that
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can help me as an individual and in my relationships.
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So he didn't know what he didn't know. He's stuck in a pattern and so was his
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wife and neither could see it. So I did write back.
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And after a few email exchanges, he and Sarah agreed to work with me.
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And that's when things got interesting.
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I like to meet with each person individually first because the story you tell
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when you're alone or one-on-one with the therapist is usually closer to your
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actual experience than the performance that you might put on when your spouse
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is in the room, especially when you first meet with a therapist.
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So Sarah came in first and I could absolutely track the exhaustion before she even sat down,
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shoulders kind of tight and jaws set, eyes doing that thing where you can tell
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she's on the verge of crying, but also doesn't really know who I am and doesn't
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necessarily trust me and doesn't want to show weakness.
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And so I'd asked her one of the most basic questions, what brings you in?
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And that opened the floodgates.
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And she told me that she feels like she's holding the entire relationship together,
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their entire life together for that matter. And she thinks that Michael is oblivious.
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She said, I wake up at 5, 5.30 every morning and I pack lunches and I get the
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kids dressed and I make breakfast and then I end up dropping them off at school.
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And she said she also works full days as a project manager and she'll pick them
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up and she manages homework and she makes dinner, she does baths,
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she handles bedtime routines.
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And Michael, she did say he does work too, but when he gets home, he disconnects.
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10 minutes, maybe chucking the kids around the room, half an hour or more on
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the toilet, then turns to his phone, then video games with his clan,
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then planning for his next mountain biking trip with his buddies.
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So I asked her, what does that feel like for you? And she said,
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I feel lonely and I feel exhausted and I feel invisible.
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And then she said, one of these things that just, it sticks with you.
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She said, I feel like I'm a machine that keeps everybody running and nobody
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notices that until something breaks.
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And then she said, I can't even remember the last time that I wanted anything for myself.
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And so I brought some gentle awareness, pushed on that a little.
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And I just said, what happens when
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you even have a desire or when there is something that you want to do?
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And she said, if I have anything like that, it feels like a threat.
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And she said, especially if I hear of something that Michael wants to do, one of his desires.
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She said, when Michael suggests going out or that she should do something for
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herself or heaven forbid, when he tries to be intimate, She said she feels a wave of anger.
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How can you think of that when there are permission slips to sign and the car
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registration is overdue and sure you're going to get to it and the kitchen's
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a disaster and I haven't called my mom back in three days and her son's struggling
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in math and her daughter's the last one off the bench on her soccer team.
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If I think about myself, that feels selfish.
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And she said, yes, I struggle with perfectionism. This feels irresponsible.
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And honestly, I get mad that he even suggests wanting to do something,
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whether it's for himself or even me wanting to do something.
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Because she said, I think he wants me to say yes to me doing something so he
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won't feel guilty about all the stuff that he does for himself.
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And so I asked, what would happen if you actually took a weekend away?
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Because she had mentioned that her sister had invited her to some sort of spa retreat.
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And her response was immediate. And she almost didn't even let me finish asking
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the question. She said, how could I do that?
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It's not because of money. It's because Michael couldn't handle it.
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Because if I let myself want things, if I stop being vigilant,
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everything's going to fall apart. And she said, somebody has to be the adult.
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Somebody has to sacrifice. And at that point, she started to get really emotional.
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She said, if I'm not the responsible one, and I did not know this was where
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she was going next, she said, who am I?
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What's even my value in the home or in the relationships?
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So duty had become her entire identity. She completely severed it from any sense
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of her own joy or her own desire.
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And she'd been doing it for so long. That's just what it felt like to be her. It just was.
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And when I did ask a little bit more about intimacy, and we're not even talking
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that it has to be sex, but any kind of physical touch or cuddling or holding
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hands or something, anything, she gave a pretty bitter laugh.
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She said, that just feels like another thing on the to-do list.
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Another person who needs something from me when I don't have a thing left to give.
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She said, I can't actually remember the last time I wanted him. I just feel numb.
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And then I feel guilty for feeling numb, which makes me resent him and feel worse about myself.
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When I asked her what she resents the most, she was really clear that he still
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gets to want things, that he still has these desires and pleasures and joy,
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because that feels like a luxury that she can't afford.
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It's like he's playing while I'm drowning. And then, thank goodness for humor,
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she once said to him, I'm drowning. Why won't you even throw me a life preserver.
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And then she said he made an inappropriate joke about, oh, the thing with the
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big hole in the middle. She said, you can guess them what he said next.
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And I couldn't help myself. And I laughed, kind of came out of nowhere.
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And then she broke down and laughed too.
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And we had a really funny moment. And what I liked about that was.
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Man, that was so nice to see her have fun, even just in that moment.
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And then when she was able to gather herself a bit, I asked,
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have you ever shared moments like that with Michael?
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These kind of comical or humorous moments? And she said, oh,
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we used to, but she's like, I can't let myself do that now because then he'll
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think that he's won and then he'll back off and he won't do any of the things
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that I asked for him to do around the house.
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And I asked her if she had experience with that. And she said,
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no, but I'm sure that's what's going to happen.
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And I know that right now I could do a whole thing on projection and emotional
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maturity. And today is not that episode.
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But Sarah had become the embodiment of duty while completely shutting down any
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kind of her own desire or joy.
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And that was eating her alive from the inside.
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So Michael then comes in. Michael's energy was different.
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I thought he would be jovial and bubbly and what a lot of guys are when they
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come in to see me because he's the one who had reached out. But instead,
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he came in and he just sat back, arms crossed, very defensive before I even
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asked a question. And then it made sense why.
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The first words out of his mouth were, Sarah probably painted me as this irresponsible
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man-child who doesn't do anything around the house.
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And I just told him, hey, I'm actually interested in your experience,
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not hers. That's why we have these individual appointments.
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And he softened a little bit and he's like, so basically you're telling me yeah
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without telling me yes, which I did not play into.
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He told me that he works hard, 50 plus hours a week as a software engineer.
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But then he said, the second he walks in the door, or even as he's driving home,
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I start feeling this tension.
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And he said, it just feels like Sarah's keeping score of everything that I'm
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not doing. And I'm constantly failing.
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Like the teacher's disappointed in me. Like my mom's mad at me all over again.
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So he said, yeah, I, he retreats, he games.
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I did make a joke about toilet time. He said, it's definitely not a half an
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hour, but he does say that he's planning retreats constantly.
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Something to look forward to.
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Because he said, because at least there, I'm not being evaluated or found lacking.
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I asked if he viewed those things as an escape and he got defensive and he just
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said, no, those are things that I have to do to survive.
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But then his voice softened a little bit and he said, you have to understand,
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I used to be able to make her laugh. When we first got married, we were spontaneous.
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We decided at 9 p.m. to drive to the coast and watch the sunrise.
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And he said that we would make love in the middle of the day.
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She was alive. And now she's running on fumes and resentment.
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And that resentment is toward me. And when I asked him when that changed,
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he said, I think it was around the time that we had kids. And he said, I get it. Kids are hard.
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But he said, it's like she decided
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that being a good parent meant killing everything fun about yourself.
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And it's like she expects me to do the same. And he told me about a few weeks
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earlier when he'd found a babysitter. He did this on his own.
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He made a reservation at a restaurant that Sarah used to love and told her,
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keep Friday night open. And her response was,
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that's the same night as a school fundraiser planning meeting.
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You could have looked at the calendar.
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And he said, that's a meeting that she could have skipped. And I asked him,
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okay, what was that like for you? Because you put in this effort and you're
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trying and his voice cracked.
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And he said, she doesn't even want to be with me anymore. I'm just the guy who
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helps pay the mortgage. And occasionally she wants me to discipline the kids.
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I don't even feel like I'm her husband. I'm a roommate that she's constantly disappointed in.
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And then when we talked a little bit about intimacy, he got really uncomfortable,
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but honest. He said, we haven't had sex in months.
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Before that, it was maybe once a month. It always felt like she was doing me
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a favor and then just going through the motions. And he said,
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I want to say that I'd rather have nothing than that because at least nothing is being honest.
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But then he said, but then I
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go with nothing and I just beat myself up and think what's wrong with me.
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And I asked what he thought Sarah might say about why sex had stopped.
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He said, she'll say that she's too tired and too stressed and too much on her
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mind and that the kids have been pawing at her all day.
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And then he paused. He said, here's the thing. She's choosing to be that stressed.
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I made a little note on that one. I knew we'd be revisiting that.
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And then he continued, she's choosing to take on every single responsibility to refuse help.
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And then she resents everybody for not reading her mind.
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And he told me that he often offers to help and to do more and asks, what can he do to help?
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And then he said that she'll sigh like he was making it worse by asking.
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I've seen this dynamic plenty where one partner says, just tell me what I can
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do to help. And it's the right mouth.
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It sounds helpful, but often it puts the mental load right back onto the other
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person who is taking care of the things to now have to manage this person as well.
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So over time, he said, I just stopped trying to connect.
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Now, just do my thing, work and game and ride and try to do things with friends.
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At least that's where I feel competent.
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And I did take a dip back into feelings. What does that feel like?
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And he did a nice job. He said, lonely. I miss my wife, but I have no idea how
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to reach her when she's built up this wall of duties and responsibilities around herself.
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And then with a little bit of edge, he said, pardon me, stop trying because I am angry.
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She's chosen martyrdom over me and over us, and I can't compete with her need
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to be the perpetual victim of her own life.
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And I brought awareness to that language that did feel a bit harsh and he got
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defensive. Well, maybe that's how I feel.
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And the alternative becoming like her, he said, grinding through joyless duty every day.
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He said to me, that's death. So when I asked what he was afraid would happen,
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if he actually committed to some of the structure that Sarah wanted,
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he got really uncomfortable. He said, I'll lose my mind. I'll disappear.
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I'll just become another cog in this machine of her version of what family life is.
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Everything that I love about myself, spontaneity and adventure and playfulness,
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I think it will get ground down into nothing.
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And he said, Sarah's already lost those parts of herself. I don't want to lose
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them in me too. That's a lot.
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Michael was protecting his desire for joy and adventure by refusing anything to do with duty.
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And Sarah was protecting her duty by not allowing herself anything to do with desire or joy.
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And both of them were starving, I think, for what the other person had,
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but they definitely weren't aware of it. So when I brought them in together, I had a brief fantasy.
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What if they both just said, you know what? We've been binging on your podcast. We get it now.
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We are fluent in four pillars of connected conversation. We just wanted to pay you to say thanks.
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That is not what happened. Within just a few seconds of me trying to introduce
18:13
a framework of how to communicate, they were already interrupting each other
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and they were in their corners and their arms were folded and they were ready
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for battle and they were sitting on opposite sides of the couch.
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Yes, the marriage therapist does look at where you sit. And I stopped them and
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I pointed out what had just happened.
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That Sarah was so desperate to be heard and Michael not to be vilified and both
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were so locked into that pattern that they couldn't even listen to me introduce
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a concept that might help them.
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And then Sarah launches right in. I feel like I'm the only adult in the relationship.
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I manage everything. The kids schedules, the bills, the house.
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And I also have a full-time job.
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And Michael comes home and just wants to relax and play video games for hours
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and go mountain biking. And I'm drowning in responsibility.
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And Michael just immediately reacted. She makes it sound like I'm a deadbeat.
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I work 50 plus hours a week. But the second I walk in the door,
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here's your list. Do this. Fix that. Why didn't you remember this?
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I feel like I'm just another item on our to-do list.
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And then he does what a lot of guys, if I'm just going gender stereotype, do.
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He went right to sex. faster than usually a first joint session would.
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And we haven't had sex in months and we don't laugh anymore.
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And he said, I married a woman I loved, not a hall monitor.
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The classic division, it was so clear that Sarah had just completely identified
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with duty and her entire self-worth was tied to being the responsible one.
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She was screaming for him to acknowledge that he is not responsible.
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Her genuine desires for things like rest and playfulness and intimacy and spontaneity,
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they've been suppressed so long that I don't think she could remember what it
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even felt like to be alive and free.
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I believe that she truly identified that that is not something that even happens
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when you're married and have kids.
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Michael had built his whole life around escaping duty and structure because
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to him, it felt like death.
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And his genuine need for structure and purpose and to contribute,
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it was buried so far under rebellion against Sarah's demands that even when
19:57
he did help around the house, it was with resentment.
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Like he was doing time. He wasn't building a life together.
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And both had these rehearsed speeches. It's what I call the greatest hits.
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These familiar patterns, they fall into almost this flat affect.
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And the same dance, attack and defend and withdraw and go apart for a day or two.
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And then somebody finally pokes their head out of the bunker and,
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hey, I'm sorry, are we okay?
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And then, yeah, we're good. And then they're good. But that's not good.
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That is the absence of bad.
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And at this point, they can't tell the difference. It's just the dance.
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It's how they co-regulate. So we identified a real core wound.
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Sarah was able to eventually express that she secretly despised Michael for having any desire.
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She was seeing that his desires as childish and selfish, and that her duty then
20:43
had become this joyless obligation, and it was just completely severed from
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any kind of wanting. She couldn't even allow herself to want.
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And Michael acknowledged that he resented Sarah for her martyrdom.
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And that was a difficult conversation.
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His pursuit for desire, gaming, biking, it left him also feeling hollow.
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And I thought that was a really important point because Sarah just assumed that
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that was him living his best life.
21:05
But he said it was hollow because it was his desire against something,
21:09
not a desire towards something.
21:11
That his pleasures had become escapes, not a way to fill his battery,
21:15
not genuine fulfillment.
21:17
And then Sarah's wound, if I let myself want things, if I relax my grip on responsibility,
21:21
everything falls apart, even though she hadn't allowed that to even be a thing.
21:25
So she said, desire feels dangerous, duty feels safe, even if it's killing me.
21:29
And Michael's wound, if I submit to duty and structure, I'm going to lose myself
21:31
and I'm going to become a robot.
21:33
Freedom and desire are the only things that are keeping him alive,
21:35
even if he feels like he's becoming more lonely.
21:38
And as a couples therapist, one of the worst forms of loneliness is being lonely
21:42
within your relationship.
21:44
So here's where things get really interesting. And I'm grateful that you've
21:48
made it this far in the podcast, because I want to connect Sarah and Michael's
21:52
story to something bigger, because I think their struggle is actually the story of so many marriages.
21:57
And this is what prompted me to want to do this episode. I was listening to
22:00
an interview recently with an author named Heidi White.
22:02
She was on a podcast from a guy named Jonathan Pajot.
22:06
It's called The Symbolic World. And I've listened to a handful of his episodes.
22:09
And if you don't know who he is, he's a French-Canadian Orthodox icon carver, an artist.
22:14
And this incredibly thoughtful guy who explores symbolism and meaning and patterns
22:18
and stories and art and culture, he often looks at how the same archetypal narratives
22:23
keep showing up across different traditions and time periods.
22:26
Heidi was on a show talking about a new book of hers called The Divided Soul.
22:31
And something that she said, I don't even feel bad being dramatic.
22:35
It stopped me in my tracks, had me write it down.
22:37
And I listened to it a few times over. And I went and got the transcript of
22:41
the podcast interview. But she talks about what she calls the fundamental wound
22:44
of human existence, and it's this division between duty and desire.
22:48
And what was really interesting, she uses the story of Adam and Eve from the
22:52
Garden of Eden to illustrate this concept.
22:54
Now, before anybody tunes out, because I'm referencing a biblical story,
22:58
let me explain how I want to use this, because I thought Heidi did a nice job.
23:01
I want to take this story as my muse.
23:04
And when I say muse, I mean it in the sense of inspiration or a starting point
23:08
for contemplation, because it's the spark that gets us thinking about something deeper.
23:11
So, whether you believe literally in the story of Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark
23:15
or Jesus turning water into wine, whether you believe them as literal historical
23:19
events or as metaphorical narratives or not at all, honestly,
23:22
it doesn't matter for what I'm about to share.
23:24
And here's what I find so fascinating.
23:27
When you step back and look at the similarities in so many stories that are
23:31
found in the Bible, also in other scriptural texts, in a variety of spiritual
23:36
traditions across cultures, in ancient mythology, you start to see patterns.
23:40
And the same themes emerge when we call these patterns archetypes,
23:44
these universal symbols and these narrative structures that appear across human
23:48
culture and throughout history.
23:51
The psychologist Carl Jung talked extensively about archetypes and these recurring
23:55
characters, these images and story patterns that seem to be baked into the human psyche.
23:59
Things like the hero's journey, the great flood, the fall from paradise,
24:03
the dying and rising god, the trickster, the wise old man.
24:07
He says that these aren't accidents. They're not just different cultures randomly
24:11
coming up with the same stories.
24:13
The point might be that these patterns appear in cultures that are separated
24:16
by vast distances and thousands of years who had no contact with each other.
24:21
The ancient Greeks weren't borrowing from the Sumerians, who weren't borrowing
24:24
from the indigenous Americans, who weren't borrowing from the Hindus,
24:27
but they're all telling versions of the same fundamental stories.
24:33
And what that suggests is that these narratives are tapping into something universal
24:37
about human psychology and about the human experience, what Carl Jung would
24:40
call the collective unconscious.
24:42
Now, depending on your belief system, honestly, this observation might land
24:46
differently for every one of you.
24:48
For some of my more Christian faith-based listeners, you might think,
24:51
okay, well, maybe all these cultures separated by time and space,
24:54
we're all trying to communicate about God.
24:57
Maybe they're all referring to your God just through different cultural lenses and language.
25:02
Maybe the universal nature of these stories is evidence of a universal truth
25:05
that different people intuited or that they were given access to,
25:08
and then it came through in the language
25:09
or the culture or the symbols and stories that they had access to.
25:13
Or maybe when you hear about this concept of people who knew nothing of each
25:18
other coming up with very remarkably similar stories to try and make sense of
25:22
things like suffering and death and rebirth and chaos and wisdom and discomfort
25:26
and uncertainty and the human condition,
25:27
for some, maybe it causes you to rethink your own belief system.
25:30
And maybe it raises questions about whether anybody has the complete picture
25:34
or whether we're all holding different pieces of the same puzzle.
25:37
I work with so many people navigating faith journey, faith crisis from high demand religion.
25:42
For some people, this realization does start to trigger a faith crisis or even
25:46
an existential crisis. And it's why so many people don't feel comfortable looking
25:50
outside of their own faith community to read those texts or those narratives
25:54
because it feels threatening.
25:56
Because if other cultures have flood stories, dying and rising God narratives,
25:59
and heroes journeys that predate or exist independently of my tradition,
26:03
what does that mean about what I've been taught?
26:05
And does that make my story any less special or less true or less meaningful?
26:09
I think that so much of this gets into the work that I love doing around emotional immaturity.
26:14
That all or nothing or black or white thinking. That if someone else has a different
26:17
experience or story than mine,
26:19
then that must mean that they think theirs is right and mine is wrong.
26:22
That's not emotionally mature. What if we can have different opinions and still
26:27
maintain connection with others?
26:29
And it doesn't have to be yours is right and mine is wrong.
26:32
And I want to acknowledge that this causes people to have a lot of discomfort
26:37
because this is part of the human experience.
26:39
It can be deeply unsettling to realize that what you thought was unique might
26:43
be part of a larger pattern.
26:44
But here's what I've witnessed in my own life and in the lives of so many clients.
26:49
For others, this realization actually can soften them up.
26:53
It opens them up. And instead of creating crisis, or maybe better said,
26:56
after they sit through the crisis and realize the world still spins and they're
27:00
okay, it can create more curiosity, more genuine humility about the human experience.
27:05
And it can allow people to more easily forgive themselves and others.
27:09
Because then they're able to embrace not only the very present moment,
27:13
but whatever their belief system is right there, right now, while also accepting
27:17
that it could most likely grow and shift and move and adapt as they continue through life.
27:23
Because every moment through life is the very first time that they've ever been them.
27:27
So check that out. Now I'm learning this. Now my thoughts are this.
27:31
And I'm here to personally testify to you that this has been one of the most
27:34
beautiful and liberating concepts that I never had a clue that I didn't know
27:38
about. because it leads me to want to know what else I don't know.
27:41
And I want to know what other people's experiences are and what are these archetypes
27:45
and what are these stories.
27:46
And over time, it's not scary. It's exciting because this is my own hero's journey.
27:52
The journey of discovering that I don't have to have everything figured out,
27:55
that I don't have to defend my beliefs against every single challenge.
27:58
And if somebody else has a different opinion, it doesn't mean that mine's wrong
28:01
and that theirs is right.
28:02
Growth and change aren't threats to my faith or my identity.
28:05
They're actually evidence that I'm alive and I'm engaged in life and that I'm paying attention.
28:10
I want to talk about this concept of impermanence. It's one of the most fascinating,
28:14
scary, and then liberating concepts that I've ever embraced.
28:18
Impermanence is the recognition that everything, literally everything,
28:21
is constantly changing, that nothing is fixed, that nothing is permanent,
28:26
not our bodies, not our thoughts, not our emotions, not our relationships,
28:29
not our beliefs, or our understanding of truth.
28:32
And I know, because I've been there, that for most people, at first,
28:36
that sounds terrifying.
28:37
It can even be accused of being nihilistic because if nothing's permanent,
28:41
well, then what can we count on? And what do we build our lives on? But here's the paradox.
28:45
When you truly embrace impermanence, it becomes profoundly healing because so
28:50
much of our suffering comes from trying to make things permanent that can't be.
28:53
And we cling to these beliefs that we think we have to defend forever.
28:57
We hold on to these versions of ourselves that no longer serve us.
28:59
And we stay in rigid positions because we're so afraid that changing our mind
29:04
means that we were wrong.
29:06
But we were just being in that moment based on how we felt and the things that we knew.
29:11
We knew what we knew because that's what we knew. So that feeling of being wrong
29:15
to the emotionally immature feels like death, like abandonment.
29:19
But what if changing your mind isn't death? What if it's growth?
29:21
What if your belief system evolving isn't betrayal, it's actual maturity?
29:25
And what if you could hold your current understanding with both seriousness
29:28
and lightness, knowing it matters deeply right now while also knowing it's not the final word?
29:34
Impermanence teaches us that the problem isn't change because change is inevitable.
29:37
Everything is changing. The problem is our resistance to change.
29:41
That's what causes anxiety. That's what causes depression.
29:44
I mean, there's chemical challenges with that as well. Don't get me wrong.
29:46
But our desperate clinging to certainty in an uncertain world,
29:50
our need to be right instead of curious, that's what causes a lot of stress and anxiety.
29:55
So now when Sarah realized that her rigid sense of duty wasn't permanent,
29:59
that she could actually accept that that is how she has felt and how she has
30:03
shown up until she doesn't anymore and then reconnect with desire,
30:07
it was initially terrifying.
30:10
And you can see why she desperately clung to this identity of who she felt she
30:14
needed to be. If I'm not the responsible one holding everything together,
30:18
who am I and what will happen to the family?
30:21
What if the family still survives? By embracing this concept of impermanence
30:25
and allowing herself to change, to grow, to become somebody who could hold both
30:28
duty and desire, that's part of what freed her.
30:31
And when Michael accepted that his rebellion against structure wasn't really
30:34
doing him a lot of favors either, he could start to evolve and embrace a little
30:39
bit of discipline without feeling like he was losing himself.
30:41
So much of this is, I'm afraid of this thing that I've never even done.
30:44
So I build up this narrative in the story that that is going to cause a certain
30:48
thing, but I've never even tried it.
30:50
He could start to practice some of this discipline without losing himself.
30:53
It felt like if he did that, he was going to give up his identity.
30:56
Instead of evolving, changing. For him, embracing that impermanence,
31:00
allowing himself to be more of this integrated version of himself,
31:03
that's actually what allowed him to reconnect with himself and allowed him to
31:07
show up better for Sarah.
31:08
We are all trying to figure out things that do not make sense because we cannot predict the future.
31:15
The brain is a prediction engine. It desperately wants to, and we sure don't
31:18
like discomfort and we want certainty.
31:20
And those are all fighting against each other. We're trying to create meaning
31:25
in a world that often feels chaotic and uncertain.
31:27
And maybe, just maybe, the healthiest approach isn't to lock down one interpretation
31:32
and then defend it against all others and try to have confirmation bias and
31:36
find all these reasons and conspiracy theories of why I have to be right.
31:40
What if the goal was to hold our current understanding with both commitment,
31:44
but also humility to say, hey, this is what I believe right now,
31:48
but I am open to the things that I don't know that I don't know.
31:52
This matters to me right now. It matters deeply, but I'm open to learning more. I'm open to being wrong.
31:57
And I don't even like the concepts in this setting of right and wrong because
32:02
I'm just showing up, thinking and feeling and believing the things I do until
32:06
maybe I don't any longer.
32:08
That's being open to growth. That's not weakness. That's wisdom.
32:11
That's the hero's journey.
32:12
That's what all these stories across all these traditions, I think,
32:14
are trying to teach us. Okay, back to the podcast. Somebody help me down off my soapbox.
32:18
Tell me off. I think I was having a moment. Back to the story of the Garden of Eden.
32:22
So it's one of these archetypal narratives and whether it happened exactly as
32:26
written or whether it's a profound metaphor for the human condition,
32:28
it contains something pretty true about our experience.
32:31
Here's what Heidi White argues using this story as her foundation.
32:34
She said, before the fall in Eden narrative, what Adam and Eve wanted to do
32:38
and what they should do were perfectly aligned.
32:40
Duty and desire were unified. And all of a sudden I'm listening.
32:43
I'm thinking, okay, tell me more. She said, they were given commandments,
32:47
be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, take dominion over all the creation,
32:51
eat from any trees of the garden.
32:54
Not that one, but everything else. And all these commandments were desirable to them.
32:58
They wanted what they should do, and they should do what they wanted.
33:01
There wasn't a division. How fascinating.
33:04
But then the character of the serpent comes in and does something brilliant and devastating.
33:09
He creates a false perception that fulfilling their duty, staying away from
33:14
that one tree, actually is going to prevent the fulfillment of your desire.
33:18
He makes them believe that what they want and what they should do are actually opposed to each other.
33:25
Kind of putting this in a different frame because I wanted to understand this
33:28
so desperately because it just felt like something was there.
33:31
The serpent's trick isn't to make them do something they don't want to do.
33:35
The trick was to convince them that the boundary, the one limitation placed
33:38
on them, is preventing them from getting what they actually desire.
33:42
He reframes the commandment from a loving protection into this repressive restriction.
33:47
He takes something that was actually aligned with their best interest and then
33:50
makes it seem like it's working against their best interest.
33:53
Or think of it this way. Before the serpent shows up, Adam and Eve experience
33:56
their one limitation is just part of a larger freedom.
33:59
It just is. They have an entire garden of delights, trees to enjoy,
34:02
fruit to eat, and meaningful work to do. and they have this intimate connection
34:05
with each other and with their dad, with God.
34:08
And then there's one tree that you can't eat from. But it wasn't experience
34:12
as deprivation, just was. It was part of the fabric of their reality.
34:15
But then the serpent narrows their focus about that tree.
34:19
Now we need to focus entirely on what you can't have, the forbidden other,
34:23
and convinces them that actually the thing you can't have, that one restriction,
34:26
turns out that's the key to happiness. I cannot believe the dad is keeping that
34:30
from you. What's up with that, right? Right.
34:32
Suddenly, everything that they have becomes invisible, and the one thing they
34:36
don't becomes everything.
34:38
And I thought of some modern examples. Imagine somebody who commits to their marriage vows.
34:42
They've chosen monogamy and commitment and faithfulness. And for a while,
34:45
that commitment, that is totally aligned with what they want,
34:47
because they want this deep intimacy and trust and this life built together
34:51
and these shared experiences, but they grow apart.
34:54
Then they meet somebody at work, gives them attention, makes them feel exciting and new again.
34:58
And then here comes the serpent's voice. Because, hey, your commitment to your
35:01
marriage actually is preventing you from being happy.
35:04
Real fulfillment would come from following this desire.
35:07
Staying faithful, that's just
35:08
a rule holding you back from what you really want. So that's fascinating.
35:11
The trick is the false dichotomy. The person starts to believe that their commitment,
35:15
duty, and their happiness, desire, are opposed.
35:19
When in reality, the momentary attraction, what if that's counterfeit of what they actually desire?
35:24
Which is a deep, lasting intimacy that can only come through commitment.
35:28
And I know as a practicing couples therapist that works with a lot of people
35:33
that are going through divorce, that there is a time and a place we can talk
35:38
about capacity where someone,
35:40
because of all the things that they bring into the relationship,
35:43
there might be a limit or a capacity issue where they aren't even aware of the
35:47
things they're not even aware of trying to show up different in a marriage.
35:50
Right now, I want to explain this process or this concept. Let me give you another example.
35:56
Because take somebody who is trying to get healthy and they commit to a nutrition
35:59
plan and exercise and they're going to move their body regularly.
36:03
That's their duty to themselves. And it's aligned with their desire to feel
36:05
good because when they have energy and they eat well and they get in better
36:09
shape, now they're going to be around for their kids and their grandkids.
36:14
Here comes the serpent's voice when they're stressed. You know that cookie?
36:18
Actually, that's what you want. So your discipline is preventing you from comfort and pleasure.
36:23
Real self-care would mean giving yourself what you want right now.
36:26
And suddenly, the boundary they set for themselves, which was actually in service
36:29
of their deeper values, if I eat right and I exercise, I do feel better,
36:33
but now it feels like oppression.
36:35
They're not experiencing this as, I'm choosing not to eat the cookie because
36:39
I value how I feel when I eat well. And if I start eating one cookie,
36:42
I'm eating the entire sleeve or box of Girl Scout cookies, hypothetically, thin mint.
36:47
They're experiencing stupid diets keeping me from what would really make me happy.
36:51
Now, back to another example. A parent sets boundaries with their teenager.
36:55
Curfew, screen time limits, expectations around homework and chores and things like that.
37:00
These boundaries are duties that the parent has taken on in service of what
37:03
they desire for their child.
37:05
Safety and healthy development and future opportunities and success.
37:08
The teenager though experiences it as restriction and
37:11
then the parent starts to internalize that and i felt this
37:14
one our kids are now adults but man this one i almost
37:17
hesitated to write because it's coming from a place of i'm
37:20
noticing some feelings of guilt because here comes the serpent's voice hey your
37:24
rules kind of making your kid miserable they'd be happier if you just let them
37:27
do whatever they want and then being a good parent means being their friend
37:30
and not their jailer and then the parent starts to believe that their duty of
37:34
trying to maintain boundaries as opposed to their desire of having a happy,
37:37
connected relationship with their kid.
37:39
And this is one I know I didn't know because I was afraid to put it in play at times.
37:45
I worried that if I held a boundary, then it was this all or nothing black and
37:50
white thing where then now my kid will not like me forever.
37:53
When in reality, the boundaries are essential to the child's well-being and
37:57
actually to the long-term relationship.
38:00
Or I thought a lot about somebody who's building a creative practice,
38:03
writing, painting, music, whatever.
38:05
They know that they need discipline and structure. Well, do they know?
38:09
I hope that they know. They probably know they need structure and discipline
38:11
to hone their craft, the practice.
38:14
That's the duty side. But then when it comes time to sit down and practice, here comes the serpent.
38:19
This feels like work. And real creativity should be spontaneous and joyful.
38:22
If you are forcing yourself, you're killing your artistic spirit.
38:25
And suddenly, the discipline that would actually lead to mastery and genuine
38:29
creative freedom down the road feels like it's opposed to their desire to be an artist.
38:34
The pattern is so familiar.
38:37
Take something that's actually protecting you or serving your deeper values.
38:40
Now reframe it as oppression or restriction and then convince you that true
38:44
fulfillment lies in abandoning that structure.
38:47
Make the boundary seem like the enemy of your happiness instead of the container for it.
38:52
The concept of the serpent, if it's a brilliant metaphor, if you believe in
38:55
it literally, but what that does is create a split in your perception where
38:58
there wasn't one before.
38:59
So all of a sudden, the concept of the serpent makes you experience your commitment
39:03
as constraint and your discipline as drudgery and your boundaries as barriers
39:07
and your responsibilities.
39:08
I couldn't think of anything that starts with the letter R and I love alliteration,
39:12
but your responsibility as burdens.
39:13
When in reality, these things are the structures that allow your deeper desires to flourish.
39:17
And then here's the toxic part. Once you believe that duty and desire are opposed
39:21
to each other, now you're kind of trapped.
39:23
Because if you follow desire, you might feel guilty about abandoning your commitments.
39:28
I'm going to sit down and practice every day on the piano, for example.
39:32
But then I'm not going to do that because I just want to be able to figure it
39:35
out and do it when I feel like I'm doing it.
39:37
Or you follow that duty, got to sit down and practice every day,
39:40
and you feel resentful that you're not, you don't like it, that you're not getting
39:44
what you want. Either way, you're divided against yourself.
39:46
Either way, you're suffering, and that's the wound. That's the fracture,
39:50
and that's what Sarah and Michael were living out in their marriage every day.
39:54
Heidi White then said, and the scripture tells us that Eve looked at the tree,
39:57
saw that it was desirable to eat, and that it would make one wise,
40:00
and it was then and only then that she decided to eat it, and that moment is
40:03
when desire and duty split.
40:05
That fracture, that fundamental wound is something that we keep replaying in
40:08
our own lives, psychologically, morally, and then we keep telling ourselves
40:12
the story over and over again in different forms because it captures something
40:14
essential about the human experience.
40:17
That's why Sarah had become pure duty without desire, that she'd organized her
40:20
entire life around what she should do, and she'd lost all connection to what she actually wanted.
40:25
And that disconnection made her resentful and exhausted and numb.
40:29
And then Michael had become pure desire without duty because he then had organized
40:33
his life around escaping responsibility because he experienced duty purely as constraint and death.
40:39
And that disconnection left him feeling hollow and lonely and defensive.
40:43
Here's the thing. True duty and true desire aren't opposed to each other.
40:47
They're meant to be unified.
40:49
And this part may sound a little counterintuitive. Stay with me.
40:52
This is probably not the part that I want to put into a clip or a reel.
40:56
But what if your duty as a spouse, either side, includes desiring your partner,
41:01
not as an obligation, but as part of what you've committed to cultivate, to figure out?
41:05
What if that's a me thing? and your duty as a parent, what if that includes
41:08
modeling things like joy and rest and accountability and emotional safety for
41:11
your children, not just productivity?
41:14
Desire without duty, without structure, I think it becomes slavery to impulses.
41:19
And then duty without desire becomes kind of a joyless obligation.
41:23
Think about learning to paint. You have a desire to create art.
41:27
You get really good at it. To get good at it, you need discipline.
41:30
You need to practice techniques that feel frustrating at first.
41:33
And if you follow every impulse without structure, you most likely won't develop mastery.
41:38
You might get somewhere, you might have fun, but if you only focus on technique
41:42
though without remembering why you wanted to paint in the first place, it can become a slog.
41:46
It can become drudgery. The same with an athlete.
41:49
Getting proficient and becoming really good at something requires practice and
41:53
repetition and frustration.
41:55
Those are things that seem to stifle the very reason that an athlete starts. Yeah.
42:00
But then if they stay consistent, and if they even let duty shape their desire,
42:04
then they eventually get freedom in their desire that they didn't have in the outset.
42:08
A real example, I mentioned my son in previous episodes. He had a wonderful,
42:12
amazing high school basketball career that led him to opportunities to play in college.
42:15
Four-year varsity starter, set a school record in scoring, four years of all league.
42:19
And I remember people saying so often that he was so lucky to have been blessed
42:22
with that gift. And I remember him coming to me once in high school after a
42:26
friend of his mom had said to him in front of her son, his friend,
42:30
that his friend just wasn't as blessed as my son was.
42:33
And my son telling me that the mom had no idea how often my son practiced,
42:37
not from a place of validation, but just to share my experience.
42:41
We had the standing rule with any of the kids that if they wanted to go on a
42:44
run, we went. If they wanted to talk about a friendship thing, we did.
42:47
If they wanted to talk about something with school, we did it.
42:49
If they wanted help with the project, let's do it. If my son wanted to go to
42:53
the church at night, even after a long day at work and put up shots, we did it.
42:57
It didn't matter if I had worked all day or not. Smile and say yes.
43:01
Did we go overboard at times? You bet we did. And I'm sure we created situations
43:05
where their lack of planning created an emergency for my wife or me,
43:08
but we were trying to figure things out as best as we could.
43:11
My point being, though, that the number of hours practice that he put in was
43:14
what allowed him the freedom to be as good as he was in the games.
43:17
And I know that there are people who have serious talent, but I have personally,
43:21
I don't know if I want to say never, but I don't feel like I've ever met somebody
43:25
who was an incredibly successful fill in the blank, whatever that is.
43:29
And I've had this opportunity to work with athletes and musicians and authors
43:33
and successful business people.
43:35
And yes, a lot of them had definite advantages due to their family finances
43:39
or positions in the community.
43:41
But there are plenty of people who also had those types of advantages who didn't
43:45
put in above average amounts of effort into whatever it was that they wanted to do.
43:49
For me personally, the number of Google Docs and unrecorded podcasts and recorded
43:53
podcasts that I've done nothing with that I've created over the last 10 to 15
43:56
years would be mind blowing.
43:58
I was thinking about this in a way, it's almost like the concept of epigenetics,
44:01
that we may have a genetic predisposition for something, let's say like anxiety,
44:05
but then if we grow up living on the beach and there are no financial issues
44:08
and we have an amazing, wonderful dog and life just flows,
44:14
it's as if that genetic predisposition doesn't become unlocked.
44:18
What if we have this predisposition for something, but then do we take advantage
44:21
of the opportunity to nurture those abilities or gifts?
44:24
So then to unlock true desire, I'm afraid, or maybe let me reframe that.
44:30
No, to unlock true desire, it's going to come with a free life course in duty or discipline.
44:35
Even if you have a number of stories that your brain's telling you about duty
44:38
or discipline, the greatest hits of those being things like,
44:41
well, I'm not very disciplined or I'm not even sure where to start.
44:44
Or what if this isn't something that will eventually pan out for me anyway,
44:47
or I'm not even sure if this is something that I would like to do,
44:49
and I want to turn this into some sort of almost infomercial now and say,
44:53
and as we're talking about this act now, your brain will also provide you with thoughts such as,
44:57
sure, but if I like doing this thing now, and if I do it too much,
45:00
then I won't like it anymore.
45:01
Or I can't pursue this thing because if I make it my focus or my job,
45:04
then it will lose all the magic.
45:06
I bring that up because I remember so well hearing that concept over and over
45:10
earlier in my career about if people just pursued their passions,
45:13
granted with discipline, then it would no longer be enjoyable.
45:16
And I would say, man, that's a great point until I remembered the very person
45:19
in my office who was saying that exact thing when I thought, wait a minute.
45:23
I did not care much for my 10 years in the computer software industry, and I love what I do now.
45:29
And it's been at the time that this happened, I was 15 years into my career, and I loved it.
45:35
And I love it more and more. And here I am another five or more years since,
45:39
and I still absolutely love it.
45:41
And I can't wait to continue to learn what else that I don't even know that
45:44
I don't know yet about myself, about relationships, of human behavior,
45:47
of parenting, of faith, you name it. When we don't discipline our desires,
45:51
we find ourselves reacting to these moment-by-moment impulses.
45:55
When we don't connect our duty to desire, we become dried-up, resentful machines.
46:01
Sarah actually needed what Michael had. Michael needed what Sarah had.
46:04
Sarah needed to reconnect with desire to remember that her duty to her family
46:07
includes her own flourishing, raising her emotional baseline.
46:10
And Michael needed to reconnect with duty to understand that his desire for
46:14
intimacy and connection can't be achieved through just escape and self-indulgence.
46:19
In sessions, I said to Sarah, you've become so identified with duty that you've
46:24
lost touch with an important truth.
46:25
Your duty as a human includes actively working on desire for life.
46:30
Your duty as a mom, what if that
46:32
includes modeling joy and rest for your children, not just productivity?
46:36
What would it mean if doing your duty to your family required you to reconnect
46:39
with what you genuinely want? And to Michael, you think you're pursuing desire,
46:43
but you've identified that you're just running away from things.
46:46
Real desire that kind of fulfills requires commitment and structure and discipline.
46:50
You say you want connection with Sarah, but you're not willing to do the small
46:53
daily acts that would make you trustworthy and present to her.
46:57
It's like he wants the harvest without planting anything.
47:00
The goal wasn't to get Sarah to loosen up and Michael to tighten up,
47:03
though behaviorally, over time, that might look like that's what happens.
47:07
The goal is to help them see that true duty is desirable.
47:11
That Sarah's duty to her family and to herself is not opposed to her flourishing.
47:16
It actually requires it.
47:17
A burnt-out, resentful, joyless mom doesn't serve anybody well, especially herself.
47:21
And true desire requires duty.
47:24
Michael's desire for intimacy and connection and a meaningful life can't be
47:28
achieved through escape and self-indulgence.
47:30
It requires the very commitment and discipline he's been trying to avoid.
47:34
So some of the homework that I assigned for Sarah, things like,
47:37
hey, this week, I want you to identify one thing that you genuinely want.
47:40
You don't even have to do it right now. Just be aware and not the things that
47:44
you think you should want, not what would be responsible to want.
47:47
But what do you want? What do you desire? What would bring you joy?
47:50
It could be as simple as a few minutes of reading a novel. It could be taking a bath.
47:53
It could be going to coffee with a friend. It could be going on a walk.
47:56
It could be just sitting outside and doing nothing.
47:59
And we'll get to the point where your assignment is to actually do it.
48:01
We need to identify it and then notice the guilt and understand that isn't being selfish.
48:07
It's part of your duty to remain human.
48:09
For Michael, that's where we got a little more pushback. Choose one small concrete daily duty.
48:15
Make the kids lunches. Do the dishes after dinner. Take out the trash without being asked.
48:19
And don't brag about it. Commit to it for a week, not because of Sarah's nagging,
48:23
but as a practice. And you don't need to get a trophy for it.
48:26
You can tell me about it as your therapist, But try not to just get the validation
48:29
from your wife for the thing that she does kind of all the time.
48:32
And then notice how it feels different when it's your choice,
48:35
when your structure is your choice, not a rebellion against her expectations.
48:40
And my own work. I need to be honest about something that came up for me while
48:43
working with Sarah and Michael.
48:44
When I first heard the word duty in Heidi White's podcast, boy,
48:48
did I have a negative reaction. I felt my own tightening in my chest.
48:52
Because words just don't have dictionary definitions. They have relational networks
48:55
of meaning that we've built up over our entire lives.
48:58
When I hear duty, my brain doesn't just think of responsibility and what a wonderful
49:01
thing to provide a container for my desires.
49:05
Oh, no, I pull up associations, being controlled, doing things I don't want
49:08
to do, lectures on responsibility, feeling trapped, resentment.
49:11
And I realized, oh, I'm more drawn to this desire side of the equation as well.
49:14
I love spontaneity, following what feels alive in the moment.
49:17
The idea of discipline and structure felt constraining. And honestly,
49:20
there were moments in the sessions, especially when Michael would talk where
49:24
I wanted to say, you know, Sarah, I think he's got a good point.
49:26
But then the more I've explored this concept, the more I've had to look honestly at my own life.
49:30
There are areas where I could use a lot more discipline and I can't just blame
49:34
it on, oh, it's my HD or I don't do a nice job with checklists.
49:38
My resistance to duty is sometimes actually, maybe it's my resistance to growth,
49:44
that fear of what the future may hold if I now actually do the thing that I've
49:48
always told myself that I want to do, something that I need to continue to examine.
49:52
And I want to touch briefly on values and values versus socially compliant goals.
49:58
I talked about this earlier in the year in an episode when I was talking about
50:01
New Year's resolutions, because this is where I love ACT, acceptance and commitment
50:06
therapies, emphasis on values versus socially compliant goals, that it's so crucial.
50:11
Values are the directions you choose for your life based on what truly matters
50:14
to you. And socially compliant goals are the things that you think that you're
50:17
supposed to do because others expect that.
50:20
Your parents instilled that in you, your community, your church.
50:23
You're trying to do these things because you think that's what you need to do,
50:27
especially to avoid judgment or to get validation or because that's just what responsible people do.
50:32
And socially compliant goals are exhausting because they're disconnected from your actual values.
50:37
They become stifling because if I don't even want to do the thing that I think
50:43
I'm supposed to do, then I'm going to turn to this concept called experiential avoidance.
50:46
I'm going to do anything else other than the thing that I think I'm supposed to want to do.
50:50
That is pure duty without desire.
50:52
That's Sarah doing everything perfectly because that's what a,
50:55
quote, good mom is supposed to do. Not because those specific things align with
50:58
what she genuinely values about motherhood.
51:00
But that's where you can see it can get tricky because you can't discover your
51:04
values just by asking what you want in the moment.
51:06
You have to go on the hero's journey. that process of leaving the comfortable,
51:10
of facing challenges, of confronting your own shadow and coming back with wisdom
51:14
about who you actually are.
51:16
And the way you're going to find out who you are is to do things,
51:19
to explore, to be open, to, I struggle with the concept of failure,
51:25
but to not having a wonderful time in the thing that you're doing.
51:29
Because once you know what matters to you, not what you think should matter,
51:33
not what your parents think should matter, not what the algorithm on Instagram
51:37
or TikTok, things should matter, then discipline stops being duty in the heavy obligatory sense.
51:42
It starts to feel more like aligned action.
51:45
I think of a musician that I worked with once who valued mastery and creative expression.
51:50
And I will tell you, he did not experience practicing scales or just the daily
51:54
grind as soul crushing drudgery.
51:56
He said, it's just what you do when you're moving towards something that you genuinely desire.
52:01
Discipline in the service of something that genuinely matters,
52:03
something that you genuinely desire, that unifies duty with desire.
52:09
So Sarah needed to distinguish between values that she actually held,
52:13
being present with her children, creating a loving home, contributing through
52:15
her work, and the socially compliant goals she'd absorbed about what a,
52:19
quote, good wife and mother should look like.
52:21
And once she was able to make that distinction, then some of the duties became
52:24
lighter because they were aligned with her values.
52:27
Others she let go of entirely because they were performative obligations.
52:31
And Michael had to do the same thing to distinguish his genuine values,
52:34
playfulness, adventure, connection, curiosity. He wanted to be a present father
52:38
from his immature, reactive rebellion against structure.
52:41
And once he could see that discipline in certain areas would actually serve
52:45
his values, then he was able to embrace it differently.
52:48
Find your own words, the words themselves, duty and desire. That might carry
52:52
different baggage for different people. If you need different words,
52:54
you can do that. You're an adult.
52:56
Instead of duty, you can try commitment. What you've chosen to be accountable
53:00
to, structure, the framework that supports your goals, discipline,
53:03
the practice that builds mastery or responsibility. what you've chosen to steward,
53:07
integrity, alignment between your values and your actions.
53:09
Or instead of desire, you might try longing, what your soul is drawn toward
53:13
or aspiration, what you're reaching for or passion, what energizes you,
53:16
what moves you, aliveness, what makes you feel like you want to go out and live.
53:20
The point isn't the specific words. The point is integration.
53:24
The point is bringing together the part of you that knows what matters,
53:29
values, desire, longing, or the part of you that can commit to consistent action
53:32
in that direction, discipline, structure, duty, commitment.
53:36
And it's that integration that doesn't happen by accident. It requires figuring
53:40
out what you actually value, what you actually care about.
53:43
And you can hopefully see that when you are just stuck in this things I have
53:48
to do, it's also providing you with a little bit of a reason to not figure out
53:52
what really matters to you.
53:54
Having the honesty to distinguish your values from the socially compliant goals
53:57
and be willing to embrace discipline, not as a soul-crushing obligation,
54:01
but as a path toward what you actually want, is going to help.
54:05
So where are they now? I have been working with Sarah and Michael off and on
54:08
for quite a while. They come in for regular checkups. They've had some setbacks in conversations.
54:12
Sometimes the conversations completely derail, but they keep coming back to
54:16
the framework and continuing to work together.
54:18
And Sarah is doing an amazing job figuring out what she wants and what she desires.
54:21
And there was a brief moment where they both feared that they would figure out
54:25
who they were and what they didn't like each other, this new version of each
54:28
other. And I said, that would be a thing.
54:31
And that was a story that their brain was trying to hook to,
54:34
to keep them from figuring out what really mattered.
54:36
She went on spa weekend, started reading fiction before bed instead of scrolling
54:40
through her to-do list or her social media feed.
54:43
She's learning that wanting things actually is not selfish and it can be uncomfortable
54:46
and enjoyable at the same time.
54:48
She can actually hold both of those feelings at the same time.
54:50
And being human is what it takes to be a good human and a good wife and a good mom.
54:55
And she's also done the harder work of distinguishing her actual values from
54:59
these socially compliant goals. And that's taken a lot of undoing as it came
55:02
with a free faith crisis that came along with it that she wasn't even aware of.
55:06
She realized that so much of her duties, keeping the house magazine perfect,
55:09
volunteering for every school committee, weren't connected to what she valued.
55:12
It was performative. It was what she thought she was supposed to do.
55:16
And then she's learned to let a lot of that go and the world still spins.
55:20
And Michael actually loves her even more as she's becoming more of her authentic self.
55:25
And Michael is surprisingly starting to embrace discipline to the point where
55:29
I am having counter-transference, realizing, oh wait, he's doing more of the
55:32
thing that we've been talking about than I sure have.
55:35
He's been committed to doing more morning routines. He's started walking in
55:38
and taking action on things that needed to be done instead of waiting to be assigned tasks.
55:41
He's learning that structure and commitment do not kill spontaneity.
55:44
They actually create this foundation for intimacy because now Sarah just has
55:49
an overall feeling of trust for him.
55:51
You can't have a real adventure without planning it out. And you can still be
55:54
spontaneous within those plans.
55:57
You can't have deep connection without consistent presence and you can't be
56:00
dependable without some discipline.
56:01
The goal isn't to choose between duty and desire or between structure and spontaneity
56:05
or commitment and passion.
56:06
It's bringing those things together because that's what marriage is supposed
56:09
to be. The vows are literally the integration.
56:12
I want you, desire, passion, longing, and I commit to you, duty,
56:17
devotion, discipline as one unified reality.
56:20
And the work is to remarry each other however many times you need to.
56:24
So if you're listening and you're recognizing yourself, whether you're the Sarah
56:27
who's lost her sense of desire or the Michael who's avoiding all sense of duty
56:30
and discipline, I want you to know you're not broken.
56:33
You are divided and division can be healed.
56:35
It is time to do something about it. And I want you to go to TonyOverbay.com slash magnetic.
56:42
Get on the wait list, if anything, because I'm going to talk about so much of
56:46
this and ways to communicate and connect using my four pillars of a connected
56:49
conversation framework. We're going to talk about differentiation.
56:52
We're going to talk about the need for validation, what emotional immaturity,
56:55
the role that plays, and so many things that you did not know that you did not know.
56:58
I want to help you go on your own hero's journey to discover what you actually
57:04
value versus what you think you're supposed to and find out what matters to
57:08
you and help you be willing to embrace the discipline required to move toward it.
57:12
It takes work to get success, and that includes in your marriage.
57:17
Your marriage does not have to be a battleground between duty and desire or
57:21
between structure and spontaneity or between what you should do and what you want to do.
57:24
It needs to be this feast where both are present and both are celebrated.
57:28
When you're no longer divided against yourself first and then each other,
57:32
you can really start to have an intimate connection. That's the work and it is so worth it.
57:37
If you have questions or thoughts or your own stories, reach out, I'd love to hear them.
57:41
And then taking us out per usual, the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence
57:44
with her song, It's Wonderful because I'm telling you, if you get the right
57:47
tools, it really can be. Have a great week and we'll see you next time.