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It's Not About the Dishes - Trojan Horses Hiding in Every Marriage · The Virtual Couch

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Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch.
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I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist,
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host of Waking Up to Narcissism as well.
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And today I want to tell you about one of my very favorite couples.
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We are bringing back Jack and Jill, not the nursery rhyme version.
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But honestly, though, by the time that couples come to see me,
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someone has definitely fallen down a proverbial hill and the other one is pretty
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sure that they could have prevented it if the other person would have just listened
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and paid more attention.
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But in this scenario, Jack and Jill, and this is all based off of real live
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examples, a culmination, a cumulative of couples that I've been working with recently.
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And I've been doing couples therapy for 20 years.
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So Jack and Jill have been together for, we're going to say approximately 25 years.
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They have a good marriage. Mostly they laugh at the same things.
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They're good parents and they actually like each other, which as a couples therapist,
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I want you to know, it's not something that I get to say about everybody who sits across from me.
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They have been in a low grade war about the dishwasher and doing the dishes
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for a better part of two decades.
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As you may guess, this isn't really a story about a dishwasher,
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but I have promised myself that I would do an entire episode around the dishes
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for so long because it's one of those conversations that gets brought up often.
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And again, I know it's not about the dishes, but we have to start with the dishwasher
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because that's where Jack and Jill live right now.
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And I can imagine that as you hear this story unfold, that's where a lot of you guys live too.
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Insert dishwasher with the laundry or cooking or something else that might sound
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a bit trivial or surface level.
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But here's what we're going to learn about today. It's often the safest place
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to have disagreements about the higher charge topics.
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Now, when I'm working with a couple, typically the higher charge topics are
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things like sex and finances and parenting and religion and politics.
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When people come into my office, they often want to immediately dive into those
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things, but they don't have a framework, a scaffolding of tools to be able to
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have conversations about those things in an emotionally mature way.
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If they did, they wouldn't be coming to see me.
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And by the time that people come to see me, they want to just cut to the chase.
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They want to save money. They want to save time.
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What they're essentially asking you as a couples therapist is let us lay out
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all of our grievances, all of our problems, and then you rule.
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You tell us who is right and who is wrong, which is the last thing that you
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actually want your couples therapist to do, you are hoping that they have a
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significant amount of experience and they can help you, the two of you,
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learn to first learn how to talk to each other and how to listen to each other
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and we'll get to resolution down the road.
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But people want to come in and can we just wrap this up and just tell us who's
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right and who's wrong, which again is a very, very unhealthy way to approach couples therapy.
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By the time we're done today, I think you're going to understand something about
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your own relationship that maybe you couldn't quite name before,
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whether you have disagreements about the dishes or not.
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So first, let's talk about why the dishes, the dishwasher and loading the dishes
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and putting away the dishes as our muse, as the thing that we're going to interact
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with today so that we can learn a whole lot about the way that you communicate.
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We're going to learn about things that you bring into a relationship because
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you may think loading a dishwasher is a very simple act, a neutral act even.
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You carry a dish to the sink.
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You carry your dish to the sink, scrape the plates into either the sink,
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if you have a garbage disposal or the trash, if you don't, or a pet's bowl,
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if you're so inclined, or you may hear me say that and you're thinking,
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are you kidding me? You don't give spot table scraps.
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Maybe you have a composting pile. So you go put them out there, the scraps.
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And speaking of a compost pile, maybe you're now reminded that you always wanted
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a compost pile, but when you mentioned it, your spouse thought it was ridiculous.
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And maybe I'll remind my spouse of their failed microgreens garden or drone
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business or the purchasing of an expensive road bike so that they could bike
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to work. How did that work out?
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Or then they would probably then remind you of your food dehydrating phase or your couponing phase.
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So forget it. Just scrape the plates, put them in however they'll fit around.
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They go in the upper rack or large cups on the bottom rack, smaller cups over
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the prongs on the top, knives pointy side up. So they'll definitely get clean.
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Forks, tongs up, just cram this large bowl over the top of the dishes and on
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the bottom load of the dishwasher and add the rinse agent and you press a button and done.
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As you may guess from even just some of the variables I just mentioned,
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you would be wrong if you assume that the way that you do it is the correct way.
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And you may have heard of things in that description that you've never heard
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of, but every single one of those comes from real life experiences and examples
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that I've had conversations of as a couples therapist.
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Because inside that one humble appliance lives an incomprehensible number of
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attack surfaces. And I mean that with love and compassion. I really do. So take the tongs.
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Tongs go in the utensil basket. I want to say obviously, but some people maybe disagree.
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But do they go handle down business end up so the water can really clean them
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and get in there and make sure that they don't have any disgusting food particles on them?
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Or do they go handle up so that when you reach in to unload them,
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you don't impale yourself?
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This is a genuine debate that reasonable adult human beings who drive cars and
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have jobs that they have in my office and pay me money to listen to.
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And I have had that conversation multiple times.
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Then there are the bowls. Do bowls go on the top rack or the bottom?
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And this depends partly on the bowl, partly on the dishwasher,
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and partly on a set of deeply held convictions that your spouse developed sometime
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between the age of four and then having their first apartment.
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Convictions that they've probably never once examined and done a real deep self-introspection
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because that actually sounds silly to do, but they also can't explain why.
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This is just the way you do it.
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So that they'll defend the way that they load the dishwasher with intensity and cups.
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You know, the prongs on the top rack, do you put the cups on the prongs or between
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the prongs? And then don't get me started on pre-rinse.
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Do you pre-rinse or does it leave a real sticky film? Do you trust the dishwasher
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to do what the manufacturer literally designed it to do?
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Now, Jill pre-rinses. Jack believes pre-rinsing defeats the whole purpose.
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Jack has a story about his mom who gaslit him like nobody's business growing
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up, who insisted that the owner's manual of their dishwasher literally said
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to leave food on the plate in order to do its job better, which Jack thought was insane.
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Again, very true story. And by the way, who on earth reads the owner's manual of a dishwasher?
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Well, Jack's mom did. That's who. But as Jack watched over the years,
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it was so that she could nail Jack or his dad on some obscure fact that they
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didn't know so that she would feel superior.
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Of course, everybody knew that you regularly had to remove the bottom heater
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coil and soak it in a mixture of apple cider vinegar and vintage cherry Coke for 23 minutes. No more.
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Certainly no less if you want to ensure that it would properly do its job,
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which is a partially true story, at least the part that that was uttered,
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but that one was never backed up by actually owner's manual material.
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So I'm not saying you should go try that at home.
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So neither Jack nor Jill have had a calm, grounded, heart-to-heart talk about
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how they were told that dishes worked as a kid.
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They just defend and attack the subject on a regular basis.
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And there's a rule about who loads and who unloads in their house.
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Now, some couples have that rule and it may feel fair, distributes the labor,
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but it also creates a situation where one person has loaded a dishwasher they
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know will be criticized and they are now on the hook to unload it too,
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because the rule is the rule.
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And Jack and Jill now no longer have that rule because that resulted in so many
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unhealthy conversations. They held it briefly, but it didn't survive contact.
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As a matter of fact, the more that we talked about that rule.
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The angrier that they became.
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So what actually happens in the relationship? Jack used to load the dishwasher
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sometimes, or he would see the sink there full of dirty dishes and he would
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think, I can do this. I want to help. So he would load it.
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And Jill would come in later and reorganize it, not throw it out,
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start it over, not really even say anything mean,
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just quietly shift things around so that they would fit better according to
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her or so the water could reach them in a better way or so that the delicate
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glasses weren't next to the heavy mugs.
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Heaven forbid something happens and they shake and rattle.
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And then there would be glass all over the dishwasher on the inside.
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Now, at one point when I said, hey, take me in your train of thought and help
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me understand where that comes from.
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Have you had experiences where that's happened. And before you know it,
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you guys are having meals full of broken glass.
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And she said, no, never heard of it happening, but what if it did?
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And that's where Jack would think, okay, so you get so angry with me about a
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thing that is hypothetical that's never happened.
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But she would tell him when she noticed that she appreciated what he'd done.
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She'd explain why she moved a few things. She was not wrong exactly.
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Her way, if we were going to break down the science of cleaning dishes,
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probably did work better if we got a dishwashing scientist to come in and speak
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with us in a couple session.
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And even as I'm communicating how it was said to Jack, Jack would often think
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that she's going into some lecture mode and he's saying, you sound like my mom.
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What eventually happened was Jack stopped loading the dishwasher and he didn't
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announce it. He just stopped.
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And Jill noticed and she filed it away and does the dishwasher now mostly and
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has complicated feelings about that.
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Now on the unloading side, Jack did try. He genuinely did. He would unload,
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he would put everything away, and then Jill would come in later and find the
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colander in the wrong cabinet or the salad plate stacked with the dinner plates
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or the good pan in the wrong drawer, and she would say something.
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Jack would take it as passive-aggressive. She tries to say it gently.
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It doesn't always land gently, and then Jack thinks, but doesn't always say,
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I tried, I tried, and it wasn't right. Again, I can never get it right.
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And then the part that is significant from a clinical standpoint,
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because I see this part so, so often, both of them are correct.
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Both of them have reasons why they do the things that they do.
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Jill isn't wrong that there's probably a more efficient system.
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Jack is not wrong that he is doing it the way that he is doing it.
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And he doesn't honestly, he can't make sense of Jill's method because the target seems to move.
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And as we established in couples therapy, both things are true and neither of
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them is the actual problem.
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Let's go back a generation or two.
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The more that we use the dishes as a muse and started talking more about it,
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the actual problem gets interesting when you go back.
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Because what we understood once we slowed things down and knew that it wasn't,
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again, necessarily about the dishes, here's where we got to learn fascinating
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things about their childhood.
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Because Jack grew up in a house where the dishes stacked up in the sink for
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a day, two days, it could be three, four days before anybody dealt with him.
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It wasn't considered neglect.
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It just was. It's how the family operated.
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Nobody really thought much about it. the dishes eventually got done.
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He doesn't even really know how. Life moved on.
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So admittedly, it wasn't until Jack was in his 30s, which he said was embarrassingly,
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that he realized that if he left a dish in the sink, that he never even thought about it.
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But of course, it was Jill who took care of it. It wasn't a dish fairy.
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Now, Jill grew up in a house where the dishes got done every single evening
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after dinner before anybody sat down to relax. This was the rule. This was the rhythm.
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It wasn't even really thought of as a rule. It just was what they did.
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It was what happened. It's like the sun rising in the east.
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Now, neither Jack nor Jill had ever fully understood that the other person is
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operating from a completely different foundational reality about what normal
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looks like when it comes to doing the dishes.
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They both think that they're arguing about the dishes, but they're actually
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arguing about two entirely different inherited worlds.
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The rules that their nervous systems were programmed with.
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And it even gets more layered because Jill's mom ran a real tight ship, high standards.
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And when Jill or any of her siblings tried to help with any chores around the
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house, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, folding the laundry.
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Her mom would often, which as Jill said, she thought it was always,
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but we were trying to stay away from the all or nothing statements,
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but often come in and then redo it or point out something that Jill's mom said
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that you can do that better.
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And Jill said she wasn't mean, she wasn't cruel about it. She was,
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and in some way that Jill's only started to recently understand trying to teach her.
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She's come to accept that criticism was her mom's love language for housework.
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Here's how you do it better. I want you to do it better and be the best at what you do.
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And that was in her mom's framework. That was help.
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Now, Jill has never been entirely sure that she didn't inherit that.
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The more that she would think about it, she thought, oh, that is my default programming.
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Let's talk about Jack's father-in-law, Jill's dad, who has on more than one
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occasion made some version of a joke about Jack doing woman's work.
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And Jack knows what that joke is really about.
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He knows his father-in-law never did the quote woman's work.
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And Jack has arrived at the conclusion that the teasing is really about the
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older man's discomfort with his own choices.
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It's his projection. It's that I didn't do those things. So if you do those
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things, does that mean that I did the wrong thing?
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And I think Jack's probably right about that. But also knowing that doesn't
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fully dissolve the sting of it.
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And it makes Jack want the credit from Jill even more because he's doing a thing
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that wasn't modeled for him that his own family of origin didn't do that his
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father-in-law thinks is faintly ridiculous and Jack's doing it anyway.
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He wants that to count for something. He wants Jill to see that,
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hey, I'm being a better husband than your dad was to your mom.
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But Jill just sees somebody who occasionally loads the dishwasher and seems
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to expect a trophy for it.
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Jack sees a person who never seems to register that, yeah, the trophy would
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probably feel really good right now. But if you point that out,
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let's say you got him a trophy and it says, congrats, Jack, you're doing the
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thing that your wife does more often than not without complaining or needing a trophy.
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No, no doubt. Jack would probably see that as criticism and shut down.
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But the real question, they are most definitely not fighting about the dishes.
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They're fighting about whether they feel seen, whether the effort that they're doing is registered,
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whether the other person understands what it costs them to show up in the way
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that they're showing up, whether the family that they came from is a resource
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or potentially a liability, but it's how they were modeled, what they brought into the relationship.
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They're arguing about whether love looks like getting it right or getting credit
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for trying, or whether criticism is a form of care, which can sound pretty crazy
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for somebody that didn't grow up with that?
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Or does it feel like it's a form of shutting you down? And these aren't small questions.
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The more that we dug into these things session after session,
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these are actually the questions.
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The dishwasher, bless its heart, just agreed to hold these questions for a while.
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The dishwasher is the mirror, the muse, and it's the thing that they can turn
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to on a regular basis to engage through because they don't know how to communicate
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about the fact that they desire to be seen and understood and validated.
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And here's the thing about Jack and Jill. If you ask them separately on a good
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day, whether they felt like their partner was essentially trying,
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whether they believed deep in their bones that the other person was in this
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marriage and wanted it to work, they would both say, yeah,
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maybe at times a little reluctantly, maybe at times with a qualifier,
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but yeah, they would agree, no, we both want this.
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And to the point where then they would even say, I know this is silly that we
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keep arguing about things like the dishes.
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And I'm saying it's not. It's the way that couples communicate.
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So, they both believe that the other one wants this, is all in,
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that they do too. But then why is this so difficult?
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So, let's give this thing a name for right now because I found in two decades
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plus sitting with couples that one of the most relieving things that can happen
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in a therapy room is when somebody finally has language for what they've been living inside.
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It normalizes things a little bit. The thing that has felt chaotic and personal
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and maybe a little shameful suddenly has a name. It's like the nervous system
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relaxes just slightly when you know, okay, this is a thing.
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The person across from you maybe stops being the enemy and now they become a
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fellow traveler. Oh, we're just reacting to this thing.
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It's not me versus you, but it's us versus the thing.
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Drumroll, please. Here it is. What Jack and Jill are doing, what I would bet
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a large percentage of you listening right now also do, is now what I call the Trojan horse.
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If you remember the Trojan horse, ancient Greece, a war that had gone on so
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long that nobody could figure out how to end it. the Greeks showed up with this
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enormous wooden horse as a supposed peace offering.
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And the Trojans, they pulled it inside the gate. And then that night,
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soldiers climbed out from inside and they took the city.
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The city fell. The thing that looked like the one thing was actually carrying
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something else entirely, but it got through the gates because it didn't look like what it was.
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Stay with me here. That's what's happening with the dishwasher.
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That's what's happening with
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whatever the version of the dishwasher is living in your house right now.
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The argument looks like one thing, tongs, rinse agents, switch rack,
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but inside the argument, hidden in the hole is a completely different conversation.
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It's one about being seen, about effort being registered, about whether the
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person that you chose actually knows what it costs you to show up in the way that you show up.
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And the conversation couldn't get through the front gates on its own.
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It's too vulnerable, too exposed. It isn't even really known that that's what it is.
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So your nervous system, which is endlessly creative when it comes to protecting you, built a horse.
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And so before I go further, I want to say what this isn't. So for today's podcast,
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we're going to assume good intentions.
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My pillar one of my four pillars of a connected conversation.
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We're going to say that there's a reason.
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Why the other person does the things that they do, why they choose to bring
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things up the way that they do about the dishes or about whatever it is.
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That for now, for the sake of today, it's not that they are trying to manipulate
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or hurt the other person.
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Jack's not consciously using the dishwasher as this vehicle for his deeper relationship anxieties.
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He's not twisting a mustache in the morning and thinking, oh,
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I'll turn to the dishwasher again and I'll get her. And then a maniacal laugh.
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And Jill is not strategically deploying the utensil basket to re-litigate her
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childhood and seek validation from Jack.
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Neither of them sat down at any point and thought, you know what would be a
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great way to communicate my unmet attachment needs?
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Tongs and rinse agents. I don't think that's what's happening.
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What's happening is far more normal human than that.
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There's something you need your partner to understand that maybe you don't even understand.
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Something real, something close to the center of how you are experiencing this relationship.
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And the thing is hard to say directly. You may not even know what this thing
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is. So your brain finds a proxy, an argument that is just adjacent to the real one.
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It's something concrete that you can now build a case about and have an argument
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repeatedly with conviction.
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But it doesn't resolve because even if you won it completely,
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if you look at it that way, a winner, a loss, the zero sum game,
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you still actually wouldn't have what you were after.
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Your brain may even be telling you, if I can really let her understand how difficult
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she's making this whole dishes thing and it lands, then we will be happy and
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this will never come up again.
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So I think you can see where I'm going. That's the Trojan horse.
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Not a character flaw. It's your nervous system doing a great job of keeping
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you safe while also trying in its very awkward, immature and clumsy way to get you connected.
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Now, how you know if you're in a Trojan horse. I've got four signs.
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First, repetition with no resolution. If you have had a version of the same
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argument more times than you can count.
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Even the conversations that feel like they end okay don't really feel like they end. That's the flag.
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Resolved conflicts don't keep coming back.
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Unresolved ones do. And often what keeps them unresolved is that you're having
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the wrong version of them.
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Now, second, it's what I call the running tab. And I thought about this one,
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did I need an updated reference?
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But I mean that exactly the way
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it sounds. If you're not familiar with keeping a tab, bear with me here.
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I recently had a client tell me that a place they go frequently will in fact
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keep a tab on what they owe, assuming of course, that they will pay or reconcile
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their tab before it gets too big.
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And if you are under the age of, I'm not exactly sure.
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A tab is a system where you're not paying for each thing as it arrives.
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You're keeping a total in the background. And at some point,
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somebody has to settle up to pay the bill to bring the account to even.
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So that's what both partners in a Trojan horse argument are doing with each other.
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There's a running account of who has tried what, who has sacrificed what,
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who has been flexible, who has dug their heels in.
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And both people are actually keeping this tab simultaneously.
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And neither has ever formally agreed to the terms and both are privately convinced
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that the other owes them.
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And what's fascinating about the running tab concept is it looks like scorekeeping,
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but it's actually an attachment bid.
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Both people are asking the same question. Do you see how much I'm given for
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this relationship? And both people feel like the answer they're getting back is no.
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We are remarkably good, call it confirmation bias, but we catalog our own sacrifices,
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and we are somewhat remarkably bad at fully seeing our partner sacrifices.
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It makes sense because we're experiencing our effort from the inside.
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Where we know what it costs to us. We experience theirs from the outside,
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where it often looks way smaller than it felt to them.
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Both people walk around feeling like the more generous one. That is so important to recognize.
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Both people feel unrecognized and the tab keeps growing and nobody wins because
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the thing you actually need to be seen and understood doesn't come from the accounting of the tab.
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Third is what John Gottman calls kitchen sinking.
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If you ever stood at an actual kitchen sink and watch somebody just pile dishes
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into it over and over, you already understand this.
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It starts with one plate, then another, and then the pan from last night,
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and then the pot from this morning and before long.
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The sink is so full that you can't even see the original plate anymore.
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And true story, some little thing grows up from the garbage disposal.
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A little plant. It's fascinating.
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That's what happens to a Trojan horse argument that's been going on long enough.
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What started as a disagreement about the dishwasher now contains something about
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your different family backgrounds, who does more around the house,
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comment about your father-in-law made a couple of Thanksgivings ago,
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one time a couple of years ago when you tried to say something to your mom and
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it didn't go well. And suddenly you're not arguing about the dishes.
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It's this muse. You start kitchen sinking, you throw in and everything.
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You're arguing about everything. You're exhausted and you genuinely cannot remember
21:43
what started it, but you sure know where you're at now. We're throwing out insults
21:47
and things from the past.
21:48
And the last one to know that you're in this situation, this Trojan horse,
21:52
I will slow my roll, sit with this one for a moment because I think that's the most telling.
21:55
Even if you do gain a small victory, a win, you don't actually feel better.
22:01
Even when your partner concedes, okay, fine. No, you're right.
22:03
You're right. I'm really bad at giving directions or you're right.
22:06
I don't recognize the things you do.
22:08
Kind of playing that victim mode, breaking my pillar four, not leaning in,
22:11
not staying present. Then there's kind of a hollowness to it.
22:14
It's a sense that you won the verdict. Then you realize that's not what I was
22:17
actually after. Maybe I thought I'll be happy if, and then you get there and
22:20
you think that this wasn't it.
22:22
You won the battle, but you're still entrenched in this long running relationship war.
22:27
It's because the verdict wasn't ever really the point. What you needed was something
22:31
that a concession, an acquiescence can't deliver, which is why a few days later.
22:38
The horse rolls back up the gate. And this is why I can feel invisible from
22:42
the inside because Jack, if he asked him, would not tell you he's fighting about
22:45
whether I feel seen and valued for doing something that doesn't come naturally
22:48
to me in a system that wasn't designed for me.
22:51
He would tell you he's frustrated about the moving goalposts,
22:55
the inconsistent expectations around the dishwasher. That's his lived experience. It's not wrong.
22:59
And Jill, if he asked her, would not tell you she's fighting about whether criticism
23:02
means care, whether she inherited a pattern from her mom that she's never fully examined.
23:06
She would tell you she's tired of doing everything herself and then getting
23:09
pushed back when she asks for help or just wants to point out something that
23:13
he could be doing a little bit differently that would be better in the long
23:17
run. That's her lived experience.
23:18
Neither are wrong. They are just expressing themselves.
23:21
Both of them are having a completely sincere argument about a thing that is not actually the thing.
23:26
What I think is really important, this isn't a sign that, oh no,
23:29
they're in trouble or the relationship is necessarily in trouble.
23:31
It's not a sign that they're incompatible or that the marriage is failing or
23:34
that they fundamentally don't understand each other or love each other or care
23:37
about each other, it's actually a sign they're human beings who never got a
23:40
manual for this. And honestly, neither did you, neither did I.
23:44
I say some version of this almost with every couple I work with.
23:47
You don't know what you don't know. And no one taught you the things that you
23:50
don't know. That's why you don't know them.
23:52
And you don't learn them in school, not usually at home because our parents
23:55
were also just doing the best with what they had inherited, what they had seen modeled, what they had.
23:59
And what they had was their own set of unexamined inherited patterns.
24:02
And then we absorb what our family modeled and then we walk it into our adult
24:06
relationships and do what we know.
24:08
And what we know is honestly never quite the thing that lands well in the relationship
24:13
because what we know is designed for a completely different relationship in
24:17
a completely different time.
24:18
This is the first time that you've gone through life is you...
24:21
With this other person going through life for the very first time as them. Of course, it's messy.
24:25
Of course, the dishwasher became the horse because the dishwasher was there
24:29
and accessible and arguable and relatable. And it felt like the familiar and
24:33
real conversation felt too exposed to send through the front gate unprotected. It's not a failure.
24:39
You're a person who learned to protect yourself in a very specific way with
24:43
your specific history taught to you.
24:45
And now you're in a relationship with another human who did the exact same thing
24:49
and is thinking about things through their own lens.
24:51
And sometimes those two protection strategies, they butt heads,
24:56
they run directly into each other.
24:57
I would love for you to not view it as a crisis. It may feel like one,
25:01
but let's reframe it a little bit as a starting point.
25:04
So why do we keep doing this? Why does the dishwasher become the horse when
25:08
the real conversation, now maybe your understanding is right there?
25:11
The short answer is because the real conversation is dangerous and not,
25:15
I was gonna say not physically dangerous, But there's some pretty cool data
25:19
that shows there's some neural overlap between emotional and physical pain.
25:23
Quick psychology nerd alert, emotional and physical pain share significant neural
25:28
overlap within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the interior insula of the brain.
25:34
Which insula is fascinating because it processes unpleasantness.
25:37
And then you got distress.
25:39
Those are things that happen in both emotional and physical pain.
25:43
So social rejection or loss activates these same neural alarm systems as physical injuries.
25:49
So this overlap, this intersection means that emotional distress can manifest as physical symptoms.
25:55
The body keeps the score. Chronic pain often leads to emotional disorders like depression.
26:00
So here we're talking dangerous, like if I say this true thing to this person
26:04
and they don't receive it well, I will have handed them something that they could hurt me with.
26:08
So dangerous, like if I admit this need and it doesn't get met,
26:11
I will have confirm something about myself, I have been quietly afraid that was true.
26:17
So the long answer starts the way most things in relationships start,
26:20
with the family that you grew up in.
26:22
So there's a concept that I think about a lot, and it comes from a brilliant
26:26
psychologist named Terry Reel.
26:27
And he talks about the adaptive child, which is the part of us that figured
26:31
out early in life how to survive the particular emotional climate of the home that we grew up in.
26:36
I want to be intentional with that word, survive.
26:39
I don't mean it to sound as dramatic as it may sound. I just mean every child
26:43
is learning survival skills.
26:46
And those can mean learning how to read the room.
26:49
Every kid's trying to figure out what's safe to feel, what's safe to say,
26:53
what needs to be hidden, what behavior gets rewarded, and what behavior gets punished.
26:58
It's just what they are doing. They're reacting in the moment.
27:02
It isn't like this is always some conscious decision, but they're doing it and they adapt.
27:07
They adapt brilliantly and creatively with whatever tools they have.
27:11
The challenge is that those adaptations come with us into our adult relationships, into our marriages.
27:17
And sometimes the thing that keeps us safe at seven or eight years old is the
27:21
thing that's burning our relationship down when somebody is 37 or 47 or 57.
27:27
Think about Jack. He grew up in a house where dishes piled up for a day or two
27:30
before anybody even dealt with him.
27:32
Nobody made a big deal about it. So what Jack absorbed, not consciously,
27:35
but more just by osmosis, was that domestic tasks are flexible.
27:39
That's why I say for survival, it doesn't have to be this big dramatic thing. It just is.
27:44
It's what we saw. It's what we saw modeled. It's how we existed.
27:48
Domestic tasks were flexible. Effort in that scenario we could judge as relative
27:53
and that needing to be acknowledged for helping out around the house is probably a little bit much.
27:58
His family didn't give out the trophies for loading the dishwasher.
28:01
They just did it when it needed doing or they didn't.
28:03
The dishwasher fairy must have loaded it and life went on.
28:07
Then Jack marries somebody whose home ran on a completely different operating
28:09
system and genuinely trying to adapt to a set of rules that were never explicitly taught to him.
28:15
While dragging along an adaptive child that learned that asking for recognition is pretty undignified.
28:22
So he doesn't ask for it directly. He can't quite get there.
28:26
Instead, the need comes out in ways like squishing a balloon and it just pops out all over the place.
28:31
It comes out sideways. It comes out as frustration or as withdrawal or as the
28:35
Trojan horse of the dishwasher argument.
28:38
And then talk about Jill. Jill's adaptive child learned that oversight is love.
28:43
That pointing out what could be improved is how you help somebody.
28:46
That was the norm. That's the familiar.
28:48
That correction actually comes from a place of caring, not from a place of criticism.
28:53
And she absorbed this so completely. She integrated it.
28:56
She embodied it. she doesn't fully experience herself as critical when she reorganizes
29:00
the dishwasher or points out to jack what she thinks that he could do better
29:04
or is doing wrong she experiences herself as helpful i was just saying i was just pointing that out,
29:10
Or that's engaged. That's doing the thing that a good partner does.
29:13
So two people, two completely different adaptive children, both doing what they
29:17
learn to do, never quite able to see the other one clearly because they're looking
29:21
through the lens of where they came from.
29:23
And the two-part example I did with the very Jack and Jill that we're talking
29:28
of quite a while ago is how that anxious and avoidant partnership comes to be.
29:35
And when you look at what those childhood adaptations were, I think about the
29:40
avoidant partner who learned to just sit this one out, to go quiet,
29:44
to not say anything, to wait till the storm passes.
29:47
That helped them tremendously as a kid. But now in their adult relationship,
29:51
it is maddening to the partner in the relationship with the person who's avoidant.
29:57
Because when they are frustrated or they want something, even connection from
30:02
their partner, their partner will view that often as criticism.
30:05
But then take the anxious partner, which I am that person, who then their childhood
30:10
adaptation, they didn't know that they even existed or mattered unless they
30:14
were able to get attention from somebody.
30:16
Be the smartest kid, be the best athlete, be the funniest, the class clown,
30:20
because they didn't feel like they were being recognized in home.
30:24
Now that childhood adaptation that kept them alive is now pretty maladaptive
30:29
as an adult because the anxiously attached validation seeking partner,
30:33
again, pointing finger right at me, apparently can be quite a lot.
30:37
Now, quite a fun time as well.
30:39
Don't get me wrong, but quite a lot. So those childhood adaptations that we
30:42
bring into our adult relationships, they are maladaptive now.
30:46
But what a joy that now we get to work on those, hopefully both sides,
30:50
the anxious and the avoidant.
30:52
Now let's talk about what your nervous system knows. because it's not just your family history.
30:56
There's something happening in the body, in the actual nervous system that keeps
30:59
us locked in that Trojan horse pattern even after we can see it.
31:02
Because when you've been in a pattern of conflict with your partner for a long
31:04
time, when certain topics have gone, I want to say bad enough,
31:08
trying to get away from the good bad, it just is, but they have been a challenge enough times.
31:12
Your nervous system starts to, in such a fascinating way, talk about survival, anticipate.
31:18
Starts to read cues, starts to pick up on the tone of voice.
31:21
And this still comes from a place of, All of us, we're all emotionally immature until we're not.
31:27
So there are some concepts around emotional maturity that they just are fascinating
31:31
to be aware of. Once you're aware of them, they're hard to unsee.
31:34
And one of those is, if I feel it, it must be true. If I feel like you're being a jerk, then you are.
31:39
And I need you to not do the thing that you don't even know you're doing in
31:42
order to make me feel better, hopefully.
31:44
So the particular way your partner sighs, the look on their face when they walk
31:47
into the kitchen, starts to activate before anything has even happened,
31:50
before a word has even been spoken.
31:52
This is your nervous system doing exactly what nervous systems are designed
31:55
to do. The problem is that the threat it's scanning for is your partner and
31:59
the more that you're around them, the more that your nervous system is saying,
32:01
got it, this is the person, okay, we got to be hyper aware of what this person is doing.
32:06
That's why we get in relationships is hopefully to
32:09
be able to become aware of these things to self-confront to
32:12
grow to take things on and they're me things and
32:15
i want to be able to learn about myself through the relationship because this
32:18
is the person that at some point you chose the person that at some
32:21
point you love the person that you continue to come back to over and over and
32:24
over again and your nervous system which is here's the crazy adorable part which
32:30
cannot tell the difference between a predator in the forest and a spouse who
32:33
just walked in the kitchen with that look is flooding you with the same chemistry either way.
32:39
And when you're in that state, unfortunately, you can't always access the vulnerable
32:44
conversation, especially if you don't even know what that vulnerable conversation
32:47
looks like. You didn't see it modeled.
32:49
You literally cannot get there. The part of your brain that would allow you
32:51
to say, Hey, I need you to see how hard I'm trying.
32:54
First of all, you got to even know that's what you're asking for.
32:56
And it also requires a level of felt safety that is just not available when
33:01
your body's preparing for impact, When your heart rate begins to rise and you're
33:04
heading toward the amygdala hijack.
33:07
So instead, what comes out in the argument is the way that you know how to have it.
33:12
The one that's familiar. The Trojan horse rolls forward because it's the only
33:16
vehicle that your nervous system can operate in that moment.
33:18
This is why the nervous system is the last thing to be convinced.
33:22
It's the first thing into battle, but it's the last thing that's going to say, okay, are we good?
33:25
You can understand this whole framework intellectually. You can recognize yourself
33:30
in Jack or Jill. You can genuinely want to have a different conversation.
33:34
And then your partner walks in with that look and your body goes somewhere.
33:37
Your mind didn't authorize it to go.
33:40
Please don't see that as failure. That's just how human beings work.
33:43
I will cram this into every podcast I can. It was first unconscious incompetence.
33:48
I did not know what I did not know.
33:50
I unconsciously was incompetent about this thing.
33:53
Now, even just hearing a podcast like this or going to therapy or reading a
33:56
book or two, now you're consciously incompetent.
34:00
How crazy is that? You are now aware of how incompetent you are.
34:04
Bless your heart. You're trying.
34:06
And that is a place that you'll spend a fair amount of time.
34:09
And it's frustrating and it's liberating and it's wonderful and it's sad.
34:13
There's so many emotions that happen there. And P.S. don't get me started on
34:16
the fact that we don't even know what to do with our emotions.
34:18
And then you move into conscious competence. I'm aware and I'm actually starting to do the things.
34:24
One of the funny things that unfolds at that time is you're still going to probably
34:28
want a lot of validation.
34:29
You're going to want to say, do you see how cool I am being and staying calm
34:34
while you are raging at me?
34:36
That's not the ideal way to react in that situation, but it's just part of the
34:39
human condition of still wanting validation.
34:42
And then you finally move into a place of unconscious confidence.
34:46
This is just what I do. I am, I have become, it is.
34:50
And those words actually don't sound so out there.
34:53
They really mean something to you. So now I want to introduce you something
34:58
that i have thought about a lot again trying to name things here and sitting
35:01
with couples in this pattern.
35:03
I am introducing you to the waiting room, because if you could somehow get both
35:06
partners in this Trojan horse cycle into separate rooms and ask them on a good
35:09
day, whether they want to feel close to their partner again,
35:12
whether they believe underneath at all that their partner's basically trying
35:15
and that the relationship is worth fighting for, most of them would say yes,
35:18
maybe reluctantly, but yes.
35:20
Even when there has been disruption in the relationship and let's just go with
35:25
one of the biggest elephants that come into my room, where there's a lack of
35:28
physical intimacy, aka sex.
35:31
And there's a high desire partner, a low desire partner. Often,
35:34
the more that that higher desire partner pushes, the more that the lower desire partner withdraws.
35:40
They get to a point where often the high desire partner will even say,
35:44
I don't even think that the lower my spouse even thinks about it.
35:47
And I can talk to the spouse and say, do you ever still think about that?
35:52
And they say, well, yeah, but then I know the next answer, but I don't want
35:55
to let them know because then they're going to start hounding me about it again.
35:58
And so sometimes when somebody is in couples therapy, I'm just encouraging them
36:01
to right now for the sake of you're doing the work, would it be okay for you
36:06
to let your partner know that I do think about it? I thought about it today.
36:10
If you felt safe enough that your partner wasn't going to say,
36:13
well, then why aren't we? And what, what isn't the problem? What's the problem?
36:15
And I just bring that up because so often our partners, couples still want this
36:20
connection. They just don't know how to do it.
36:22
And they're so afraid of being vulnerable because they're worried that they
36:25
will be engulfed or overwhelmed, or they will jump into the all or nothing.
36:28
Well, then if you are thinking about it, then we have to, it has to be all good.
36:32
Or if it's not, it's all bad. And we're defending things that aren't even true.
36:36
But yes, again, they want to reconnect.
36:38
But often, most often, both of them are waiting for the other person to make the first move.
36:44
Picture it literally here. Both partners have walked through a door that says, reconnection this way.
36:48
And the room that they're in is that's comfortable enough, has nice cushy chairs.
36:53
They've been here before, been here a time or two. No, let's make it work.
36:56
They'll say the right mouth sounds.
36:58
They know the drill and they're completely prepared to walk through the next door.
37:02
The one that leads to actual closeness and connection.
37:05
I'm just going to do it as soon as the other person gets up first.
37:08
And then neither of them does because this has been going on for years, decades.
37:12
Hours pass, then a day, maybe several days, little things that normally wouldn't
37:16
register become these hot button items, these flashpoints, because both nervous
37:19
systems are still activated and they don't know where to put the big emotions.
37:23
And eventually one of them reaches out. Now out in the wild,
37:26
it's maybe a text, a small gesture coming out of the bunker. Hey, are we good?
37:31
But by that point, the other has been braced for so long that the reach doesn't
37:35
quite land. Now, the one who reached feels rejection.
37:38
The one who didn't reach still feels abandoned and they are somehow even further
37:43
apart than before they'd even tried.
37:45
I see this so often. And the heartbreaking part is that neither person believes
37:50
they're being stubborn or selfish.
37:52
They kind of just think that they're being right.
37:55
But both are being self-protective. Both are doing what that adaptive child learned.
37:59
Don't be the one who needs more than the other person's willing to give,
38:01
because that's going to lead to rejection.
38:04
Because that is a lot of what the vulnerability is that feels the most dangerous.
38:09
And not, again, not the dishwasher argument, Not even the real conversation
38:12
hiding inside the horse.
38:13
The most dangerous thing for most people is to then move toward your partner
38:17
without a guarantee of being met.
38:19
I'm going to feel like a fool. I'm going to like a chump, a sucker.
38:22
And over time, even the unhealthy version of this becomes the familiar. It becomes routine.
38:27
Who comes out of the bunker first? Typically, it's one of you far more than the other.
38:31
And so they sit in the waiting room together, yet separate, both waiting for the same thing.
38:36
Neither of them moving toward it because moving first feels like losing.
38:41
Because moving first feels like it proves something. That you need them more.
38:45
That you're the one who always caves because your adaptive child who has been
38:48
in charge since the fight started learned a long time ago that the person who
38:52
reaches first is a person who gets hurt.
38:53
But your adaptive child also learned who typically does go first.
38:57
And so who's most likely going to stay in that waiting state until the familiar
39:00
occurs, even if it takes longer and longer time.
39:03
And that's just going to build more resentment. It's going to be more on the tab.
39:07
So until the person who typically makes the first mouth sound does so,
39:10
and then the other can do the thing, the one where they do their part. So we're back to good.
39:14
Okay, but actually not good. It's just the absence of bad.
39:17
The waiting room dynamic, it feels like we're trying to figure out what's fair.
39:23
I want to acknowledge that and it will feel like it's unfair.
39:25
It feels like a reasonable response to a history of feeling like you're always
39:29
the one who gives more and tries more and reaches out more.
39:33
You start to look at that as self-respect. You're subconsciously and then eventually
39:37
consciously trying not to self-betray.
39:40
And even the last few times you do it, even when you're aware that I feel like
39:44
I'm betraying myself, it will build more resentment.
39:47
And in a perfect world, we're looking for reciprocity.
39:51
And I'm not here to say that if you are desiring reciprocity that there is anything wrong with you.
39:56
It's one of the most human needs
39:57
that there is. It would be ideal if both people could lean in together.
40:01
Here's what I've observed. In couple after couple, conditional effort maintains
40:06
the very distance that it's protesting.
40:09
When Jack waits for Jill to acknowledge his efforts before he tries again,
40:12
he's not wrong to want that acknowledgement, but the waiting guarantees that
40:16
it won't come because Jill and her own side of the waiting room is waiting for
40:20
evidence that Jack's genuinely committed before she lowers her guard enough to offer it.
40:23
I don't want to assign blame or wrong or right. Both are stuck.
40:27
The running tab keeps running. The horse keeps rolling. The kitchen sink keeps
40:31
filling and both of them are sitting in a room with a door.
40:34
They both want to walk through and neither of them moves.
40:37
Two people being lonely together is one of the saddest things I encounter in
40:41
this work because they are right there.
40:43
They're in the same room and the gap between them is an incompatibility.
40:47
It's this gap of two people waiting for a safety that neither of them is currently
40:51
creating and neither knows how to do in a long-term, sustainable, healthy way.
40:57
There's a quote that came to mind when putting together the outline for this
41:00
episode. It's a Robin Williams quote.
41:03
However, controversy is a strong word, but controversy around whether or not
41:06
he said it about his personal life or he said it in a movie.
41:10
So I did a little digging and according to Snopes.com, the quote reads,
41:13
I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone.
41:16
It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.
41:21
And while Williams has a connection to the quote, he's not the original author.
41:25
The quote comes from the 2009 film World's Greatest Dad that was written and
41:29
directed by Bobcat Goldwaith. And if you don't know who he is,
41:31
kids go Google him and think of him as a director and then go listen to his
41:36
standup routine. Crazy.
41:38
But Williams in the movie plays this character, Lance, who's a high school teacher
41:41
who's dealing with the death of his son.
41:43
He speaks a slightly modified version of the quote near the end of the movie.
41:46
In the movie, Lance says, I used to think that the worst thing in life was to
41:49
end up all alone. And it's not.
41:51
The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.
41:54
And I think of that often as a couple's therapist. People are often coming to
41:58
me alone inside the relationship, particularly inside the relationship in their marriage.
42:05
So, the real conversation, let's reframe this. And I hope that you will take
42:09
this in, in its entirety.
42:10
Feel the full weight of it because I think it matters to really understand now
42:15
that we've set the table of what the reframe looks like.
42:18
The Trojan horse in your relationship is not a sign that your relationship is
42:22
failing. It is not a final verdict. It's a signal.
42:25
It's a relationship pointing at something that needs to be said,
42:29
something that hasn't found its way out of the horse and into the open air.
42:32
In this kitchen sink full of grievances, the running tab of unacknowledged effort,
42:37
the waiting room where both of you have been sitting, these aren't a disease.
42:41
They're symptoms. And symptoms, in my experience, are almost always pointing
42:45
somewhere useful. If you're willing to follow them, the question isn't,
42:49
why is my partner doing this to me?
42:51
Here's the reframe. The question is, what is this argument trying to tell me
42:55
about what I actually need?
42:57
And then maybe even dig a little deeper. What would it look like for me to ask
43:02
for that directly without the horse?
43:05
Because here's what I know about the real conversation. It almost never sounds
43:09
like the argument sounds.
43:10
The argument sounds like tongs up versus tongs down. Sounds like whose system
43:14
is correct? Who was raised the right way? Who was raised the wrong way?
43:18
The real conversation sounds more like, I want you to know how hard I'm trying because I care.
43:22
I want you to know that when I reach toward you, that you will acknowledge my
43:25
effort and that perhaps you'll be open to seeing what that looks like from my
43:28
angle, my lens, my chair.
43:30
It looks to me like the goalpost tends to move and that is frustrating to me
43:34
and seemingly impossible for me to navigate at times.
43:37
And that makes me sad and I feel disconnected.
43:40
I want you to see how hard I'm trying because I love you. I would like to know
43:43
that when I make a bid toward you that you won't continually move things around
43:47
until my efforts are unrecognizable or until I get upset because that feels
43:50
frustrating and I feel lonely.
43:53
I would like for you to know that I am capable and I do things the way that
43:56
I do them because that's how I'm doing them.
43:58
But I'm open to conversations about how you do them. And we both may never agree
44:02
on the best way to do something.
44:03
And that's okay. What if both ways are okay?
44:06
I'm committed to genuine curiosity toward you. I want to know you.
44:10
I want to know all of you. And I want you to know me. And I worry that I don't even know myself.
44:13
So I would love to ask for patience and respect as I learn how to figure out
44:17
myself. And I will give you the same.
44:20
Those sentences can be terrifying to say. I know they are.
44:24
And they require handing someone something that they could hurt you with.
44:27
Last time I had Jennifer Finlayson Fife on my podcast, I need to have her back
44:30
on soon and talk about her book.
44:31
I was talking about my four pillars of a connected conversation and that it's
44:35
based off of emotionally focused therapy.
44:37
My couple's modality at that time still is, but hang on.
44:41
And she's a big differentiation therapist. And I remember saying or asking what
44:45
she knew about emotionally focused therapy.
44:48
And I loved her answer because it sent me on two or three years of a journey
44:52
that I am so grateful to have gone on.
44:54
She said the locus of control was the challenge in emotionally focused therapy,
44:58
because in essence, you're handing over this person, your heart,
45:01
you're providing this emotional bid, and they have this potential to take your
45:05
heart and crumple it up and throw it on the ground and stomp all over it.
45:09
So that locus of control, and it caused me to go on a deep, deep dive into the
45:14
world of differentiation.
45:15
And it has changed the way that I react to the world and the way that I do couples therapy.
45:20
Now wanting to start from a place of my four pillars of a connected conversation
45:23
based off of attachment and emotional bids, because when it works, it is one of the most.
45:27
Connecting things that you'll see as a couple's therapist.
45:30
But there are other times where you're at a stalemate. You've been heard.
45:33
You both understand each other, but why doesn't it feel okay?
45:36
And that's where we get into the world of differentiation. Everything's a me thing.
45:40
Because when you're putting out these emotional bids, I mean,
45:42
you're asking this person to know you, which takes courage.
45:47
More courage, honestly, than the dishwasher argument takes.
45:49
More courage than the waiting room takes. The waiting room is hard,
45:52
but it's a familiar hard.
45:54
This putting yourself out there, that's a different kind of hard.
45:57
It's the hard of standing in an open field instead of behind a wall,
46:00
but it's the only way to actually get what you came for in your adult relationships.
46:05
There's a concept from the work of David Schnarch called differentiation.
46:09
This is what Jennifer sent me on the path and I'm grateful for.
46:12
Quick definition, differentiation is this capacity, this ability to stay fully
46:16
yourself, connected to your values, your sense of who you are,
46:20
while remaining genuinely close to your partner.
46:23
Not closing off, not necessarily protecting yourself by going numb or cold or
46:28
going to the basement and waiting for that person to go away.
46:31
It's the ability to stay present, but also stay open, stay curious.
46:36
Stay in a relationship while also knowing clearly who you are and what you stand
46:41
for, independent of whether your partner, bless their heart,
46:44
validates it in the moment.
46:45
And I believe that's such a key part of this.
46:50
I'm fairly convinced that we don't know who we are and that we're actually on that path now.
46:55
What a joy to be on the path with somebody else that we care about,
46:57
that we have shared experiences with, might have a kid or two with,
47:01
that we have inside jokes with, that we have been through experiences with,
47:05
that we have some social capital with.
47:07
Everything moving forward, though, is new. It has the potential to be exciting.
47:12
But we're also human who lug our own bags around from our past with us.
47:16
And the only way to get rid of those bags is to be able to have our conversations
47:19
about our experiences, to be heard and to be understood.
47:22
And we need to be able to embrace the opportunity that we have with this person
47:26
who we have cared so deeply about at times.
47:29
So as we start talking about differentiation and staying grounded in who you
47:33
are while remaining connected, I want to introduce a concept that at first glance
47:37
might feel a little bit abstract, but in practice,
47:40
I think it's really grounding because underneath the waiting rooms and the running
47:43
tabs and the Trojan horses, and even the vulnerable,
47:45
real conversations, there's something even more fundamental that's happening.
47:49
And it's this, we don't just experience what happens in our relationships.
47:53
We experience the meaning that we give to what happens. And those are not the same thing.
47:58
Most of the time, we're moving through our day, we're assuming that what we
48:01
feel is coming directly from reality, that our frustration, our hurt,
48:05
our loneliness is being caused by what the other person did or didn't do.
48:09
But there's actually a step in the middle that we rarely notice.
48:13
Something happens, and then almost instantly we assign meaning to it.
48:16
And that meaning is what drives our entire emotional response.
48:20
A real simple way to picture this is imagine you get an email notification on
48:23
your phone. You haven't opened it yet.
48:25
All you see is the sender's name and maybe the subject line that says, hey, can we talk?
48:30
Now, before you open it, your mind is already off and running.
48:33
If it's your boss, maybe your stomach drops and you think, oh,
48:37
what did I do wrong? Am I getting fired? If it's your spouse,
48:40
maybe it's, did I forget something?
48:42
If it's a friend you haven't heard from in a while, you might feel a mix of
48:44
curiosity, maybe concern.
48:46
Your body reacts, your mood shifts, and your whole narrative starts forming.
48:51
And here's the part that matters.
48:53
Nothing has actually happened yet. It's an unopened message.
48:57
The email itself is neutral, but your mind rushes to fill in the blanks.
49:01
That gap, that space between what actually is and then the meaning we assign
49:05
to it, that's where so much of our emotional experience lives.
49:08
And when you think about it in the context of a relationship,
49:10
this is also where so many disconnections begin.
49:14
A tone of voice, a look, a missed text, a comment about the dishwasher.
49:18
And before long, we are not reacting to the moment itself. We're reacting to
49:21
the meaning that we've layered on top of it.
49:23
Another way to think about it is like a whiteboard. So throughout the day,
49:27
let's say that things get written on that board, conversations and texts and
49:30
glances and small moments.
49:32
But instead of just seeing what's written, we immediately start circling things
49:35
and underlining and adding exclamation points and drawing arrows and writing
49:38
notes in the margins, and by the end of the day, we're not responding to what
49:41
was originally written, we're responding to everything that we've added on top of it.
49:44
And this is where things can start to shift because when you can pause even
49:49
for just a moment and say okay here's what's actually happened and here's the
49:53
meaning that i'm giving it,
49:55
you start to create a little bit of space a little bit of flexibility
49:58
and you start to loose the grip of the story just enough that you can be genuinely
50:02
curious about it with yourself first and that curiosity is what makes the real
50:07
conversation possible and okay quick pause quick note before we go any further
50:12
everything i'm talking about today is really aimed at situations where at least on some level,
50:16
both people want the relationship to work and they may not know what to fix,
50:20
but they know there's something that needs fixing and they may not know where
50:23
to begin, but there's willingness there,
50:25
even if it's buried under frustration or distance or exhaustion.
50:29
Because I also want to acknowledge, I know many of you listening are in a different
50:33
place in your relationships.
50:34
You may feel like you're the only person that's trying and you might feel like
50:37
you've been the one carrying the relationship for a long time.
50:40
And if that's you, my heart genuinely goes out to you.
50:44
That's a painful and it can be a lonely place to be. A lot of people come to
50:49
therapy hoping that their partner will join them.
50:51
They've done everything they can to try to get the person in the room and the person still won't.
50:55
And it takes a lot of courage for them to come in anyway.
50:58
Because I do believe that what we're talking about here can still be helpful
51:01
because it's not just about fixing a relationship.
51:03
It's about understanding yourself, your patterns, your responses, and how you show up.
51:07
That work is always going to be valuable no matter what happens next.
51:11
Not all relationships repair. Some end in separation, some end in divorce.
51:15
And if that has been your story or if that ends up being a part of your story,
51:19
there's no part of that that means you failed.
51:22
It means that you were in something that was complex and you are a human.
51:26
And you're still on a path of becoming, of learning, of an awakening.
51:31
You're still learning, you're still growing, you're still becoming more aware
51:35
of who you are and what you need.
51:37
There's a concept that shows up a lot in psychological and philosophical traditions
51:41
and it's one that I have just fallen in love with genuinely,
51:45
I want to say truly, literally, and it's the idea of impermanence.
51:48
It's the idea that everything is in motion, everything's changing,
51:52
whether we want it to or not.
51:53
Relationships change, people change, circumstances change, even the way we understand
51:58
our past changes over time.
52:00
And for some, and even initially, that can feel pretty unsettling,
52:04
but it can hold so much hope and so much power because if things feel painful
52:08
or if you feel stuck right now, they are not fixed that way forever.
52:13
This moment is not permanent. The way you feel today is not the way that you will always feel.
52:18
And the work that you do, the awareness you build, the courage it takes to even
52:21
listen to something like this and to reflect on your own life, all of it matters.
52:26
And I'm saying that in a positive way, not in a, oh my gosh, it all matters way.
52:30
So wherever you find yourself today, whether you're in a relationship that feels
52:35
repairable or one that feels like it may be coming to an end,
52:38
I just want to encourage you to stay engaged in the process of learning and
52:41
understanding yourself because ultimately that's the work that carries forward no matter what.
52:46
Real intimacy requires this courage to act from your values before your partner acts from theirs.
52:53
Not after, not in response to, not once the conditions are right and the running
52:56
tab is settled and the waiting room has been vacated.
52:59
In a perfect world or in a good world, it's before, it's first,
53:03
it's without a guarantee.
53:04
And I know that that can sound like it's not fair because it's not.
53:08
And you can even wish that your partner would do it along with you.
53:10
And you can even make the nice mouth sounds that they'll do it once you do it.
53:13
And you can even get them to sign a blood oath.
53:15
But in reality, every single minute is the first minute that you've been you in that minute.
53:19
Ultimately, and I say this as something that eventually is liberating,
53:23
everything's a me thing.
53:24
Ultimately, I spend the most time with me and I have a chance to improve,
53:27
to let go, to become, to be, to learn whether anybody else does with me,
53:31
whether they do it as well or approves or wants me to, or even as curious as
53:36
to why I'm doing the things I'm doing.
53:37
Ultimately, the actions I take to be the best version of me are the greatest
53:41
gift I can provide myself and oh, I promise I didn't see the next line coming, but wait for it.
53:47
Because that, my friends, is why it is called the present.
53:51
Present moment, present, give myself a present. Anywho, I know there's something
53:56
that goes along with that concept, but we often tell ourselves that if we go
53:59
first and the other person doesn't do their part that we've lost,
54:02
or it sounds like caving.
54:03
That sounds like the thing that you've been told your whole life not to do.
54:06
The adaptive child who learned that reaching first is how you get hurt is very loud right now.
54:11
And you can't tell it to go away. You can't dismiss it.
54:15
It has good reasons for being loud, but I would love for you to consider the
54:20
alternative. The alternative is the waiting room.
54:22
The alternative is two people who both want to walk through the same door,
54:26
both sitting in the same room, both waiting for the other one to stand up first.
54:29
And I've been doing this work for a long time. And I can tell you,
54:33
nobody wins in the waiting room.
54:35
Both people just get more tired. And I can already hear some of you saying,
54:39
but Tony, I am always the one.
54:41
I reach first. I try first. I give more and I'm exhausted. And you're telling
54:44
me to do it again. and I hear you.
54:46
And I'm not telling you you're wrong. And I'm not even telling you that you
54:48
need to do it again, because if you're going to do it, it's something that you'll
54:52
now intentionally be doing for the very first time after hearing this podcast.
54:55
It's a you thing. What I want to offer you instead, though, is a question.
54:59
Are you reaching first? Are you reaching first while keeping score?
55:02
Are you doing it because you realize that it's the right thing for you to do
55:06
because you're the one who is really working on doing the right things?
55:09
Or are you doing it so that your partner will too, or we'll see that you did it.
55:14
I am not a fan admittedly of the so that principle, because those are two very
55:20
different things and they land differently on the receiving end.
55:23
Reaching first while keeping score looks like effort on the outside,
55:26
but it carries kind of a weight, a conditional quality, has a little stank on
55:30
it that the other person I believe can feel, even if they can't name it.
55:33
It says underneath this gesture, I am doing this and I need you to register
55:37
it or clock it as I am actually confident that the kids legitimately saying right now.
55:42
And if you don't, then I'm adding it to the tab. And one day,
55:45
oh, the tab will come due and you'll be sorry.
55:47
It'll be time to settle that score. I am sorry. I do not want to be in that relationship.
55:50
And the other person who has their own nervous system and their own adaptive
55:54
child and their own running tab picks up on that wait.
55:57
And they either respond defensively or they go back to the waiting room and
55:59
pretend that they're enjoying the Discovery Channel documentary on the wild
56:02
gazelles of the Serengeti and doggone it, they are going to find all of the
56:05
missing items in the highlight magazine.
56:07
And if you know that reference, please email me because I would,
56:11
I think I need to send you something.
56:12
But what happens most definitely is the cycle will continue if that is the way that it's playing out.
56:17
Reaching first without keeping score looks different, feels different,
56:20
comes from a different place, not from a, I'm going to do this.
56:23
So you'll finally see me, but from, I am going to do this because this is who
56:27
I am choosing to be in this relationship.
56:30
And I am not pretending it's easy. And I'm not pretending that your adaptive
56:33
child will be on board right away.
56:35
It's going to literally go, I don't want to. and you might have to bribe it with some ice cream.
56:38
But I'm telling you, it changes the dynamic in a way that conditionally reaching
56:42
never will, never can, because it removes the weight, it removes the stank,
56:47
it removes the transactional feeling.
56:49
And your partner, who is also sitting in a waiting room, can feel the difference.
56:53
And it's not a one and done thing, I'm afraid, but it's definitely a what just
56:56
happened, something feels different kind of thing.
56:58
So here's what differentiation actually looks like in practice,
57:01
not detachment. It's not indifference. It's not pretending that you don't need anything.
57:06
It's being rooted enough in your own values and knowing who you are and your
57:10
own actions that they come from a place of who you are rather than from what you're owed.
57:16
It's being able to say, at least yourself, I am loading the dishwasher because
57:21
I am someone who contributes to this household, whether or not it gets recognized.
57:25
Whether or not it gets acknowledged, whether or not the score is even right now.
57:29
And then being able to say out loud to yourself, maybe in actual words without
57:33
the horse, I would love for you to know how much I really do want to get this right.
57:39
And I would love for you to know that even when you redirect me,
57:41
even gently, that's hard for me.
57:43
It's a me thing. And I would love to feel safe enough to talk about what that's like for me.
57:48
But if you continue to do it the way you do it, then I understand.
57:51
That's the conversation the dishwasher argument's been trying to have for years.
57:56
And Jill doesn't get a free pass on this either. The reframe for Jill is a little
57:59
different and it requires a kind of honesty, I think, that she is very capable
58:02
of. I would love for Jill to look at the moment.
58:05
And I believe she knows the moment. She's had it a hundred times or more.
58:09
When Jack loads the dishwasher and she walks in and her hand is already moving
58:13
toward the bowl, he put on the wrong rack before she's fully decided to move it.
58:17
That automatic, I'll just fix this real quick impulse. And I would love for
58:21
her to get curious about it. Not guilty, no shame, curiosity.
58:25
Because that impulse has a history. It learned somewhere that this is what caring looks like.
58:30
And the reframe for Jill is not stop caring about how the dishwasher is loaded.
58:34
The reframe is what if the most caring thing I could do in this moment is leave
58:38
the bowl where Jack put it and tell him I appreciate him.
58:41
Not because the bowl's placement it doesn't matter. It still feels like it to her.
58:45
But because Jack's experience of being received, of having his effort land without
58:49
correction, might matter more than the bowl right now.
58:53
It might matter actually more than being right.
58:56
Growth from discomfort. And what the discomfort looks like is different.
59:00
It's so much different than what we sometimes anticipate.
59:03
It might be Jill sitting with the discomfort of wondering if that bowl will be as clean.
59:08
Because she can still wipe it out if it isn't. But what she can't wipe,
59:11
something about Jack, but my joke brain just jumped in way too fast.
59:14
But this is the path from Jill's waiting room to the door that she actually wants to walk through.
59:19
And here's the thing about both of them. And honestly, most couples I've sat
59:22
with over the years, the version of their relationship that they actually want is not that far away.
59:26
It's mostly behind a few conversations.
59:29
Some honest, unhorsed word, unhorsed conversations where Jack says what he actually
59:35
needs and Jill says that she's actually afraid of.
59:37
And both of them discover probably to their mutual surprise that what they need
59:41
isn't actually too far off.
59:42
Or if it is, the first step is saying it and watching the earth still spin and
59:45
the sun still comes up and we can continue with curiosity.
59:48
I am noticing that I want to insert magnetic marriage revamp plug here.
59:53
Go to tonyoverbay.com slash magnetic, get on the waiting list.
59:57
My magnetic marriage course is about to do a complete overhaul and it is going
1:00:02
to include all of how to do all of these things.
1:00:05
So you can have this relationship. grounded, differentiated,
1:00:08
using four pillars, and the anxious and avoidant loop, and how to have difficult
1:00:11
conversations, and all of those things.
1:00:15
Let's wrap this thing up. Jack needs to know that his effort's seen.
1:00:19
He would love to know that his effort's seen. Jill would love to know what teamwork
1:00:22
looks like and that she's capable of it. Those two needs don't fight against each other.
1:00:27
They can actually complement each other. They solve each other.
1:00:31
That's the conversation.
1:00:33
That's what the dishwasher has been holding all of this time.
1:00:36
So, let's leave you with Jack and Jill one more time. Jack's standing in the
1:00:39
kitchen. It's Tuesday evening.
1:00:40
The ordinary kind, the kind that doesn't announce itself is any big deal in
1:00:44
any way. Dinners happen. There's a dishwasher.
1:00:47
There's a sink full of dirty dishes. Jill's in the other room.
1:00:49
The running tab sitting there in the background the way that it always is.
1:00:54
Quiet but present. Kind of just ready to keep its count.
1:00:58
And Jack has a choice. He can load the dishwasher the way he has been with one
1:01:02
eye on the door, half expecting the redirect, half already resentful of the
1:01:07
redirect that hasn't even happened yet.
1:01:09
Adding to the tab in advance is kind of an emotional insurance.
1:01:12
His adaptive child could run that program in its sleep.
1:01:16
Or he can load the dishwasher differently, not perfectly. He's still going to
1:01:19
put something on the wrong rack because he genuinely doesn't really have Jill's
1:01:24
system memorized and probably never will.
1:01:26
I still don't know exactly where the pillows go on our maid bed in my own,
1:01:32
in my relationship and married 36 years.
1:01:35
I think it changes every time, but she maintains it doesn't.
1:01:39
He can load it because he's decided quietly, without announcement,
1:01:43
without expecting a trophy, that he's somebody who shows up for this household,
1:01:46
for this marriage, for the person in the other room, who is also in her own
1:01:50
way trying to find the map for something nobody ever showed her how to do either.
1:01:54
And maybe, just maybe, when Jill walks in, she sees him.
1:01:57
Something in her recognizes it, not perfectly, but she sees him.
1:02:01
And she leaves the bowl where he put it, and she says something small.
1:02:03
Hey, I appreciate you helping.
1:02:05
And it's not the trophy. It's not the complete resolution of the running tab, but it is something.
1:02:11
And something in the right direction is how everything eventually moves.
1:02:15
It's where I want to leave them. Not fixed, not transformed.
1:02:20
Definitely not overnight by a podcast episode, because that's not how human
1:02:24
beings work. And I would never insult you by pretending otherwise.
1:02:27
But something's different. Something's happening. It's turned a little bit.
1:02:31
Pointed a few degrees in a different direction.
1:02:33
Carrying still the same story, the baggage The same adaptive children,
1:02:36
the same dishwasher With the contested organizational system But with a little
1:02:40
more awareness of what they've been doing And a little more willingness to try
1:02:43
something different It's actually enough for now Because it's a lot
1:02:47
And I want to say this to you specifically Not Jack and Jill,
1:02:50
but you, the person who made it to the end of this episode Who is sitting with
1:02:53
whatever this brought up.
1:02:55
This stuff can be difficult. I know that probably sounds like the least surprising
1:03:00
thing a therapist has ever said.
1:03:01
Of course, it's difficult, but I don't mean difficult in the just fluffy abstract way.
1:03:05
I mean, genuinely, specifically in your body difficult.
1:03:08
Because if you're doing this the quote correct way, you're doing it the right way if it feels weird.
1:03:14
It's hard to look at a pattern you've been living inside for years and then
1:03:18
see it clearly for the first time.
1:03:19
And it's hard to locate the real thing inside the horse when you've been arguing
1:03:22
about the surface thing for so long that the surface thing feels like the real thing.
1:03:26
It's hard to leave the waiting room first when you're genuinely,
1:03:29
legitimately not sure whether your partner is going to follow.
1:03:32
And knowing doesn't automatically become the doing and the nervous system is going to take some time.
1:03:37
The adaptive child doesn't just throw up its hands because you now gave it a name.
1:03:41
And I want you to know that I know that because sometimes the most discouraging
1:03:46
thing about this kind of content is it can make you feel like other people are
1:03:49
getting it more gracefully than you are.
1:03:51
Like the couples and the examples all had the clean moment of insight and then
1:03:54
everything shifted and now they load the dishwasher together in peaceful harmony
1:03:58
and that isn't how it happens.
1:03:59
It happens in the Tuesday evening moments and the small decisions that nobody
1:04:02
sees, including sometimes your partner.
1:04:05
And the moment when the horse rolls up to the gate and you catch yourself,
1:04:08
even maybe mid-sentence, maybe mid-reload of the argument, and you think, I know what this is.
1:04:13
You still might have the argument, but you'll have it a little differently.
1:04:17
The repair will happen a lot sooner.
1:04:19
There'll be a lot more awareness underneath it. And then the next time,
1:04:22
maybe a little differently still.
1:04:24
And that's actually what the
1:04:25
progress looks like. And it counts and it matters every single bit of it.
1:04:29
But one thing you can carry with you from today, if you just take one thing
1:04:31
at all, the argument you keep having is not the enemy.
1:04:35
It now is your map. It's pointing at something, something that matters,
1:04:39
something that's been trying to find its way out of this horse and into the open air
1:04:42
for however long you can remember having the argument
1:04:45
and the fact that keeps coming back and that it won't quite resolve
1:04:48
no matter how many times you go around it is not a sign that
1:04:51
your relationship is beyond repair it's a sign of
1:04:54
what's inside the horse that still needs to be addressed the real
1:04:57
conversation is still waiting and you and your partner are still underneath
1:05:01
everything trying to find each other you are not broken
1:05:04
you're a human and your relationship is
1:05:07
a thing and now it's doing right now what
1:05:10
relationships do so check that out you're
1:05:13
two human beings who grew up in specific houses with different families
1:05:16
and they handed you different maps and it's imperfect and incomplete and designed
1:05:21
for a different territory than the one that you're now trying to navigate together
1:05:24
and you're doing what human beings do which is the best you can with what you
1:05:27
were given sometimes the best we can with what we were given looks like a dishwasher
1:05:31
argument and that's okay because now you know more than you did before and that
1:05:35
changes what's possible.
1:05:36
So keep trying and keep showing up and leave the bowl where your partner put
1:05:39
it or at least one time this week and see what happens.
1:05:42
If this one resonated, please share it with somebody who might need to hear it.
1:05:45
Reach out to me if you have questions, specific questions, if you're interested
1:05:48
in even working with me. From time to time, I have an opening.
1:05:51
And as always, you can reach me at contactattonioverbay.com.
1:05:54
I read your messages. I read them all.
1:05:56
And I'm grateful for the listeners, the support, taking us out per usual.
1:06:01
The wonderful, the talented, Aurora Florence, with their song,
1:06:03
And it's wonderful because it is.
1:06:06
Have a great week. I'll see you next time on The Virtual Catch.