35: Relationship Communication: How to Talk About Emotions & Feelings in a Relationship
Healthy communication creates safety, trust, and intimacy in relationships. Unfortunately, many of us did not learn how to communicate in healthy ways when we were younger, and can end up playing out unhealthy communication patterns when we are adults.
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In this episode, I talk about codependency, what it is, and why it’s often the culprit to unhealthy communication patterns. I also answer a question from a listener looking for advice on how to communicate with an anxious partner, and another question from a listener looking for advice on how to communicate about sensitive issues.
Episode References:
More Information on Codependency:
Book Recommendations:
Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt
The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman
Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
14:00 Listener Question 1
36:33 Listener Question 2
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey, there beautiful souls. My name is Amanda, and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. So it is my intention to guide you on the healing journey and to offer you a new perspective on whatever you may be going through. It is not my intention to give you the answers. I truly believe you have all the answers you seek, you just may need a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. Today we are talking about relationships and specifically good relationship communication, healthy relationship communication, how do we communicate with our partners about our feelings and emotions? This is an important topic because I think that learning to communicate healthily is so important for relationships. And it's also challenging, I find good communication can be really difficult because good communication involves having those tough conversations, those uncomfortable conversations. They require us to confront our partners about things that are bothering us as well as maybe talking about things that may appear shameful to our partners. But we want to create safe spaces in our relationships. And one way to create safety is to have these conversations to create a safe space for us to talk about our feelings and our emotions. Most of the world doesn't want to hear about our feelings and emotions at least that's what I've found. So we want our romantic partnerships to be a safe place for that it's so important and it also creates intimacy. So learning to communicate healthily will help you to create intimacy, vulnerability and feel more loved throughout your relationship. So I think this is a great topic for us to discuss today. Before I jump into the questions, I'm going to give a quick introduction on codependency. I find codependent behaviors can be the culprit behind bad communication in many relationships. And I think codependent behaviors are very, very common in our society. So codependency is not just in romantic partnerships people can be codependent in friendships codependent with people at the grocery store, codependent with coworkers, codependent with families, and most codependent behaviors started in dysfunctional family structures. So I wanted to give a quick introduction to codependency because I think that it is relevant for both the questions I'm going to answer because I'm also going to talk about how codependent behaviors may come up when we try to have these tough conversations. So I want to give a quick intro to codependency. And then I'm going to be answering two questions, one with a listener who wants to know how to communicate with an anxious partner and a second from a listener looking for advice about how to communicate with their partner about a sensitive topic, which is masturbation. So today's episode is probably on the longer side because I'm going to do this introduction. So today I'm going to jump right in and let's get started I wanted to begin this episode with talking about codependency because I have found in my own life for codependency and codependent behaviors, to be a reason why it can be so hard for us to have healthy communication. And one of the questions to me is an example of codependent behaviors. So part of one of the questions is talking about how can you manage somebody's anxiety, manage the situation and if you're trying to manage someone, this is a sign that you are acting codependent ly. I had trouble finding a definition that I loved about codependency but here's a general definition I found of codependency so codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self destructive behavior, such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility or under achievement. So I liked this definition because it talks about enabling people's poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility and underachievement because I think codependency oftentimes is described with the classic example of an alcoholic and the person who enables that addiction. And a great book to read if that's your relationship with codependency is codependent no more. I used to recommend this book on this podcast but really the first half is helpful for most people, but the second half is really focused on that alcoholic example. And so it's not really the general definition of codependency and I think our society is filled with codependent behavior that is in the addiction example. So I wanted to give a few examples of codependency to help people to maybe understand if they're playing out codependent behaviors. I want to mention that a lot of the self help world talks about codependency now and I think that it can have a shaming element. Like people can go oh my god that's so codependent and it can feel shaming, but I don't mean it with any shame or judgment here. I am a recovering codependent. I have played out codependent relationships for most of my life. And as I heal, and as I become more of my authentic self and I allow myself to be vulnerable, I am healing these codependent patterns, but it has been very difficult for me to heal, because these codependent patterns I played out for a really long time were ingrained in the way that I created and sustained relationships. So I just want to mention there's zero judgment here. And here's a few examples of codependent behaviors that I see regularly from people. So one example I see often in codependent relationships would be a relationship where one person is very strongly opinionated and always gets their way and one person is seen as easygoing from the outside but what they're really doing is always appeasing the other person and always doing what the other person wants in order to not upset them. And so they just always go with what Person A wants what the person who always has opinions wants. This is a matchup I see very common in our society. One person very opinionated the other person seems quote unquote, easygoing, but is often codependent and is afraid to voice their opinions is afraid to make waves is afraid that if they say what they want, the other person may leave. codependent behavior stems from those core beliefs we often talk about on this podcast. So oftentimes codependent behavior starts in our childhood when we have dysfunctional homes. For me, my codependent behaviors started because I spent my youth around angry adults. And these angry adults would scare me. I felt unsafe, I felt unsafe for my life. So I changed myself to make sure I was easygoing enough so that the people around me would be happy. And this is very common. Other reasons you may develop codependent behaviors is because you want to feel loved. So if you go along with what somebody else wants, they show you love another reason to feel worthy. So maybe you're accepted when you do these codependent behaviors. For example, say there's a group of girls who are doing something not so great. Say they're picking on someone else, and you decide to go along with picking on someone because it makes the group of girls accept you. In that moment. You learn that if you go along with the group mentality, you will be accepted. So you start to develop codependent behaviors, you start to change who you are, to fit in with the norm or to fit in with your partner or to fit in in your family. For so many of us, these codependent behaviors started in family because of these core beliefs, right? So for me, it was safety, safety is my core thing I've had to heal is finding safety within myself. And so I changed myself so that the world would feel safer. So another example I see very often, of codependent behavior in romantic partnerships, is when one person has really strong feelings. This is an example that I played out in my relationship, I could have really strong feelings, I still have very strong feelings, but I'm able to express them in a healthy way now. But in my early 20s, I was not able to express these in a healthy way. So it could come out as rage, it could come out with sobs, and so my partner could develop codependent behaviors to try and manage my feelings. Because I think that these strong feelings would make him feel unsafe because of things that happened in his own childhood around strong feelings. And so he would play out a pattern where if he could make himself smaller, more easygoing and enable me and my behaviors, then he would feel safe, but feelings can be so strongly made people uncomfortable and I wasn't dealing with them in a healthy way. That's key as well because I think that the technical definition of codependency really talks about the person who enables the bad behavior but I truly believe that the person with the bad behavior sue me with the strong emotions that I wasn't dealing with on my own is also codependent because I'm depending on those other people to enable me to fix me to numb me and you can't be codependent without another person. So it takes this back and forth between the two people for codependency to exist. A third example of codependency I want to give that I see regularly happen is when you have a romantic partner, a friend or a family member Who's exhibiting bad behavior such as irresponsibility, who never takes responsibility for their actions, and you never ask them to take responsibility for their actions. So another pattern I've seen played out, is when there's two people in a relationship, and one of them's very irresponsible and very immature, and they do things to hurt other people, and their partner or their family member or their friend apologizes for them and takes responsibility for that person's actions. That is codependent. That is codependent because that person is responsible for their actions. Because you are not responsible for that person's actions, you are actually enabling their immaturity enabling their irresponsibility, by apologizing for them by taking the responsibility and by fixing the scene right by mitigating their actions. And these are three examples I wanted to give. Because these are three very common examples. These are three examples I have played out in my own life on both sides. I think codependency is ingrained in our culture. I'll give another codependent example from my own life. When I'm at a restaurant and I feel uncomfortable complaining about my meal. So say the waiter got my meal wrong. And I'm too worried about the waiters feelings to say anything. This has happened to me many times before. It has been my growth to be able to say, Oh, you actually got my order wrong. But it's codependent when I won't say anything, because it's not personal. It's not a big deal. If you leave emotion out of it, not a big deal. Hey, sorry, I actually ordered this Do you mind helping me get that fixed? Super easy, not personal. But there's so many times like that in society where I'm too nervous that I'm going to offend somebody. So I don't say anything. So I don't speak up. And this is very common, which is why I wanted to mention codependency at the beginning here because I think that a core reason why it can be very hard for us to communicate in relationships is codependency. We don't want to offend our partners, we don't want to hurt their feelings. It's easier to ignore the bad behavior than it is to have the tough conversation. That's codependent or we put our partner's feelings above our own. We want them to be happy. We love them so much. It's okay that they hurt me as long as they're happy. That is codependent. And I want to mention it because these codependent behaviors keep you from yourself. They keep you from putting yourself first and they keep you from being your best self, because you're putting someone above you and we're equal. And the only person who's going to consider your needs first Are you. And when you consider your partner needs before you it's not healthy, because only they really know what they need. And only they can be responsible for their actions. And when you try to manage or fix or control them or worry about them for them. That's not helping anybody. You can't do somebody's personal work for them. You can't do the work for other people. But you have to do the work for yourself. And the last thing I'm going to mention about the importance of healing codependency and calling out these codependent behaviors is as I mentioned, they're oftentimes rooted in childhood, and your inner child deserves to know that it is safe for them to have opinions, it is safe for them to voice their concerns. It's safe for them to voice their needs, it's safe for them to voice their emotions and that it is safe and that they will be loved no matter how the other person reacts because you love you and you have your back and you support you through these tough conversations. So that is my quick introduction to codependency. I hope something in there was helpful. And if you have more questions on codependency, please reach out I would love to do a full episode on it because it's a very complex topic. And together we can dive into different codependent behaviors, what's healthy, what we could maybe do to improve it and how we can heal it. With that said, let's dive into the first question.
Amanda Durocher [listener question] 14:00
I just found your podcast and I love it. My husband suffers from anxiety and recently began therapy and medication. However, he still snaps at me pretty regularly and gets frustrated easily. It feels like I have to walk on eggshells with him. He also works six days a week. I'm a full time working mom too, which is even harder with our four year old toddler. When we're good, we're great. But right now I don't feel we're at our best. I want to bring it up but want to be careful with his feelings. What can I do to manage or navigate someone with anxiety? Thank you so much for this question. I love this question. I think this is a great conversation for us to have. And I think so many people can relate to this question. How do we communicate with somebody who is anxious? How do we communicate with our partners who have very large feelings in my relationship? I was the one with very large feelings for a lot of the time my partner and I have been together so this is a great conversation for our So how because it's something that my partner and I have had to work through and learn how to navigate as well. Firstly, I want to mention that it sounds like your partner is working towards change, which I think is great. He's taking actions towards change with therapy and medication. So I just want to mention that I think that's great, because as you learn to communicate, I think that it sounds like he is already working towards healing his anxiety and being with his anxiety. So I just want to mention that because if he wasn't even aware, he was anxious. That'd be a totally different conversation. But I think it's great that you have a partner who is working on themselves. And I wanted to mention that, as I'm sure you've noticed is you're still having issues is that these things take time. So neither of these are an overnight fix. The therapy is not an overnight fix, and the medication is not an overnight fix. But I did want to mention that I think it's great that you're both working towards healing and improving yourselves. So first, I wanted to mention the codependency intro I did because in your question, I thought it was a very common codependent behavior when you use the word manage. So how do you manage someone with anxiety? So throughout my relationship when my partner is acting codependent to me and feels like he's trying to manage me, which does not feel good. I do not want to feel manage. And managing is a form of control. So how can we control the situation? How can I control my partner's reaction, and that stems from codependent behavior. So I just wanted to offer you that. And maybe you could reflect on that if you've never considered if you have codependent behaviors. I'm not calling you codependent, I'm just inviting you to explore that. When you use the word manage, you could have meant something else. So I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. And again, I'm not trying to judge you either. Because I think 90% of relationships have codependent patterns and start that way. I don't think a lot of people go into relationships without codependent behaviors unless they had a previous relationship where they were codependent and they started healing those behaviors. So again, it's not a judgmental thing, why I'm bringing that up. But we don't want to manage our partners. We don't want to control our partners, we don't want to fix our partners, we don't want to change our partners. What we want to learn to do is communicate with our partners, and to invite them to explore themselves more with us, and also communicate how we feel. And we want you to be responsible for our own lives or in our own feelings and our own emotions. And we want to give back the responsibility of their emotions and their feelings. For example, having an anxious partner, you want to learn to communicate how that anxiety makes you feel, and how it affects you. And you want to invite your partner oftentimes through questions to see where he is, in what he is thinking and feeling about his anxiety and his angry behavior. because questions are a great way to communicate with our partners because they aren't accusatory, even if we think we know the answer. If we ask a question one, we're inviting our partner to explore a topic and we oftentimes will learn something new. So I will often make assumptions about my partner, and then I will ask him a question about his behavior. And what he communicates to me is often something I would have never thought of. But I wouldn't have known that if I didn't invite him to communicate with me through questions. So here are a few pieces of advice I have for you. And for creating a safe space with someone who has what sounds like a lot of feelings, I relate to having a lot of feelings. And because I have a lot of feelings, it's so important for me to have safe spaces. So I want to invite you to create a safe space and a safe time to communicate with your partner. So what I mean by that is you can create a safe space to discuss yours and your partner's feelings. As I mentioned, you don't want to manage your partner because your partner will feel this and it will create an unhealthy pattern between the two of you. And it can create more anger and resentment, which is not what you want. So you want to create a safe space to feel your feelings and to hear each other's feelings. So how do we create a safe space? One way I invite you to try is to invite your partner to have a conversation with you at a specific time. Many of us try to have conversations when we're ready, and our partners can feel attacked and it can make them feel defensive. So my first piece of advice for creating a safe space is to create a time where you and your partner can have a tough conversation and where you can share your feelings. So I don't advise that you just blurt out your feelings. If you're worried about your partner's anxiety and anger. I would say hey, are you available in an hour to talk with me? I had a few things I wanted to discuss. Or I'd say hey, are you available Friday night I'd love to put a time on the calendar for us to discuss some things I've been thinking About Nothing big, I just want to share with you my feelings about a few topics. And this invites them to the conversation. It also allows them to put down their defenses because people can get really defensive and feel attacked if you try to have a tough conversation with them when they're not ready, because you don't know where their headspace is. And so this will allow your partner time to prepare, you know, you want to create a safe space. So you don't want to catch somebody off guard. That's not the intention. You're not trying to upset your partner you're trying to have a conversation with with a person who you love and care a lot about. So I have found in my own life, setting time aside and not trying to have the tough conversations right now can really help me because I can find when my partner wants to have a tough conversation, and he expresses it at first I get defensive, and all my guards go up. But if we schedule it for later, it allows me time to bring those guards down. And to think about if there's anything I want to bring to the conversation as well. So my partner and I will call this trust trees. So we used to do trust tree Tuesday, as we were doing the program in the book, getting the love you want. It's a book, I highly, highly recommend for couples. It's a classic. This book I found through Oprah she talked about on The Oprah Winfrey Show like 20 years ago. It is a classic book. And it has a very simple form of communication, the imago dialogue. And this is a great way for couples to learn to communicate if you don't have a healthy form of communication. And I mentioned this book, because when my partner and I were first learning to communicate, we did the books 12 week program. And the book asks for you to set a time aside each week to go over the exercises with your partner. So this allowed my partner and I to schedule time on the calendar every Tuesday, trust me Tuesday's where we would sit down and have tough conversations. And we both would do the exercises. And this for us built a foundation of trust, it built a foundation of communication, and allowed us to learn how to have these tough conversations. And also, we both learned that we both had a lot of things we wanted to say about the relationship. But we also both had to take a lot of responsibility for things that weren't perfect in the relationship. And through this program, which we did the workbook, we didn't do it online, we didn't do it with a teacher or anything. We just did the workbooks together, we were able to learn this foundation. So I mentioned that because that was really helpful in my relationship. But there are tons of self help books, tons of couple books, tons of communication books, I do invite you if you don't have a great way of communicating with your partner, to look into if there's a book that the both of you could read together, because then you create the same language, which is my next piece of advice is that you want to create a framework and a similar language that you both can communicate. So another book I talk about a lot is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. And I know people have mixed reviews on it. But I found it really helpful in my partnership because my partner and I learned to communicate about each other's love languages. So I didn't know his love language is words of affirmation until we had the language for it. And he didn't know my love language was quality time until I had the language for it. And Gary Chapman talks about the love tank. So how love can be like a gas tank and it can be full or empty in how you can get halfway, but how different actions you can take can help to fill your love tank in your relationship. And when my partner and I had the language to communicate about our love tanks, and we both read the book and had that language, it was really helpful. So I wanted to mention that I think a book could be really helpful for you both to read, I think it's important that both partners read it. So both partners have the same language. I've read 100 self help books, they're not really helpful for my partner unless we've both read them, then we can both communicate about them. So now that you have a safe space and a safe time, when you confront your partner about what you want to talk about, I invite you to use I statements. Specifically I feel statements when you are expressing how you feel careful not to accuse them of anything. What you want to start doing is creating language and conversations around how you feel. So if you want to express that you were afraid to have this conversation because of your partner's temper, I would say something like I have been feeling like I need to walk on eggshells around you. I feel scared that I may upset you. It is never my intention to upset you. I feel we are not at our best and I want to work towards making this better. Because I love you. I want to create a safe space to tell you how I feel and to listen anything you may want to communicate with me that I could be doing better as well. You want to focus on the I statements because if you say you're always angry, and it makes me feel like I'm walking on eggshells, your partner is going to feel like you're attacking them. You don't want to put words in their mouth. You also don't want to say you're angry all the time because you want them to communicate to you they're angry. You want to say something like I feel scared when you yell I feel nervous nervous that I'm going to upset you. You want to take responsibility for your feelings, and you want to communicate how you're feeling. So in getting the love you want, I'm going to talk about this book a lot. But he talks about the imago dialogue, which I mentioned, which is basically you give an I feel statement, so I feel angry one, and then your partner would communicate back to you what they heard. And you would either say, Yes, that is how I feel. Or you will learn that your partner didn't actually hear you. Because what happens a lot too, in relationships, which is why mirroring can be really helpful. So having somebody repeat back to you, what they heard, is that when people get feedback, or they hear your feelings, they can get really caught up in their heads and their own emotions that they can start telling themselves stories. So for example, you can say I feel angry when you don't wash the car. And your partner may say, if I hear you correctly, I heard you say that you're angry, because I never wash the car, and I'm a failure. And you'd be like, No, I never called you a failure. I just get angry when you don't wash the car. And then your partner would communicate that they were glad that you shared, you would thank them for listening. And then you would listen to anything they wanted to communicate as well. Again, the book goes into this in much more detail. But the point of me sharing the imago dialogue with you is the importance of the eye feel statement. Because you want to communicate how you are feeling because you can't put words in their mouth, you don't want to put words in their mouth, you want to tell them how you're feeling. That's why you're having the conversation is because you feel like you're walking on eggshells, and then you want to ask them questions. So whatever you're discussing, you want to ask them questions, how does this make you feel? Is there anything you want to communicate with me, you want to invite them to the conversation, you don't want to put words in their mouth, you don't want to say you'll be better when blank? Or you should discuss this in therapy, you want to say, is this something you think you could discuss in therapy, you want to invite them because you want them to make their own decisions. And you don't want them to feel like you are controlling, managing or trying to force them into anything, you want to invite them to make their own choices, invite them to share their feelings. I hope that makes sense. So I also want to mention that through these questions, you are inviting your partner, to be honest with you as well. And that's another reason why you put a safe time aside to have these conversations because you want to be open to your partner's feedback as well, that's part of healthy communication is that you may have a lot of things you want to say. But you also have to be open to your partner reflecting back to you some things you may have been missing, or some ways they might have not been feeling loved. Or you may find out that the way you've been communicating comes off really critically. So you want to leave time for them to communicate as well, because you both want to hear each other because oftentimes when we are in ruts in relationships are not at our best is because of a lot of miscommunication. So it's on both sides. And so it's important to have that safe space so that you can be ready to receive some feedback as well. And so this leads me to the importance of also communicating in a non emotional way. So we want to talk to our partners because this creates safety, yelling mean language and lots of crying creates unsafety. And also does completely shutting down and like a freeze response, which can happen. So this has happened in my relationship, when I would yell my partner would freeze, he would completely check out and he wasn't able to communicate anymore because he felt unsafe. And when he would check out this would make me feel unsafe. So I would get more angry. And so this would be a really good time to stop the conversation when you feel the emotions are starting to become heightened. So if you feel yourself getting worked up or your partner getting worked up, you'll have to communicate with your partner that you need a break from the conversation. So you'll want to take alone time and come back later or even the next day to the conversation because it doesn't help anyone when we get too emotional and can't articulate how we feel. I find this important because many times when somebody gets emotional, the other person gets triggered. And then everybody goes into defense mode. This won't be helpful when trying to change a pattern. hard feelings are not wrong, but sometimes it's important to process them separately, so everyone can feel safe. Many of us had hard feelings thrown in us as children. So parents yelling at us parents crying and then depending on us, or having rude critical and mean remarks said to us as children, so it can really trigger our inner child. So if you find your partner becomes angry, or that you become really triggered as well. You'll also want to communicate that you both should take that space, take some time to feel your feelings and come back when you can have a conversation. I also want to stress that we can feel angry, but it's different if our anger is directed at our partners. So in my relationship I can now say I'm feeling really angry about this. And my partner can hear this because I'm communicating I'm feeling angry but I'm not expressing that anger through yelling through throwing things. I'm just communicating. I'm feeling angry right now. And I'm able to articulate about the anger. And before I would express that anger, as I mentioned, by yelling at him, and that wasn't good for anything, so there's nothing wrong with our feelings. But we do need to find safe ways to express them. As one of my favorite spiritual teachers says hard feelings are not an excuse for bad behavior. And I also want to mention that when communicating, it often takes one person to apologize for hurting the other, and taking responsibility because often once one person takes a step towards reconciliation, the other person will take a step forward as well. But people can get at a standstill, because both people can be stubborn and not want to admit they were wrong. But oftentimes, when somebody takes responsibility for their actions and apologizes, it allows the other person to put down their defenses and apologized as well. So I want to just mention this, because you may have to be the first one to apologize, I'm not sure what's going on your relationship or what you need to communicate. But it may take you taking some responsibility and being like, Hey, I'm sorry, if you've been angry with me, I'm sorry, if I haven't been the most supportive partner, I want us to work towards better communication, and work towards finding more time to express love towards each other. And I want to take my part that I've been really busy and I haven't been putting this priority first. And I want you to know that this is a main priority of mine, I really want to create a safe space for us to have a loving relationships. So I just want to take responsibility for my actions in that. So just taking ownership of your feelings and responsibility for your actions can really just help others to feel safe to let down those defenses and to communicate clearly. And know that it's a safe space to communicate. Clear, honest, healthy communication takes a lot of time and a lot of patience, you're not going to get it right on the first try. It's the same thing with communicating boundaries. We don't do it right on the first try. It's with each new conversation, each safe place you create. And each time you try saying something and see how it works over we're practice will create that healthy foundation, but it's with practice. So as I mentioned, create that safe space, communicate how you feel also, if your partner says something that offends you, in the moment say, I feel hurt right now that you said that. And also creating that not emotionless, but healthy emotional space. So not being really triggered when you're having these conversations, coming back as many times as you need to, so that you're not having these conversations from the heightened trigger space. And taking responsibility will all help you with communicating with your partner who is anxious, and communicating with your partner who can express anger in unhealthy ways. The last thing I wanted to mention, before I wrap up this question is that I just wanted to say that all that is important for your communication. But what is also really important for you to be doing right now is to prioritize self care. So from what it sounds like, you're incredibly busy, you have a young child, and you have a partner who is focused on their own mental health, which is so great and so important. So it's really imperative that you prioritize yours. So I don't know if you have a therapist as well. But I invite you to get a therapist as well. I think it's really healthy when both partners in a relationship have therapists because then you can have those conversations, you can go discuss those conversations with your therapist and come back and continue to have healthy conversations. And you have that space to express how you feel in a safe space without your partner and to process some emotions that may have come up for you. And as I mentioned, your partner is working towards making the right changes working towards bettering himself. But that takes time, so you need to take care of you. So this may require that you wake up earlier, so you have time to exercise so you have time to journal so you have time to meditate. It may require you stay up later, it may require that you take your lunch break for you. And a lot of us work right through lunch. But it may require you start taking that full hour of your lunch break and spending that time on you. Or it may require that you order takeout a few nights if you're always finding you're cooking dinner, and that you take that time for yourself to do things for you. In this may seem impossible to take an hour every day. So I invite you to start with an hour a week. But I think an hour a day would be really great for you and would help you with those codependent behaviors because oftentimes when we're trying to manage somebody, it's because we can feel out of control with life. So one way to start feeling that control again, is to do self care. And that doesn't mean you control life. But the more we take care of our inner world, the more we can handle the outside world, if that makes sense. So I invite you to start meditating, honestly, 15 minutes a day could really help to you just want to start creating time for yourself carving it out into your schedule. As I mentioned, since you have a young kid, it may require waking up earlier than you like you can even meditate in bed with headphones Then or get up and go to the couch because I can often fall right back asleep if I try meditating in bed. So I just want your number one priority to be to take care of you. And that will really help you because the more you prioritize yourself, the better you'll be able to also show up in your relationship because this time to yourself will also help you to become clear on your own wants and needs help you process tough feelings and help you with your partner because starting to prioritize yourself will help you to heal any codependent patterns you may have. And also will help you put you first, you must prioritize yourself. It's just so important. And it's really all I talked about here is that if you want more love in your life, if you want more happiness, it all comes back to you, it all comes back to your inner world, it all comes back to prioritizing yourself. And you deserve to feel safe at home and not feel like you're walking on eggshells. So I want you to find this time for yourself to create safety within yourself. Because my guess is in your relationship. When you feel those ways. There's a very triggered inner child who probably needs attention and probably doesn't feel safe. So through self love, self care, self acceptance, accepting that you can't control your partner accepting that there are things outside of your control could really help you to create a healthier relationship with yourself and your partner. This is a lot in one question. So take what resonates? Leave what doesn't try one thing I mentioned. But I hope something in this answer was helpful. I am sending you so much love.
Amanda Durocher [listener question] 36:33
How should I approach my partner on sensitive issues? I caught my partner on home video masturbating on a porn a girl sent him How should I approach him? I also saw him sending snap responses to several females. Thank you for this question. This is a great question. And I want to honor that this is a tough situation to navigate. And that I think it's great that you're looking to communicate with your partner about this sensitive issue in a healthy way. So I think all the advice I gave in the first question applies here, you want to create a safe space, discuss this with your partner, you want to articulate that you have something you want to discuss. And find a time that works for both of you. You also want to communicate with those clear, I feel statements. You also want to make sure you're working on self care throughout this time. Because this may require many conversations more than just one. So you want to make sure you're prioritizing yourself in order to create safety within yourself. Because this, this conversation will probably be tough for you and for your partner. So you want to make sure you're taking that time to process your feelings, feel safe, feel loved, and become intentional about how you want to communicate this. With that intention that I just mentioned, you want to become really clear on how you feel. So that's going to be really important before you have this conversation. So how do you feel about what's going on? Do you feel like this was a portrayal? Are you sad? Are you upset? Are you really angry, become really clear and really specific about what you're triggered about? Is it the porn? Is it that he's getting porn from other women? Is it that he's hiding it from you, I invite you to become really clear on your feelings so that you can articulate clearly what you feel and why. So when we are communicating about sensitive issues, the more intentional, the more clear we can become, it will be really helpful for our partners. Oftentimes, if we don't take the time to reflect before having difficult conversations, what comes out of our mouth can be like word vomit, and a lot of mush, and a lot of accusations and a lot of feelings. And we can try and process it as we go. And when that happens, we can realize how many different feelings we have. So taking the time before the conversation can be really, really helpful. Because then you can process the excess feelings and get really clear about how you feel. And as I mentioned in the first question, when you bring up this sensitive topic, you're going to want to be as level headed as possible. And again, your feelings are not bad. And it's not that you can't have them, but your partner is probably going to get defensive about what he did. So the more clear you can be and the less emotional then it'll allow him to be less and less defensive. If you come at him and you're bawling your eyes out or you're screaming at him he's gonna get really defensive that is human behavior. We do not like when people yell at us we do not like when people sob at us, then we often go into fix it mode. And we're not allowed to process our own feelings in that case, or if somebody's yelling at us again, we go into fix it mode. And that's where some of these codependent behaviors can come from. Because we don't want these feelings at us. It's very uncomfortable. We want to feel safe in our body. We want to feel comfortable. So we can often go into codependent behaviors because we don't want our partner to feel this way and we don't want to You know how we're feeling in our body. So we just want to fix it as quickly as possible. And though that's very common, we want to move into having tough conversations, and allowing that uncomfortability to arise, allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable. It is not comfortable to have hard conversations is actually incredibly difficult, which is why most people do not have them. Which is why, like I mentioned in the intro, for so long, I didn't complain about anything in my life, even if somebody else got it wrong. Like my order, like say, I ordered a Caesar salad and somebody brought me a comp salad. There was a point in time where I wouldn't tell anybody, they made that mistake, because I was worried about hurting people's feelings. Very common, but very codependent. So as I mentioned, you want to become clear about how you feel, and what you're trying to communicate. Because do you just want your partner to know, you know, do you want your partner to stop? Do you want to go to couples therapy to discuss this? Do you want your partner to tell you more about what's going on, you want to become clear about what your intention is for this conversation. And if you're not mad, let them know that or if you are mad, let them know that too. You want to articulate how you feel about the situation. So saying something like I feel like my trust for you was broken through this act is much better than you broke my trust, I can't believe you would do this. One is communicating your inner world and what's going on, and the other is accusatory and accusing them of something. So again, like I said in the first question, when you do this, sit your partner down to discuss this, you want to use those I feel statements articulate how you feel. And I also want to mention that because there is a privacy thing involved. I'm not entirely sure about your home video setup. I'm not sure if your partner knows that he's being watched, or if he knows there's cameras, but he didn't know he was being watched. I'm not entirely sure about the whole situation you have going on here. Because the questions very short and brief. But I just wanted to mention that because of this, your partner may become very defensive, and may jump to accusing you of breaking his trust through watching these videos. And you may want to take responsibility, you might want to say I'm sorry, I was watching the home videos or tell him the truth. I'm not sure why you're watching these videos. And again, I'm not sure if he knows you watch him. So you may have to take responsibility for that for how he feels about that not take responsibility for its feelings, but take responsibility for your actions. And you may want to say I was watching the home video because I love to watch our dog at home. And I didn't expect to see what I saw, I do take responsibility. And I'm sorry that it feels like a violation of your privacy or whatever his concern may be. And you can be like that was never my intention, I was really just tuning in to the video to watch our cat, or to check on the Amazon package. And you'll just want to communicate the truth about the situation and acknowledge any feelings he may be having. But you'll also want to articulate that even though what you did may have hurt him what he did hurt you as well, right. So sometimes when people get defensive, they can flip flop the conversation and then try to project onto us and blame us. For example, with cheating, which I talked a lot about in previous episodes, what can happen there is that somebody can find out somebody was cheating on them through texting their phone, and the person can flip flop and be like, Well, you shouldn't have been reading my phone. And you can take responsibility and say I'm sorry, I read your phone. But what I read still upset me. So you can say I'm sorry, I was watching you on video. But what you did still upset me. It doesn't negate your feelings. And it doesn't negate however you feel about the situation. Because it's important for you to express your feelings. And it's important for you to have your feelings and it's important for you to feel safe enough to express these feelings. And it's important for you to feel heard by your partner in your feelings. And it's important for your partner to feel heard in their feelings as well. And as I mentioned, tough conversations are hard. It's not easy. But it gets easier and easier with time. I used to hate tough conversations. And now each time I have one it becomes easier. It's like flexing a muscle. It's like going to the gym. Each time we talk about our feelings each time we talk about sensitive topics. Each time we use those I feel statements each time we leave when we're triggered, it all just becomes easier to communicate with our partners. But it's a skill not taught in school, I had a bunch of teachers who were really bad communicators, and they did not teach good communication skills. And my parents didn't have the best communication patterns. And the girls I grew up with didn't have great communication patterns. So learning healthy communication has been a journey for me. And I think it's a journey for many people because a lot of people are lacking healthy communication. But you know what, you know, right? It's hard to know how to communicate well if you've never seen it, and you've never been asked to communicate well, so just offering grace and compassion to everyone out there. There's no time like the president to Start learning healthy communication skills and there's no blame for the past and there's no shame in having unhealthy communication skills. There's no shame in being codependent. There's no shame in anytime you have expressed your anger unhealthily. There's no time like today to change. But there's no shame in the ways we've acted in the past and the ways we cope with feeling unsafe and uncomfortable. It's just where we start today. So another book I wanted to recommend for you is principles by Ray Dalio. This is actually a book my partner recommended on communication. If there's any buddy out there who's interested in business, and personal communication. This book gives a lot of business and personal advice. And something Ray Dalio talks about is radical transparency. So you want to be as clear and open with your communication as possible. Because the more transparent you are, the more honest you are, the less room there is for miscommunication. So that's why communicating how you feel, communicating your inner world, communicating without all the extra emotions, creates clearer communication, more open communication, more honest communication that both people can hear. So again, if your partner gets defensive and really angry, be sure to pause the conversation come back to it later. Also, if your partner takes zero responsibility for their actions, and how they affect the relationship, this is something to start becoming aware of, because you want to make sure both of you are looking to grow. Both of you are looking to create clear communication it takes to you deserve a partner who treats you well honors your feelings prioritizes your safety and wants to grow and can't with you. And this could totally be the person you're with, or if you are anyone listening to this episode, because these questions I hope, help many people who listen, if you find that your partner repeatedly gets defensive and refuses to help. Remember what you deserve. You know, remember, you deserve somebody who can communicate about their feelings, it doesn't mean it won't take time, it will take time. But who also wants somebody who's willing to change who's willing to have these tough conversations, who's willing to take responsibility for their actions, you deserve to grow and change throughout your life, and you deserve a partner who's gonna grow and change with you. Because that's how we grow and change throughout life, right, we want to grow and change together. And the more you grow, the more you want people who are willing to grow with you, and you deserve love and safety, and someone who treats you really well. So I just wanted to mention that to anyone out there who may have been trying to communicate and all these ways I've mentioned and has found that their partner is unwilling to communicate to and it's just important to recognize that sometimes we do do all the right things, and other people just aren't willing to change, or they're just going to continue projecting all their shit on to us. And we don't have to take that we don't have to tolerate that. So I just wanted to mention that and I hope something in this answer was helpful. I am sending you so much love. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher [outro] 48:04
Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful to have these conversations with you each week. I love having these conversations. And I'm just so grateful to have found a community of people who like to have these conversations as well. So I hope you found something interesting or helpful within this episode. And if you have any questions, please reach out. And that reminds me that if you have any questions in general about any topics, I am honestly open to discuss anything, you can submit a question to be answered on the podcast through my website. So my website is www.newviewadvice.com/question. Or you can email me at newviewadvice@gmail.com. And you can ask a question, you can ask a follow up question to this episode. Or you can ask an entirely different question about an entirely different subject. So if you have a question, like I said, please reach out. And if you would like to just send me an email and say hello, I am so open to that as well. I love every time I get a direct message and email a new question. I love connecting with everyone who listens to the podcast. It brightens my day every single time anybody reaches out thank you again for tuning into another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on wherever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
