35: My Wife and I Need To Go Back To Couples Therapy

Questions: Does this mean we’re doing something wrong, or we’re flawed as humans?

Jason also shares some of the recent disconnection he’s had with his wife. 

Learn more about Jason’s coaching practice at: RelationshipFixed.com & Jason's therapy practice here: Colorado Relationship Recovery

Transcript

Jason Polk  0:00  
My wife and I need to go back to therapy. I'm sharing this because even couples Therapist and Relationship coaches need to go, relationships can be so challenging, and they bring up all of our stuff. The questions are, does this mean we're doing something wrong? And that's just me that we're flawed. Answer these questions. Next, my name is Jason Polk, and you're listening to the healthy relationship secrets for parents podcast. I've worked with couples for over nine years, as a couples therapist and relationship coach, and I really appreciate your time and attention. And I hope this can be of great value for you. Thanks for listening. My wife and I need to go to couples therapy need to go back to couples therapy? And does this mean we're doing something wrong? And does this mean that we're flawed? There are two ways to answer this. And you may think it's a cop out. But the first way, the answer is no. Because relationships are very challenging. And conflict is inevitable. In any relationship. If we're not having conflict in a relationship, that could be a signal that you're not being your true self in the relationship. And if we're not being our true self, then the relationship and feel a bit dull. So it's good to have conflict. The question is, how are you going to work with it, work through it, and manage that conflict? So the both of you end up, okay. And another way of looking at this question is, does it mean we're doing something wrong? The answer is yes. My wife and I were both doing some things wrong. And let me tell you about it. Recently, my wife had some family in town, and we had a conflict. Because family was in town, we couldn't really talk about the conflict, and process it, we were both really upset with each other, and felt totally justified in our points of view. I may have mentioned this in episode number 30. But our flavor of disconnection is to be like roommates. So since we didn't make time to talk about it, the company left, then the weak hit, and we were off. But we had this unrepaired frustration with one another, which are style manifest in passive aggressive withdraw. And this was bad. I got really bad, folks. We weren't looking at each other, still cool around the kids, we were still talking to the kids around each other. Luckily, we weren't taking jabs at one another. But we had thick walls up, we weren't looking at each other. We weren't talking to each other. And we were doing this wrong. We were both so mad. No one wanted to initiate repair, or even a conversation for that manner. Not even initiate eye contact. And this is a side note, it's almost better. If couples are arguing with each other, instead of complete, icy withdrawal. At the very least arguing shows that you care, you're still not going to get what you want be the arguing, but it's still some type of interaction. The problem is if you've been engaged in icy withdrawal, and we've been sleeping in different rooms, you're what happens is you can't help but think the worst. Because there is no interaction. What happens is our minds go negative. Because there's no interaction we make things up. And when we make things up, it's always negative. For example, I wasn't thinking, Oh, my wife is downstairs sleeping, and writing me love notes. I guarantee you she wasn't at this time. And our mind goes negative. So we can't help but think of the worst. And as I mentioned, I've been divorced. And this was some of the stuff I was thinking I'm gonna be real here. It's damn, what if we get divorced? That's gonna be number two. For me. That's not good. Also, what about our girls? Who's going to live in this house? What if Jessica has another relationship with someone who's abusive? What about the girls and so this is not a good place to be. And then the next question is when you In this icy withdrawn place is it's actually the worst place for couples to be in what was getting in the way of initiating repair? I'm a couples therapist. I know how to do this. But there is knowing how to initiate repair. The second part is the willingness to do so what was getting in the way and my willingness to do so. My pride, I was thinking, Why do I always have to initiate the repair? And the funny thing is, I know Jessica was thinking the same thing. Finally, we did talk about it. We talked about what happened, and I'd share the ins and outs of our perspectives. But if I did it, then it would be clear that I'm right and she's wrong. I'm joking, total joke. And that was a joke. And on that note of I'm right, and you're wrong. Here's a quote from Terry reel that I want to share. He said, You can be right, or you can be married, what do you choose? So I chose to be married. I initiate the talk. And we're both still mad at each other. However, we were able to see each other's point of view, even though we don't agree with it. But after the talk, this was good news. We both agreed that we need to go back to see our couples therapist, to someone who's not in our situation. This may seem like oh my gosh, you know, like a signal of the feet or again, you know, both of you are flawed. I can't believe we have to see a couples therapists, kind of like, you know, we can't do this on our own. But I look at this as our willingness to see go back to see our couples therapist. As a right. We both want this, because that time when we weren't talking, my mind went to some dark places. Going back to the questions, it doesn't mean we're doing something wrong, because conflict is inevitable. But also we were do something wrong, because we've reverted to some old patterns that were not helpful. And it was a reminder that we need help, to not go back to where we were. And a lot of what I hope we're going to work on in our couples therapy is maintaining our connection because as you know, you work you have kids, the relationship gets knocked down a few pegs. And so my home for couples therapist for my home for couples therapy is that we can move that up. So not only can we work on avoiding that is harmony, but we got to get back to having an active relationship to our relationship as as their Parral says love is a verb. one more quote from Terry real intimacy is not something you have is something you do. So I hope to get back to doing thanks for listening.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai