Adult Formation, Imago Relationship Exercises, Part II, 5/19/2019

Yeah, if I need your mind help, please.

Well, welcome back, everybody.

Thank thank you for coming back.

Or if you're new, uh welcome.

Reminder that we're trying to do.

I'm I'm trying to present to you in a non-workshop format um Imago relationship therapy and some ways that you can do practices that have been clinically and anecdotally proven to strengthen relationships regardless of how strong they already are, if if that makes sense.

Um always with these things, there's um there's modulations you can make.

So I I gave you last week at the very end uh something called positive flooding.

Positive flooding reminder is where you make a list of physical characteristics, personality traits, and behaviors so that you can shower your partner with absolutely positive bits.

And in the exercises, they suggest that one of you sit in a chair and the other one circles the other person, and that you get a little more energetic as you go through your list, and at the end you might be jumping up and down saying, I am so lucky to have you, you're the best person ever.

Now, that works for a lot of people.

My wife would hit me in the neck if I did that because uh excitement and energy level are not her thing.

So I mentioned to you uh the way I did it was she turned 40 recently, and I wrote a list of 41 reasons that I love you.

Now that's not good forever.

You you get what I mean.

There's opportunities to do this.

You didn't positively flood daily, but it might be something you you try to put in your phone as a reminder.

Uh, this is my once-a-quarter positive flood or my semi-annual positive flood.

This sounds really silly, but a lot of the times, honestly, we want to communicate something, whether it's with somebody at work or with a spouse, sometimes we take for granted with our spouse, we can say whatever we want when we're ready, and it's really helpful to have appointments.

In fact, when you do, when you go to an Imago therapist, if you ever do, it could be that you've decided today you're going to have an appreciation dialogue, or you're going to have what we'll talk about next week, the Imago dialogue, like the behavior change request.

And you always start with, I would like to make a behavior change request.

Is now a good time?

And if the other person says no, you don't say, Well, too bad.

You say, then when can't when do you think we can try again?

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

And what's interesting is the biggest trouble I often get in is that I want to do something with my wife while one of us is going out the door.

And there's no time to really respond or to listen, because we gotta be somewhere, right?

And so one of the things they suggest is you say, hey, is now a good time to do this?

No.

And if you say no, then you have to give your partner the first available time and be ready to follow up.

So if you say, not right now, when I get home from work, yes.

When you get home from work, you need to be ready.

Does that make sense?

We don't always do that because we say, I understand how strangers need that, but we're not strangers.

We've been together 15 years.

You have.

But this is a way about honoring each other.

I wanted to check in and see, and I'm not inviting you again, I don't want to make this a workshop, but I want to see if anybody had thoughts from last week or if you had opportunities to do an appreciation dialogue at all, and or a flooding, either one, and if you had any kind of comments about that.

I did an appreciation.

I don't know.

It's actually just wondering if you weren't walking around or doing something.

I really appreciate it when you like to hold my hand and that too.

So that's what I'm doing with appreciation.

Did you do all three bits?

No, I did that one bit.

Yeah.

It's a great start.

Now, listen, sometimes it feels weird.

And I told you this last week.

It feels a little weird to say that represents blank I got from my childhood.

It either mirrors it or it doesn't.

That feels a little bit weird.

But see, if you'll do it, what you're what you're communicating to your partner is how deep a small thing really goes.

And that's not just something you're doing for them, it's something you're doing for you.

It's really transforming the depth of your gratitude.

Sometimes I try to do this once a day.

I do, I try to do it once a day.

Sometimes I'm like, I don't have anything really meaningful.

But you did do this thing.

And then you see, if I'll spend time, I'll realize it was much more meaningful than I than I thought.

Anything we appreciate about somebody can be very, very meaningful if we'll allow it to sink lower and lower into our bones.

I I think that's right.

And part of what you're saying is why it means so much is because I didn't have it, or I did, or I had the opposite, or hey, my mother is the one who did that, and um boy, like I was mama's little boy, and that's like a really special thing.

So thank you for representing the way I most cherish being loved as a kid.

The spoken word is powerful.

In fact, what they say is the spoken word is the most powerful thing we can do in our brains is to have dialogue.

A lot of us, if we're honest, have more monologues than we have dialogues.

So the goal here is to have dialogues.

And that's why they suggest mirroring.

Mirroring is that it feels really annoying because you're just regurgitating what they said.

No, you're what happens a lot of times, and I don't know if you remember this in school, teacher asks a question, and five of you put your hand up.

Only one of you is going to get called on.

Now, when that person's speaking, because you didn't get picked, what are you doing?

Are you thinking about what they're saying or what you're going to say?

When we take the time to say, okay, you so Kathy, you really appreciate my holding your hand when we're out together.

Did I get it right?

Yeah, you did.

Well, is there anything more to that?

You're showing that you're not thinking what you're going to say next, you're showing that you're thinking about what they said.

One of the biggest traps we get in professionally and with friends is thinking we're above best practices because our maturity, our relationship has evolved to be too good for that.

Does that make sense?

And I'm the king of that kind of thinking.

I'm really good with other people's children because I don't know how they were raised.

But I have thoughts about how my kids were raised and what they should know, and that makes me violate best practices all the time.

And then also with my spouse.

Well, she knows I'm blank, so she knows I don't like to mirror, so that's just fine.

She can accept me how I am.

Well, she can, and you can be that person, or you can heal that person.

That's really the deal, right?

Reminder when you're there for your spouse, you help them heal, and by helping them heal, you heal yourself.

Sounds like magic.

The best kind.

It's kind of magic's magic.

The best kind.

And theologically, remember, right?

I mean, this is really good.

Sin means, according to the prayer book, separation from God.

But we say God is omnipresent.

So where isn't God?

Nowhere, right?

So sin has to be an experience that's not actually real.

We can experience things that aren't true.

Consider your feelings.

Often I have feelings that are not true.

I really feel them, but they're not true.

So sin are these moments where we think God is absent and we're wrong, and this I think is the case here in relationships as well.

At the quantum level, everything's entangled.

We can experience disconnection, but it's an experience, not a reality.

Does that make sense?

That's one of the premises here.

So the question is: how can we more fully experience what's really there?

And one of the quotes they use is that seeking love keeps us from the awareness that we already have it.

Seeking love keeps us from the awareness that we already have it.

That's part of why when you go to talk, good or bad, it's really nice to start with some deep breaths.

And the 40 at least second hug or the 40-second interconnection.

And you know what's interesting?

When you want to give somebody a criticism, if your hands are interlaced, it's a lot harder to be nasty.

Which is why it's a great practice, don't you see?

Because as you know, nastiness doesn't change people.

Nastiness is about getting even, it's not about getting change.

I want to give you another.

Sorry.

If it does change, it's for the worse.

It usually it does, right?

Because when you when you get even with somebody, you might have gone out a little bit more what they actually did to you, and now they've got to get even with you over that.

There's another really interesting um piece I wanted to start with, and then I've got some more sort of exercises to talk through with you.

Uh, one of the interesting pieces is um I don't know what you how you learned humility, but just curiosity, does anybody have a working definition of humility?

What does it mean to be humble?

I think probably for me it's realizing that you can be wrong.

Humility means I could be wrong.

I could be wrong.

Anybody else?

I've never been accused anyhow.

And why not?

What does it mean?

We use the word frequently, right?

Especially in church.

But what does it mean when we use it?

Went to work on nylon factory in Virginia.

And all these guys who barely had high school education so they got a lot more about the process than I do.

And so I had to learn from them what was going on.

Okay.

So one way to hear that, right, is that as you get more and more educated, you realize how much you don't know.

Right?

So that's one way of humility is recognizing what's beyond you.

Is that okay?

That wasn't good mirroring.

Do you know why?

I paraphrased what he said.

I didn't actually give back what he said.

Can you tell the difference?

Anyone else humility?

I think of the parable in the Bible from Jesus about, you know, don't go to the head of the table because you might be asked to go down to the end.

Or go down to the end so that you might be raised up.

So this is a great question.

If you're the king, should you sit at the head of the table or should you go to the bottom?

This is good.

How about you ever even given an extravagant gift or given one, and somebody said, that really humbled me?

What does it mean to be humbled by a gift?

I've never given a gift like that, or I I wouldn't have thought of that.

That was you were more thoughtful than I would have been in that situation.

So I want to say, because as a southerner, even though I grew up in Florida, that's the north, but I was born in Kentucky, and that's the South, really.

I mean, we were north of the Mesa Dixon line, but not really.

Um, humility usually is tantamount with self-deprecation, right?

It means saying there's always somebody bigger than me and better than me.

And look, that may be true.

But I had this great professor in school, he was an Anglican studies teacher, the only one I had, actually, and he said humility is being exactly who God made you to be.

No more and no less.

We're really good at the no more bit.

But there's something we often miss in the no less.

So being into humility is not deprecating ourselves.

I mean, listen, when you got a PhD in chemistry, the guys at the plant might have known how to run the plant, but I doubt they knew more chemistry than you did.

So if you took a chemical stand and said, no, friend, I do know this, that would be humility.

Not arrogance.

Arrogance would be saying, because I have a PhD in chemistry, I can tell you how to set the schedule for all your workers.

Because you don't, in fact, know that.

Does that make sense?

Now there's this thing in relationships that happens where if we if we're falsely humble, like self-deprecating ourselves with our spouse or our peers or our kids or anybody, we can't ever receive because what it means to be humbled by a gift might mean somebody appreciates you for who you are.

That's an extravagant gift.

It was humbling.

You believe I deserve that, and I accept that you believe I deserve that.

So there's this interesting thing that we can start to say, which is how do we give each other gifts?

Is it harder to give somebody what they want when you don't want to do it, or is it harder to give somebody what they want when you want to do it?

Well, I think it's harder when you don't want to, don't you?

I didn't want to.

I don't want to go on that walk with you, and it's my gift to you that we're going to go.

I don't know if I would say that out loud, not initially, but internally it's important to say when you do something to honor your partner, it is a gift you're giving them.

My gift to you is to go walking.

We're terribly afraid to say that.

But why?

It's a gift you're giving.

And when we can recognize that we give each other gifts all the time, then we can start to appreciate the gifts we give and the gifts that we're given.

I'm humbled that you would go walking with me when you don't want to.

You must really care.

You see how that goes.

And what that does is it really it puts us in this place realizing we're gift givers.

And there are many things, honestly, I might do with a complaint.

Yeah, that's what I think.

Instead of saying, Because I love you, I give you this gift.

I'll share with you a really simple one.

This is and I don't struggle doing this.

My father never put the toilet seat down, ever.

The default was the seat was up.

Now there were three boys in the home, right?

In our home, the default is the seat's down.

Sometimes I forget and I hear, you left the seat up, I'll put it down for you.

That can be very grating, except it reminds me when I put the seat down, that's a gift that I'm giving.

Think how much more fun it is to give gifts than meet demands.

My gift to you is to put the seat down whenever I remember.

Well, Mike, that's silly.

It's not silly.

That's a gift that I give.

Not silly, especially that particular one.

But every couple's got their own things.

You know?

Because you love me.

And what can I do that because you love me, I just kept repeating because you love me.

I didn't go do it.

And so after that, I had to train the first time and say, Because you love me, they would just do it.

And see, see, what Amaga wants to get us to is somebody makes a request and the other person says, Because I love you, I will give you.

Does that make sense?

We'll look at that particular interchange in a couple of weeks, but we are not afraid to claim, my gift to you is to go on this walk.

My gift to you is to put the seat down.

We're not that doesn't make us superior.

The way we say it might be real snarky, but if we mean it, and how would we how would they know they mean it they listen?

Hey, when I was a kid, my dad never did that.

So I really appreciate it when you do it.

That could be an appreciation.

It's no small thing because it means even in very quotidian Liliputian matters, you're thinking of what I want.

What an opportunity we miss to be grateful because we miss the smallest things that actually go very, very deep.

So I was thinking about your case, and my son always said, I'll I'll do it later.

And and I don't think if you loved me, it wouldn't work.

But I could say my gift to you is I'll allow you to do it later.

But you have to do it.

You could.

And then another way you see that it starts to it starts with couples, I think, because this is the person we're most deeply committed to, but it actually starts to spread.

I was telling Terry, these kind of communication skills are actually ways of just listening and being present in the world.

Spiritual directors are really good at these, so are therapists, hopefully.

But we can do this with our kids, right?

Our kids can say, Mom, I want to do this.

My gift to you is that I will give that to you now.

And if they hear us doing it, guess what they will start to do?

Because the biggest predictor of who your kids are going to be is who you are.

Not how many books you have.

Again, read for economics.

It's not how many books you have, it's how many, or actually it is, it's how many you read.

How many books, how many times your kids see you read really affects their love of reading.

And if you don't let your kids apologize, or if you don't apologize to your kids, they will grow up learning not to apologize.

So these aren't just couple skills.

They might start as a couple and they they go everywhere.

Now, when I had to do this training, I was with other people who were looking, they were real therapists, like they had licenses.

And I'm gonna tell you, I don't have any licensure.

I'm just like this priest guy, and I see couples a couple of times a year, but I really want to be able to do that well because I think marriage is pretty important.

Um so so I took this class.

And every time somebody we we did mock dialogues, like we had to give an appreciation to somebody we never met and find something.

And there was a facilitator, like a therap, you know, playing therapist with the skills, and at the end, we had to say something we appreciated about their facilitation, and then we had to give them a growth gift.

My gift to you, my gift to you is whatever it was.

My growth gift for you is to go ahead and stick to the script instead of thinking you've got to add libit.

My growth gift to you is to always put the work on the couple instead of you doing it for them.

Does that make sense?

Well, Mike, that's a criticism.

Uh well, it's it's actually not a criticism, it's a growth gift.

Criticism is really hard, we have a hard time with.

Somebody who wants you to grow.

We might have a hard time with whether we ought not.

Does does does that make sense?

Sometimes it is Mike.

If somebody feels that they've been in a class where people were good at livers, they may feel they have to do that.

And that's not a skill everybody has.

Absolutely.

It's not a skill everybody has.

And sometimes we can talk we can talk so much that we talk over our anxiety and everybody else's when we really needed to deal with it.

I'm a great talker.

And uh my son is not.

You would not believe the excellent sermons I have delivered to him over the years.

I mean, they belong in a book.

I am a great motivational speaker, and in some ways the worst one, because I could talk right over him without meaning to, but he wasn't me.

And that comes back to this thing, right?

Differentiation is where this all begins.

You are not me, and I am not you.

So how do I make space for who you are and maintain who I am as well?

The biggest trouble they say with couples is that we forget he is not me, she is not me.

And I'll be curious about the differences.

Okay, I wanted to give you another exercise.

Now I'll tell you this is probably the one that I will appreciation dialogue, deep breaths, hugs or interlaced fingers are now standard part of any premarital counseling I give.

Because those small practices make a huge difference.

This is another one that I will do.

Usually what happens when I meet with a couple, they come in one time and I ask them how they met and what they like about each other, how they know marriage is for them and why they want the church involved.

Then I ask them to take an online inventory because I've got a different kind of certification through this thing called Prepare and Rich.

It matches up, it's not perfect, it's not like a report card, but it gives a start of where they're already strong, perhaps, and where they're different, like where they have different thoughts.

So usually we come back as a group and do that.

Then I meet with uh one each of them individually and then once back together.

So we meet one, two, three, four, five times, but I meet with each of them four total.

Does that make sense?

And um, this is the next thing I am definitely going to do.

It starts on page number 250.

Um I I don't actually start there.

I start on appreciation because I think before you do any serious work, you'd better start appreciation.

I don't think that's because you want to butter each other up.

I think it's because you want to remember that I appreciate you and I'm connected to you, and I believe you can change for me, which is why I'm going to ask you.

If you think the other person can't do what you're asking, don't ask them to do it.

If they do it, be grateful.

Don't say that's what you should have done all along.

It's a totally different way of framing our normal pitfalls.

Does that make sense?

They did it for you.

Somebody asked me to change stuff, boy, I'd say good luck, take me as I am.

So it means a lot to change for somebody else.

You know, it means a whole lot.

It's a gift you give.

Um, this one's called your relationship vision.

Do any of you have a relationship vision as a couple?

It's a great opportunity to do on your annual the head of your anniversary.

A lot of us don't have vision.

And listen, I don't want to sound crazy like those devotional writers do, but where there's no vision, the people die.

And sometimes it's really important to remember what our common values are because we can easily forget.

Do you know the number, uh, the the main trouble that couples go through?

There's like three things that destroy couples.

Money.

Money's one of them.

Well, sexuality, period, right?

Intimacy.

Let's call it intimacy because it's not just about sex.

Fam loss.

Uh family is another one.

Yeah, family, which might include child mirroring.

Those are the big three.

Sometimes religion sneaks in there too.

Sometimes.

Less often in my experience.

Usually people make peace with that.

Um, those tend to be the big three.

So it can be really helpful to think about something we don't usually think about, which is to write down a piece of paper short sentences that say what you'd like to have.

What does a deep satisfying relationship mean to you?

And you don't put I wish or I want.

You put things like, we have fun together, we have great sex, we're loving parents, we're affectionate.

We both know when to relax.

And we both know when to work.

Whatever your thing is, that's what you write.

Again, you don't write I wish or I hope.

You write like it's already happening.

Now, for number two, you want to take some deep breaths together, and you want to hold some fingers, and you want to remember that the other person isn't you.

If you forget that, you will say, Why the hell didn't you put we go out to restaurants every night?

Because that's what I want.

Does it make sense?

You've got to put yourself in a place to hear what they want without mapping that onto what you want.

There's another skill not in this that I really recommend.

This is a daring greatly skill.

Um, you remember when you were in elementary school, you had to get a permission slip to go on a field trip?

I give permission to so-and-so.

This is a really good thing for me sometimes, like when I'm around people that I know I have a hard time being around, to get on a little yellow piece of paper and to write myself a permission slip.

Like, it's gonna sound terrible when I say this, but it's my words.

It's what I need to hear.

I give myself permission to waste my time.

Because my biggest hang up for me is the thought that I'm wasting my time.

If I'm together, especially at like a Con Ed event or a retreat or a clericus where all the priests get together, and it took a lot of my time to get there, and I'm worried about wasting my time.

I absolutely will not enjoy myself, and I will be looking only for negative stuff to confirm that I'm agitated.

So I have to put, I give myself permission to waste the next 60 minutes.

Well, Mike, you can't really waste time.

I need to hear it that way.

You might say, I give myself permission to be fully present the next forty-five minutes.

I give myself permission to be curious about what my partner has to say.

Yes, ma'am.

You'll find some this summer when I'm just gone.

And to be honest with you, when I go to Armenia and Georgia for two weeks for the heck of it, I have to give myself permission for each day to be what it is and not to have to be super tourist and see everything in the guidebook.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

Listen, some people need to give themselves permission to go see landmarks instead of just purse shopping.

I don't need that permission.

See, no, I thought on our Israel trip, I thought you were pretty laid back.

I didn't think that's a good one.

Thank you.

I thought I was in Jordan, too.

There was one day where I was like super hiker, but listen, nobody else was there.

That's what I wanted to do.

We all did what we wanted, and we gave ourselves permission, I hope, to do what we wanted.

And that's a good thing.

My wife and I gave each other permission to take separate vacations.

I get six weeks of vacation a year.

Six.

She gets no vacation, or as much as she wants, as long as she bills two thousand hours.

To bill 40 hours, you've got to work 55.

She's at a low-billing firm.

So her needs are to take long weekends because she only misses one workday and gets to have three days of fun.

That is not good for me.

Three days is not enough.

When I go, I need to be gone for like seven, ten days.

And it really helps if there's no internet in the country where I'm going, because then I can't possibly check my email.

So I go to weird countries.

We gave each other that permission, but I also give my permission.

So this is the thing.

Whether you're doing this with a couple or you're at work or with one of your kids, it's sometimes really helpful to give yourself a permission slip, which is really just a goal you intend to live into.

Make it very specific.

The more specific, the better.

I give myself permission to say no when my child asks me for$20 again.

This is really helpful because the Brene Brown sentence is to pick the discomfort of setting a boundary over the resentment that happens if you don't.

Sometimes you need permission to say no, and sometimes you need to give yourself permission to listen.

Because if you don't give yourself permission to listen to your partner here, you will resent each other.

I promise you you will.

When they say, I really want to, we go on walks every day, and you're thinking, where's the sex comment?

Resentment you just created.

See, what we do is we listen, and you can go, I don't think you go one by one.

I think you read your whole list.

And if you've got one in common or it's close enough, you underline it.

It's very rare you won't have one in common.

I can't even imagine that you won't have one thing in common.

Then you get to rank which ones are most important to you.

One through five, don't go through ten.

Whether it's underlined or not.

Then you circle the two that are the most important.

Put a check by the difficult ones, you see.

And then you continue to compare.

You're gonna make a combined list, and then you're gonna see where you've got checks and where you don't.

And see on the next page, you'll see what a combined list looks like.

Hey, Jenny and Bill both want to have fun together.

Communication easily and openly, they both had that, and they both ranked that as the most important.

Satisfying careers was more important to Bill than Jenny, but they did both have it.

Financial security, more important to Bill than Jenny, but they both had it, you see.

Living close to their parents, important to both of them, but actually of like not the primary importance.

And then you put that list where you can see it, and you read it to each other once a week.

Oh Mike, it's like we're in first grade with doing stuff like that.

The reason you put it and look at it, look at it, is to remind you of your core values so you can live into them together.

There's a little deal one of the um presenters did.

You can make a video, it's I try to remember what it's did I mentioned this last week?

You can make like a three-minute video that has some of your most important ideas about who you want to, who you want to be, and then you watch it every day.

Because it reminds you of your core values, and you start to say, I want to be honest.

And then, you know, when you get more change at the grocery store, you think, okay, I want to be honest, what do I do about it?

My tax my property assessment went up.

Do I want to fight it because I don't want to pay more money or because I think it's wrong?

Do you do you get what I'm saying?

Oh Mike.

There you go, trying to make everything moral, just because it is, right?

So this is like a really good thing to remind us of our core values and to remind us, hey, we both want to be these three things.

So that's what we're gonna be.

We're gonna really focus on our communication.

And look, hey, we share important decisions, we want to do that, but more than anything, we want to communicate about decisions, so we don't have to agree on the decisions, but we do have to communicate them.

I hope that's helpful.

Did any of you ever make a relationship vision like in premarital counseling before you got married?

Informally?

Yeah, we want to have kids.

Um, hey, we want to unlike our parents.

Did you ever do this one?

We don't want to be like our parents, we want to blank.

Don't you see that's probably go back to childhood?

It's really why we go back.

Because a lot of who you know, our marital talk was we're gonna do it like our parents are different from our parents.

So we go to back what that really is.

That may seem hokey, but I don't think it is.

I really think that's about integrating our whole our whole self and not just the last 10 years.

I'd love to hear if you do this, not what your shared vision is, um, but how you feel the exercise goes for you.

You may have to tell your partner, I'd like to ask you to give me a gift.

I'd like you to do this with me.

As a gift to me.

Okay.

Remember, if there's a couple of you and you want to each take one, that's more than fine.

I have plenty of copies.

What's nice is to have these instructions, not to have to share them, but so that you can independently look at them and do them.

These ones are all in the book from ever getting the love you want.

It's a great book, and I think I mentioned to you Houston's like a hotbed for this community, and you can go do a workshop.

It's a weekend workshop.

I think total it's like$700 for the weekend for both people with your meals and instruction, and you actually workshop this like you do the exercises, and you'll you'll get feedback, I suppose.

I haven't been to one, but I aim to go because it seems like good stuff to me.

Um, but they they do it probably 12 times a year.

I'll give you a pass on missing church to go to it.

Uh can I tell you something interesting too?

If it's okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a little bit of oversharing.

Um I've found that there's times in my own marriage, and by the way, my wife and I, I think are about 95 percent on the same page with parenting.

95 percent, which I'd say is really high.

You know, we don't really have conflicts about how to parent our kids.

We do it differently, but we have common values.

I would say there's times when parenting has been so stressful, so stressful.

Not because we don't agree, but because it's been so stressful that we stop doing some of these things.

Because that stress lives into that parts of your brain that looks for negativity.

I'm not looking for it in my partner, but it these practices, especially in times of stress, like moving, changing careers, somebody dies, parenting, those things that are naturally stressful, these are things that can really, again, help you live into your values.

We didn't have conflict about parenting, we really didn't, and yet there were times we were just so beaten down, and maybe we needed to do it differently, I don't know, whatever, but um that it that it made the affirmation bit not come naturally, and if we'd done it, we would have, I think, taken a lot of that taxing energy out of our whole body.

Remember that adrenaline and cortisol, those are the chemicals that let moms pick cars up.

But the toll of that on your body, it will eventually catch up with you.

It might be years before it catches up, but when it hits you, from experience, it is a blow you were not ready for.

And I will share with you, this is not happening to me, but um, there's a common thing that happens in couples who have a sick child, like leukemia, lymphoma, in general, there's gonna be an affair.

The kid doesn't have to die.

The stress of that sends them to look for an escape.

Not an escape from each other, but from the stress, which guess what the other person's wrapped up with?

When I say in general, what do I mean?

Like 70% of the time.

It's not because the per the couple doesn't want to be together, it's because they're exhausted.

And how can we put energy back, get out of that adrenaline cortisol, and get back into things like oxytocin and um serotonin and dopamine.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Okay.

Um I want you to look at good enough development just for a second.

No therapist had good enough development as a child.

If they did, they wouldn't be therapists.

Many of us did, right?

And so in general, what good I might have Xeroxed the wrong thing.

Good enough development meant things like, hey, we had attachment and bonding.

We felt wanted and desired and secure, we were provided consistent warmth and availability.

Now you didn't have to be perfect, but if you were good enough, then you've got uh this sort of fundamental attachment that carries through you the rest of the world.

So you can read these studies about children who are neglected the first two years of their life.

Actually, the first 18 months.

If they cry and they're not answered, if they're dirty and they're not changed, if they're hungry and not fed, it affects the rest of their lives, says every longitudinal study.

It means the world is a random place, not a reliable place, and they can cope with the world being reliable, but what's most formational is the world's random and no one cares.

Doesn't mean you weren't, you you know, you could have been a rough wiper.

That can still be good enough.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

You could have been a little late on the pickup, but you were there.

And and that affects how we do everything.

So then this is the one I meant to.

I had a big one like this.

This is not good enough development across several years.

So maybe one of your parents was an avoider, like they picked up all the overtime they could.

Well, weren't they just providing?

Maybe, but they weren't there.

So what that can do is make you feel, well, unwanted.

Like who I am is not good enough.

I just need to change.

Or it can make you feel abandoned.

So you see the two kinds of deficient parenting on either side.

Parent is not available and they're cold.

Like they come home from their overtime shift and say, You got a 93 on your paper, what'd you miss?

Not present, cold.

Or they're not available, and then they show up and they give you all kinds of gifts, and then they disappear again.

This is like what you really see in alcoholic absentee parents, right?

They're gone, and they show up and they give like a$200 pair of shoes, but you don't see them again for three months.

Either way, right, you end up with this sense of either being unwanted or abandoned.

Now, see, if you're unwanted, you'll be an avoider, most likely.

But if you were abandoned, you'll be a clinger.

Did you know clingers like to be around avoiders?

And avoiders like to be around clingers in general.

That's because they're trying to heal that part of them that got messed up when they were kids.

They're trying to fix that.

And you can read that all the way across, right?

When you tried to explore, like I used to go to the playground with my kid.

Now I'm going to take credit.

I did this well.

When I went to the playground, I spotted Emory, but I never told her no.

So she was climbing up the ladder when she was two.

It's not safe.

I was there to catch her.

There were other parents who had four-year-olds that would say, that's not safe.

You've been around people, helicopter parents?

Smothering means uh, geez, moms over moms or dads overprotective, they're possessive, and as a result, they kind of rail against that and they end up being, well, isolation or distancers.

Then there's parents who neglect.

Like just go play in the street, don't come back for a couple hours.

I know parents who are like, you get out and don't come back till dinner.

So, neglect, which means they're gonna be pursuers.

They're gonna grow up to do what they didn't have.

What do you know?

Distancers usually want pursuers, and pursuers want distancers, subconsciously.

Not always, generalities, right?

So you can read all the way across about what happens when we got new good enough development, and the top level are people who minimize, they're like turtles.

When there's conflict and problem, they get in their shell.

The maximizers are like blizzards or snowstorms, or in this area, they're like Hurricane Harvey.

So there's a disconnect, I'm gonna chase it, I'm gonna attack.

What happens when you attack a turtle?

It goes even further in.

What happens when somebody who's trying to get you to answer when you ignore them even more?

They ramp their game up, right?

I mean, when you're a warrior and somebody retreats, you chase.

I don't know if you see any of this in your own marriages.

People retreating and chasing.

I don't know if that's the case.

But this is often the case.

So when the turtle gets criticized, criticized, criticized, at some point it might explode.

Literally, it might just blow up.

Um could get angry, could fight back, could say awful things.

A lot of ways explosion can happen.

That's on the next page.

Like the turtle is having too much painful contact, so they want to withdraw.

And the blizzard or the heart hurricane is having a pain from not enough contact.

So the turtle constricts and minimizes, they withdraw, they shut down, they avoid attention.

The turtle is somebody who says, I don't even know what I want you to do.

You do.

Gotta work on that, maybe.

But a turtle says, I don't even know.

A maximizer has got a list that they can unroll.

I want you to do these 900 things.

Right?

And maximizers are people who cry and attract attention and they cling and they pursue and they whine.

Funny that you can be maximizers in some areas and minimizers in others.

It's not like flat.

So is sorry, is this saying over involved and underinvolved using either restrictive energy or expanded energy?

That's right.

Okay.

Either thing is going to result in um natural energy flow not flowing.

Okay.

In one way it's going to minimize energy, and in the other, it's going to maximize.

So to go back to the very beginning, the idea is we're all made out of energy.

And energy would like to flow, and it has a particular way of flowing, but sometimes there's constrictions, and sometimes there's funnels that can make it shoot, if that if that makes sense.

So the question is, how do we let energy flow between us?

So there's another way you can do this, and this is on the first page.

This may seem super wacky.

It's okay.

You don't have to do everything, but I just want you to know the skills.

This is called the parent-child dialogue.

This is where you do a role play.

See, one of you is gonna be the parent, and one of you is gonna be the child, and you're both gonna have the script in front of you.

And you could decide to lay behind the person so that you're deeply in connection?

Probably not.

This one you should look at each other, I think.

And the first person says, I'm your mom.

What's it like living with me?

Living with you, mom, is now it's helpful if the other person says, You don't want to do this when you're 19.

You want to go back to five to eight.

Okay, so the person might tell you the year.

And then you always mirror, okay, living with me is unpredictable.

You never know when I'm gonna come home, and when I do, I always give you chores.

Mirror that back.

So I'm your mom.

You said living with me is unpredictable, you never know when I'm gonna be home, and when I am, I always give you stuff to do.

Is there more?

Well, there is or there isn't.

So you're gonna pick the one thing, right?

All of these answers are like two or three sentences, not paragraphs.

Sometimes we want to over talk, and that destroys dialogue because it turns into a monologue.

So, what's your deepest hurt with me?

My deepest hurt with you is blank.

I'm not tall enough.

The work I do isn't good enough.

The deepest hurt is it's like you never want to be around me.

The deepest hurt is I never fold clothes the right way.

Anyone have a mom that uh you fold the clothes and then she went back and refolded them?

You know what that taught us, right?

Don't fold clothes.

I hate how my daughter folds clothes.

But if I refold them, I'll make sure she doesn't see me do it.

Because that's so disempowering, isn't it?

Okay, I did it and it wasn't good enough, so I quit.

Oh no, no, no, no.

Listen, you're gonna learn to do it the right way, which means my way.

You could say that doesn't matter.

It it really does matter.

It affects your sense of industry, like whether or not you can be successful or not.

Okay, I'm your mom or dad.

What do you need from me that I don't give you?

Boy, I just need you to be there and be curious in what I did instead of what you're curious about.

I need you to follow where I want to talk instead of you controlling the conversation.

I want you to say, thanks for folding the towel.

Yeah, I mean, whatever it is.

That's what you say.

I wish I could give you that.

You deserve to have had it.

Thanks for listening.

And then this is super really important.

You say, It's me, Mike.

It's May 19th, 2019.

I'm not your mom.

I'm back.

Here I am.

What behavior could I do?

Me, your husband, that would touch that childhood wound.

Well, the behavior that would touch my wound of not folding the towels right is that you thank me when I fold the towels.

I could do that.

You may not be able to do that.

So then the person gets to say, I wrote this on here, well, if you can't do that, what could you do?

Has anybody ever done anything like this with your partner?

Gone back to what it was like to live in their parents' home.

Anyone made inferences about what it was like to live in their parents' home?

So the difference between an inference and a dialogue is when you dialogue, you get to know.

And when you make an inference, you could be really wrong.

And because this is the most important person in your life, wouldn't you rather know?

Oh my, this is all pop psychology.

Well, it isn't.

That's the thing, it isn't.

It's it's clinically effective.

How often should you do this?

Probably not every day.

Yes, ma'am.

I think Jim and I did this with the other three parents were on pre-deceased.

I think it's helpful, and the thing is about predeceased, even somebody who's living, um, I guarantee you that my wife experienced my parents when they first met in a different way than I did, because parents always want to protect their kids.

So again, there's assumptions that we both make that may not be right.

Or hey, maybe they are right, but then you get to hear that's right.

And here's what I'd like you to do about it.

But did you see you didn't say to mom, one thing you could do, Lila, is this.

Lila says, Jim, what's one thing I could give you that would touch your heart?

So you ask him, he doesn't tell you.

Does that make sense?

So how I would like to start with something really easy.

That's a great idea.

Really, like, really easy idea.

Yeah.

Like, really, really easy.

Yeah, like what kind of salad dressing can I give you for dinner or something?

Any ideas on really easy stuff?

You know that ranch.

Really easy stuff, right?

Is where you ask, tell me one specific thing I could do.

Lila, if if Jim says to you, what's one specific thing I could do?

And Jim says something like, make me feel loved.

Then you say, tell me one specific way I could do that.

Well, I just want it.

I know, and what's one specific thing I could do?

Well, I don't know.

I need you to know because I want to give you that.

It's wrench dressing.

You just told me.

Yeah, but you do you get what I'm saying?

A lot of times, a lot of times we think so big the other person can't ever do it.

Yeah.

They can't read our mind.

And this is, and that's a big thing.

We're not the same person, so they can't read our mind.

Well, you ought to know by now.

Get rid of that.

That's what this is asking you to do, is get rid of you what you ought to do.

Have you ever asked?

Or if you asked, did you follow through?

What's one thing I could do for you?

What's one gift I could give you that would touch that place in your childhood?

And start with really easy, and you'll catch on to what you're doing.

And here's part of the short answer: is all of these requests need to be either smart goals, or if that's too long, they need to be PMS, positive, measurable, and specific.

Positive.

We didn't say, stop leaving the seat up.

One gift you could give me is to put the seat down every time you go to the potty for the next week.

That was very specific.

Every time you go to the potty for a week, one thing you could do is put the seat down for the rest of your life.

Um, it's really hard to measure that.

And I'm not supposed to get out of the Excel and make a spreadsheet every day and go to sleep three other times.

What you're supposed to do is I noticed you put the seat down three times today, and I really appreciate that.

Positive.

Positive.

Remember, our brains are evolution, they've evolved to look for negatives.

We want to retrain them to appreciate.

So it's always positive requests, never negative ones.

So it's what, is it 15 seconds for something positive to sink in?

Or 20 seconds?

You told me that.

I believe it.

Like when somebody gives you a compliment, like an appreciation.

Okay.

Do you want to say thank you immediately?

Yeah.

Just hold it.

Yeah.

Thank you for your commitment to that behavior.

That's where you end.

And then you give each other a hug for a minute.

If you knew a simple thing that would make your partner feel loved, wouldn't you love to give it to them?

A simple thing.

If you knew a really hard thing, if you knew it that would make your partner feel loved, wouldn't you give it to them?

If you knew what to do.

So, how much more so a simple thing?

This is a lot of times, even in the work environment, again, this is a transferable skill.

I want you to work harder.

What does that mean?

I want you to hear each request with a one-week timetable unless I specify.

A little more specific, right?

Positive.

Didn't tell you what not to do.

You ever had somebody give you ambiguous work feedback?

And you thought, oh my god, what does that mean?

It just made me mad.

It makes you resentful because you can't read their mind.

And sometimes we say, well, I don't want to treat somebody like a child by telling them exactly what they ought to know to do.

And then what we do is we create an atmosphere for resentment.

Right?

Because when it's specific and you say, listen, let's return to what I asked you to do that I didn't see, that's what you call a growth, a work improvement plan.

Nobody wants one of those, but wouldn't you feel a lot better giving somebody one when you've been specific?

Do you want one more dialogue, or are we done enough for today?

I just I wanted to make the observation that it would be very long time, you read some of the stuff about going back to your childhood.

But we are formed by our first family.

And then your spouse works in a different thing.

And then probably the difference when your spouse violates something that was done in your family, you get real, you get real upset, and your spouse is clueless.

What's going on?

And sometimes it takes a long time to figure out that that is what's really upsetting.

My father always did this, and you're not doing that.

My family never said the F-word.

Fart.

Oh my gosh, I just I just said that word, and it drives me crazy because my wife's family says that word all the time.

I'm like, what are you teaching our daughter?

My mother would cry if she heard Emory say that.

And so Emory says that, and I'm like, you will not use that one.

What a small, silly thing.

But it's so ingrained because my parents treated that like a like a you know, like a magic word.

And it's still there for me.

Like, I can't believe I just said that word out loud.

I'm gonna go wash my mouth out with soap.

Listen, I I I have a much easier time saying the other F word than I did that one.

My parents didn't say that one either.

I just want you to know there's something magic about that one.

I don't already have read it.

Those are the kinds of things I think you're talking about.

Ways that we're formed that are so important, and we don't know that.

Having parented a kid who was neglected for his first couple of years, so easy to forget.

You know, um, we got him when he was six, and I'm not telling you any intimate details here.

I sort of figured after six years we'd have reprogrammed him, and it doesn't work that way.

It doesn't.

And all that did was set up room for me to be resentful instead of for there to be safe space between us.

So again, I didn't think it's pop psychology if you take it from the angle, I really want to know you.

Not just adult you.

I want to know more about you.

Not so that I can digest you, because I'm curious about you.

Does that make sense?

Oh, now I understand why you're such a jerk.

No, no, that's not it.

It's helpful to know though.

I hope it's helpful to know.

Well, I mean, I think actually, you know, if your spouse comes in and is always dissatisfied with when dinner was ready or how you folded or what you did with your day, and you realize that's how they were treated from the age three and up, you start to say, it comes from somewhere.

And no child should have to feel like they're never good enough for their parents.

I'm not saying it excuses the behavior, but it gives you compassion.

It allows you to connect instead of to distance yourself.

Like poor three-year-old you.

Poor eight-year-old you.

Not pity, empathy.

And then, this is I think it's the big thing not in here, but from Brene Brown.

Then you don't love your partner in spite of what they do, you love them because of what they do.

And I think that's a good thing.

And I never understood the silly now.

So permissive, I had to be the bad parent, which I hated.

Which you resented.

I hate the bad resented.

I want to be a good parent.

Yeah.

And in that sense, it's nice to know because it's never too late.

You still have the present and the future with each other.

I would hope for 54 years.

Well, thank you for being here.

I'll see you next week.