Forge Stronger Bonds Through Repair

Episode number 77, repair. Hello and welcome to the Fighting for Connection podcast. I'm Brett Nicola, a husband, father and fun lover. Listen in as I share stories, tips and inspiration that will move you toward the connection that you want in your relationship. Alrighty, welcome back to the Fighting for Connection podcast Today.

I am recording this at the end of another full week here at Pivotal Approach and running home here because my kids are going to be getting home from school and we have a babysitter at home because Kelsey is gone for the weekend. So when Kelsey is gone for the weekend, I always get reminded about the work that we have done here, because so many times in the past these weekends were so challenging for us when either I was away or she was away just because of our bond how unstable or insecure it was, and how we so often worried if we really cared for each other. Those things were present. At least they were for me. I would say that generally I was a more insecure or insecurely bonded partner in our relationship. But this weekend now she is off with our little baby who is now what? Six weeks and one day old, bram, and he's doing well. Kelsey's seems to be doing well too, and she's going to enjoy a weekend away with her sisters up in Northern Minnesota and Duluth so excited for her to be able to do that and excited just to hang out at home with the kids and enjoy them. And when it's just one on six, you definitely get to be a little bit more involved with all the kids and I would say I often go into these weekends with kind of romantic visions of how it's going to go and by the end of it we're just happy to survive. It just kind of highlights how amazing it is to have two people on board when it comes to parenting and how fortunate I am to have both Kelsey and then myself working with those kids, because it's a big job and to do it alone it seems like it'd be a pretty significant feat. When we have these weekends apart, we definitely get to recognize in a very small way of what it is to have each other in our lives and what it would be like to not have each other. So I guess in my own way I'm saying that these weekends can make the heart grow fonder and can help us recognize the fortune that we have, and that's a lot different perspective than I once had Today. I wanted to keep this relatively short and sweet. I know in the past I've gotten a little bit long-winded, but just want to illustrate an idea through a quick little story highlight. You know what my work is really about.

Oftentimes, when I'm working with couples, we talk about the conflict cycle and it's amazing to watch these couples understand and learn about the conflict cycle. Some of the couples that I've worked with have gone to more traditional couples therapy and when they step into my office it's a pretty different experience than probably most typical couples therapy. We look to understand the dynamic that's happening in the relationship and we get a visual representation of it through the conflict cycle. Really, in the first session we're beginning to discover things and put things into a way that they've never been able to put them into before. They're connecting dots that they've never connected before. And then what I find is so many couples, once they figure out their conflict cycle, they move into this idea of trying to eliminate the conflict cycle, and that really isn't the goal of my work.

When I'm working with couples. My goal isn't to get rid of the conflict cycle, it's not to get rid of conflict, it's to really figure out how to work through the conflict cycle, how to have a conflict cycle come up and communicate through it so that it resolves. And really the most important thing is, once we break a conflict cycle we learn how to repair. Why that's so important is, if we don't know how to resolve the conflict cycle and we don't know how to repair, what happens when the conflict cycle comes up? Is there's two people who just for a moment of time get this sense that the other person maybe, just maybe, doesn't care about them? And if that's not resolved and repaired, then that question kind of lingers in the back of our mind. And as that question lingers, more and more pain kind of develops around that idea. And as more and more pain develops around that idea, we naturally begin to pull away and step back from our relationships.

This idea of trying to eliminate the conflict cycle is really what I call the roommate effect, like I think of college roommates and how at the beginning of the semester they're so excited to move in, you know, with each other and be roommates and everything's like really good at the beginning of the semester and by the end of the semester we're kind of tired of each other. Right, the ways that we operate kind of create some resistance or some pain within that relationship. By the time next semester rolls around, it's like you know we should find an apartment with two bedrooms so we can have our own separate bedrooms, and we try to eliminate the pain by creating distance. So now, instead of being roommates, we're apartment mates. We go through another semester and now it's like you know the dirty dishes and how they keep their house and all of these things continue to create pain. So what do we do now? We get two separate units in the same apartment building, right, and we continue to solve the problems by moving apart. And that roommate effect really isn't what we're going for.

And if we're trying to avoid the conflict cycle and that's naturally what happens what we want to do is we want to figure out, we want to be able to identify when the conflict cycle happens. Right, the way I talk about it with my clients is like this feeling that's like tightening up the chest, the pit in our stomach that happens when there's any sort of conflict in our lives, specifically around relationships, and that like tightening of the chest, the drop of the stomach, that anxious feeling, that frustrated feeling, that angry feeling, like those are all ways that we can identify that we are in the conflict cycle. And once we identify when we are in the conflict cycle, it becomes our responsibility to figure out how to change our feeling within the conflict cycle. So many times people are trying to change their actions, but we're so perceptive as humans that if someone's frustrated, angry, defensive, blaming, resentful it doesn't matter what they're saying we're going to be able to kind of pick up on those emotions. So if you want to break your conflict cycle, what you need to do is you need to figure out how to change your emotion right. We need to figure out how to regulate ourselves out of frustration, anger, resentment, defensiveness, blaming or whatever that emotion is that we are in. We need to figure out how to break that emotion and get back down into one that is more regulated, one that is more in alignment with who we'd want to be as a spouse.

And typically when I work with individuals, what I hear them say is they want to be kind, caring, compassionate, supportive, strong. These kinds of words are usually attributed to who we want to be as a spouse, and when we catch ourselves in the conflict cycle, we see ourselves moving into frustration or defensiveness or whatever it is. The better we are at catching that, the better we are at regulating ourselves, then, the better we're going to be at turning towards a partner and saying things like hey, it seems like we're confused. I care about you, you matter to me. When these things happen, I get worried, I get scared that maybe I don't matter to you or I'm not important to you, and I want to be able to figure out whatever it is that we're trying to figure out here together, so that I can be close to you and connected with you. On the other side, if there's something that I'm falling short on right, I want to be able to move towards them and apologize and recognize that I'm not showing up as the person that I want to be. How important it is for me to figure out how to do that so we can stay close, because they, more than anybody else, is important to me and I want to be able to stay close to them. And these are the ways that we can begin to kind of bridge that gap that has been created as a conflict cycle has commenced, and then what we wanna do is we want to learn how to repair.

Now. Repair is so important. The analogy that I use in office with so many of my clients is this my mom growing up had this buffet full of china plates and cups and whatever. And I think of like a relationship like that when we first get into a relationship with this beautiful china plate and what happens in our relationship is there's like cracks and fractures that come into that relationship, right Into that plate. Now what I know about the repair process of china is, if there's a break right, and if we go and we glue that plate together, oftentimes those repair people are gonna give this kind of a guarantee that the plate won't break on that same line again. If it's gonna break, it's gonna break in a different spot Because the glue that has repaired that plate is stronger than the plate itself.

And that idea is true for relationships. As we fall in love and we come together. It's like this plate that it's pure, it's not broken, it's not fractured. But as that relationship develops there's going to be breaks and fractures and hurts and chips and whatever you wanna call them that take place in that plate and in that relationship. And it's not that we wanna prevent that plate from cracking, it's that we want to be good at repairing every crack that shows up and when we can repair every crack that shows up as our life moves forward, our plate gets stronger, right, we have less areas that that plate can break and fracture and crack. At the end of our relationship together we have this beautiful masterpiece. It's like that art where you kind of take broken pieces of glass and put them into like this beautiful collage or whatever we'd call that. Our relationship is much the same way is that if we can continue to repair and we continue to address those areas of hurt that have happened in the relationship and we learn that process of really moving through them rather than avoiding them, then what can happen is we can grow closer together. We can have a much more beautiful relationship as time moves forward.

I've said it on this podcast before, but the thing that distinguishes a relationship where a couple comes together, they fall in love and then they grow apart over time versus a couple that comes together, falls in love and grows closer over time is their ability to break their conflict cycle and their ability to repair. Just a quick little message here today really recognizing your ability to repair in your relationship, looking in the mirror and seeing if you're kind of stuck in that roommate scenario, or if you do have the skills and you do have the tools in place to break your conflict cycle when it shows up and communicate about it and move through it in a way where repair can be made and can feel closer, you can have a deeper connection and you can feel more securely bonded. And if that's not the case, it's so easy for our brain to say that it's because of our partner and that's just a dead end place to stay. So I would encourage you to look in the proverbial mirror within yourself and look to see if there's anything that you can do to change the dynamic within your relationship. By the way, I believe everyone here that's listening there's always more we can do. The amount that we can do is infinite, so we can only move closer to infinity.

There's so much that I can do to make sure that I am showing up in my relationship in the most loving, caring way possible, knowing and recognizing that I'll always be human. But I also know and recognize that especially my wife Kelsey deserves so much more than I could ever offer that it does seem like it's my work and duty to continue to learn how to expand my ability to care for her and to love her and all of those kids that are part of our relationship. That's what I have for today. I can't wait to talk to you all next week. I hope each and every one of you have an amazing week and you continue to go out and connect and you continue to do your work to be a cycle breaker. Have a good week, everybody. Bye-bye.