It's Not You, It's Me

Episode number 78. It's not you, it's me. 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. Alright, hello everybody Today.

I hope to keep this short and sweet. Last weekend I was down in Arizona at a service weekend with my church, and Sunday afternoon on our way home I started feeling a little bit of a tickle in my throat and I wasn't feeling too hot overall and just has gotten downhill from there. So the last couple of days I've been meeting virtually with my clients. Talking just takes so much effort in this state of well-being. So I had a few other podcasts lined up that I wanted to record this week, but I'm going to punt them they're a little bit more robust topics to some other time when I don't feel quite as congested as I do right now. I'm scheduled to fly out to Seattle to attend a church couples camp on Friday. I'm recording this on Wednesday, so I am on a mission to get well by then. And I am doing all the things. Believe me, there just doesn't seem to be a button to turn this off. It seems to some degree that I just have to let it run its course. I'm just hoping that the course isn't too long. Cross your fingers for me that by Friday I'm feeling much better and I can enjoy the weekend on the West Coast.

For today's topic, I really wanted to boil down relational conflict for you, no matter who you are, how mushy-gushy you are, or how staunch and manly you are, whether you see, your personality is warm or chilly, if you're an extrovert or an introvert, you, my friend, have a longing, a relational longing, and generally, from a very base perspective, this longing is to be accepted. It's a human condition. We're a tribal species. We want to be a part of the group. Interestingly enough, once we feel like we belong, then we want to be separate. But there's this kind of dynamic where we all to some degree want to know that we're accepted and that allows us to feel like we're safe. And oftentimes, this relational longing, it results in relational conflict.

And these longings are often referred to as our inner child. I see it as the little boy that is inside of me, that boy that still longs for that sense of recognition, that show of affection, of acceptance. You know, there's still a little boy inside of me when I'm working on a house project that longs to have my wife just kind of watch me and be there and kind of give me that at-a-boy. Every once in a while it feels kind of foolish, it feels kind of even vulnerable to share that. But it's true that it feels so good for me when she just spends that time to kind of watch me do something and I get the sense that she's admiring what I'm doing. It bonkers as that seems.

It's the truth and we all to some degree have these kinds of longings within us that really soothe us and help us feel accepted and safe. And that's really that inner child within us that wants to feel safe. And when it got these kinds of behaviors from its primary caregiver as a child, it was important. It really helped give that child that sense that all is well, that our parents accepted us and loved us and cared for us, which is so important to a child. And as we grow up, these feelings that we've experienced as a child sometimes they're feelings that have come from being missed. With these longings we felt like we weren't recognized, we weren't seen, we weren't listened to or whatever it was, we weren't heard. Those can also be a part of this. These longings that come up and these ways that we were loved or these ways that we were missed in our care and love often come with us into our adult relationships.

And, as I said, this inner child, these longings, are a source of, and maybe even I could say the source of, relational conflict that happens in our marriages. And I promise you, if you felt hurt, if you felt unseen, if you felt unheard, abandoned, unwanted, unaccepted, disrespected, invisible, frustrated, defensive, angry, or you've experienced some negative emotion in your relationship because of what your partner has done or said, there's a very high chance that what happened was your inner child was activated, was triggered, and that emotional longing that you have wasn't being cared for. And when we get that sense that that inner child isn't being cared for, that that emotional longing isn't being met, there are typically two responses that I will see Either we will pursue our partner in an attempt to solve the pain in the relationship, or we will avoid and withdraw from our partner, hoping that the pain will go away. Oftentimes, couples will get caught in a cycle where they feel like the pain is because of their spouse and what we'll try to do is we'll try to get our spouse to take care of that pain, to stop what they're doing or to start doing something to make the pain go away. And something that is so important to recognize is that this pain is really ours to take care of, and it's because of this inner child that's within us we're the only ones in a position to clearly and accurately take care of it. And when we can begin to recognize this, we can show up more clearly and more functional in our relationships. We can get clearer with reaching out and asking. So oftentimes that's really where we're limited is we don't know how to ask for what we long for and what we want. And other times we protect ourselves and talk so often about how our protective emotions can be so confusing emotions like anger, frustration, resentment, defensiveness. They can really keep our partner from seeing the love and the care that's within us.

To kind of illustrate what I'm talking about here, let me tell you a story that I heard once years ago now, and this is just my own version of it, so maybe you've heard this story in another version, but this is the way I think about it and this is the way I share it. There's an older couple and the husband of this couple was in getting his annual physical and he's complaining to his doctor about his wife. He says, doc, I think she's losing her hearing. It's just aggravating because she never responds to me. And the doctor told him that's concerning, that maybe you should test her hearing out to see how bad it really is. If it's really bad, then maybe send her in and can take care of it. And he said here's how you can test if it's something that we should address or not. Start in the furthest room of your house and move as far away from her within your house that you can and just call her name out in the inside voice and then move a little bit closer and call it again and continue to do this until she responds. And he says if you end up in the same room as her before she responds to you, why don't you send her in and we'll check her out? So he went home and he was ready to finally put an end to his frustration, to get his wife into the doctor and get her some hearing aids or something, so that he could move on with his life and he wouldn't have to deal with this anymore. Just as the doctor said. He started out in the furthest room in the house, away from his wife, and he called out Agatha no response. So he moved closer and called out again Agatha. And again no response. He went through this process time and time again until he entered the same room that she was in. He was kind of feeling like vindicated. He was ready to send Agatha to the doctor. So he called out one final time, agatha. And Agatha turned to him clearly irritated, and she said for the 10th and last time what do you want?

You see, sometimes we think that it's the other person and all too often it's us. It's our own insecurities, our own incapacity to feel love, our own blind spots. These are the things that so often it's easy to see them in other people. So often it's difficult to see them within ourselves. And when I work with couples, oftentimes they've been trying for years to figure out how to care for their spouse so that their spouse would care for them, and they see their spouse's blind spots. They get frustrated with their spouse because they've been putting in all this care and their spouse just isn't caring for them.

And what I do is I teach the individual in that relationship, to recognize their own part, to learn how to take care of their own part and really to understand their own part so that they can show up more clearly within the relationship, so that they can communicate more clearly within the relationship. And what this can sound like is being able to communicate. It's not you, it's me. When I don't get a call, when you're running late, I worry that I'm not important to you. It's not you, it's me. When you point out the areas that I'm letting you down, I worry that I'll never be enough for you. And that's so scary for me because I love you so much. It's not you, it's me. So today, and you can start to work on learning how to manage yourself in a way that brings more clarity to the relationship, in a way that allows you to communicate more clearly, you will begin to see how you can create change in your relationship without requiring your partner to change, and that is really an amazing gift that you can bring to your relationship. I hope that all of you are staying healthy and you're finding a more secure bond in your relationships. Bye-bye.

["the Love Song"]. This has been the Fighting for Connection podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast and want more content like this, check out my Connected Couples Campus, which can be found on my website, wwwpivotalapproachcom, and become the difference you need in your relationship. ["the Love Song"].