When Kelsey and I tied the knot, little did we know that the real work was just beginning. This week on Fighting for Connection, I get help you see how even seemingly stable relationships have their share of turbulence.
This episode takes you through the heart of what many assume to be 'just another normal marriage'. I peel back the layers to reveal how familiar struggles with insecurities and doubts can quietly erode the ties that bind. It's a journey into attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy, demonstrating their effectiveness as tools for couples to repair and deepen their connection. By consistently showing up as a friend to your spouse, you're investing in the kind of change that can redefine your relationship. So join me, Brett Nikula, and discover how even the most resilient of partnerships can benefit from a little extra care and understanding.
When Kelsey and I tied the knot, little did we know that the real work was just beginning. This week on Fighting for Connection, I get help you see how even seemingly stable relationships have their share of turbulence.
This episode takes you through the heart of what many assume to be 'just another normal marriage'. I peel back the layers to reveal how familiar struggles with insecurities and doubts can quietly erode the ties that bind. It's a journey into attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy, demonstrating their effectiveness as tools for couples to repair and deepen their connection. By consistently showing up as a friend to your spouse, you're investing in the kind of change that can redefine your relationship. So join me, Brett Nikula, and discover how even the most resilient of partnerships can benefit from a little extra care and understanding.
Episode number 80, what to do with a normal marriage. Hello and welcome to the Fighting for Connection podcast. I'm Brett Niccolo, 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. All right back here with another podcast today, and today I want to talk to all of you with a normal marriage.
Speaker 1:When I started learning about attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy and the conflict cycle and all of the good stuff that makes so much sense for me and helps me understand behavior within relationships and not only that, it provides me with so many tools to help solve common relationship issues I was so excited because these things really helped me. Now I would diagnose myself as having a normal marriage, and I don't know what all of you guys think or what your perspective is on my marriage that I have with Kelsey, but I have found that the more marriages that I sit down with, the more people that I talk with, the more I recognize just how normal the things that I'm facing and the things that I'm experiencing within my marriage are. Now, obviously, some of the circumstances that I have seen and I've worked with have never happened within my marriage. But many of the feelings that really were the seeds that created some of those circumstances are present in my marriage and some of the circumstances that I've worked with could happen in my marriage. I don't find that I'm somehow separated from those circumstances that could happen, like a spouse getting sick or something like that, and so often, like if there's a behavior that's taken place in a marriage that has harmed the marriage, those behaviors, their choices but they become enticing when there's seeds of doubt and insecurity within the human and that insecurity and doubt it flourishes within the relationship. And I really believe that we're all prone to these feelings that can come up within a relationship and we're not all prone to, maybe, some of the circumstances like having an affair or something like that. Those are choices that are made, but yet I do think that so many of the groundwork that leads to those kinds of decisions are present in so many relationships. So in this way I really do believe that I have a normal marriage, just like all the other people that come through my doors.
Speaker 1:Five years after I came across all of this stuff and I've done a lot of work on myself and my marriage and I've learned a lot. I still think that I have a normal marriage. I haven't somehow graduated out of that and I really do believe that you have a normal marriage too. You see, marriage is such a unique challenge and important. If you're struggling, if you experience moments of pain in your relationship or of disconnect, these are components of a normal marriage.
Speaker 1:A painless, perfect marriage really is the unicorn. That doesn't exist, and I think we're way better off recognizing that we all struggle in marriage versus creating this idea that somehow there are these some couples that are separated out from the rest of us, that experience this utopian bliss Everything is good and they get along and they work through things and they have this perfect marriage. I just don't think that that serves anybody. It doesn't serve that couple. It doesn't serve other couples. It really prevents us from getting help and supporting one another. Why create this image that there's somehow a marriage that can independently flourish and why not create this narrative that we're all struggling to connect and to create safety within our relationship? It's fragile and nuanced and we all can learn from each other and we all can help each other and we all can support each other wants and we all can learn from each other and we all can help each other and we all can support each other. That just to me seems like a way better way of approaching relationships, especially with one another, especially talking with other couples and having friendships and things like that. I think it's important that we learn how to support each other, versus creating these islands where we can't help each other.
Speaker 1:Another idea that I hear quite a bit is that we need to have a problem in our relationship before we can reach out for help, and I just want to like share with you something that I've experienced. If you would have asked me five years ago if Kelsey and I had problems, I honestly would have said I don't think so. It didn't feel like our marriage was in jeopardy. It didn't feel like we didn't love each other. Now, get this right. We were two humans that were both imperfect in our own ways. At that time, I don't think I would have ever signed up for therapy or got a relationship coach or even was seeking help in my marriage.
Speaker 1:However, I was working with couples and I was struggling to help them, and so I went out seeking help for my clients and my career, and it's from this personal experience of reaching out to support couples that I came to this belief that so many normal marriages can benefit from simply reaching out for support. And there are many just like me, just like Kelsey and I. They're not wondering if their relationship can last. They're not going to. You know, there's not a risk of either one of them leaving their relationship. They generally get along. They don't want to fight. There isn't a pressing need for help.
Speaker 1:These are the couples that I think can benefit so much from really working on their relationship. You know, you can definitely listen to podcasts, you can read the books, but I just don't think that there's anything quite like the value that you can get from going through the experience of having someone look at your process, look at the way you communicate in your marriage and can really help you see where you are getting caught in your conflict cycle. The cycle happens in all relationships. The more intimate that relationship is, the closer that relationship is, the more important that relationship is, the more likely we are to get caught in conflict cycles, and the health of that relationship really depends on our ability to navigate through the conflict cycle and it depends on your skills at repairing the hurt and the pain that takes place as we go through the conflict cycle. These skills can really make all the difference in your marriage and in all of your relationships. Having the skills to navigate through the conflict cycle, having the skills to repair, can lead to such a deeper sense of connection and a higher level of intimacy in all of your relationships.
Speaker 1:One other thought that I wanted to share here is this that each individual has a relationship that has been given to them and in so many marriages there are circumstances that we can't change Personalities, beliefs, opinions. These are just circumstances that can be present in our relationships. If we are going to stay in that relationship, we're not able to change them. Maybe these are things that were discovered after we got married, or they're things that have evolved over time that we could have never even predicted we'd be faced with in this relationship or in this marriage. It also could be that there were things that were happening prior to marriage that weren't a problem at first, but now they create so much pain for us we can get into, like this pursuit of perfecting our relationship, and this pursuit of a perfect relationship gets us so distracted that so often we bypass gratitude and we can overlook the things that have been given to us.
Speaker 1:One thought that's so grounding for me is this thought that I deserve nothing. And when I consider that, when I close my eyes and really feel that I don't deserve anything, it's different than a lot of the ways that we're taught to think in society, which is we deserve so much. But what if we flip that over on its head and went to this thought that we deserve nothing? Then we open our eyes and we look around and we see so much more vibrance than we did before. We don't see all the things that are wrong, but we see all the things that were given to us, that we have, that are part of our experience and enrich our lives.
Speaker 1:And in marriage, I really believe that we are in a relationship that is a one-way street. This is the way that I see marriage. Is that we are called to serve our spouse, and when we're looking for how our spouse is serving us, so often we forget to do our part. We're so busy trying to be loved that we forget to love. Now, in my own mind and in my own selfishness, I often get myself all tangled up. I'm the first at times to start measuring and comparing how much I give against how much I get. It's something that we as humans have to watch over and we have to practice a more productive line of thought. I've just watched how this line of thought that we deserve something, that we have a right to something in our marriage it's a great thought. It just doesn't really lead to a whole lot of benefit for us. I don't know why that is, it's just something I've observed. And when we can see that we deserve nothing, we can see in so much more vibrant color what we have. What if marriage was a deal of what we are to give, way more than it's a deal of what we are to get? When we think of it this way, we can begin to change how we show up in our relationship, and I want to share with you just a story that I think really illustrates what can happen when we show up this way in our marriage.
Speaker 1:Think of a boy who doesn't have any friends and he wants all the people to be friends with him. So he sits back and waits. He sits back and demands. He demands people be friends with him. Yet he struggles to make friends, to gain friends. No one will be a friend to him. One day he discovers that he isn't to have any friends, but now he has a job and he's been given a friend to him. One day he discovers that he isn't to have any friends, but now he has a job and he's been given a duty to go and be a friend. This is different than having friends. He's got to be the person who's a friend to someone else. So he sets out finding people to be a friend to and one day, years later, he wakes up A man of many friends.
Speaker 1:You can take the same approach in your marriage.
Speaker 1:You can be a friend to your spouse.
Speaker 1:You can do the work to make sure that you are taking care of you so that you can take care of them. In this way we can affect so much change in our relationship. It can really create this fluid dynamic in our relationship, one where sometimes those situations where the relationship is the most stuck, when we can take this kind of approach, all of a sudden it's like a knot that breaks loose. Everything can move and shift and change, and sometimes it just takes constant pressure to continue to show up in this way, to change your mindset, to be a friend rather than demand someone as a friend to us. That fluidity that can be created in that type of environment can allow for so much growth and change.
Speaker 1:I really have seen the power of that. That's all I have this week for the podcast. I will talk to you all next week. Bye-bye, 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.