The Art of Repair: How To Reconnect After Conflict, Strengthen Communication & Stay In Love, with Relationship Expert Baya Voce

Motherhood is not just cute Instagram photos with the caption hashtag blessed. It is chaos, it is comedy, and sometimes, honestly, it's crying in my car. Welcome to the Mom Room, the podcast that makes life a lot more fun and a lot less overwhelming. My name is Renee Rena. I am the creator of and the host of the Mom Room. And every Tuesday and Thursday I dive into everything moms actually want to talk about. I got juicy interviews, I got parenting experts, parenting wins and fails, pop culture, gossip, and even game changing products that might just save your sanity. Want to feel like you're talking to your best friend about your favorite shows? Want to dive into the latest documentary? Or maybe you just need to know what book to read next. Check, check and check. Motherhood is wild, messy and hilarious at times. But you don't have to do it alone. Let's have fun every Tuesday and Thursday. So grab your coffee, hide in the bathroom if you have to, and come hang out in the mom room. Because even moms deserve a little bit of entertainment in their lives. And if you're looking for even more mom fun, you can follow us on Instagram at the Momroom.

What has been painted for us externally about what healthy, long term, secure, functioning love should look like and what it actually looks like are two completely different things. When we're in longer term relationship or when we move out of the merge or the honeymoon phase, all of a sudden your nervous system starts to give you cues that sense vulnerability and intimacy. It's the difference between perspective and perspect. I think that the truth is.

Hi friends. I'm Jillian, the host of Teach Me how to Adult, a podcast on all the things you never learned growing up. Between landing your dream job, crushing your love life, learning to invest, mastering your mindset, and figuring out how to be happy along the way, there's a lot to navigate. I've learned firsthand that there's more than one way to adult and it's not always linear. So you so consider this show my love letter to taking the unconventional route, creating new milestones and carving out your own version of success. You're right where you should be. So join me every week as I call in the experts for unfiltered, game changing advice on how we can all live our best lives. Adulting isn't easy, but we got you. Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I'm so glad you're here because we are in for a real treat today with our guest relationship repair expert, Be a voce. I am fully in my love era right now. And it feels so good because I've spent most of my life being very focused on my career, my output, family and travel, and just like a lot of external things. And I'm so excited to be in this chapter right now of building a beautiful relationship. And I've just been consuming all of the books, the podcasts, the. The videos on what it means to create a really deep and meaningful and lasting relationship. I've been learning so much. This is like, it's been an obsession essentially. And I have been following Bea on social media and learning so much from her amazing takes on repair and conflict and communication. And I knew I had to talk to her. I really love this quote from Bea and it really rang true with the teach me how to adult mission of like learning all the things that we should have been taught about adulting and we never did. She says we're taught how to fall in love, but not how to stay there. So that is exactly what we are diving into today with the art of repair. Bea has an MSW from Columbia University. She specializes in couples counseling and MDMA assisted couples therapy research. And she is mentored and supervised by the incredible one and only Esther Perel, who is one of my all time queens. As you guys know, her work has been featured in a TED Talk, in Vice, Forbes, mtv, abc, and the videos that she releases on everything from boundaries to using AI for therapy to jealousy and trust. It's all so helpful and actionable and she just breaks down these really complicated emotional things in ways that are just game changing for anyone who's navigating a relationship. So if you are in love, if you want to be in love, if you care about love, this episode is for you. Teach us how to repair in relationships, navigate conflict, and stay in love. Bea, I'm so excited to have you here. I'm such a huge fan of your content. I have been like ferociously consuming it and I love how you explain things and I love your approach to like going deeper than just helping people fall in love. Like, you're really in the weeds of how do we stay in love when gets hard. And I think that's what we really need right now.

Oh, thank you so much. First of all, I feel like pro, I, I probably probably am that way because relationships have been so hard for me and when I look at people around me, I feel like they're also really struggling. And then when I look at coaches and therapists and facilitators, somehow it just seems easier. And I'm like, wait a Second, I think there's something about lifting the veneer a bit around being a practitioner and being like, but by the way, the stuff that I'm talking about is really freaking hard. And it's the most important work we're ever going to do. But the reason we don't understand how hard it actually is is not actually our fault. It's the fault of culture and being indoctrinated into Disney and Hollywood rom coms. And then looking online and everywhere you go you see couple goals. Like, hashtag couple goals. And I feel like what has been painted for us externally about what healthy, long term, secure, functioning love should look like and what it actually looks like are two completely different things. And I think we are very, very confused about what healthy love actually is and takes.

Oh, my God, I could not agree more. I'm really figuring it out for the first time right now at 34, what it's like to build a life with someone, because I really haven't experienced that before. And I'm quickly realizing, like, this is a marathon, this is not a sprint. And the romantic things we're told, like, oh, if someone loves you, they'll drop absolutely everything and do anything for you at any time. I'm like, actually, if someone loves you, they will, like, make sure that they're taking care of themselves too, even when that doesn't look like dropping everything for you so that they can show up as their best self and so that you can tend to yourselves and each other, like in a, a way that allows for longevity.

Yeah. And to your point, I, I think there was a line by Alison Armstrong, who's someone in the relationship space, and I, I'm going to butcher it. This is not, these are not her exact words, but I am kind of quoting her. She says something like, relationships are simpler than we think, but the skills it takes to be in relationship are completely different than we think. So they actually feel harder than we imagine. Because we have this idea, to your point of I move in with somebody, we, we are getting along so well, we love each other so much, love should be enough. Like, love should be enough to sustain us. If I just love my partner more and they just love me more, then relationships will somehow simplify. And, and unfortunately, I see plenty of relationships with a whole lot of love and a whole lot of dysfunction.

Oh, my God, a hundred percent. And we're just, to your point, we're just not taught the skills, which is wild because relationships are like literally the most universal thing, thing that we have to navigate as adults. And, and we never really learn the skills to sustain them. So I'm so excited to get into this and I'd love to start by learning more about the three stages of long term relationships that you've specified. From like infatuation to interdependence and why a lot of relationships get stuck in that second stage.

Yeah, so listen, there are a lot of different teachers who will talk about stages of relationships in a different way. This to me feels like the most. It's, it's like the easiest to grasp. So. And it's, and it's completely simplified. So I'm just going to name. This is totally simplified. Relationships are very complex, but I talk about them in three stages. The first stage is infatuation, or what we call the merge. I sort of think about that Spice Girls song for anybody who grew up in the 90s when to become one.

Oh my God.

Yeah. Anyway, so that's for anyone who went and got the VHS of Spice World.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. It's, that's, that is this, it's merging. It's what we. It's what's commonly known as the honeymoon phase. We don't have differences. You, you find somebody and all of a sudden they complete quote unquote, something in you. The things that they, that they do, those small annoyances don't actually bother you that much, Right? They're, they're, they. The. You fall in love with them because they're so boisterous and outgoing and they bring that part of you out also. And you're so excited about that. And then you enter into the next phase, which is the power struggle. And the power struggle is where your differences come to light. So that person who was super gregarious and you loved them for it because it brought that version out in you. All of a sudden that extroversion starts to become quite annoying on one level or frustrating or, or actually comes up against some of your deepest wounding. So they might want to stay out later than you and party all night and go on trips and you're maybe even a little more introverted and you want more time, just the two of you. And now all of a sudden that thing that attracted to you is the very thing that's touching up against your wounding. Right.

So now you don't feel chosen or the, the thing comes up that's, that's really deep in you.

Yeah, completely. So like key signs of this phase are misunderstandings and fights over small things that carry deeper emotional meaning. You can start to have polarized dynamics. So it Starts to become pursuer, distancer or a maximizer and a minimizer or someone's under functioning and someone's over functioning. All of a sudden childhood coping strategies start to get activated and partners start to want to make one another change instead of taking responsibility for their own growth. Now it's not that you can't. You might be a completely growth oriented person and still feel like you want your partner to be the one to do something different. So why this happens? And first of all, I just want to name the power struggle phase is inevitable. But most couples get stuck here and they will stay here for basically the duration of their relationships. And I'll talk in a minute about interdependence, the third phase. So if you're in this phase right now and you're listening and you're like, oh my God, what do I do? Every couple has to go through this phase. This is a non negotiable phase. And if you haven't gone through this phase, it's not like all of a sudden you've gotten to stage three, interdependence. Usually what that means is it's two more conflic, avoidant people, people who are used to sweeping things under the rug a little bit more. And so this phase is very important for building stability, safety, intimacy, trust. So I just want to name, even though this is hard and the goal is to move through it, it's also a necessary space to inhabit. So this is why it happens when we're in longer term relationship or when we move out of the merge or the honeymoon phase or infatuation. All of a sudden your nervous system starts to give you cues, these sort of like blinking lights that sense vulnerability and intimacy and can revert then to old strategies or survival strategies. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Some people might call these attachment patterns. Right. So what happens when our nervous system starts to sense these things or we start to go into survival mode is we begin to project onto our partner what we're projecting is almost always unmet childhood needs. So the hope becomes this time in this partnership, my needs are finally going to be met. But instead what happens in this phase is that that need, whatever your particular need is, triggers conflict. Another piece of this stage that makes it so hard. And what human beings again, I think in part because we haven't been taught this, especially in our cultures, differentiation. So that's really what's happening. We're moving from more of an enmeshed couple. When we're in the, when we're in the infatuation Phase to differentiation. This is a critical phase where people learn to stay connected while also being different. But because our cultures don't really teach us what it means to love somebody for our differences and to allow differences to occur, difference can feel very, very threatening.

This is so interesting. It's reminding me of. Of watching children grow up and watching, like, the phase where they want to be just like their parents. They want to do everything their parents want them to do. The parents are obviously reinforcing that. That's the ideal situation for them. And then all of a sudden, the differentiation starts, and the kids are, like, figuring out, like, where do I begin? And you end. And, like, what are. Like, who am I? What am I? And they start to differentiate and go against the parents. And then you see the conflict of, like, the. The otherment. The othering of. Of each one of them. And it's so interesting to see it growing up and how in most families, we're not taught that. That's. We're kind of taught assimilation. And so, of course, it makes sense that then we enter these romantic relationships, and that differentiation feels really scary.

Totally. And I love that you're bringing it back to childhood, because you could sort of map it in the same way. You're gonna feel that kind of awkward tension of, who am I and who are you and what's mine and what's yours and what's ours, like you did in childhood, only now we're adults, or you could say we're kind of kids dressed up in adult bodies, trying to figure it out. So it really looks like it can. It can look like you're not who I thought you were. I can't get through to you. We keep having the same fight over and over again. And so though the work of the power struggle phase is to a know that it is a phase that is meant to build deeper intimacy. All of that conflict, all of that trying to untangle what's mine, what's yours, what's ours, is. They're all gateways to deeper intimacy. If we learn how to repair. Right. So differentiation looks like learning to hold your partner as separate from you without needing to make anything different. It also requires boundaries. So understanding your limits and needs without making your partner wrong. And we really misunderstand what boundaries are. We often think that boundaries are about someone else changing. Like, stop yelling. Stop raising your voice at me. But actually, a boundary requires nothing of someone else. And this is for partnership, business, partners, friendship, family, whatever. All of this can actually be applied to many relationships. It's about Taking care of ourselves. So instead of saying stop yelling at me, I'm saying if you keep talking to me like that, I'm going to leave the room. And you're doing that not as a way to punish, which is a key distinction and something that you'll start to find in phase three. When you're interdependent, you're not doing it as a way to punish, you're doing it as a way to take care of yourself.

Right?

Yeah. We also learn about regulation, the work. When we're working this stage, it's working reactive cycles of the pursue, withdraw or pursuer, pursuer or autoregulation, self regulation and co regulation. And some of us are going to be better autoregulators. Some of us are going to know very well how to self soothe and others of us are going to feel like we need our partners to help us self or to help us soothe that self. Soothing is completely foreign. And the move here, the work here is to get better at the one we're not very good at when we enter in the relationship.

Got it. So we do need to be able to self regulate and co regulate and both are equally important 100%.

They're both equally important. You will lean towards one as more natural. So one will, it's like, you know, if you want to use again just more popular language like anxious, avoidant, disorganized attachment styles. And by the way, I just want to name this. I am fortunate enough to be supervised by Esther Perel and she has taught me maybe more than anybody around critical thinking. And so when I name things like attachment styles, I'm also very aware that attachment is a. There, it's a theory. It's, it's like, just like anything else. It's like it's, you know, is it wrong? Is it right? I don't know, it's, it's an easier framework so I want to just name that. But, but basically if you, if you fall on the withdraw, the withdraw side, the more avoidance side, you're going to be better at autoregulating because that's what you learned was safest. If you are more on the pursuer or anxious side, likely you're not as good at self regulation and that's the skill to build and you're. And the thing that feels like it's going to bring you back into safety is when you and your partner are good again, like your partner helps you feel better.

This is tracking for me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Believe me, me too. I am, I fall on the, on the much better echo regulation than self regulation side of things.

Yeah, me too.

And then the, the, the final piece of the work of this stage, which is deeply important. And, and really the focus of my work is repair skills. So it's building trust that conflict is a, inevitable. It's going to happen, it has to happen, it's healthy. But then b, you come back to each other predictably and you know things are going to be okay. You know that you're going to resolve between the two of you so that every time you go out, your nervous system isn't needing to navigate. Are we ever going to come back? Am I ever going to be seen? Are they going to leave? Am I going to be validated? So you both end up predictably and reliably coming back to each other. And the reason people, you know, couples get stuck here is because they never learn nervous system regulation. We certainly have not learned the skills of repair. We have these cultural myths, right. The right one, my soulmate, happily ever after that have been so deeply ingrained in us. It's hard to overstate how much, even if you're like Disney, like what? It's like it was. That's what we were raised on.

Oh, yeah. So there was like a romantic propaganda.

Totally. It's such a good way to. Such a good way to put it. And then, and then our family of origin dynamics taught us avoidance or escalation rather than curiosity and repair. Once we hit the power struggle phase, you can be here anywhere, starting from right after the merge or the honeymoon phase. And that can last anywhere from one to three years. This is not science. This is like, you know, it lasts. It lasts as long as it lasts. But then once you enter in the power struggle into the power struggle phase, it can truly last your whole relationship. So it's not like, oh, you're going to be here for a couple of years. I mean, it really is up to you both how much work you're going to put in and dedicate yourselves. And this is the work of healthy relationship. I have yet to see anything outside of it that actually works other than a deep commitment to learning these things for yourself and as a couple. What's required to leave this phase and get, get into interdependence, which I'll talk about in just a second, is something called disillusionment. And disillusionment is the process, and it's totally natural. It's what a lot of people confuse as endings. They think, oh, this is the end. Disillusionment is the period of Time where you let go of hope that anything will be different.

So just acceptance.

Like which?

Real deep acceptance.

The deepest. It takes. It takes so much surrender and, and surrender as an active process, not a passive one. My, one of my mentors, he's a amazing couples therapist. Terry Real. He has a line I love which helps people start to understand is, are we going through disillusionment and we're going to come out on the other side, or is this going to end? Which is what I'm getting in this relationship worth grieving? What I'm not, is. Is. Are all the things I'm getting from my partner in our dynamic, which is a lot, but it's not going to be everything. Yeah. Are those things worth grieving? The things that I'm not getting? And if the answer is yes, then you go into grief work, which is, which is where you, you have to grieve in order to move through and get to acceptance. You can't just move from, oh, my partner is totally different than I am. That's okay. Without bypassing a lot, you have to grieve. I'll tell you a story just to make it personal. So my wife, Emmy, we are currently going through the IVF process right now. And for anybody who's had kids or has gone through this process or has tried to get pregnant, it's really easy to realize how quickly, whatever your expectations of pregnancy, birth, for us, just even moving towards pregnancy, what our expectations have been about that moment. Same. You could talk about weddings, you could talk about anything. That's just a big moment. What you may have always expected of it. And then what reality is for us. It really hit when I was going through, you know, you have to take a ton of meds, you have to go through all these. To all these doctors appointments on ivf and part of where we were in our cycle, I needed to. Needed to go to some doctor's appointments during, during Burning man, which is for Emmy, like her annual pilgrimage. And we go together and it's a deeply important and meaningful time for both of us. But for her, she's been going for like 15 years.

Wow.

And I fully had the expectation that Emmy was going to miss Burning man this year to stay with me for my appointments and all of that. And for her, it was just a non negotiable to leave. To, to leave and go.

Yeah.

The amount of grief that I had to face, to look at my wife and basically say, she is a fiercely independent person. Fiercely. She needs freedom more than anybody I know, basically. And yeah, she needs this so much so that she would be willing to leave during this time. The amount of grief that I had to go to really wrap my head around her not coming back and me being so freaking mad at her and resenting her for that. It was. I'll tell you what, it did not look like a clean. Oh, you're going to Burning Man. Let me just accept that. It looked like I went in kicking and screaming. Like, I was like, what the. Like, I mean, I'm not saying. Yeah. But in my head, I'm just like, how is this happening? This is so up.

Yeah.

Like, this is so unfair. This is, like, so much. How am I not going to resent her? I mean, I was throwing. I threw so many tantrums inside my head and outside, like, both of. I mean, anyway, to get to the place where I. I literally. I come back to this question all the time. Am I getting in. Am I getting enough in this relationship to. To make grieving when I'm not getting worth it? Okay? Yes, for me, absolutely. How can I come to releasing hope that she will ever be different? Releasing any expectation I had of what this process might look like and allow for reality, what is who she is to be? Okay. That puts me up against all of my. My childhood wounding of feeling left or abandoned or not enough or blah, blah, blah. I mean, you name it. But then moving through that process, you go. And disillusionment can happen for transitions. A death of a parent, a move, a job loss, a. Like, it happens in kind of big transition moments. But when we don't understand disillusionment is a part of relationships, it can feel like an ending, because it is.

Yeah.

And if we try to hold on, this is what keeps us in the power struggle. Because we're not actually grieving the thing that we need to grieve in order to see what relationship is on the other side of letting go of your partner or the dynamic needing to be any different than it is. Yeah.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That's like, such an incredible example of. Of the acceptance of who someone is and how it comes up against your needs in this moment. And then the choice of, is this going to be a thing that, like, completely throws us off course because I can't accept this, or is this a thing that is outweighed by the good of the relationship? So did you. If I can, if I may pry, did you have needs or, like, compromises or anything else wrapped around that situation, or was it just, like a radical acceptance of this is what's going to happen, and I'm just going to, like, do my own internal work to be okay with it.

It was both. It was. I basically, I requested from her that she be available for my upset. So, yeah. Which didn't mean I could be a dick to her. That's not what that meant. It just meant that, like, I. I could bring my grief to her over and over and over again as long as I needed, and as long as I don't blame her, and this is a big one, and I will. I promise you, I will get to interdependence as long as I don't blame her. And this is for most people. As long as we don't feel blamed for most people, we can actually be with a lot of grief or a lot of anger because we can. We can detach it from it being about us. So.

So it's not an attack.

No. And then she went for a shorter time this year. She agreed that if anything were to happen that were major, she would be on the first flight back. So there were definitely. There were definitely pieces that. That I don't. I don't love the word compromise, but we did have to negotiate. We. We did have to negotiate. And the biggest piece for me was, was I am not going to be in this pain by myself. Like, I will. I will do my own work, and I will agree. And. And by the way, for her, she then ended up having boundaries around that. She was like, listen, I can be available for your process for probably 10 minutes if it's going to be a big one, and then I'm probably going to need to step away, and then we can revisit the next day or in the next few days. Right. Because I could have. I have big emotions. And for her, as someone who leans more avoidant, the big emotions can feel like a lot. So for Hirsch, and she has overridden those a number of times in our relationship, and then we both get in trouble for it. So. So for her to be able to say, hey, listen, I can be with you in your process, but we have to have a time limit on it was good for both of us. Right? So that's. That's a perfect example of a boundary that had no requirement of me doing anything different. In fact, there were multiple times where she left my process and I continued my process. Right. I was crying and felt so sad and alone and whatever else I was feeling. And.

But the setting of the boundary is so helpful because I feel like that's. That for a lot of us, that Would be a really hard conversation to have. Like, I don't know how I would tell my partner, like, I got 10 minutes before I'm gonna get, like, a little flooded by this. Like, that's really hard. But in doing so, you set it up for success so that they don't suddenly feel, like, abandoned. If you just leave the conversation without. Without repair or like it. It allows you to understand, like, what the playground is so that it doesn't. It's not mistaken for something else.

Absolutely. And the other thing it does is it allows the person. So for. I'll just keep using this example. It allows the person who's just been given the boundary to learn how to take care of themselves in a different way. So I actually look at. I look at relationships having three pillars or poles. You have each person in the relationship, and then you have the third pillar, which is the relationship itself. So you each, as individuals, have individual preferences, individual desires, individual wounds, individual needs. So does the relationship. The relationship has its own needs, has its own vision, has its own desires, has its right. And so I can. What. What. How I actually like. If I. If I broaden this out a little bit. The way that I look at relationships is actually one of the most spiritual places the dojos we can be in. Because what. Ultimately, if you're in a safe dynamic, and this requires you to be in a dynamic that is healthy enough that it is safe, that you can surrender into the relationship versus individual preferences. So when Emmy gives me her boundary, there is somewhere inside of me that gets to say, even if it hurts in the moment, there's wisdom here. And that wisdom in her boundary is for me. There is something here that if I learn to self soothe, if I learn to take care of myself in the moment, I begin to heal parts of myself that have been very hard for me to heal, that ultimately no one else is going to be able to heal for me as much as I wish someone else could do that work. So it becomes this. It becomes this surrender into the relationship and the relationship's wisdom versus actually a surrender into each other. Another perfect example of this actually is at one point, Emmy came to me and she said, I don't have any more capacity for processing in our relationship. And I will just tell you, I'm like an empty well for processing. I could just go and go and go and go. But she had said this before, and I put up a fight. Like, I was like. I felt like it was her avoidance. I felt like it was her wounding. I felt. But this time I Actually heard her from the relationship's wisdom speaking through her. And when she said it, I was like, I literally did kind of the math in my head. And I was like, okay, we haven't been having that much fun lately. We have been doing a lot of processing. What's. What's here for me? If we were to actually pause on processing for a minute. And one of our vows is, we will always go to therapy, and we will always have pauses from therapy. That's one of our. One of our vows. And so she brings. I am. I don't have any more capacity for processing because she brings it without any blame, without any making me wrong for wanting to process just her deep, deep truth. I can then be like, where is the wisdom in this? And we. We ended up having. We stopped therapy. We had. Or paused it for three months, and we had some of the best three months of our relationship. And that was part of my commitment to being, like, cool. So what would it actually look like to let things brush off my shoulder a little bit more? What would that actually mean? To just like, be a little bit easier and. And let things go and kind of move through me? And how would. How. How would I learn to do that so that I don't hang on to them? I mean, I had to go through a whole kind of development mental arc where with.

Yeah, it's like challenging the automatic responses we have.

Totally. I think the. The key point here is in order to get out of the power struggle phase, you have to go through disillusionment, which means you have to understand what boundaries are, how to set them without punishing. You have to understand what it actually means to move through grief without punishment and into acceptance. And then you start to move into interdependence, which is stage three. And by the way, you could go back and forth in different moments. It's not like once you get into stage three, I mean, relationships are living, breathing things, right? It's not like. So just like anything else, it can fluctuate during harder moments. But what stage three looks like is a bit more mature love. So it's like you're able to choose your partner freely without losing yourself and vice versa. So instead of enmeshment, right, the merge, and instead of a whole bunch of friction, the power struggle, now you're in a space that has more. It's like there's more room to breathe here. So in this stage, you can be deeply, deeply connected without collapsing into each other. You can trust the bond enough where closeness and space or autonomy Both exist. However, they need to exist for each of you. And that conflict doesn't feel existential. Yeah. You have a deep trust in the repair process. Right. So features like how this looks is mutual regulation. So you both know how to regulate yourselves and you, you know how to co regulate together. And so when fights happen, they don't destabilize the whole relationship. It's not like fights don't happen in this phase. They totally do. Yeah, but they don't throw everything off course. You hold boundaries with warmth, so you're able to assert your needs without punishment or guilt. Now, in order to do this, like, I really want to emphasize this because I think especially as women, this is really hard, which is like you, it's almost. Sometimes the pendulum just has to swing. If you're a people pleaser, it has to swing to the other side of I need to tell you all my needs and I need to do it in a super dysregulated way. And I don't know how to do it without kind of being a jerk. Right. Sometimes we just have to. We have to understand what the other side feels like in order to come back into center a bit. The goal, though, is to be able to speak a boundary with your heart open where it truly is about taking care of yourself. It truly is not about punishment and it's not coming from a dysregulated place. Again, that sometimes takes the pendulum swinging. And that's why we. That's why the power struggle phase exists. We've now learned way, way more to bring curiosity over judgment. It's an understanding of your partner's inner world versus trying to change them. Now this in and of itself, just building curiosity. It can sound easy. Curiosity is like actual genuine curiosity. It's one of the key components to repair and. And it is quite nuanced and difficult. Curiosity truly means stepping into somebody's shoes. Like how I, how I think about it is it's like you're an anthropologist and you put on these anthropologist glasses and you're like, what's it like over there being an alien? Like, you're this alien species over there. I need to, like, that's, that's the level of who the fuck are you? You are so different than me. I would never behave that way. I would never, like, I would never get mad at you for that thing. The fact that you're mad about that or that that hurt your feelings is insane to me. But you're literally going over to their world and being like, whoa, like, what's.

Going on under there?

Yeah, like. Yeah, like you're an alien species. Like, which is tricky when you think you know someone so well. When you think you know someone because you live with them, because you've been with them for years, we lose a state of curiosity, which is. So this is. I mean, I could talk about this for the whole rest. So I'm not going to, like, go into a whole thing about it, but it is.

No, I love this. This is so good. This is so good.

So important. Okay, well, okay, then let me just go one step deeper here. There is a former CIA agent, his name is Andrew Bustamante, and he talks about something that they use in the CIA, which completely replicates onto relationships, which is this. It's the difference between perspective and perception. So perception is you living in your own world and seeing the world from your lens. So it's how I'm thinking about how this recording is going. It's. Am I close? Do I think I'm close enough to the mic? Am I feeling hot? Do I feel cold? Am I thirsty? Right. What do I think? You think about this conversation? That's perception. And we live in perception most of our lives. It's how we walk through the world. Perspective. Perspective taking is the exact opposite. It's literally going over to your world and being like, okay, so how does Jillian think this is going? How are you feeling over there? What's it like for you to put together this podcast and to think about the question that's coming up next? Right. It's. It's truly coming.

So asking also instead of assuming, it sounds like, too, like really wanting to know instead of, like, predicting or assuming.

You cannot be curious and also be assuming, like, that's. Those two can't. Those two cannot coexist, so you have to. And this is why it's so tricky, because you're over there being. Or I'm over here being like, well, if you're my partner, I know you so well. I know your ticks. I know the things that make you mad. I know the things that make you happy. Of course I know you. But there is. But when we approach our own in inner worlds or our. Our partner's inner worlds. As complex as our inner worlds, by the way. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's. It's the. One of the key pieces that we miss and repair. So it's like, I think we often sort of blaze over curious. Just be curious. But curiosity is a deep, deep skill. And. And you're curious in this phase without your partner needing to Change. So in the example of Emmy, it's like, what's it. What's Burning man like for her? So much so that it is more important to her to go there than it is to stay with me. Right. Like, what. What in. And there's a way that I can be judgmental about that. Right? Why. Why is Burning man so much more important than being here? Of course.

Yeah.

But there's another way where I can actually be like, okay, I'm scratching my head over here because by the way, if the roles were reversed, there's no way I would go to Burning man and leave you. Just no way. So I'm over here scratching my head, being like, okay, I know she loves me. I'm going to use that generous assumption. I know she wants to be here for me. I'm going to use that generous assumption too. Why in the world would. What is it. What is it about Burning man that would make this so important to you? And when I begin to. This is. This is why it ends up being like this magical component of repair is because when I actually get that curious and she starts to unveil to me without feeling judged or like she needs to protect or defend herself because she knows I'm actually genuinely curious, we begin to co regulate because she's opening her world up to me. And I am starting to understand that doesn't mean I collapse into her worldview. It doesn't mean I would do the same thing. It just means, whoa. Well, if you're a creature called Emmy, my wife, that's what. That's how you operate in the world. That's wild. That's so different than how I operate in the world. And we being, we begin together to co regulate. So it's genuine curiosity and is a co regulation tool.

This is so, so important.

Oh, good. I'm so. I'm so glad it's helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is.

Oh, this is so important because without knowing like how to name it in the way that you obviously just have, I've really personally seen the difference in the feeling like something is happening to me versus being curious about it. And what I was realizing as. As I was making these shifts was that the judgment, the why is this a thing? Or why are we having such different perspectives on this? Like, that judgment came from fear. It came from feeling like things were maybe threatening me or threatening the relationship. So it came from this, like, closed off, fearful place. And then when I was able to shift into curiosity, it was so much more based in a love where I just want to know you. I want to deeply know you. And that's trumping the fear voice. That's trumping the. I feel like this is a threat. It's trumping everything. And so really like shifting out of the. The fear and judgment as much as possible and into the. The more I understand and the more I know, the closer we can get. That's been huge for me. So this is, this makes so much sense.

Oh, I mean, I love that you've done the work to get there because I think it's not, I think it's, I think it's not easy work. I mean, that's just the truth of it. And, and, and you're not. How you can tell you're dysregulated, by the way, is when you can't be curious. When, when the need to be understood and right and heard and, and that they understand your perspective. Not that that's not important. It gets to have a turn for sure. But it's also, if that is, if that is a necessary component when you two are talking or arguing, then you're not regulated enough to be curious. So taking care of yourself, feeling your feelings all the way through, whatever that means, is so important because you can't move into curiosity unless you've done some of your own work first. It's too hard. It's too, like there's too much of your own, like your own story, your own pain, your own wounds. Being like, hello, I'm over here. Someone tend to me. Like, look at me. Yeah, right. So it's going to be really hard to be curious if you haven't done any. Doesn't mean you have to be fully regulated by the time you come to the conversation. But you need to know if you can be open.

Yeah.

If you, if you have the willingness to be open for curiosity.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So, so the interdependence now, final step. We're living more in curiosity. We're more regulated, we're more boundaried. This makes a lot of sense. And that's how we navigate like this dance between closeness without being consumed. Because something I think a lot of people who are very independent struggle with is like, how do I not disappear into this relationship? How do I protect my needs and my sense of self while also like honoring my partner's needs and like showing up for them. And so that's where I guess interdependence is, is the state that allows us to show up as a good partner while not self abandoning.

Absolutely. That's exactly right.

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So on the, on the dysregulation point, I'd love to hear a bit more about how that shows up because I don't think we probably realize how dusty disregulated we are going into conflict and how much that can cause us to like freeze or avoid and shut someone out or escalate things or for me, I have realized that I'm a huge fawner and I really came from a background and a household where conflict was not. Nothing was addressed. Everything was swept under the rug. It was a bit more walking on eggshells vibes. So conflict feels so stressful for me in adulthood. It feels very scary. And so my default is to just like make everything better asap. And I'm like, everything's great. Okay, I'm so glad we talked about this. Perfect. Let's move on. And, and that fawning and appeasing is, I think, my, my default. And I'm trying to examine it more and get underneath it and figuring out like avoiding going deep into these conflicts. It's a disservice to actually growing and becoming closer. So what are some of the ways that, that we can recognize if we're dysregulated or how that shows up?

Such a good question. You know, I'm. By the way, I'm also a fawner. That's my, that's my modus operandi. Yeah. So I know that one very, very well. So, first of all, I really believe that so much relational work is just too hard to do on our own. Like, we need a third party. We need a coach, a therapist, somebody to support, support us. Otherwise, it's. It's like you're trying to heal in an echo chamber of your own childhood wounding. And it's really so. So just to know it's really hard. Because dysregulation can look like a tantrum. It can look like appeasing. It can look like withdrawing. It can also look completely numb. And underneath the numbness is a whole bunch of overwhelm. But you might feel absolutely nothing. You just look a little bit blank, right?

Frozen.

Yeah, totally. I really believe if you don't know what it looks like for yourself to be dysregulated, the move is support. Somatic experiencing is a fantastic modality that can help you get into your body parts work in any form. TERRY reals rlt there's obviously ifs, right? So there's different kinds of parts work that I think are really, really. Can be really, really useful. But I think the, the move from noticing what your. If you. If you truly do not know what dysregulation looks like or feels like in your body, then you probably need support now if you know what it looks like. To your point, I fawn. So do I, Yifon. So do I. Then that's kind of a different conversation because that depending on the thing you do, if you freeze, then you're going to use the mechanism you need to thaw out, right? If you fawn, it's probably going to take you a little while, but noticing it and beginning to name it is really important. So I often talk about narrating our experience. So if you're somebody who fawns and wants things to just be better and make it go away, then instead of you being taken by the. By the pattern, whatever that pattern is, the move is to begin narrating it. So saying I can feel the part of me right now that wants to make this go away just to make it better. Yeah. So now it's not the pattern speaking, it's narrating the pattern. That means you've done the work of separating yourself even just a little bit from it. Right. I can feel myself wanting to leave the room and withdraw like that feels. Or I can feel myself wanting to scream right now. Like, I can feel the part of me that is so mad I just want to scream. I just truly believe if you don't know how to, if you have no idea what your signs of dysregulation are, I think it's going to be really hard for you to walk yourself through a body scan and say, what part of myself am I feeling right now? Oh, it's a rapid heartbeat. Oh, it's sweaty armpits. Oh, it's pot. Like that might be how it is for some of you. Some people it's going to be a rapid heartbeat, sweating. Other people, like I said, it will just be a kind of blankness. It will be, or a defensiveness or whatever. But if you truly do not know step one, then I, I, I think it's a, it's a fool's game to try and do that. Work on your own. Once you know, narrating is a very helpful first step to not have the pattern own you, but to not just completely dissociate from the pattern. One thing I also talk about a lot that I haven't heard many people in the relationship space talk about is the relationship between dysregulation and our physiological and biological health. So if we are under slept, if we are super stressed, if we're eating crappy foods, if our thyroid levels are off, if we're magnesium deficient, if we're vitamin D deficient, if our cortisol is spiking at the wrong times of the day, all of these pieces will either enhance our ability to regulate or completely derail our ability to regulate. And so a lot of the mental health field wants to say, well, deal with your trauma and then you'll be able to regulate, look, fine. Okay, great. I think that's awesome. We should 1000% be working on our trauma. But there is, there are other pieces at play that have nothing to do with childhood wounding and a lot to do with hormone and chemical imbalances. And when we don't know what those are in our bodies, if we don't actually know what, what our levels are and our physiological, what our physiology actually looks like, and our labs really look like, we might be fighting a losing game. I cannot tell you how many patients I've had who we have worked their trauma, we've worked, and nothing's working until I'm like, let's get you some labs and let's see what happens. And they're at complete burnout. Their cortisol is off the roofs in ways it shouldn't be. And then they literally deal with that one part and all of a sudden that quote unquote trauma or the quote Unquote, wounding that we were dealing with for so long just isn't as big anymore. It doesn't impact you anymore. And so our ability to regulate is directly impacted by our physiological and biological health. And I think it's really important to understand that just because you're going to a bunch of therapy if it's not working, there might be an underlying reason that is really important to address.

Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. I really do. I. I'm just so against working in a siloed way in general. Like, it's a whole. The holistic approach is just the best way to go because everything impacts everything. Like, I'm on antibiotics right now, and I'm like, attending to my gut health like it's my day job because I don't want to get depressed. And I know when I look back historically and I'm on a lot of antibiotics, it. With my mental health, it really does so, like, being really aware of, like, how's my sleep? Where am I at in my cycle right now? Like, what else is going on with my gut, with my levels, with all of these different things, because it does really impact how we're able to regulate and show up in for ourselves and in relationships. Yeah, I want to dive back into repair and just in general with conflict. I think we've, we've definitely moved from this idea of happy couples don't fight. And now most of us have heard, like, conflict is normal. And if you're not ever having any disagreements or any sort of conflict, like, maybe examine that, like, are you guys just not talking at all or. So I think we're, we're aware that this is normal and this is okay, but are there any. I don't want, I don't want to oversimplify and call them red flags, but are there any, like, concerns to watch out for in terms of, like, can there be too much conflict? Is. Does the amount that you're fighting matter or not matter, or is it just really about, like, your ability to repair? Doesn't matter how often you're. You're butting heads?

I mean, I think that the truth is different people have different capacity for tension. And so there are going to be some people who are listening who actually have quite a bit of capacity for higher conflict dynamics like that. It doesn't throw them in the same way. There are going to be people who have much less space for tension or sensitivity or a lot of little things getting brought up. So I think it really depends on each, each person's sort of constitution. And. Yeah. Whether or not, you know, a lot of conflict or very little conflict is going to be sustainable for them. So on some level, it's about, you know, trial and error of what actually works for your system. I don't think that there is. I think, listen, ideally we're having more good days than hard days, but that's about it. Like, other than that, I don't actually think there is, quote unquote, a healthy amount or an unhealthy amount of conflict. I think the thing that is most important is that we are working on coming back together and repairing more quickly, more efficiently where both people are feeling validated and understood and heard and seen and all the good things, where repair is actually happening. That is what constitutes health in a relationship, not whether or not you fall out.

Got it. Okay. So it's really the repair that matters. It's like, I remember being younger and hearing, like, it's not about if you fight, it's about, like, how you fight. And that always before I had all this language and before I'd even heard of repair, that really stuck with me because I'm like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like, I see people fight and it's like, it's nasty, it's mean. It's not coming from a place of. Of love and of, like, wanting to find the common ground. It's coming from like, I'm right, you're wrong, I want to win. And so it always just as a, like, as a young person really stuck with me that, like, okay, I. I shouldn't be scared of disagreement. I should just be focused on making sure that the disagreements are, like, respectful and, like, moving towards love at the end of them.

100%. I mean, we certainly need skill in conflict. And it's not okay to be a jerk. I mean, that's just the truth. It's just, like, not okay to act, to just put your. But I also feel like there are so many frameworks, there are so many books, there's so many teachers who are going to help you do better at conflict. Like, you know, it's really easy to find nonviolent communication or imago or any series of. Of ways to be better at conflict.

Yeah.

I think your audience is probably smart enough to know that we might make mistakes and say things that we don't mean, but healthy conflict is important. But you can't be abusive. That's not. That's just not okay.

Yeah, obviously. Agreed.

Yeah. So.

So speaking of those. Speaking of those skills you've talked about, Four steps of like, making up and repair in a relationship. Could you walk us through that framework?

Yeah, absolutely. So the first piece I think about, and I got this from my mentor Terry Real, also, is that one person goes at a time. This is where most of us mess up. Most of us think we're coming to a repair conversation. And it's going to be, you go, I go. You go, I go. And oftentimes what happens is you go and. And I'm not listening. Or I go, and you're not listening. Because we each really want to be heard and we're trying to do that at the same time. That does not work how Terry likes to say it. And I think this is just an easy way to think about it, is one person has to be at the customer service window. It's not like one of us is going to come and give, you know, to the customer service window and be like, here's my broken microwave. And the other person is going to say, great, thanks for that. Here's my broken toaster. Like, that's not how it works. You're like, great, how can I fix this broken microwave? That's what you do when you're at the customer service window. So you have to go one at a time. Generally speaking, the person who is more hurt. And you can use a one to ten scale if you want. Like, I'm at. I'm a seven out of ten pissed. I'm a five out of ten pissed. Okay, so seven out of ten pissed. You're going to be the one who gets repaired with first. So you decide who goes first. One person goes at a time. It's super, super important. That means that the person who is repairing with the person who's hurt, you are literally. This is where you become the anthropologist. This is where you get really curious. This is where all of those skills start to come into play. You start to. Like, this is where it matters, that your orientation is on perspective taking, not your own perception. Your perception, while it is important. And this is. This is important to say it's important, but it needs to in this phase, in this if, if you're, if you're, if it's not your turn, you put your perspective, you just put your little perception, you put it over to the side like it's just taking a little bit of a nap. And that allows you to be an anthropologist. That allows you to truly look at your other. The other person with cure, with a curious. Through a curious lens. So, so. And if you know you're going to get A turn. Then it doesn't feel like you're abandoning that part. It's just not its turn right now. It just takes. It's just taking a nap. And it matters. It's very, very important. Just not right now. So one person goes at a time. It's very important that when. Before you come into a repair conversation, if you're dysregulated, you're just going to be getting into another fight. That's usually what ends up happening. You're not actually there for the repair conversation. So I like to say you do nothing. What I mean by do nothing is you do nothing with each other. You go take care of yourself. You feel what there is to feel. If you're. If you're a 10 out of 10 pissed, then you work with that anger so that by the time you get to your partner, you're like a five at it. You're just like down a notch, right? You go on a walk, you talk to your therapist, you phone a friend, you work out, you do whatever you need to do so that by the time you get back into a conversation, you don't need to be right. You're not blaming and you're not shaming. And if any of those pieces. If. Before you get into a conversation, any of those pieces are present, like, I deeply need my partner to see how right I am, that the thing that I am saying is true. The more that that is the case, the less likely repair is to happen. You're just not ready to come back to it. You're just not. You're just not quite ready yet. So. So note that for yourself when you're. When you're in the space of doing nothing, am I actually available to go back into the conversation where I don't need to blame, where this isn't about making my partner wrong or shaming them? Right. Yeah. And that I actually have that ability and resilience and confidence capacity in myself because I've done whatever I needed to do in the do nothing place. That's how you know.

So the blame, the blame and the shame traps, those are signs of dysregulation. Like this is. If you're going in with that.

It's a great point.

So then we remove ourselves and we regulate. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. Back to your regulation dysregulation question. That. That 100%, if you're in the place where you are, where you so desperately need to be heard, that nothing else that your partner brings to the table is going to be Able to be represented. You're just not quite there yet. You're just not quite there yet. And if you're somebody who is better at auto regulating, it's really kind to your partner to say, hey, I need to take space and to tell them how long you're going to be gone so that they're not freaking out while you're gone about when you're coming back. And then you ultimately get the thing that you need, which is to be able to auto regulate on your own. Oftentimes, if you are taking space but you haven't told your partner when you're going to come back, if you come from a more withdrawing or avoidant place, your partner will likely do little pursuit efforts. Maybe they might not be big. It's not like they. They may not be chasing you down the street, but maybe they're texting you when you just need space. Right. Or they're wondering when you're gonna.

It's so stressful for the partner.

It's so stressful, you don't know. Totally. Yeah. So if you wanna get what you want as an auto regulator, you just need to tell your partner when you're coming back. And just to check in, even if you say you're coming back in an hour, you can say, you can in an hour come back and say, hey, I just need a little more time, I'll check back in in another hour. So you always check in at those points, but you don't need to necessarily come back. You just tell them, you know, it's a. This is, this is actually what an appropriate timeout or quote, unquote, pause is. Yeah. And. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. The third piece is what we talked about earlier. It's the perspective versus perception. This is super, super important. So you know you're ready to come back when you are able to be curious. When you're open and available for curiosity. We spent a lot of time on this. I don't need to go too much into this right now. And then the fourth piece, and this has been a massive one for me to learn, is how to know when you are being unrepairable with. I don't even know if unrepairable with is a proper sentence to be. Totally.

It should be.

I know, I made it up. So I don't know. I don't know.

It is now.

It is now. Great, great. Which basically means your partner is getting it like 80%, right? Yeah. There's a 20% gap there that if you need your partner to get it 100% right. But they're 80% there. That 20% is usually yours to do. I mean. I mean, one time, Emmy and I were in a fight, and we're probably about an hour in, and she's trying everything. Now. Sometimes she collapses. Sometimes she goes into avoidance. And so then I get to be kind of righteous, and I get to be in my story about, like, she always does this. She doesn't know how to meet me, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But in this particular time, she was doing. She was, like, doing all of the moves. She was getting really curious. She was staying open. She was. And nothing was moving me. Nothing. So finally, about an hour later, after she had tried everything, I looked at her, and I was like, oh, there's just no way for you to win right now. And she looked back at me, and she was like, thank you. And that actually got me to the space of really understanding way more on a visceral level, what it means to be unrepairable with. I used to call it the 70% rule, but I actually think it's about 80%. The more that I work with couples, the more I'm like, no, this is about 80%. And what is required for 80% is presence and attunement. Presence and attunement, the way we know our partner is present and attuned, is what is coming out of their mouth, lands in our system as congruent. So that time when Emmy came to me and she was like, I have no more capacity for processing. That's not easy for me to hear. Hear as somebody who was like, what? Can't wait for our next therapy session? Right. It's not the easiest thing to hear, but she was fully congruent, and she wasn't blaming. Like I said earlier, she wasn't shaming none of those things. She was fully congruent. And by her being so congruent, I was able to attune to. To what was happening because I wasn't so caught up in. She's not saying anything mean. She's not. She's not doing anything wrong. She's just literally expressing what's there for her. And then I got to attune, and we were both able to meet that with deep presence. So presence is really just the ability to not be in your mind about something that happened earlier. Not be. Future pacing, not being on your phone, not be, but, like, actually being with what is in the moment. And then attunement is the ability to be with what is. Okay, that's what your experience is. Here's my experience. Those things are different. Like, those are different. It doesn't mean collapsing into one another's and it doesn't. It doesn't actually mean agreeing. And in fact, I think that this is part of why differentiation is so hard and why part of the work of repair is so hard is because we so deeply want to be in agreement. We want someone to agree with us because that in some way validates our pain. Yes, you agree. It validates our pain. My pain. Yeah. But agreement is often the enemy of repair. Because if you, If I need you to see my point of view, if that is a requirement for us to repair, then I'm asking you to collapse, not necessarily be congruent over there. And it's not actually going to feel good over here. It's not going to feel like the thing that I want because it's not actually true for you. So you could do, quote, unquote, do all the things right, but it's not landing in my system as repair because it's not congruent.

Wow. Agreement is the enemy of repair. That is huge. I feel like I've. I've never really heard it captured that way. And that's from someone who feels like historically, I'm like, oh, we just got to get on the same page. And. And like, that's what repair has. That's what my need for repair has always been. So this is such a helpful shift that, I mean, I. I'm aware that like, two things can be true at once, but sometimes it's hard to apply that when you're in the moment, in a conflict, and you're like, repair would be if we walk away in agreement, but really, I guess it's walking away understanding each other and understanding what's going on for each other and being a. Attuned for it and being able to hold space for my experience is this. Your experience is this. They may not be the same, but there's like a mutual respect for. For what each of us is experiencing.

Absolutely. It's. It's why, it's. It's why grief work is such an important piece of healthy relationships. Because I. I'm with you in that. All I really want in repairs for my partner to agree with me. I really deeply want it. And when it doesn't happen, that's heartbreaking. There's like a. There's a real heartbreak, but there is an. A maturity to relational loneliness. Another kind of Terryism that he's taught me is how prevalent and normal it is to feel. Prevalent's not the right word. How normal it is to feel lonely in a healthy relationship because you're not interested, you're not enmeshing. Right. You are two differentiated people. And for somebody over here who really wants sameness, who really values sameness, who really wants someone to agree with me, it's lonely to have my partner say, I love you. I'm gonna go to Burning Man. I'm not gonna stay here. And I hear your. I hear how painful it is. And it makes so much sense to me that it's painful and I'm not gonna make a different choice. And I love you. Like, that's gutting. That's deeply gutting. So there's, there's.

It would be unwell.

Unwell. Unwell. That's right.

Unwell.

Unwell. And so. And that's where grief work is really important in healthy relational dynamics. Wow.

This. This is just so important. I've like never even thought about grief work in a healthy relationship and the place that it has. So thank you for bringing this to our attention because this is huge. And this is really the way we stop going to therapy and being like, how do I change my partner? Which is what I think so many people do. They literally show up and they're like, so this is everything that's going wrong. How do we change them?

Yeah. Which obviously every.

Obviously we know that that's. That that ain't it. And yet that I think is still like the underlying desire for so many people. So this is such an antidote to that approach.

Yeah. I would say that therapy rooms are really just drop off stations for our partners to become better. Just like make them change. So they're better partners to me. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. I'm also curious how couples can go about rebuilding trust when there's been a rupture in trust or even in emotional safety. I feel like so much of the exploration of trust I've done has been these, like big breaches of trust. Like, what do you do after if there's been cheating or dishonesty? But there's all these, like, little micro ways that emotional safety can kind of be broken and where disagreement can feel really scary and unsafe. So how can we rebuild that trust?

The way I've seen trust and experience trust be built most effectively is twofold. One is the ability to stay with your partner's upset without blaming yourself or blaming them and just being with it for as long as it takes. This does happen a lot with infidelity. It's, you know, the, the partner who has gone out on the relationship starts to become quite annoyed eventually that their partner isn't done with this and then starts asking when are we ever going to be done? When is this ever going to be over? When, when, when is anything that I do ever going to be enough again? Right. That's just a form of collapse. So the idea is you stay with your partner's upset for as long as it takes. Period, full stop. That does not give your partner permission to be a dick. That's why not shaming, not blaming, not making your partner wrong are so important because you can stay with each other much more easily when you're not putting your pain on your partner. You're taking responsibility for your own pain and being honest about it, but you're not blaming. So it's the capacity to stay with a partner's upset and then it's behavior change over time like that. I, those two things are super, super important to rebuilding trust. A lot of people can be smooth talkers and can be really good in the moment of repair. Like, I can't believe I did that. I can totally see how, how much that hurt. I can't believe I never want to do that again. And then they're late for that dinner again. They're. They, they still don't help around the house like they said they would. They. So it's, it's both of those things. It's building our capacity. And interestingly enough, capacity in our, it, in our kind of generations at this point is something that we're losing more and more because we've now entered into a basically frictionless virtual world where we can swipe and date from our houses, we can grocery shop from our house. We literally don't need to leave our house. The algorithm feeds us anything that we want to see. We say we like a brand on Google and what are we seeing showing up on our algorithm the next day? Like 10 brands that are exactly like that one. So we're basically just living in echo chambers of our own, our own perspectives. And, and yeah.

And makes sense why we're so adverse to disagreement at this point.

And we're bad. We're just bad at it. We're really bad at it because we don't actually have to ever put ourselves in positions where we have healthy debate. We don't have to put ourselves in positions of being in relationships with people who think differently than us. And so, and so we are quickly losing the ability to handle friction. But one of the necessary ingredients in healthy relationships is the capacity to be with tension, which takes. Which takes a capacity to be with a certain level of friction. So the thing that builds trust is actually developing a, a nervous system that can handle the tension your partner might be bringing to you so that you're not collapsing inward. People, People will often either blame inward or blame outward. So I'm either going to make it your fault or I'm going to make it my fault. And, and what we want to do is help people move more towards the middle of. It's not your fault. You're not, you're not worse than me, but it's also not my fault. I'm a good person and I'm no worse than you. We're both flawed human beings that are gonna make mistakes. Yeah, I, I'll say two more things. It's not one size fits all. So it's just true. Some people are going to need more to rebuild trust than others will, and it will likely be a slow process. So I think we have this idea that if you give a grand apology once and it lands for your partner, like it really hits your partner, that that's the only time you're ever going to need to do it. If they've really been hurt. Probably not. Maybe if it's a small thing, maybe it's something small. But if we are talking about a bigger rupture or betrayal or anything like that, we're talking a long time.

I also wanted to just bring up what you said about being able to work on your, Your capacity for friction. So this kind of, like, window of tolerance for, for difficult things. Because I think it's easy to believe that, like, we are the way we are. Like, this is my capacity and I just, I can't really tolerate much, much volatility or I can't tolerate much, much friction. So this is something we can work on. This is something that's not fixed and that's, that's figureoutable. Or like, how would you coach someone who's, who's struggling with, like, I just can't take this much processing. Or I just can't. I can't tolerate this kind of chaos.

Yeah, well, I think it's a. Both. And here I think some people. I think people. I use this word before, but kind of have different constitutions and our makeup is just a little more sensitive or a little less sensitive or, you know, or can tolerate a little bit more or can't tolerate as much. But I do think we can build capacity. I don't think it's going to A, change overnight or B, change from night to day. But I do think we can start to handle more tension. And how do we do that? We practice. We practice with small things that aren't. That are more inconsequential and less so. We practice with the dishwasher when normally we might get annoyed that our partner, you know, leaves dishes in the sink, and we just quietly to ourselves, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and we're mumbling about how much we're annoyed with them. So we use something like that as an opportunity to be like, hey, I'm wondering if, you know, I feel like I've been putting the dishes away a lot lately. Could you take care of that tomorrow? Right. So you. And then you've got to deal with, oh, shit, I can't believe I just said that. Usually I'm really silent and I don't say much because I want to keep the peace. But it's something a little more inconsequential like that. So that when deeper, more insidious, more challenging dynamics come up, or even something like you two are deciding where to move and your family lives on the east coast and their family lives on the west coast. And, like, you know, one of you wants to live there and the other person wants to live. Like, how do you determine that? How do you handle that tension? Of. Okay, now we have complete. We have completely different ideas of what we want, this next chapter of our life or where we want to live. So you practice. It's like, you would never expect someone to play Beethoven on the piano when they haven't even learned how to play Chopsticks.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, you gotta build the muscle. You have to build the muscle. And I feel like I'm kind of on a broken record here saying this a lot, and I know a lot of people say this, but it's just one of those things that we haven't wrapped our head around. How similar emotional fitness and what it means to be emotionally fit and what it takes to be emotionally fit. We haven't really started to wrap our heads around how similar that is to physical fitness. And the fact that if, like, no athlete, no person who cares about being in shape or cares about exercise would tell you you only need to go to the gym once a week and you'll be good. They would be like, absolutely not. That's just that you will literally never, ever be healthy or have the fitness level that you want to. If that's. That's. You just never do it. So you have to be practicing. It's like our expectations of what relationships are and how we function inside of relationships are so different than what our skill level is to actually be in relationship. Yeah. So we expect the world of our partner. We expect our partners to be our best friend and our confidant and our. Our sex slave and our Whatever. Like the comedic relief. We expect all of this. Yeah. And yet we have no idea the skill it takes to get those things. And we. And we don't actually understand the dedication that. That it. That it takes. And so to me, this is literally like a complete reframing of what our expectations like, really. Really having expectations of what are where. Where expectations that meet our skill level, which is real tricky. Which is real tricky. That doesn't mean we can't work harder. But then that means we got to go to the gym more. You just got to go to the gym more. That's it. It's just practice. It's a matter of practice for somebody who's never drawn before and then can't draw a stick figure and then takes a semester drawing class. And at the end, they can draw, like, a pretty complex human or whatever. Let's you. We've seen ourselves build skills, but also in our adult lives, we are less likely to choose things we are bad at and then become good at them. Like, I am naturally not. I do not have a lot of hand eye coordination, so pickleball is not my thing. It's definitely my wife's thing. Every time I go on the court, I actually get off the court feeling like total crap about myself. Why? Oh, why?

Because I should hang out.

It's the worst. It's the worst. I'm like, why am I doing this? I'm gonna go into a I dance. I would much rather prefer going to a dance class where I can come out of there because I'm more naturally good at it. It's something I've practiced my whole life, so it's easier for me than trying something like pickleball, where I leave every time feeling like crap. So in our adult lives, we don't often pick up hobbies or pastimes that we're not good at and say, I'm gonna get really good at this. We usually pick things that we have a more natural proclivity towards, and we do that because we're good at it, yet we don't know whether or not we have a natural proclivity towards relationships, yet all of us want one. So it's really important to be bad before you get good and to know that you are going to be shit at it. You just are. You're gon try to show up and take responsibility or not blame. And the first thing that's going to come out of your mouth is blame. I remember one time I was. Emmy and I were in some sort of tiff over. I can't remember nothing. It was over something so silly, but I was super mad about it. And I'm. I'm literally in the shower, I'm washing my hair, I'm saying to myself, okay, do nothing, do nothing. Just don't say anything to her yet. Don't say anything to her. Just do nothing. Do nothing. I get in bed and I was like, I have to talk to you about something.

You know, it's like that mean. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Did it. Did it.

Like literally. Literally. So it's. There is, you know, we gotta give ourselves some grace around being bad before you're gonna be good, you're gonna mess up and it's gonna hurt and it might hurt you and it might hurt your partner. And that's okay. Yeah, you know, it's okay. It just is.

No one gets out unscathed.

Exactly.

For sure.

Exactly.

Yeah. I love the parallel to the working out in the fitness. There's so. There's so many ways to liken it to relationship skills and communication skills and the fact that muscle doesn't grow without like, literally rupture, like without with the muscle and then it grows bigger.

Totally.

So these, these things do help us grow closer when we handle them with care and with respect and with curiosity. So I think that's. I could talk to you for the rest of the day, but this is the perfect place to end. And thank you so much for your time. This was an amazing conversation. I really learned a lot. I feel so inspired and excited to apply all of this and I know it's going to help so many people.

Oh, I'm so glad to. To hear it. And if you want to follow along, you can find me at Instagram, on. At bayavoce or on my website. A voce. I'll. I'll be launching some group programs, so that'll be fun. If you want to. If you want to dive in, if anyone wants to dive in more.

Yeah, 100%. I will link your site and your socials in the show notes below. So everybody please check it out because the amount that I've learned just from following you on Instagram, it's a masterclass. So thank you for everything that you do and for helping people with something that's so important. It's making a huge difference.

Oh, you're so welcome. I'm so glad we found each other and it's been so wonderful talking today.

Yay. This was so great. Thank you so much Bea. There you have it friends. Thanks for listening and make sure you're following along on Instagram at Teach Me how to Adult media and on TikTok at teachmehowtoadult. If you like what you heard today, it would mean so much if you would subscribe and leave a comment or a rating. It really helps us grow the show. And if something in this episode really resonated, text it to your friends or screenshot it and share it on social Wherever you are in your adulting journey, just remember you're not alone. My DMs are always open and I would love to hear from you. So hit me up with any topics or guests that you would like to hear about. See you next time. Bye.

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