How to Strengthen Your Relationship: The Questions Every Couple Should Be Asking (Episode #122)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, I want to ask you a question. Couples come to us all the time and they're asking, What should we do? What do we need to be doing to succeed in the healing process? And I want to turn it around this week and the next few weeks, and maybe we'll do it this way. Ask questions like, here's the thing, Marianne, what questions should couples be asking themselves as they go through the healing process?

I think there's so many questions, and I know our goal today is to start putting those questions out, not what we should ask our therapist, but what we should be asking ourselves as a couple.

I think the reason why is because as a therapist, I could answer your question. I could say, here's the thing that you should be asking or you should be thinking about. But every couple has their own story, they have their own journey, and they've got to figure out some of the questions. So I'm going to give the first question. What are we doing? I mean, it sounds kind of simple here, but are we going to work on the relationship? Well, how do I know if we don't have information? Do I want to work on the relationship? A little bit different question. And maybe even a little bit deeper than that. If I do want to work on it, why do I want to work on it? And I've had many people come to me and I say, okay, let's pause for a second. You guys have been fighting for years or arguing, conflict. And, and yes, there has been some kind of sexual betrayal. And you've been fighting like cats and dogs. So why are we in this relationship at this point doing that? What are we doing? Your thoughts, Marian?

My thoughts, if you asked, if I was coming to you for therapy for this problem and you asked me that, I think I'd be a little taken aback and I wouldn't know how to respond. I have no idea why I'm doing that thing. I don't know. But one of the things that I've learned from you is how important it is with a couple to say, yeah, what are we doing here? Do you guys even like each other? What's your point? What's your goal? Because maybe you're caught in some patterns, but maybe you haven't actually taken the time to really sit down and look at really what, what are we doing? Is this, is this where we wanna be? And is this healthy? Helpful for us.

And when we ask questions, and this is maybe one of the benefits, Mary Anne, when we start asking questions like this, it gives us more insight. And without that insight, I remember many years ago hearing about the Cheshire Cat, you know, this going like, where are you going? Don't know. Well, it doesn't really matter if you go left or right if you don't know where you're going. So the questions we should be asking ourselves, what kind of relationship do I want? What kind of marital relationship do I want to be in? And some people, they really haven't contemplated— they're married, but like, what does this healthy marriage look like? What does a good marriage look like? Listening, talking, sharing, being vulnerable. Oh, that's scary. Who am I? I don't know. If I don't even know who I am, how am I going to show up?

Marianne, I'm thinking about this too, Dr. Skinner. I'm thinking there's so many different types of marriages. Some people marriage for love, some people marriage for convenience or for politics or culture or so many different reasons. Even with that, I know the research says that oftentimes some of those things don't necessarily matter, but there is changing and growth that happen and maturing usually that happen along with the relationship as well. And so I hope that as we share them, they can become questions that maybe we would pull out periodically and say, hey, let's relook at what we're doing here. Hmm. Where are we going? Really looking at what I'm hearing you talking about is getting that end in mind. Where do we want to go? Where do we want to end up? Are we aligned? Do we want the same thing still? It might've looked different before when we were young, before we had kids, before life happened to us, but are we still heading the same direction or are we going different directions.

And I know a lot of people, I would say, in the very beginning, it's easy to say, I love this person, I'm committed to this person, I want to be loyal, I want to be faithful, I expect the same. But there's more to it than that. In the beginning, they can't keep their eyes off each other. That's what they're doing. They're in this, what we call it, twitterpated, in this chemical concoction. You just feel like, whoa, this is incredible feeling. Then reality sets in. That's just life. Things change. Stress, children, bills, work, job change, all those kinds of life pressures. Do we understand marriage? Maybe the question I'm trying to get at here in the beginning is like, what do we— we've been married 10, 20, 30 years. My wife and I've been married 32 years. And I love the analogy, like we've been cooking our marriage like it's a slow crock pot. And it just gets better and better and better because we're still learning about each other. We're still discovering each other. And I think even us, we're asking this question, like, what are we doing here? What kind of a marriage do we want in the next 32 years of our lives? So I think it's a very valuable first question that we have to be asking, like, what are we doing? And what kind of a marriage do I want moving forward? Whether you've been married 3 years or 20 years or 30 years or 50 years, we still have to ask the question, what kind of marriage do I want to conclude with in this life?

I think one of the tools that can be really helpful for this, the Gottmans talk about having a ritual and creating these questions and once a year going away and taking some time that you've planned and sitting down and going through these questions and saying, From where we were last year, where are we now? And this is what we said last year. Is this still where we're going? What looks different? And so creating a ritual with these questions, I think, is a really important tool and saying, where are we going? What do we want?

A marital check-in is what you're describing there. Yeah, I love that idea. A marital check-in once a year, we get together. Maybe that's what we should do, Marian. Maybe annually we should have a marital check-in where couples come and play. And we give them some tools and resources to continue to build their communication. If you're interested in that, I'm just going to tell you, info@humanintimacy.com. You send us a message and we'll create a marital retreat just for you guys.

We'll make it happen. That'll be so fun.

Yeah, it'd be absolutely fun. Let us help you strengthen your marriage. Yeah. So I want to go back to earlier. I said that, you know, initially you have these hormones that are kind of pushing us towards this relationship where we can't keep our eyes off each other. We're just talking all the time and then life settles in and we don't ask that question. Where are we going? Very often. I was reading Peggy Vaughn's research where she talked about in the beginning, you know, couples talked about their expectations of the relationship once. Hmm. Once. And, and, and really just made assumptions thereafter. I think that's an interesting thing. We make assumptions like, I, I think I know where, where we're going. We all change. I mean, think about how much you've changed in your marriage, Mary. Just, just life changes.

Yeah, I think about, as we're discussing this, of course I'm thinking about how does, how does it apply for me? And I came from a really large family. My intent was I'm gonna have a really large family because that's what we did. All of the families had 7 kids. I was gonna have 5 to 7 kids. We had that conversation and then infertility happened and it wasn't what I had planned or what I expected. I use that as an example because I think it happens for every couple. Here's the idealized, I don't know what's up ahead in the future, but here's how I think it's going to be and here's the, my expectations. Mm-hmm. And then we have experiences that don't meet those expectations that shift us. So I can very vividly remember dropping off my second daughter for kindergarten and going, oh, wait a second, I'm too old to not have any kids in the home. I'm supposed to have like another 5 or 6 kids in my house. Like, I'm way too young to have an empty house at this time.

And then the adaptation or being compelled to make changes. Things that we don't expect occur. And I think that that's a very unique time. I was reading a book by Jim Collins, and he talks about the meaning of a life. He's talking about how we get to— in life, we come up to these cliffs of life, as he calls them. And I think it's a great way to look at this. We all have our cliffs. And he initially thought, I'm just going to find people who have cliffs of life and and compare them. And then he found everybody has cliffs.

And I love the imagery of that because we do all have cliffs.

And when we bump into it, Marianne, we have to reevaluate this. What are we doing? And things that can occur that create that, we've talked a lot about sexual betrayal and infidelity, major cliffs of life, having to step back and evaluate and say, why am I fighting for this relationship? Am I willing to pay the price to fight through these challenges, to work through these difficulties? Am I willing to do that or not? And if not, why not? Well, I can't handle the conflict. I can't handle the criticism. I can't handle the fighting. I can't handle the lack of trust. So then that may be what makes the decision, but then what? What happens the next stage? Can we anticipate that, the challenges, the adversity?

Well, several years ago, I remember talking with a friend, Dr. Kevin Skinner, and I, you know, I was talking a little bit about the betrayal that I'd experienced, my life, some of my life expectations that hadn't gone the way that I had planned. And this friend was a gentleman and he said, You know, everybody doesn't have the same metaphorical cliffs. He didn't use that word, but, but that's what he was talking about. And, and he talked about having a son who was born with Down syndrome, who went through cancer at 2 years old and the impacts, like the far-reaching impacts that has had on other children. And there are other children that have had, that have autism. Oftentimes here in this space, we are talking about betrayal trauma and infidelity, and there are other things stacked on top of that as well that we haven't even really addressed or broached that I just wanna make sure that we are acknowledging that this is one facet of oftentimes our clients' lives, but they often have other really major life stressors going on. And they may be different or they may be in addition to, but these are, these are the cliffs that take our breaths away. And that for so many couples, I think, I know there's some statistics. One of my clients who has a child with autism said, do you know the statistics, Marianne, of divorce with autism? Incredibly high because there's so much stress. It's so difficult. And so I think we're talking about relationships that get to have stressors come in. That are unanticipated. And oftentimes we're immature, we haven't learned or had modeled the tools. And both individuals are dealing with really dysregulated emotions, really difficult situations, and may not know how to connect and work together because it's often so overwhelming and so stressful.

And when we bump into those cliffs, those life's challenges, Jim Collins said, after the cliff, there's always a fog because you're, you're trying to make sense of where you're at, what's happened. It's what we typically say, the car metaphor. You've been in an accident. And when that happens, you don't have a sense of stability. And really, when we look at, say, the repair process or the healing process, or coming out of that cliff in the fog, you do get stabilized. In order for us to do that, I think we still have to ask ourselves important questions. I would say to every couple, you should be asking yourselves questions on a regular basis. Like, what am I feeling? What are we doing? How are we interacting? What do we want our relationship to look like? And those questions alone could be a really good self-evaluation, a journal entry that you could just spend 20 or 30 minutes on periodically, just to get that kind of an insight.

I think there's also a readiness factor here, Dr. Skinner. I wholeheartedly agree with you. And I'm also thinking about, you know, last week my husband came to me and said something. I wonder if you noticed that you do this. And I hadn't noticed. And I said, oh no, as a matter of fact, I didn't notice that I, that I do that. And he shared some feelings about it. And I was able to say, I wanna change that. I wanna fix that. And I'm gonna work on it. I'll try to be aware of it. Will you let me know? That's a different conversation that in other times in our relationship we might not have been able to have. And so based on like the safety that we often talk about, based on our ability to receive and have a constructive conversation, these are some tools that we have to learn how to do. I could have gotten really dysregulated. I could have been extremely defensive. I could have slammed back. Well, what about you? I could have blamed. And so I think there's also a readiness of being able to say, hey, how do we, how do we figure out how to have these conversations as well? We need to plan for them and we need to be, as you said, maybe we're spending some time journaling and then getting to a space of saying, we've got this on the calendar. Maybe let's spend some time and have a conversation. And it's okay if we get dysregulated, then we wanna use our other tools of stepping away and then coming back.

I want to make an observation here. When I do intensives, I can get couples in 3 minutes— I give them 3-minute exercises, and in 3-minute writing, it's unbelievable how productive they can be. I will give them very specific questions. In 3 minutes, I want you to write. Go. And I would say, you may think, oh, I, I can't do this, it's going to take too long. Just trust me, for 3 minutes, write down some of the things that we've talked about today. So we're going to create for you in the show notes some of the core questions that we want you to ask yourself, and do it for 3 minutes, and then talk with your spouse about it. So first question, like, what are we doing and why? Now maybe I'm not ready for that question because it's deeper, so you may need to ponder on that and think about it. Like, what am I doing internally? Ask yourself the question, how am I showing up in this relationship? How do I want to show up in this relationship? How often am I defensive? How often am I listening to what my partner is actually saying? Can I feel what they're experiencing? Am I being kind? Am I being critical? Yes, I am being critical. Why am I being critical? All questions. Questions are beautiful. They teach us. And when we ask them and we listen to what comes to our mind, that's pure revelation.

So let's say that I just took these questions that you've given me, Dr. Skinner, and I've done some writing on them. So if I'm listening to the podcast, I've paused or I've gone back and, or, you know, I've jotted them down. These are the questions. I went through and I did some journaling on them. What do I do next?

Well, two things. One, you have to decide, are you doing this by yourself or you're doing this with your spouse? Because if you're both listening to this and you're both like, hey, this would be a good idea, then you do it as a couple. If your spouse isn't listening, the insight to those questions is about you, your self-awareness. And then ask the question, am I showing up the way I want to show up, or are there things that I need to address that I've been keeping quiet on that are really bugging me, that are making me resent my spouse? I think that when something happens and we don't have the courage to talk about it, we don't have the courage to speak to it in our relationships, it makes the relationship sick. I experienced something, I don't share it, I become resentful, I hold back. You don't know what I'm feeling, you don't know what I'm thinking, or I'm spewing things, but I'm not really pausing to say, why am I actually saying this? More intentional conversations. I am experiencing this. I am feeling this. I didn't realize I was that upset. Here, here it is. Here's what I'm experiencing. So that whether it's by yourself or in your relationship would be my next step.

And I think I would say both if possible.

Ideal.

I think for me in that scenario to show up, I need to do that internal work myself and explore it. And then can I share it with my partner? And I think it'd be a great exercise to do together in tandem. Great. Here's what my personal one looked like. Here's what my partner's personal one looked like. But now as a couple, what does that look like?

Yeah. And I think the interesting thing about that is if we could do this as a couple, I wonder, here's it, I'm working on this concept, Marianne. So I'm just going to share it with you. All right. Listeners, you can tune out if you want. So this is me and Marianne conversation right now.

All right.

I wonder, Marianne, If trust meter— I'm gonna call it a trust meter for a second— the trust meter goes up when I actually know more about you. So the more you share about what your thoughts are, your feelings are, the trust meter goes up because I'm starting to understand who you are as a human being.

And I know you're noodling on this, but I also know that you're an attachment therapist, Dr. Skinner, and wouldn't I just boil down what you just said when I'm vulnerable and I allow myself to be exposed and seen, I connect.

Of course. So, so, and I use trust there first because trust precedes connection, and safety is really the mover of things.

Say more about that. I want to understand that a little bit better when you say trust precedes connection.

Well, the neuroception, Dr. Stephen Porges would say, is when we feel safe, trust, then we connect. So trust precedes connection. You aren't gonna do it the other way around. You don't connect and then say, I trust you.

Well, but I think it's—

Yeah, now you're noodling on it.

All right. So listeners, this is what happens behind the scenes when Dr. Skinner and I are working through concepts. The way that I would look at it, which let's explore it, I would look at it as courage and vulnerability. So to having the courage to be vulnerable, which is what I step into that vulnerable space that then creates the safety or the reception, how it, how I'm received that, and that safety is then what's creating I think that's where the connection comes, and then the trust in my mind would come later because, because I saw that happen, you were there for me. Now I can trust that you will be there for me. And that ties into the connection, availability.

I love it. Great, great. We'll roll with that. And trust means that I'm willing to be vulnerable.

Right. And so I think it's a cycle, right? It happens and it builds and then we do it again.

It's a chicken and an egg and it's a consistent thing. So, so I believe trust precedes connection because if I don't trust you, I'm not going to connect with you. But preceding trust, you have to feel safe because if I don't feel safe, I'm not going to connect with you. That's, that's Stephen Porteous's work. So yes, I think we're constantly playing with safety, trust, connection. When I feel connected, maybe I'm more vulnerable, or when I'm more vulnerable and I take that risk, I develop more connection. So listeners, you tell us what you think. Okay. We're playing with this. You play with this because we're trying to figure this out. You do it with us. Write us an email, uh, info@humanintimacy.com and tell us what you think.

And we should do a poll. You can vote where you think. I think about this though, when I think about the early stages of dating, You know, my hand's next to their hand. Oh, oh my goodness. Can I, can I reach their hand? Can I touch their hand? I think this is so nuanced and there's so many layers to this. We're all interacting at the same time, but we also reach out and do things. Hey, I'm not sure how this is gonna be received. Ooh, not gonna go there again. That didn't go very well.

So what do you bring up there? I'm gonna use a term. It's called blind trust, right? When I really don't know somebody and I open up and share with them, blind trust is I'm sharing this with you, putting a feeler out there blindly. I don't know how you're going to respond. In early dating relationships, there's a lot of that going on. I share more when I feel safe. When I don't feel safe, I hold back. And human intimacy is this. I mean, even in marriage, we're continually learning and discovering each other and each other's traits. And I had an experience with a group where this couple's been going through some tremendously insightful experiences looking back into childhood. And they were both just, I don't know the way to say it, the enlightenment of having a conversation about the past that occurred has helped them understand each other and individually. At much a deeper level. That's the questions. You start asking questions, you get validation, you have these meaningful conversations. And what happens in life, Marianne, is you're going like, I never knew life could be this way, because you start to really understand each other. It's beautiful, but you have to ask the questions.

I think about the disclosure process that we often do, and I think about my clients who, when they see their partner not always, but when a partner has a little bit of insight and can say, let me tell you about some things that happened in my childhood that I'm starting to make sense of. When I can look down that long lens of not past the hurt that you've just caused me here, and I can see the hurt child that, that you were and some of your roots of shame and trauma and where those started and the pain that you've been carrying along with that. Because we're humans, when we see other people in pain, oftentimes I think this is what you're talking about, that, oh, I can see your pain. I'm a human. I want to connect with you because that's what we do as humans.

As we close, Marianne, something occurs when we see into another human being. When we see into ourselves, Do we like what we see? Am I showing up the way I want to show up? Am I being the person I want to be? And when we ask that question and we say, you know, I could be better, then we make a plan and we'd be better. But the ability to openly communicate, the ability to speak truth— what am I doing and why am I doing it? If you want to repair your relationship, write 100 reasons why you want to be with your spouse. And share with them the why. I usually do that with my betraying partners groups. I'll say, just do me a favor, give me 100 reasons why you love your spouse, why you want to be with them, and why.

How difficult is that for, for these groups?

Some of them, they're very— I mean, it takes time. You don't rush through that. It takes absolute time, but what a gift to take the time, to take the— make the effort to really contemplate, why am I doing this? Recently I was working with a couple and I had a— just this something I often say: marital success is a skill. It's learned. It's not inherited. It's not like all, you know, you just all of a sudden get how to be good at marriage. There's a price that you have to pay. And if you're not willing to pay that price, then you're not going to get the kind of relationship that you want. It means that we have to really tune into self and show up in meaningful ways. And when we show up in meaningful ways, then we can have attachment, then we can have the connection that we long for.

I came across a video on YouTube a couple weeks ago by the Gottmans, Dr. Julie and John Gottman, that I think really illustrates this point, Dr. Skinner. What they said was, Drs. Gottman, they are researchers. They are, they're about the science of love and relationships. And they said, and this, this figure just shocked me because I'd never heard it before. They said that 69% of the conflicts or the problems in our relationships are probably not solvable. And I remember hearing that and going, okay, I'm just going to do a little math. I'm going to bump that up to 70% because that's a nice even number for me. That's easy. So if we're saying almost 70% of the problems and the conflicts in my relationship aren't going to be resolved or aren't going to be resolved immediately, that means only 30% of them will or are. And Dr. Gottman went on to say, this is all about learning the skills and learning to compromise. If we have to look at it through this lens of most of the issues aren't going to be resolvable. Therefore, to have a healthy relationship, we've got to figure out how to communicate and work around them.

I love it. And here's why, because when we think that we have to solve a problem, that we have to work through it, that we're going to be exactly on the same page, it still boils down to, hey, look, we might not fully agree on this, but I can treat you with dignity and I can treat you with respect. We can have differences, and in those differences, we can still be good to each other.

And we have to find other ways around it that work for both of us because we value this relationship and we want to make it work.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, fun conversation. To our listeners, we encourage you, shoot us an email. Let us know your thoughts. I mean, we've given you a few things to think about today. We'd love to hear your questions. What questions would you like us to address? Today we started down the path of questions that couples should be asking about their relationship. We'll continue this conversation next week. MaryAnn, thank you so much.

You're welcome, Dr. Kevin Skinner. This is a great conversation today. And I look forward to continuing because I think we need to be asking more questions in our relationships to our partners. And I think that's where we learn more about ourselves. And we can deepen that relationship with our partners, which is ultimately what we want is deeper relationships. So thanks for the conversation, Dr. Skinner.

All right. You guys have a great week and we'll see you again next week.