On the Brink of Divorce - Special Guest Dr. Dave Robinson (Episode #5)

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. Today I'm excited to welcome Dr. Dave Robinson. He's a licensed marriage and family therapist with a 24 year career as a university professor. He's taught marriage and family therapy, medical students and family practice residents. Dr. Robinson's experience includes a noteworthy 12 year tenure as the director of a prominent marriage and family therapy program. Drawing from over 29 years of therapy experience, Dr. Robinson is dedicated to helping couples navigate challenging issues. He shares his insight in the course here on Human Intimacy, the Relationship the Dilemma in which he offers valuable knowledge gained from his years in working with couples. Beyond his teaching and clinical work, Dr. Robinson is an author contributing to discussions on relationship and mental health topics. Today I want to welcome Dr. Dave Robinson.

Dave, I'm happy to be with you today.

You've done so much in your professional life. Tell us a little bit about what drives you.

So I really have thought a lot about this for the last little while and with everything going on in the world, all the negativity, all the mudslinging, all of the really difficult things that are happening in the world, I've really found that coming back to my home and marriage and family therapy is a real important thing to look at because although we can't control what's happening politically, we can't really control what's going on in the world. We actually can control how we treat each other. We can control what happens within the walls of our own homes. And if we could get more people to do that, our lives could be so much better. If we could start at the foundation of the family, that's A really cool thing. And so I think that's the thing that if I boiled down my whole career into something, is that we can learn how to be nicer, and we can create an environment, at least for the people, within the walls of our own home, where there can be peace and comfort and safety.

You know, one of the things that I really appreciate about that is in my career, I found something very similar. There's so many times that couples and families, they don't know where to turn. They're struggling. And I found that many times people want to have healthy relationships, they just don't know where to turn.

Absolutely. And. And sometimes they. They start looking in places that maybe don't give them the right answers. Um, you know, we. We had a recent case where somebody was looking for a little bit of help, and now he's going down the divorce route, because the place he went, that's what the therapist told him. Like, oh, my gosh, this sounds horrible. You should just leave her. And so I think there's too many. There are probably too many options out there, and not all of them are very good options, you know, and it's.

Interesting that in today's world, I think that's an easier answer. But the reality is, is nobody has to live with a decision of leaving a relationship other than the two people and their children and around them. It seems to me like if we would pause and really take a good stock, we could make more informed and better decisions.

Absolutely. Because. Because you're right. Like, if your parents want you to get divorced or you're. Your friends want you to leave somebody, they're not the ones that have to live with the decision. And at some point, we have to all just take a step back. And if someone chooses to stay, that's their decision, and they should be able to do that. Or if they need to leave and that's the best option for them, then that's their decision, and they have to live with it. But too many people get involved in these relationships and cause a lot of significant problems for them, and they feel like, well, I really want to make this work out, but everybody hates my partner, and so I can't, you know?

And we'll come back to this in a little bit, but before we do that, I really want to jump into a little bit about your career, because you and I, we went to school together. We went different directions. You went back to Nebraska, where we started our time together. And tell us a little bit about your time in Nebraska and your interesting research. You're working with medical students and some of the stuff that you were working on.

Yeah, I kind of have a weird career for a marriage and family therapist, but I worked for 14 years in the department of Family medicine. And so part of my role was actually to try to make a difference in what I've found to be problematic, which is too many people with chronic medical illnesses, with terminal illnesses, with even just acute illnesses that are so overwhelming that. That I could make a difference with those individuals. But I was also able to make a difference with the physicians and help them learn how to improve their bedside manner and how to address some of the things that are going on within the family system and train them on how to utilize people like us to make their jobs easier, but also to take really good care of the families that we're working with. And so that was. That was. It was a little overwhelming, I'll be honest. Like, when I first sat down. So every morning at the beginning, I'd sit down and do rounds where we'd go visit all the people that were in the hospital. And as they're talking, you know, there wasn't one sentence without six acronyms in it. And so it was like learning a language. And, you know, after a while, you start learning everything. You start understanding what's going on with these individuals. And with that kind of looking through the. The lens of my professional eyes and helping me see that there's some people here that need a little bit of help, a little bit of discussion, and sometimes intervening at the level of the physician saying, you know, the way you address that with this patient was not very helpful. And so helping with the training there. And so it was really. It was really inspiring and helpful for me to feel like I made a difference with the. The. I think it was close to a thousand medical family practice residents that I worked with over my time there.

That's incredible. Over a thousand. That is incredible. So a couple of things about your time in that area. You've done a lot of research trying to understand medical issues and how it influences families and couples. What's some of the key results or key findings that you've found in your work?

So I think, you know, I've worked with. In research, I've done a fair amount with depression, with breast cancer, with some other chronic and terminal illnesses. And one of the things that. That I found early on in research was there's too much protection that goes on within the family system when there's a person who's ill. And so what. What we found is that as people got sick, they also became more isolated because, you know, if you have a problem, your mom's sick, you can't go talk to her because that would burden her. If your wife's sick, you can't talk to her. So everybody withdraws. And we found that that ill person actually was lonely because everybody was protecting them. And through that process, I label it, you know, the shared experience, like if we start talking together about what's going on and we find there's a joint experience between the family members that actually isn't burdening for the ill individual. They feel part of it. They feel like they still matter, they still have a role. And I found that across illnesses and across my career, that is really cool to bring families together and have them share their experience with this significant illness that they're encountering.

That is so interesting because it's almost counter because we, in our culture, you know, we don't want to overload people. We don't want to visit too much. We don't want to. And you're saying that in your research that there's a lot of loneliness as people are going through this medical issue and in some cases, transitioning in, you know, out of this life. You're saying there's. There's loneliness.

Yeah. And. And it doesn't need to be that way. It's. And it makes total sense. Right? People want to protect people that aren't doing well. And in our efforts to protect, we also create isolation and us facilitating just a simple discussion about what was it like for you to be a daughter of a woman with breast cancer? And what was it like for you to have breast cancer and go through treatment? What was it like for you to be the husband? And we found that shared experience building has been so profound for a lot of families. And I think it works with most illnesses that if we can create a discussion, a forum where people can talk about what's going on, it actually leads to less burden for each of them and higher coping for all of them.

That is so, so important, I think, to understand. So to our listeners, you know, we're going to be talking about relationships and overall, but I'm going To tell you, Dr. Robinson is an absolute expert in looking at medical issues and how families can deal with medical issues. And what we're just talking about right now seems to be so relevant because so many people dealing with medical issues, not knowing how to approach it from a family, not knowing how to deal with it. What should we say? What should we not say? What a great Resource and insight you, you have there any other information you'd like to share with our audience that you found interesting in your research?

We're currently working on a study with couples where, where the family female partner had breast cancer. And one of the areas that's just completely void in the literature is the impact of breast cancer and breast cancer treatment on the couple relationship, especially the sexual part of their relationship. And we're finding some things already that if we can help the couple learn how to discuss some of the limitations that come from the treatment, but also not to just give up everything because that happens too much like, oh my gosh, this is so overwhelming, this is such a problem. And so we're gonna put everything non essential on the, on the side and we're gonna just take care of the essential things. And for some reason, and some of it's physiological, right, that sex gets put on the back burner. And if we don't do something to revitalize that once things have calmed down, sometimes couples have a hard time coming.

Back from that, Reintegrating sexually.

Right? Reintegrating lots of things. But there are all these different areas. But for this study, we're looking at the sexual aspect.

All right, well, now I want to introduce our audience to a project that you and I have been working on. And something that I think in reality is something that I care a lot about. I know you do because we live in a culture today where we have witnessed about every year for the last many years, over 700,000 couples divorcing every year in the United States. How they, how they make that decision, Are they, are they satisfied with their decision or are they looking in the rearview mirror saying why, why did, why did we do this or why did I do this? Anyway, we're talking about the relationship dilemma. Anyway. What are your thoughts, Dave, as we get started in this conversation?

I think this is where a lot of my couples that are on the, on the brink here, they get a little irritated with me because I'm so interested in seeing what we can do. You chose to get married and you chose to stay together this long. So what would it look like to choose to stay? And we can always explore other options, but you're here now, so let's figure out what to do with that. Let's put all of our effort into that. And I think that's irritating for a lot of couples because they just want like, oh, just give us the stamp saying we can get divorced. And they're not going to ever get that from me at some point they may choose to do that, but I'm going to make sure that no stones are left unturned on possibilities and potentials. And I think more people need to do that because you and Dr. Skinner and I, you know, we've just seen too many people that they end up getting divorced and then they're still not happy. They didn't find this amazing joy that came out of the divorce. And divorce is hard. So if we can save people from that, that's what I want to do. That's why we're bringing our. To bring this together so we can help people maybe do a better job on doing some more preventative work on their relationships.

You know, you and I were talking a while back and there was a really interesting statistic about how many couples or individuals actually regretted getting going through the divorce. What were those numbers? And tell us a little bit about what your thoughts are on the regretting going through a divorce.

Up to one third of people regret getting divorced. And I think those numbers may be smaller than what's reality, because there is an aspect of self protection that if you made a decision, even if it might be wrong, it might be better to just say that it was okay. And so that a third of people admit to that. That's pretty profound. And we've just seen so many people that keep going through marriage after marriage looking for things that they are never able to find.

You know, and the underlying question for me is, how did we arrive at that decision? Right. Because ultimately we want to step back and say, look, if children are involved, finances are involved, you know, and even the aftermath, how did I come to the conclusion that this would be the best decision? And sometimes I find that we're not slowing down enough to really make an informed decision. And really that's what our course is about, is helping people step back and make an informed decision. You still may choose to divorce, but why not put your heart and soul into understanding what you're doing, the decisions you're making, and why you're making those decisions?

Absolutely. And why would you not do that for yourself? So that you can, you know, I'll tell my couples, like, if, if you choose to divorce, in the end, I want you to be able to leave saying, I did everything, I tried everything to make this work, and it still didn't. Let's be honest here. There are times when maybe divorce is a better option. If there's abuse going on, that we're not saying that everybody has to stay, but we're seeing too many that had Potential for making a relationship work well, who are stepping out. So we're not, we're not talking about that other end of this where if you're being abused by your. Your spouse and you're afraid to go home. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the couples that just have fallen out of love, or maybe they don't know how to resolve conflict or they fight about money or sex or whatever. And so those things are fixable. And sometimes even with violence, maybe there's things that can be done to fix that. But we're not saying that you have to stick it out just because you chose to get married if somebody's being violent.

Yeah. And I would say, in addition to that, from my experience, when I see people continually lying, manipulating, and making their partner feel like they're inadequate or not enough. So not just what we would say, physical violence, but when people are continually hurting their partner, manipulating them. In my mind, if you're going to continue to do that, there's no way to form a healthy relationship, because lies, manipulation, those types of things just don't enable you to have a healthy, close relationship.

Right. Although on. On the same realm of that, you know, we do have individuals that lie a lot just because they, they're embarrassed by their behavior. And so, for example, I think pornography is a good example of that. There is a lot of lying that goes on at that. But. And so I think you're talking about the more profound lying, deception sort of thing instead of I just have trouble telling the truth because I'm embarrassed by my behavior.

So, yeah. And if I was to then even take that a step further, the recovery process, the healing process from that is still, I'm going to be an honest person moving forward, and I'm going to take out the lies, I'm going to take out the deception. I. I'm going to be a person of integrity. And if you're going to be that person, then, man, we can. Not only can we work on the relationship, we're going to actually get a better person because you don't have secrets, you're not hiding behaviors, and you're genuinely doing the things that is positive for a relationship.

Absolutely. I think that that's a great point.

All right, so if there, you know, a lot of couples, they come to us and they don't know what to change, they honestly, they're stuck. And so I want to talk a little bit about these couples that come to us and they don't know where to start. Dave, they don't. They don't know where to go. They're coming to a therapist and they're saying, help. Where do we even begin? What would you say to that couple?

I usually want my couples to start with personal responsibility. Look at yourself. Be willing to look at what's going on in your life and see what role you play in what's going on in your relationship, and what are you doing that's maybe facilitating things to not be working that well. And I think. I think once. Once we can get individuals and couples to start looking at their role and what they can do to make things better, instead of looking at why my partner's problem is and what I think my partner should be doing, I think change happens more quickly.

You know, I had a person just going down that path. I had a person who was in my office. They were actually there together as a couple. And as they sat down in my office, and I just started asking the questions of, like, in your relationship. Let's just break down the patterns, because I typically look at patterns. Who does what during conflict? And it's always interesting to see the fight pattern because it's almost always predictable. Couples know how they fight.

They really do.

You can say, okay, who does what during a fight? And usually you have a pursuer or a distancer, or you have somebody who is constantly in the role of what we may refer to as a victim. I'm always feeling hurt by this person. And so they take on this role of a victim. And in essence, as we were talking about this, the wife was pretty upset in this situation, and her husband, interestingly, when they would get into a fight, he would get on the floor and curl up in a ball. And in her mind, it's like, would you just get up and stop being a little boy? And I said, what's interesting there is we don't know why he's a boy. Why is he curled up? And so I stopped and I said, just before you say anything, I said to the wife, I said, let's let me just have a conversation with your husband. And so I said, tell me what it's like being on the floor. What's actually happening in this situation? And I learned so much in this little question. He said, I don't know what to do. That's what I've been doing since I was a boy. And he then proceeded to tell us a story where he had grown up on a farm, and they were. He was driving a very expensive tractor, and it was really late at night, and he Fell asleep and the tractor continued going and went straight and got stuck on a ditch. His dad comes out to him and says, what are you doing? You are wasting our time. We don't have time to waste. And you're acting like, and this was his exact words, you're acting like one of your sisters. You're just being a wimp. Go in the house and be with your mom and sisters. You don't belong out here with the men. And so every time there was energy, there was anger, he literally, he was an eight year old boy. And so when I start to see how people fight, we almost always have to explore their stories.

Yeah, I agree. I think that's a lot of people aren't aware of what's been going on in their mind or their hearts or their souls from a very young age. And so sometimes, sometimes our innate actions are due to something else that happened in their past. And if we can help people realize what they're doing and why they're doing it, you know, think about how life is. There's a portion of self protection in everything we do. And emotional self protection is part of what happens in intimate relationships. And I think that's the other thing about this is like intimate relationships might be the only time when somebody's actually fully vulnerable with someone and that's scary for them. And if you think about it, you add the sexual intimacy into that, you're literally naked with someone else. And I think both physically and emotionally, sometimes we need to be capable of being naked with our partners emotionally, physically, and some, sometimes that's too scary. And so instead of risking that because of things like the story you just shared, instead of risking that, I'm willing to risk the fact that maybe I don't have to develop so much intimacy because the fear of it not working out well is scarier than the possibility that it might.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that. Why do you think we're so afraid to take that risk and allow ourselves to, to be that vulnerable in the way that you're describing? Why do we struggle with that, do you think?

I mean, I think, I think there's things that happened in our childhood and our growing up, what we saw, how our families were organized, maybe our first trial at getting into a relationship in elementary school, high school, college, whatever. And we get to the point where it's really not safe. And there's also differences between men and women sometimes, like men are typically, like you're saying, with, with your example there, you know, stop being a Sissy. Because we teach young men that emotions are a bad thing. And so we want, we want men to jump into emotionally laden relationships where there is deep emotional connection. But we've told them from the beginning that we shouldn't do that. And it's not always men, you know, women can be taught that also. But too often we try and it doesn't work. And so that I'm not, I'm not going to try that again. And you know, we've known plenty of people over the years who, they got married once. It didn't turn out well. And so like I'm never dating again, I'm never getting married again because it's too scary. Being alone is less scary than the possibility of things not not working out. Okay. And, and I think that sometimes it's just scary. Being vulnerable and exposed is too scary for a lot of people.

Yes. And not only is it scary, but what happens when we don't know how to solve a problem? That's one of the common things that I find when couples get into that kind of conflict, they don't know what to do, they don't know how to solve it. They're fighting and they're in conflict and they really don't know what they can do to change the patterns to those couples. What do you say to couples who feel stuck, they don't know what to do.

I'm currently a professor in a marriage and family therapy program and we're constantly teaching our students to map out these cycles. And I can't tell you how many light bulbs go off when we're drawing a simple cycle of your partner does this and you feel this way and you feel that way, so you do something and then they do this and, and you spell out this pattern. Like you were saying earlier, if we help people understand their patterns, even just spelling that out, it makes it harder to continue with that. And if we can help people realize that there's no necessary malice in a pattern, it's just where you typically show up. So if my pattern is my partner yells at me and then I shut down and go downstairs and don't talk to them for four days, that makes sense in that, in a self protective way. It doesn't make sense in developing a relationship. Right. And so for us to just acknowledge our part in what happens when things aren't going well, that's really key to a lot of healing when it comes to couples. They can start realizing that the normal pattern that they have, they're little escape hatches for all of Them if you feel offended, I could do this differently than what I normally would do. And then maybe I do something that I normally do, but I can come back and do something different. I can apologize, I can realize that I'm doing that pattern again. And I think there's real power in understanding that.

Yeah, I completely agree. So you're talking about. We have to identify the patterns. One of my favorite things to do, I do. It's called the drama triangle or the Cartman triangle. Every time I do this with a couple, one of the key findings is they come to a belief about themselves and their relationship. So as an example, you know, I don't feel lovable in this exchange with you, or I don't feel like I'm important or I'm not, I'm not enough for you. And what's interesting is in addition to the patterns that we're outlining, we almost always see a conclusion, a core belief in the interaction. And so when my partner's on the ground in the floor acting like a little boy, I feel unlovable. I feel like he doesn't care about me, like I'm not important. And now we start pinning what we would say, a belief to an action and we start to really enhance this process of. Wait a second, you're telling me that when he's on the ground he's feeling like a little boy and I'm feeling unlovable? Well, who's, who's going to at this.

Point change the pattern?

And when they have that awareness, that's where I see the lasting change come in. Because it's like, oh, he's on the ground because he's feeling like an eight year old boy. Well, what would happen if I went up to him and said it's going to be okay? Or what if he gets up off the ground and says, I don't want you to feel unlovable?

Yeah, I just had just even today I was meeting with a couple and that's what we were talking about. That their quote unquote battle is about the sexual frequency in their relationship. And I help them break it down that both of you are feeling poorly about this. You feel like you're not loved because your partner doesn't want to have sex with you as much and she's feeling inadequate because she's not good enough to fulfill your needs. And truthfully, you can understand that you're both coming from this point of vulnerability, but it comes out as anger, it comes out as frustration. And if the two of you could own and Feel for the position of your partner, we can get to a better place. And it's pretty amazing when couples are able to do things like that, and then.

Then they can really talk about the real core issues.

Yep.

Right. And that's really what I think we're trying to get at here is, you know, in every relationship, we have to. We have to determine how we see our partner and how we see ourselves in this. In this relationship. And when I look at this and say, okay, we as a couple, we don't know how to do something, but can we learn? And I think that that's where our society has really given up too quickly, that we haven't paused enough to say, can we learn the right skills so we can work on a relationship and give it our all? For a whole myriad of reasons. But. But are we willing to pay the price? Because at some point, you're going to have to learn to be relational. At some point, if you're going to be in a relationship, you have to learn how to be relational, how to work through problems. So why not this one? Why not this relationship?

Yeah. And that's why when we talked about doing this program, that's why I was so excited about it, because we can help provide that guidance of helping people get to the point where they're making better decisions, they're seeing that they have options. Because if it's just stay miserable or get divorced, what were. What is anybody going to choose? But there's so many more choices involved in what's going on. And that's where I really love this project of us bringing together our minds and our experience and the thousands of hours that we've spent with couples over the years of bringing that to the point where we can help others see that there are lots of options and you can do this.

I love that. That's one of the fun things. Dave and I together, we're working on almost 60 years of doing therapy. Right. So this upcoming year, it will be 60 years. And I can tell you from my personal experience and talking with you, you know, it's so enjoyable to actually see a couple who come into the office. They don't know if they can make it. They don't know how to communicate in healthy ways. And with the right information and the proper skills, they can change their relationship and they can change the trajectory of their. Of their relationship, not only now, but for generations to come.

Yeah. I love the. Part of my medical family therapy background, we use the. The metaphor of the crucible. So a container that's Able to hold a container that they use to make steel. Right. Something that doesn't interact with what. What's going on. And in the making of steel, there's heat and pressure and everything that's going on there to make things stronger. And I'll use that a lot of times with couples that it feels hot, it feels like pressure, feels like there's a lot going on here. But if you are able to work this through, not only are we going to make your marriage good, your marriage is going to be better than it ever was. And that is such an amazing experience. I don't know why, but I work with a lot of couples where affair has been part of the situation. And that idea that I share with them from the beginning. And I have a couple that I'm just finishing up with where there was significant multiple affairs, it was hopeless, everybody wanted to quit. And now they are in a relationship that they always dreamed of. And we're not talking about going back to how it was when they first got married, because they have always of this background, all of this experience that they bring to it. And now it's very exciting to be able to go through that journey with these individuals where they can see that we went through the fire and we came out the other side better. And obviously the other is the case too, that sometimes they go through the fire and it doesn't work. But the ones that are willing to put in the effort can make it.

Happen, you know, and it does require two people to put in their hearts and be willing to make that effort. But when two people are willing to say, I'm willing to try, I'm going to trust that you're going to give us the information and the tools to help us make this informed decision. When that happens, it truly is fun to watch. It really is. Now, the other side of it, there are times when people. One person's heart is in it and one person's heart is not in it. And in this course, we actually talk about something that we've both been through, discernment counseling or discernment training, where individuals really, before they even begin marital therapy, they have to discern. Are we on the same page? Are we both willing to put our heart and effort into this effort? Talk a little bit about that concept of discernment counseling.

I think it's a really cool way of looking at it, because again, everything's a black or white, like divorced or stay miserable. But what discernment counseling looks at is it allows people, and they use the terms clarity and Confidence. With clarity and confidence, how can I move forward in this relationship? And we give them three choices. We can stay with the status quo, just keep things how they are. Maybe that's where you guys need to stay for a while or forever. The other one is to put all the effort into it and work like the devil to make things better. And the third option is divorce. And until they both have decided that they want to work on the relationship, we don't move forward with marital therapy at all. Part of that process really is pretty cool. And in fact, the couple that I just talked about, we were in discernment for about a month and a half, and it was a different effort by the one partner and not effort on the other one. And sometimes it does take somebody to just hold on. Discernment counseling talks about the leaning in and the leaning out partner. And so sometimes the metaphor of the car, that if I'm in the car and I'm sitting there and I'm driving, I'm into this relationship regardless of whatever, and my. My partner's hanging by the seat belt out the door. What do we need to do to make things. Make a decision on how do we proceed? Do we both jump out of the car? Do we crash the car? Do we push our partner out of the window? And I really think that this way of looking at it has really changed. Because, you know, Dr. Skinner and I were doing this before that therapy even came out. And it's been a really good change because we would waste a lot of time trying to fix a relationship. They haven't committed to making it work.

And that's a critical part to our listeners. If you're trying to make a decision, if you're a person, a couple that's trying to, you know, can we make it? Should we make it? Really, the first question before we're ever going to do marital therapy is we have to discern, are we both on the same page of what we're trying to do? And if we're not, then we're going to actually do counseling around that concept before we engage in marriage counseling. Otherwise, what we're doing is we're prematurely doing marital counseling, which is rarely effective because we aren't on the same page. We don't understand what the primary goal of the. Of the counseling is.

Right.

All right, a couple of closing questions today. If you could just give the world any advice, any advice. This is Dr. Dave 101. What advice would you give to couples who are trying to work on the relationship?

I think it boils down to one thing. Too often we have couples come in and it's like, you know, I tried for 15 years on this, and then I quit. And now my partner, the. The other one says, I've been working on this for five years, and they're not even trying. And so my advice to people is like, could we get you both to try at the same time? What would that be like? And can we start living life to. Through the front window of your car instead of the rear view mirror? Because it's hard to drive with the rear view mirror. And most couples could use the rear view mirror and say, okay, well, he did this and she did this. And you have all these lists of bad things. At some point, you have to move on. Like, are we gonna keep looking in the rearview mirror and try to drive to California? Or are we going to use the front window and say, what's our future look like? And our future is unwritten. Our past is written, and we can learn from it, but we have to choose. And I think this goes with couples. It goes with people with individual struggles and depression and that sort of thing. Sometimes we have to decide that, I'm going to make today good and I'm going to do my best. And that's where. If you're thinking about doing something with your relationship and your partner is not willing to do anything, you do everything you can to make this relationship work. And then we've seen it happen where one partner puts in all this effort and the other one just slowly starts feeding into it and it starts making change. And that's really cool. And the other thing is, when you go to bed at night, how do you want to feel about what you did? If you're. If you were nice and kind and gentle and your. Your partner was a jerk, at least you can go to bed with a clean conscience. That I treated people well. And sometimes your effort and your example can make a difference for your kids, for your partner, but at least for yourself, you can feel good about what you've accomplished.

Hmm. Thank you so much. It's so much fun talking with you. I look forward to having you back with us again on the podcast. Any final thoughts for our listening audience today?

I think about. It was probably 25 years ago. I was sitting in a therapy room with a couple, and they were in their 70s, and the wife got up to go to the bathroom. And the husband and I was much younger then, obviously, he pulled me over and kind of said, hey, Sonny, I want you to know something. This was. He was on Marriage number five. And what he told me has stuck with me and I've used it a lot of times with the couples. He said, I wish I would have known that marriage was more about me than about her. And if I would have followed that, I would still be married to the love of my life, marriage number one. But because it was about her, I was expecting her to fulfill all my needs instead of me fulfilling her needs. And so I think that's what we want to look at, that there's wisdom in that, that if we want to continue to look for our partner to make us happy, maybe we're looking in the wrong direction, wrong window.

That is such good advice. Thank you so much. I absolutely love this time together with you. Dr. Dave Robinson, our guest today. Thank you so much for being on.

Thanks for having me. Take care, everyone.

I want to thank my friend and.

Colleague, Dr. Dave Robinson. Thank you so much for being with us. Now, before we end today, let me introduce you to the Relationship Dilemma course. Do you ever question whether your relationship is going to make it or not? Every year in the United States of America, roughly 700,000 couples divorce. The question that Dr. Dave Robinson and I have for you is can your relationship succeed? What if you had the information that would help you make a more informed decision? In the course, the relationship dilemma, Dr. Robinson and I talk about how to flourish or how to avoid floundering and suffering or ending the relationship prematurely if you feel stuck. If you question whether you should continue in your relationship or end it. In this course, we offer valuable insights through videos and writing exercise which will help you reflect on your own feelings and your partner's. As you gain a deeper awareness, you'll be able to make more informed decisions. Guided by Dr. Dave Robinson and I, with 60 years of clinical experience, we we will walk you through step by step, the things that you can do to help you make a more informed decision. We are going to offer test your relationship an online assessment that will help you pinpoint the areas in which your relationship needs help and it will also show you the areas that are strengths. Finally, as you take this course, you'll be able to make an informed decision. As you go through the videos, as you walk through the assignments, your personal insights will increase. Please join Dr. Dave Robbins and I in the Relationship Dilemma. You can learn more about the relationship dilemma@humanintimacy.com and we have a link below on our podcast Homepage. Thank you for joining me and Dr. Dave Robinson today on the Human Intimacy Podcast with Dr. Kevin Skinner. May you be blessed in your efforts to find deep, intimate relationship.

You. Something surround you.

It's like you're shining, you're staring.