What Happened to Us? Unpacking Relationship Challenges and Finding Solutions (Episode #26)

On behalf of me and Marianne Michaelis, I'd like to thank you for being a listener of our Human Intimacy Podcast this year. It's always a privilege to spend time with you and I want to express my deep gratitude. If you are ready to take your healing and recovery to the next level, you're ready to deepen your healing and strengthen your connection and gain real tools for meaningful change. I invite you to join us and other Experts at the 2nd Annual Human Intimacy Conference where myself, Marianne and many other leading experts will come together for powerful teaching, live question and answer sessions and provide insightful pre conference conversations to help you get the most out of your conference experience. And right now, you can save 50% when you register before December 31st. Please don't miss this opportunity. Visit human intimacy.com and reserve your spot today. Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile. Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with you. Thank you for taking time to join me for this podcast. The focus is on individuals who are struggling in in their relationships. I've titled it what Happened to Us? Let me begin with a story this last week, my wife, her niece. So my niece, she and her fiance were married. Absolutely. Beautiful wedding, beautiful experience with family in town. We really enjoyed the experience. They shared, how they met, they shared their stories, their family members kind of roasted them a little bit. It was fun. It was enjoyable to watch them, watch the light in their eyes, the connection and the excitement of the life that they can now create together. As I was contemplating that, I was also contemplating the other part of the equation. A lot of people today are scared of relationships. They're scared to get into relationships. And the question is why? Well, part of the reason why is that every year, and I'm going to give you a little quiz here in 2022, how many couples actually married? Well, the answer to that question, according to research, is about 2 million. A little over 2 million couples tied the knot in the year 2022. In that same year, how many couples divorced? Can you imagine? Do you know? Well, the answer is 673,989 couples. They ended their marriage. This kind of statistic suggests that. And Again, this is 45 of the state's recording. So these numbers are a little bit higher than that, which would suggest that maybe 750 to 800,000 couples divorce in the United States every year. And so we really need to be asking the question, what happened to us and what can we do to prevent that? What can we do in our relationships to keep the light on, to keep the connection growing, to continue to bond and develop this important relationship. Our society is only as strong as our relationships. And so I want to invite you to think about what happened to us. And so I'm going to begin this conversation about what the researchers found, what's happening to these couples, and then I'm going to deconstruct some of these things and see if we can work to improve upon it in our relationships so we can keep that bond going. And if we have struggled, I'm going to offer a few ideas of what we can do to get through difficult times. Alright, so individuals then, when we're going to get through difficult times, maybe we need to understand the most common reasons that couples divorce. According to the Forbes article that I'm reading, the lack of commitment is the most common reason for divorce. The article says, in fact, 75% of individuals and couples cited lack of commitment as the reason for their divorce. This was the most common cause of marriage ending, exceeding even infidelity. But now we look at infidelity, and that's the number two reason. 60% of divorced couples cited infidelity as a reason for their divorce. Now 60% citing that their partner's unfaithfulness as the reason that their union ended. So when we look at lack of commitment, we look at infidelity. These are two of the most common reasons that couples are divorcing in today's society. Additional reasons that individuals gave include arguing and excessive conflict. 58%, 45% of divorcing couples indicate that they married too young. And 38% reported financial problems as a cause of divorce. So top five reasons, we've just gone over those. Lack of commitment, infidelity, excessive arguing and conflict, getting married too young, and then financial issues. Those are the top five according to what the researchers asked. And then if we throw on top of that, 24% listed domestic violence. What it's telling us is that we're struggling with commitment, fidelity, we're struggling to solve problems, and at the end of the day, we are having a hard time with relationship skills. Now I want to just emphasize this. Relationship skills, learning how to connect, learning how to understand each other, learning how to communicate effectively. These are important issues that we have to learn as a society. And so as I contemplate how to share this message with you, what happened to us? Really, we have to ask a few questions. What about this lack of commitment? When we get married into this relationship, we have expectations. Sometimes we take them for granted. But what are Those expectations, the lack of commitment would suggest that I get into this relationship. Yes, I'm probably committed, but what happens to that commitment level? Should we not be asking that question? What happens to that? Well, usually what happens is something happens that we don't solve. A frustration, an argument. Perhaps we have sexual desire discrepancies. Whatever the cause, we begin to manifest this lack of commitment. And when I don't feel you're connecting with me, and I don't know how to solve this, and I don't know how to communicate with you because I'm frustrated, and when I do try to communicate it with you, we fight and we argue conflict, and then I turn outward. I go work more, I start drinking more. Maybe I turned to pornography or other unwanted sexual activities. And now we start looking at, well, really, why am I in this relationship? It's not filling my needs, and they don't really care. And we begin to tell ourselves a story. And it's that story that I find as a clinician that leads so many people into our offices, because once they get into the mindset that my partner's not into us, that they don't really care, I begin to tell myself a story. And that story hurts the relationship, and it hurts my desire to connect because I don't feel like you're meeting my needs. As Dr. Sue Johnson said, are you there for me? And if I don't know if you're there for me, then I'm likely to turn elsewhere, turn out. So what happens to us? What happened? What's the story? 700,000 couples every year have this story. But if we were to sit down with all 700,000 individuals or couples, really, it's 1.4 million, if we look at it that way. If we sat down with a 1.4 million individuals every year who are going through divorce, and we said, could you help us understand your story? What happened? Do you think that they would be able to tell us the origins, the beginning part of when they started having problems? Most likely one or both of them could. And it's probably going to go something like, we didn't understand. We couldn't solve problems. We fought too much. But if I was to even break it down further, we fought too much. What were we fighting about? What were we arguing about? If we start to really look deeper, we see that that basic need, our expectations are not being met. And then we begin to tell ourselves a story. And that story very validates our perception of what's wrong in this relationship. I'm just going to Walk through an example here. Many couples that I've worked with in my career, when I ask them core issues that have created problems for their relationship, more often than not, I hear about sexual desire discrepancies. We're not sexually compatible. I want sex more than my partner, and when I try, I get rejected, and so I stop trying. And so when we don't have sex, then we start fighting. We. We disconnect, and we don't know how to solve the problem, so it's easier to turn outward rather than toward our partner, because we don't know how to resolve it. That's just one of the common stories that I've heard. So what's the story? The story is an event occurs, we don't know how to solve it. Then we begin to tell ourselves something about our partner. In our minds, they don't care. They don't love me, they don't want me, they don't need me. They're too needy, they want too much from me. And we begin to create a story that hurts the relationship, that pushes us away from our partner. Now, it's not that way in the beginning. We've got this glary look, we've got this excitement. We're really attuned to this person because we're listening and we're talking and we're communicating. And then something happens, an event occurs, and we don't know how to solve it. This is what I have found over and over and over in my career. So there's key moments that couples get stuck in that they don't know how to solve. It's those key moments that I have found that are so critical to deal with as a therapist. So in my work, in the work that I do in intensives, in the couples work that I do, I actually help couples pinpoint those areas and then we work to address them. The reason why is couples haven't solved them, and unresolved issues continue to be a thorn in the relationship side. So what happened to us? It really begins with the story that we didn't know how to work through, that we didn't resolve. I've given one example of a sexual desire discrepancy, but there are many others. When there's yelling and fighting, I begin to pull away because the message is, you're angry with me and I can't meet your needs. And so obviously there's something that I've done and I don't know how to fix it. So I disconnect. And when we disconnect from each other, we usually turn to something else or someone else. Now, that happens with what we found with 60% of divorces occurring because of infidelity. When we get into conflict and we can't solve it, in my mind, I may start thinking, oh, well, there's someone else that, you know can meet my needs. Somebody else that will understand me. And if I find that person and if I'm interacting with that person and they're flirting back, all of a sudden I begin to tell myself this story. This person loves me. This person cares about me, and I begin to tell myself that story rather than working on it with my partner. I've turned outward for that needed connection. Oh, and this person meets my needs. And so we begin to tell ourselves this story that fits with our perception. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve the problem, because this relationship, we still haven't learned how to solve problems. We still haven't learned how to work through things. And so we're living in this facade of this perception that somehow this other relationship is going to be different and better because this person understands me better. Well, what happened when we were married in the first place? We thought our first spouse understood us. We thought we had things in common. And all of a sudden, when we pause and reflect, we realize whether it's the first, second, third, or tenth marriage, we still have to learn how to solve problems and work through our differences. So what happens to us is we begin to tell ourselves a story that ultimately puts hurt and pain into the relationship. I'm hurt because you're not meeting my needs. I'm in pain because I don't feel loved. And so that ability to turn towards our partner, to turn towards them and say, I want a deeper connection. And I don't know how to do this right now. I don't know how to solve this. That's where couples therapy can really be effective. But we want to do it before we get into these problems, not after. But that's what I typically am dealing with. I'm dealing with the aftermath. That's what us counselors are dealing with, is helping couples get back to that point where the fracture, where the wound occurred. Help them repair and understand those core moments so they learn to communicate more effectively. They learn to work through those differences. And if offense has been given through some form of addiction or turning to unwanted sexual behaviors or turning to work or whatever it is, we turn towards our partner. We understand them. And that's where couples begin to really, really reconnect. When they've started missing each other so much. I Often talk about this in my intensives with couples. When you start to feel that disconnection and all of a sudden you start to see this person as your enemy. And that's typically the word I use, that your enemy. That's when we're in trouble. And that's where I work with couples to help them see this person again. Human intimacy is to see this person again for who they are, for the who they truly are. That is how we work to repair things in difficult relationships. Alright, now let's turn our attention to couples who are wanting to save their relationship, but they have experienced these things. They're in the middle of this, what has happened to us? Because their initial feelings, those loving feelings, are starting to go away. In some cases they may say, well, it feels like they're dying. And usually that happens because we stop connecting, we stop creating. And I want to talk about the idea of creating. See, human intimacy is a creation. Love is a creation. We choose to love, we choose to be intimate, we choose to be seen. But when we don't feel connected to people and we then hold back from them because we feel like they're hurting us, we feel like they're the enemy, and we choose to not really connect because we don't know how to solve it, then we have to turn our perspective to this person who I love. See, I can choose to be a loving person or I can choose not to be a loving person. That's my choice. That's your choice. We choose that every day. But what then is love? Love is a creation. It's not just a feeling, it's an action. It's what we do. In the book Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson, she talks about this creation of love. And here's what she says. Love, as you'll see, is not lasting. Now I'm just going to push pause there. Love, as you will see, is not lasting, she says. It's actually far more fleeting than most of us would care to acknowledge. Then she says, on the upside, though, love is forever renewable. And perhaps most challenging of all, love is not unconditional. It doesn't emerge no matter what, regardless of conditions to the contrary. You'll see that the love your body craves is exquisitely sensitive to contextual cues. It obeys preconditions. Yet once you understand those preconditions, you can find love countless times each day. Now that's a fascinating thing. You can find it countless times each day. She then continues. Your outlook quite literally expands as you come under the influence of several positive emotions. So put it simply, you see more as your vision widens. You see the bigger picture. This is what happens when we're creating love. And so it's important for us to understand that when I see you, I have to pause. Every one of us has to pause. And we, first of all, we say, am I safe with you? Then once we realize I don't know if I'm safe with you, then I'm going to naturally pull back or I'm going to talk with you, trying to create that safety with you, because I want to ensure that you're safe with me. You're safe to me. But then in our actions, I can choose to be. I could be a person who's hurt you in so many ways. But in a moment, I could say, I was wrong, I made a mistake. I should have never done what I did or said what I did. In those moments, those are loving expressions acknowledging my mistake. See, that is an example of I'm trying to repair. I'm trying to create this love. So if we put it in that context, she says this. When I compare love to oxygen and food, I'm not just taking a poetic license. She says, I'm drawing on science. She continues, new science that illuminates for the first time how love and its absence fundamentally alters the biochemicals in which your body is steeped. In other words, they turn in and can alter the very ways your DNA gets expressed within yourselves. That's what love does. When we are in love and creating love, it actually influences how our DNA is expressed. It influences us physically. That's why when we lose love, we feel the physical manifestation of it, the fear of it, the loss of it. Love is physically a part of our lives. So it's not just an emotion. It's a feeling. Physical feeling, too. And if it's a physical feeling, I can create it with you by how I am in your presence. I can smile at you, I can give you a hug. I can give you a facial expression that's inviting you into my world. Or I can push you away. I can criticize you. I can belittle you. You, me, we have a choice. Every day, every moment, I can choose love. I can be love can be it. And that's what I'm inviting you to think about. What happened to us. When I go back and look at my niece and I look at how she was looking at her new husband and him looking at her, I can just absolutely tell you, you can see those feelings, those chemicals that I'm now talking about. And if you've felt that love, you know exactly what I'm talking about. A few years ago, my friend Ken Patey and I, we were in Orlando attending what they called a Smart Marriage conference. And we were learning about these how to, you know, look at couples and how to help couples. And as we were attending that, that evening, after going to classes all day long, we were eating, and we went into this really, this open area where they had, you know, shops and places to eat. And this couple were just celebrating their wedding. And as we were watching this couple, the way that they looked each other in the eyes, it was incredible. And my friend Ken turned to me and he said, what do you think happens? Where does that look go? I think that where that look goes, it goes in what I was sharing with you earlier. We don't know how to work through things, but when we learn to work through things, when we learn to solve problems, we stop seeing our partner as this person who's trying to hurt us. We stop seeing them as the enemy. We start seeing them as a person who is also suffering. This person who doesn't know how to solve problems, this person who doesn't know how to communicate, this person who feels so alone and so empty, and we start to see each other, this human being, this person longing for love, this person looking for connection. So in all truth, if we are going to solve today's relationship issues, if we're going to reduce the divorce rate, we've got to start early in learning how to solve problems, how to communicate more effectively, how to discuss our expectations of what commitment means. Because lack of commitments, the number one. We should be talking about this. Are there things that are happening in our relationship that are making the commitment go down? Are there things that we can do to understand each other so we can resolve problems, so we can keep that commitment, stay faithful, truly understand each other, and create the kind of relationships that our society needs. That should be our goal. So what happened to us? If you look back on your life and I'm just going to give you an example, and I'm going to invite you to think about this, maybe as an assignment, If I can give you an assignment. I don't know, can we do that on podcasts? I don't know, but I'm going to give you one anyway. I'd invite you to look at your life in your relationship, look at your story, do what I refer to as a relationship history timeline. If you go to the website human intimacy.com, i have a Free course there on our podcasts or webinars, I should say. And under the webinars, you can go look at the Human Intimacy webinar series. And I will actually put under today's podcast, I'll upload the podcast just there as well. But under that, I'm going to put a relationship history timeline. And I'm going to invite you to go to this timeline and look at your relationship in the first five years, look at your relationship in the five to 10 years and look at key events and look at how they've influenced you. Identify issues that are holding you back from connection. And as you increase your personal insight and your personal awareness, you'll begin to understand your story, your relationship story, and these key events, the ones that you weren't able to resolve, the ones that you weren't able to talk through. And then you stop and reflect on how those specific events have really hurt the relationship. But what would happen if you could learn to work through those differences? You would begin to see this person that you once saw, maybe through a completely different lens. You would see them not as the enemy, but you would see them as your friend, the person that you fell in love with, the person who is the parent to your child. How important is it that we see each other? It's very important. So my invitation today is to pause, look at your relationship story, and then if you have done things that have hurt your relationship, take ownership, acknowledge what you've done, and express in a most vulnerable way your desire for a reconnection. See, relationship repair is what's essential here. If you have a story that we haven't been doing it right, if we haven't been working through these things, then work on the relationship repair, acknowledge mistakes. Today I was running a group and we were talking about vulnerability. And one of the key concepts that I was trying to get across is when we're vulnerable with people, there's times where we have to acknowledge our mistakes, we have to acknowledge our faults. And then, not only that, are we saying, I didn't do that? Right? Let me try again, because our relationship matters. See, that's love. When I acknowledge I want this relationship, I'm showing a level of commitment. One of the core foundations of true human intimacy is an expression of my commitment to this relationship. Remember, the number one reason that people listed for their divorce was lack of commitment. The moment you turn towards me and say, I am committed, I want this to work out, and I'm going to do everything I can to be the person that I committed, I would be. Now we're talking about true love. I want to repair because you matter. You matter to me. And if you can't find that you matter to me feeling, then there's work to be done. And if you have hurt your partner to the point where they don't know if they can love you anymore, your challenge is to show them that you're willing to do whatever it takes to repair the damage that's been done. You may not be able to save your relationship. In some cases, that's not possible. But still be the best person you can be. Be that loving person and give it an opportunity. Give the relationship an opportunity. Love is a choice. Love is a creation. And so my hope is today that as you think about what happened to us, that you'll go back and reflect on your story. And if you want, go to the Human Intimacy podcast series@HumanIntimacy.com, go to the course Human Intimacy webinar series. It's free. And I will put, put down today's. I'll put in there today's podcast and the relationship history timeline so you can go do a little bit of your own work. It's free. I invite you to do that if you will. You'll gain more insight. The real way that we create change is through gaining insight and then putting it into application and practicing it until we get better. Relationship success is a skill. It's not inherited. And if there's anything you're going to hear me say over and over again on this Human Intimacy podcast, love is learned. It's a skill. How to communicate, how to have compassion, how to be with people when they're struggling in their emotions, and how to resolve problems. All right, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for taking your time. May you be blessed in your pursuit of happiness. And if you're really struggling and if you really don't know where to turn to, you don't have to do this alone. Join us. We have the Relationship Dilemma. It's a course I did with Dr. Dave Robinson to really get couples who were really struggling to think through their decisions, to learn how to solve problems, to work through their differences. If you're interested, the Relationship Dilemma course is available. I encourage you to find solutions. Don't give up until you've put everything into this relationship. And once you've done that, if things don't change, then you will at least know that you did your best. All right, I wanna close with a quote by Barbara Fredrickson she says love is the essential nutrient that your cells crave. Isn't that beautiful? Love is the essential nutrient that your cells crave. Mine too. Mine too. May each of us be blessed in creating that love, because that will make our society better and stronger. Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. May you be blessed in your pursuit of human intimacy.