I Didn’t Sign Up For This: What To Do When Your Relationship Doesn't Look Like The One You...

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey, welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and I'm so excited to talk about what happens when you didn't sign up for this, when your relationship does not look like the one that you said yes to. I've certainly been there. I'm sure you have too. So I'm excited to talk to Dr. Tracy D. DalGyesh about What happens when you didn't sign up for this? But before we dive into the conversation, I'm going to share my win and my fail as I do weekly. So my fail is that my nanny quit and it's disappointing, but I'll tell you my actual fail. So I recently got a nanny to help me out when I need to be 2 places at once, because that's impossible. And so it's been great. She's only been here for a few weeks, but I got a live-in nanny and it has been wonderful. But when I came home on Sunday from a trip, she quit, and it turns out she's allergic to our dogs. Now, I did know she was allergic to dogs when I interviewed her. She was the best candidate. Everything was perfect about her except all of her allergies. That's not the only allergy she has, but she assured me that it would be fine, that, you know, my dogs were here when she was here on the interview, and she didn't respond. Long, long story that I'm not going to bore you with, but ultimately, Ultimately, she could not take the dogs. And my dogs are Labradoodles. They are generally considered to be allergy-friendly or hypoallergenic, but some people do still respond to Labradoodles, and she happens to be one of them. And she couldn't breathe. And so she had to quit, and it was disappointing, but it was my fail because I should not have hired a nanny who's allergic to dogs when I have multiple dogs in my house. It doesn't matter how great she was, which she was, if she can't tolerate my dogs, it's not going to work, and it didn't. So my fail: I overlooked something I shouldn't have overlooked, even though, yes, she reassured me it would be fine, but I just shouldn't have done it, which has put me in the difficult predicament of having to find somebody else. So my win: I'm going to be going to Sarasota, Florida in January to speak at the Hope Writers Conference. Speak is actually kind of an understatement because I've been host of Hope Writers for close to a year now, and Hope Writers is a community that supports writers of faith and making progress in their writing towards ultimately writing and publishing a book. So if you're a writer, I do invite you to look into joining Hope Writers. I will put the link in my show notes. And if you could benefit from a writer's conference, come on to Sarasota in January. It's January 17th through the 19th. It's going to be beautiful, and we are going to have a great couple days of supporting writers. I'll be giving a workshop, and I'll be giving a short keynote about mining your past for diamonds and how to change your hard story into your hope story. I've got a lot of So that's my win. I'm excited to travel to Sarasota and speak and, and really just hang out and encourage other writers of faith. But first, I've got to find a new nanny. Okay, so on to the topic, I Didn't Sign Up for This, with Dr. Tracy D. Dr. Tracy is a clinical psychologist and relationship expert who is on a mission to help couples break old relationship cycles and find joy in their relationships again. She's the owner of Integrated Wellness, a mental health practice in Ottawa, Ontario, and she's been working with individuals and couples for 17 years. Her forthcoming debut book, I Didn't Sign Up for This: A Couple Shares Real-Life Stories of Breaking Patterns and Finding Joy in Relationships, including her own, a couples therapist shares that. The book helps readers learn how to get unstuck in their relationships. Dr. Tracy's popular Instagram account, @DrTracyD has more than 200, I think 250,000 followers, which has allowed Dr. Tracy to bring her therapeutic expertise and advice to a broader audience looking for help in their relationships. So listen in, we're going to talk all about what happens when you did not sign up for this. Listen in. Dr. Tracy, I'm so thrilled to have you on today, and thank you for making time to come when your book is coming out in a hot minute. I know it must be crazy busy for you right now.

It's such a busy and exciting time. Dr. Zoe, thank you so much for inviting me into your space, and I'm so excited for our conversation today.

Me too. And I love the topic because I think everyone at some point has gotten into a relationship, a long-term relationship, a marriage, and felt like, wait, this is not what I signed up for. So I love the topic of your book, the title, and I'm excited to dive into it. So can you tell my listeners, how did you come to a place Of writing this book, of wanting to write about couples stuck? And I say stuck because when we feel like I didn't sign up for this, then I think the next feeling is I'm stuck, or now what?

100%. Gosh, just a passion to be able to share with a broader audience outside of my therapy room, to share with those who maybe aren't able to get to therapy or who are not interested, or their partner's not interested at this time, or the kids are too young and it's hard to get to the office, it's such a value of mine to be able to reach more people outside of my therapy room. And that's really what comes first in all of the work that I do.

Mm-hmm.

And the book came out of continuing to sit in front of couples who are blending, couples who are dealing with in-laws and family challenges, couples navigating the mental load, having children, or really just trying to create a healthy relationship. I continued to hear the same thing over and over again. And it wasn't just with the couples. It then became also the mothers I was sitting in front of and sometimes the men who were showing up in my office.

Yes.

I didn't sign up for this. This isn't the relationship I wanted. How did we get here? And the piece that really took me by surprise, despite all of my training and all of the skills that I have and the tools that I know of what to use in my own relationship, is finding myself crying in the shower saying those very words. I didn't sign up for this after my second was born, and I was in a well of deep resentment in my own marriage.

I love that you're so willing to be vulnerable and share not just from a professional disconnected point of view, but from your own personal life.

I think it's so important what we're doing today in terms of these conversations that we're having. And it's, it's a really interesting experience. I imagine you had something similar in your training, which was to be told to be a blank slate.

Yes.

To be told to not be on social media. That was the message we received in the first week of our training. And how interesting it is to be— gosh, what are we, 17 years from that first day for me? 17, 18 years. And now to be saying, you know, if I'm not showing up in this space, other people are. Other people are doing this work.

Right.

And I always think back to this one time she was working with this mom. And the first few sessions, I kept trying to understand what was happening for her. She was coming because she had 2 young children. She felt disconnected in her marriage. And it almost felt like there was a wall between us. And of course, I tell all my clients, I recommend not following me on social media. I can't guarantee your privacy if you're liking and commenting, right? And some people choose to still engage. And she happened to come in for maybe session 5 or 6, and she said, I saw your Instagram stories. I saw you struggling in motherhood and wondering if you are good enough and like you're failing all the time. And in that session, the wall that she had built between us had crumbled down. Because she said, I can see you as a human now. And you sit in this office, you're dressed as we are when we're seeing clients, and they don't get to see the humanness. And so really showing up in this space and in the book felt like saying, I'm human.

Mm-hmm.

And despite knowing how to communicate, how to get out of cycles and difficult patterns, I still come to the table with all of my own fears and old wounds and hard moments that I have to work through too. So it's through story that I'm hoping people will learn how to navigate their own relationship and build interdependence and connection. So I take you through 4 stories, 4 couples, and how they did the work in my therapy room, as well as the changes that we made in my own Marriage.

I love that. I love that. We know, and we're told in all aspects of business, of speaking life, that stories are the thing that connect us. Stories are the thing that move us. We humans are just emotionally invested in story. And so I'm so glad that you were able to use that in your write. I can't wait to read it. I can't wait to read it. Thank you. The combination of story and actual real-life help. So for the woman or the man, because hello guys out there, I know you guys listen to the podcast too, who are feeling like, you know what, that's me, I feel like I did not sign up for this. Can you provide, probably from your book, some first steps? And what can you do when you find yourself in a marriage that you didn't sign up for?

Yeah, I think one of the things we need to do is really step back and understand what's happening for ourselves. What are the feelings and the needs that are happening? And what does that cycle look like between you and your partner? We all get stuck in cycles, and we all have ways of communicating that at times are not so helpful. So taking stock of what's happening for you, and you can look at the communication patterns like how Drs. John and Julie Gottman outline with the 4 negative communication patterns, the 4 Horsemen.

Horsemen.

Do you tend to get critical? Are you defensive? Are you— do you use contempt to communicate? Or do you stonewall and shut down? And when we can start to bring attention to the ways we try to get our needs met, we can then start to shift into doing something that's more healthy, that is going to help your partner understand what you want and need. I talk about the different cycles that Dr. Sue Johnson talks about in her book, Hold Me Tight, and in emotionally focused couples therapy. And we all have these cycles. And That there's the common— the 3 common ones are the find the bad guy, where both partners are blaming the other person for the problem.

Right.

The other one is the pursue-withdraw, where one person is looking for connection and pursuing and looking for the other person, and the other person is either getting defensive or withdrawing in response to that. It's like, as I knock on your door, hello, are you there for me? The other one shuts down and doesn't open the door.

Yeah.

And that third one is the— and that's called the polka dance. And the third one is the freeze and flee. And that is both partners shut down and they don't talk to each other. Those are the couples that say like, oh, we never fight. Things are always good for us. We're good.

And then with all that layer of resentment underneath, all

underneath there. And those are the couples that show up to my therapy room and they don't really look at each other, but they're kind of like eyeing, like giving the side eye and like, oh no, we didn't talk about that. And And deep. So what we know is we get stuck in these patterns of communication, and over time, these hard events show up and we start sharing more negative emotions like anger, resentment, frustration. And then we start to miss each other in terms of meeting each other's needs.

Right.

And working from an attachment perspective, we talk about our core longings and needs, meaning, do I feel important to you? Do I feel like I matter? Am I enough for you? Am I adequate? And so once we start to recognize what pattern of communication we are in, we can stop that negative cycle and then we can start going underneath that to what are the needs and longings we have.

Hmm.

When I fight with my husband, if I'm— let's just use like the socks on the floor. If the socks are left on the floor and I've— how many times have I said please The socks in the laundry bin, right?

Yes.

It's often not about the socks,

right?

Because when I'm close and connected with him and we feel like we're in a good spot, I can be like, oh, the socks. That's right. He's got a busy work meeting today and the kids and all the things. I'll pick them up, put them in the laundry bin. But when we're in a place of distress, if we haven't connected, if we feel like things aren't fair or we're fighting more, we're disagreeing more, I look at the socks and I go to him and I'm like, you never put the socks away.

Right.

And those are the moments where we get stuck.

You know, I think a great question, because the socks might matter, right? They might matter.

Mm-hmm.

But when you start to get angry, especially when it's the same thing over and over again, I think it's a great question to say, like, what do the socks mean to me? What, what does this, like, what's the story I'm telling myself about my partner and my relationship? Regarding these socks? Because it's not just the socks, but it's, he doesn't care about me, right? He, he doesn't care about our home, or he thinks I'm just here to, you know, be the house slave. Whatever the, the message is, I think it's important to ask yourself, what is that? Because that's the thing that you need to go talk to your partner about, not necessarily the socks.

Yeah, that feeling of like, I feel like I'm invisible and like you never see me and Um, that is what— and, and so often we don't slow down to then ask ourselves that question. What does this mean? What am I telling myself? And then checking it out, because I know for a lot of people, we build these narratives, but they actually come from previous relationships.

Right.

Right. And so then we, we show up in this relationship trying to work through those old experiences when actually your partner Maybe open to receiving information, but you go to them in a way because in your, your early childhood relationships, they were critical or they shut you down. And so then you don't go and do it in this relationship. So we've gotta work through the stuff within ourselves, but then also of like how we go to our partner to share that underneath longing and need.

Dr. Tracy, I think that is such a great point. And I think that's also how we get to a point sometimes in a relationship that might start out really good. And how we get to a point of being stuck is that we forget not to project our past relationship onto this one. And in some ways, we can almost, you know, we get into it and we almost just recreate the same thing. Now, whether it was with a past romantic relationship or even with, you know, a parenting relationship, but we, we can easily, if we're not very intentional, recreate that relationship. And then the next thing we know, this relationship that started out very different, we've helped mold it into something that we didn't want. And maybe if we look at, you know, I'm blanking. Imago, you know, like Imago therapy. Maybe the purpose is because we're trying to fix or heal, you know, that past relationship or the issues from that past relationship. But I think the importance is to become aware. Right. So I love that you are suggesting pay attention to the cycles, pay attention to the things that hurt you or bother you the most. And what they mean to you and, and how you can then approach your partner about it. I love that.

For people who are looking to dig a little bit more into this, I like asking the questions of, did I choose a partner who does what an early caregiver did to me?

Love it.

Am I doing to my partner what my early caregiver did to me? Or have I internalized my caregiver and I'm now doing it to myself in this relationship?

Those are fantastic questions. Yeah.

So if we think of the highly critical parent who said things like, oh, 95%? Where's the other 5%? Or do better. You know better than to hit your sibling or whatever, those kinds of— critical pieces, or maybe even watching your parents be critical with each other.

Yeah,

you might today then be the critical partner in your relationship. You know what it sounds like, it was modeled to you. Of course you know that, right?

Yes.

Um, or you found the partner who is critical to you, and so then you are then playing that same role that maybe you did as a child. Or within your relationship, then you criticize yourself so much that you struggle to even turn to your partner because maybe even you think they're going to criticize you. And you keep reenacting that. They're powerful patterns that we unconsciously engage in.

It's so powerful. And it is completely unconscious. And that's why I want to— that's why I have this podcast to help bring those things, you know, into consciousness. Because once we see something, we can't unsee it.

And, and so true.

Yeah, it is. And it's beautiful. And it's powerful in many different ways. And so for you listener out there, I'm hoping that you're starting to see some things that you will now no longer be able to unsee. And that's the very first step. And I, as you were talking about that, and I'm thinking back to my early marriage, I did both of those things. I was both critical because I had that Type A personality, so driven as an athlete. And I had, you know, the critical coach and the critical dad who was like, great, you won that race, but you didn't break the record. You know, and my dad never didn't mean to be that way, but that was just how he was. And, and then also I approached him from a way of expecting him to judge and criticize me. And so then I was already either on the defensive or I held things in because I made an assumption about the way he must think or feel about what I would, you know, what I was going to tell him. And in that way, I wasn't able to show up authentically in my marriage. Yeah. And when you're not able to show up authentically in a marriage, even when the person loves you, you don't feel loved. And so it's, it's this whole cycle, right?

I, I feel like I'm in good company here because I'm also a fellow blamer and my own high standards and high expectations of myself. And something I've really come to, um, build space for or acceptance or even maybe honoring is that perfectionist part of me. And how she has helped me do all of the things that I have done. And then also at times too, and of course, recognizing that that does come from— I remember those comments of, oh, you've got 98 on a calculus test. Where's the other 2%? Which of course comes from their own generation of how they were parented. And then also really stepping into that space of her parents did the best that they did, that they could with what they had. Right.

And we're doing the best we can now with these kids that we—

I know. Oh my word. And then all of this information that we're holding, right? It is— this time of parenting is incredibly hard.

It is.

We are doing so much reparenting for ourselves. The boom of information available to us is overwhelming at best. And then we're so hard on ourselves. But it's interesting when we think about the pressures we put on ourselves. And how we experience things. And then we show up to our partner with the very same thing. And it was so easy at times. I can remember distinctly trying to put my toddler's little Strider bike in the trunk, and my newborn is crying. Wow. And then he's crying. And there was a bin in the trunk. My husband's not home. And he had put the bin in the trunk because that's where the bin is kept and the grocery bin. And as I'm trying to put the bike in, all I'm thinking is, Greg, it's all your fault. How could you? Right? It's like this release of blame and frustration and anger because deep down inside, what was actually happening in that moment is I'm so overstimulated. I feel like I've lost control. My kids are crying. I'm not a good mom.

Yep.

My identity is upside down, and I don't know what to do with all of this.

Yes.

And it was so easy to then just grab the phone and text my husband and say, why would you leave that in the— and I mean, really, he wasn't even there, so it's not his fault.

Well, I'm doing this deep dive into shame this year as I'm writing my book. And what I hear as you're saying that is that's a shame response, right? It's a shame response. You're feeling this shame about Not being a good mother, not being good enough. And your response is to project it. Let me try to get rid of this feeling by projecting my anger onto my husband. And—

The anger binds onto the shame, though, right?

Yes, it does.

In the sense that how can I possibly even access— well, even understanding the anger, because of course I'm angry. I've lost control. Things feel unfair. And anger tells me something so important. But I guess we could almost flip it in a way, right? Like I'm outwardly angry, but then shame is binded to it and I don't access what's in the shame. And then if we even flip it the other way, when shame binds onto other emotions, we can't process that emotion because shame blocks it.

Absolutely. It does. It's such a difficult, a difficult emotion to try to process. Yeah.

It can

be quite painful if you're not. Very intentional. And once again, that word aware. Aware.

Aware. I, which is the first section of my book, I've called it aware because that's what clients do when they first come in, right? We build this awareness of what's happening. And you talk about shame in different ways. And so for the listener who would be thinking like, yeah, I've been in that moment where I just want to get angry at my partner, is that a helpful shame or an unhelpful shame?

Well, I don't know that shame is ever necessarily a healthy, we can call it defense mechanism or place to go. Anger is though. Anger certainly is. Anger tells us something's wrong and it can motivate us to change. I think that when we attach shame onto it though, it convolutes it. And it's generally, it's kind of like a sabotaging emotion because then we're not able to really process the anger in a healthy way. So I would have to say probably an unhealthy shame.

Yeah. So interesting how it shows up, though, in all of these quiet moments where that core stuff isn't addressed. I can just kind of think of not yet being able to access that sense of worthiness as a mother in that moment. And I was just recently with a client, and I had asked the client to identify the things that Make her a good mom. And she was like, this is just so hard to do.

Yeah.

Right. And so then that sense of unworthiness shows up day to day, and we struggle to see what makes us good, what makes us who we are.

Right. And that's where I go back to those stories. Like, how did you learn this about yourself? How did you learn that you were, were unworthy? Who taught you that? What were, what were the words? Or sometimes I always talk about the fact that the things we learn most deeply and kind of embed most deeply in our psyche are actually never spoken to us, which makes them so confusing because maybe a parent never said, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you know, you're, you know, Lazy or bad. Maybe parents never said those words and never would have, but yet—

Most don't.

Most don't. Right. But then somehow we get those messages, just like, that's great. That's great. You won the race. What about this? My father never said that's not good enough, but what I incorporated is not good enough.

Right.

Right. And so we have to look back at those events and the words that weren't spoken, but the messages that came to us. Yeah.

I share a story in the book about how I learned to be a good girl and a people pleaser. And it's interesting because it's not the— this is the experience. This is the human experience where it's not that my parents ever said to me, you must be a good girl all the time.

Mm-hmm.

You must make sure everybody else is happy. But yet through those small interactions where my feelings and needs weren't seen, what I needed in that moment wasn't given. And I also couldn't vocalize it because as children struggle to do that, because our brain's not there yet, we internalize those messages. And I'm thinking about the other client that I share in the book, Ashley. She comes to therapy. She has 2 young kids. And her husband says, you're the problem. You have anxiety. You go to therapy. And underneath so much of the anxiety is, well, the behavior that she engages in is people pleasing.

Right.

And she's fused to her husband. She's repeating cycles of what she would do with her mom. She's doing it with her husband. So there's a lot of codependency in there. And underneath all of that, though, is like, am I good? I keep doing all these things because I'm trying to seek the approval from other people.

Yes. When I think about— so one of the things that I talk about a lot on this podcast is that we're not trying to fix them, we're fixing you, and that changes everything. And so when I heard you say, He's like, you are the problem, right? One of my first responses is, you're not, but you are, right? But not in the way that he's saying you are. You are not the problem in the way that he's saying you are, but your responsibility is to work on changing you so that you show up differently in your life. And so when I think about codependency, or I think about the work that she needed to do, it's not It's really taking away that self-blame and not attaching his story, which is I'm bad, I'm unworthy. It's instead figuring out how do I enhance my strengths? How do I show up in a healthy way? How can I have healthier boundaries so that I'm not having this experience with my husband? So yes, it's all about fixing you, but not because you're the problem.

Right. Yeah. Right. I love how you have reframed that. Where were you last year when I was writing this book? But And you in the depths of your own book right now. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And I think so many people resist showing up to do this work because they get stuck in the, well, my husband's not here, or my partner's not here, and they need to change too. This isn't just me. And it's like, yes. And you happen to be here, and you're the one ready to do this work. Not because you're the issue as like an entity and based on what they're saying, but because when we can tap into our own meaning, when we can tap into our own identities to be able to say, here's what I feel, here's what I need, these are my boundaries, this is how I'm going to do self and other to communicate myself, but then also see you as a separate person. When we do that work, We feel different. And then we know that over time, the whole cycle can start to change. If every time you go to your partner and you start the sentence with, you never, you always, what, what does that trigger for them? What does that lead someone to respond with? A defensive response, right?

Yes.

Of course you're going to be on defense because someone's coming at you,

right?

But then you go to your partner and you say, Gosh, I feel so empty right now. I just like, I need connection time with us. Can we put our phones away tonight? Do you have anything? Me? No. Okay, let's do it tonight and let's just cuddle on the couch so that we can kind of fill up this need. And you might go to them and the first time they might still get defensive because they're not used to you showing up in that way. But the more you keep doing that, then it gives them this opportunity to maybe then see Huh. Oh yeah, you're not coming at me. I can respond differently. I could feel that. Yeah. Oh, you're saying you need something. It's not about me and my defectiveness. It's about you and me. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And just, and just switching from, you know, you need to do this to when you do this for me, it makes me feel loved. It makes me feel more connected. All of a sudden you're giving your partner directions on how to love you better instead of a honey to-do list. Just shifting that mindset for your partner, just in the way that you approach him or her, makes a huge difference.

I'm curious how you show up to the feedback. So here we are as therapists, and gosh, it sounds so easy when we're saying this on a podcast. I— and I know this, and, and it's also— I know this to the— to my core of that When I have to go and say it in all of these ways with my partner, but actually I'm angry and I wanna stay in my anger, right? So what, what do you say to people when they say, Dr. Zoe, I don't sound like that. I can't say it like that.

Or I'll also hear, I feel like you're, that's a game. Like you're trying to, to teach me how to play this game with my partner. And you know what I often say is, number one, I acknowledge it. You're right. You don't talk like me. So let's figure out how you would say something like that. Does that, just me saying that, does that resonate with you? That when your partner does this, it makes you feel loved? And I might go, yeah, it does. Okay. So how would you say that? How would you say that to your partner? And when I, when I get the game thing, like I just want to live and I just want to be me and I don't want to have to think about what I have to say, you know, I ask them. But does it matter to you how your partner approaches you? You know, um, would you want your partner to always just say things right off the cuff that might be very hurtful to you, especially if they're not aware that they're hurtful to you? Or would you rather them come to you in a loving way because they do care? And is that a worthy investment into your relationship to pay attention to the way that you speak to your partner? So that's kind of how I respond. And often people will get on board when we don't They can take away this mindset of, now I've got to pay attention and come to my marriage as if I'm this therapist and speak in this other way. It's really just helping them figure out, how would you say it in your words? What would it sound like for you?

Yeah. How do you feel? I often talk about how, yes, definitely adding to what you're saying. So it is about like, let's find how you can express it. And then I like to use the analogy of riding a bike or putting on your mascara. You know, you think of getting on the bike. What leg do you put on first? Which one do you put over first? Okay, so next time I want you to imagine actually putting over the other leg.

Wow, I like that.

And just because it was COVID a few years back and I was with my spin bike in the basement and I did it, I did it. I mastered doing the other leg. So every time I would show up to the bike, I would put my right leg over, buckle, buckle hands and go. And then I said, I'm going to challenge my body. to do the left side. I almost fell over. But like the first, I don't know, 5, 10 times, I almost fell over.

Mm-hmm.

Which demonstrates that neural connection we have in our brain. Yes. That is automatic. We don't have to think about it, which then maps back to your early childhood experience where you saw someone vocalize a need either to you or about you or around you. And that then becomes that pathway. So then now you go to your partner and you do it in the same way that your parent did.

A deeply dug trench. Yeah.

Oh, it's so— it's this like well-traveled path and you're going, you're trying to do it differently. You're gonna fall off the bike. So then you do it again and again and again and it'll start to feel different over time. But we, we, um, We as humans don't like to have to wait, or we don't— we, we can sometimes be impatient, right? We want things now. We want them to be easy. But instead, what I encourage people to, to come to terms with or to understand is that when you feel discomfort, when there is tension, those are the spaces where you're growing. Mm-hmm.

Yes. And in that tension—

You need to sit in that.

You do. You need to sit in it. And so as you said that, I just thought, so I wonder when you're in that space of, I didn't sign up for this, if you could take a second, because anger and frustration and sadness and fear is going to be there and is all a part of it. And we want to honor that feeling too. But I wonder if you could just take a second and think, what am I learning from this? Like, where and how can I grow in this space? And share that at some point with my partner.

I love that.

Yeah. So we have just a few minutes left and I wanted to, I wanted to chat maybe a minute about interdependence versus codependence. And then, and then I'd like to invite you to give someone who's in this space of feeling stuck a little bit of hope.

Oh, okay. Gosh. Interdependence. Interdependence is about putting together autonomy and intimacy.

Mm-hmm.

And when we say it that way, it actually sounds easy, but it is one of the hardest things that we are trying to do in our relationships. We're trying to coexist or co-create. And so that space of autonomy is recognizing the differentiation, the individuation and separation between you and your partner. Fancy psychologist words. We don't need to use those. But basically what it means is I am me and you are you, and I have all of my own thoughts, feelings, desires, and that makes me who I am. And when we then see our partner as having their own thoughts and feelings and desires, we can start seeing that there's the separateness between us.

Right.

And we don't want to get stuck in hyper-independence. Independence. I will never forget my, gosh, I don't know, 60-year-old supervisor. I was a fresh 21-year-old in my undergrad doing my honors thesis. And I said to him, I get it. I'm independent. I'm securely attached. I'm researching attachment with couples. It was my first, right? And he's like, Tracy. And where we go as Perfectionists, high achievers, right? He says independence is fine. Interdependence is better.

That's such a beautiful statement. I'm going to keep that. I love it.

And that, that I was like, okay, so like, you know, I'm good. Like, come on, I'm good on my own. I'm good. And it's like, no, you can be good on your own. And then you also need to know what it means to turn to somebody and to lean on them and to consider their world with your world. And when you can do those 2 spaces, you can feel close and connected. So that intimacy part. So then when we swing into codependency, then we lose the I. We lose being able to express our own feelings. We fear separation and distance.

Right.

And we do things out of hopes of remaining loved and connected rather than if we think of interdependence, of being able to have the I, To sit in discomfort if my partner's upset, and then to also then go towards connection to be able to say, how can I support you in this space of you being upset? So, for example, let's just take something like my husband wants to talk about something. I have a boundary. It's like, oh, it's like 9:00 PM. This is work-related. I've shut off my work brain. Is our business on fire? No. Cool. We have to do it tomorrow. That's my I. I am saying I'm tapped out. I need to hold this till tomorrow. And I can see it's hard for him. And so when we're co-creating together, I can say to him, I get it. It's hard for you in this moment. This feels really important and pressing for you. And I know you, and I appreciate you bringing that to me. And I can also appreciate how hard it is that we have to wait for tomorrow. So self and other, we have to coexist through that.

That is a beautiful, beautiful explanation of independence and codependence. And I love that. I'm going to save that statement. Independence is good. Interdependence is better. Thank you so much, Dr. Tracy. So can we just leave our listeners with a little bit, just a little bit of hope if they're feeling very stuck in a relationship that isn't what they signed up for?

My message for hope. This is acknowledging all relationships go through seasons of change and seasons of struggle. And one of the things we need to accept in life is that in order to know true joy, we also need to know what pain looks like.

Hmm.

Pain doesn't mean we need to push it away or ignore it or not do anything. It simply means that we need to acknowledge when it's there and then start doing that work for us. us to show up differently. And when you feel disconnected, you can start making those small choices towards each other, even when it's hard. I hear, I hear all the time couples who are really stuck in deep resentment. Why should I do this when she's not doing that? And I don't want to do that because he's not doing that. And instead being able to say, what can I do today to turn towards my partner? that is within my control to be able to show appreciation, to show my love for them, to show that I'm here with them, that I'm still choosing them. And sometimes it is just the smallest moment of pouring their coffee, sending that text of saying, I appreciate you got the kids out the door this morning. Just those small, frequent things, even in those— let's normalize those seasons of disconnection.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for those words of wisdom. We're not fixing them, we're fixing you. And that changes everything. Dr. Tracy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How can people find your book? How can people find you? I'll put it in the show notes too.

Wonderful. Thank you. One of my favorite things to do after podcasting is to have people come into my DMs and send me a message. I am on social, so Dr. Tracy D. I'm mostly over on Instagram. Say hello. Let me know what stood out for you from our conversation today. And then my book is over at drtracyd.com/book, and there are lots of resources there. And I'm so excited to hear from people once they read it.

That's awesome. And I see it's already ranking on Amazon even though it's not out.

I know. I know. How exciting.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes go out on Tuesdays. Subscribe to my email list So that you don't miss an episode and so that you can get some weekly encouragement from me. Have a strong week.