Your Two Competing Drives That Sabotage Your Relationship

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 there, welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today's topic is how your mind's 2 competing drives sabotage your relationships. But first up, my win and my fail. So my fail is that I'm superhuman, not superhuman, but really human, and I succumbed to a lot of the things that I thought I didn't when it comes to COVID. Many of us have experienced the kind of, you know, the lock-in aspect of COVID that's prevented us from going out, going to concerts, going to big events, all the things that we were doing before. And I just recently got invited to a Black psychotherapist meetup, which was fantastic. I went to it back in February, right before COVID hit, and had a wonderful time. It was the inaugural event. And so now they— Stévan Lewis, who puts this whole thing on, decided to put on another one. And he did a phenomenal job of keeping everybody safe. Everyone had to be vaccinated or tested right before the event, and it was really wonderful. But as I was preparing to go, I noticed that I started to feel kind of like, oh, I don't want to go. I've been so used to sitting home. And especially this weekend, my kids are out of town. I was thinking, I can just lay on the couch. We don't really need to go because we're so used to doing things on Zoom. So my fail is that I allowed myself to sink into that feeling of staying in and not venturing out. My win is that I did not give into it. I know that when you feed a monster of dysfunction, it grows. And so the very last thing I was going to do was give into it. So I said to myself, Zoe, number one, you like people, you love going out and engaging. Number two, You know that you will enjoy it once you get there, and you know that it's good for you. Networking, socializing with people is always good. And number 3, just go. You already committed. You already— I was supposed to pick my friend Wen up. You're going. And so I did. I went. And the beautiful part is that I was rewarded with a wonderful experience. I got to see old friends, which was so sweet, meet new friends, which was wonderful, make great connections, and it was a good night, and I didn't grow my monster. So My win and my fail are wrapped up in one. I'm human. So on to the topic today, how your mind's 2 competing drives sabotage your relationship. Did you know that when you're interacting in your relationships, you have 2 competing internal parts that influence your interactions? It's often why things are so complicated in relationships sometimes. And of course, to further the complicated situation, don't forget that your partner also has 2 competing parts 2 that you are communicating with. These competing parts are the drive to connect and the drive to protect. And it's why you sometimes feel so conflicted in your relationships, especially when the stakes are high. Despite what you may think, listen, our brains are not wired to be productive and happy, successful, and achieve all the things you want in life. No, our brains were wired first for survival. Think of continuation of the species. Our limbic system is the instinctive part of our brain that reacts and is wired for survival, right? It keeps us alive. The amygdala is the part of the limbic system, but it houses our emotional brain that we feel with and we experience pleasure. It's wired for emotional responses, which can sometimes lead toward connection. But these 2 drives, protection and connection, are constantly competing, and often the drive for survival comes first. It wins out. Especially if there's any strife or discomfort in your relationship. When things are feeling pretty perfect, they're going smoothly, our limbic system calms down and our drive for connection steers the boat. Now you would think that our brains want us to be happy, right? And to a certain extent it does, but that is not its main goal. That would be nice, but your brain knows that more important than being happy is being alive. So we're constantly competing with ourselves and others because of these 2 drives. And as I seek to help you have a better relationship with yourself and your partner, I want you to look at these 2 competing parts. The drive to connect is easily expressed when you sense that your partner is reliable, understanding, when you feel like he loves you and he's committed to the relationship. It's easy then, of course, to be warm, to move towards them, to share your desires to connect. That's ease. But if you worry that your partner is not completely trustworthy with your emotions, then your drive to protect gets triggered. Think about if you're walking in a dark alley at night and you've been told it's dangerous to walk there or in the dark, and you hear a noise. You're probably gonna turn, you're gonna look all around, and you're gonna be more watchful as you walk down the street. Every sound will feel like a threat, right? You've been there where you just keep looking around. And if you were walking during the day and you heard sounds, you may not even think twice about it. This is what happens when your limbic system gets triggered in relationships. You're on the lookout and everything looks like a potential proof that your partner doesn't care about you or that he's dangerous in some way. Basically, you feel like you're in danger of being rejected or hurt. Now, some people have a stronger drive to protect because of their early history and wiring that has taught them that the world and maybe people in general are not safe. If this is what you've learned and you notice that you often think these types of thoughts, if you notice that you tend to see danger everywhere, that you feel a little distrustful, then you probably have a stronger drive to protect. And this drive looks like shutting down emotionally, communicating with sarcasm, Being irritable or defensive, and you may constantly feel suspicious. You might give the silent treatment or distance yourself from your partner when what you really want is to be close to them. You might find fault in them. You might act rude. You might highlight their faults and mistakes, all because you're fearful of being vulnerable. And sometimes we do this, and I've seen myself do this, and even as I'm being irritable or being defensive, I'll notice I'm asking myself, like, what are you doing, Zoe? What's going on? Because that's not really what I want to do, but my drive to protect kind of just rises up and it overcomes my drive for connection. And it could be that you notice your partner is doing this to you. He might be responding from a protective mechanism that's undermining your relationship. And see, the thing is, it feels okay. You feel justified in your behavior, and then gaining space from your partner makes you feel temporarily safer. But what you're actually doing is damaging the relationship. Self-protection is this ironic thing because it paradoxically ends up creating the very thing that we don't want, which is less intimacy and less security. Men and women do this equally. It's like trying to walk towards something by walking away from it. It just doesn't work. So the question isn't whether offenses are going to come into your relationship. They will. The question is, what do you do with offenses? What do you do when you're hurt? Sometimes you're not even getting hurt by the things that are said. It's what's not said. It's those unmet expectations. They're the breeding grounds sometimes for, for feeling offended. And see, the more intimate your relationship, the higher the potential for offense. That's why family is sometimes so difficult. That's why Thanksgiving Day is like, you know, getting ready to step on grenades because the closer we are with people. the more likely we are to be offended by the things. So it's not that he's ever looked at you and said, I don't care about you, right? It's that he forgot to kiss you goodbye when he always does. He didn't make a big deal about your birthday, or he blew you off when you were venting to him about your difficult day at work. You wanna put up an emotional barrier to prevent you from being wounded. You might decide, I'm not apologizing first, I apologized last time. Or, he forgot to kiss me goodbye? Well, I'm not gonna say anything, but I'm gonna hold onto that for protection. I may be able to use it in the future. You might think, I wish I could give him a hug, but I'm not going to. I need to teach him a lesson. I need to protect myself. So what can you do about it? How do you stop your competing desire for protection from sabotaging your relationship? First, when things get heated or emotional, just ask yourself, am I responding from a place of protection or connection? If it's protection, Which you may recognize over time as your default mechanism, how do you move towards connection? Conventional faith-based advice might be turn the other cheek. Just love your husband through this. Don't hold on to offenses. Just lay them at the feet of God and love your husband anyway, showing up joyful and giving and open. Now, I do think we should lay everything at the feet of God, but otherwise— This advice works wonders if you have a mature reciprocal relationship, but what if you don't? Is it really healthy for you, for your husband, or your marriage to allow yourself to be slighted time and again? For your needs to not matter in a relationship? No, we are not called to this. We have to be discerning about our dynamics that are going on so that there's balance, because we hurt ourselves when we allow other people to hurt us with no boundaries. The good news though is that those 2 competing parts of your brain, the protection and the connection, can dance together in the healthiest of ways if you let them. Second, you need to ask yourself, what is it you feel you need to protect yourself from? And does this have a valid foundation? Meaning, has your husband repeatedly acted in such a way on this issue that has led you to distrust him? If the answer is yes, then you are not being unnecessarily defensive. Your emotional reaction is valid and it's necessarily protective. But that doesn't mean you're free to give all the silent treatment you wanna give. It doesn't mean it's time to distance yourself. No, remember, even with a valid reason, this kind of behavior still hurts relationships. 3, you can protect yourself by erecting healthy boundaries, being clear what behavior you will and you won't tolerate, yet still being open and communicative. You're not distancing, you're not giving the silent treatment, but instead you're acknowledging your brain's desire to protect you. You're gonna honor that and then recognize that your relationship Issues do not equal danger, and instead walk through the fear and voice all of your issues to your partner. Number 4, it's helpful to remind yourself that you are both on the same team. He is not the enemy. Focus on his efforts because they're probably there, and try to see him through a lens of trust, not suspicion. Number 5, listen to his point of view with an open mind and look for the grain of truth. There is often a grain of truth, even when we go and want to go straight straight to defensiveness. If you stop and hear the grain of truth, you're going to get so much further. So express how you feel clearly without using hedging words. Hedging words negate what you just said. So if you say something and then you negate it, it almost doesn't count. So if you say things like, I think, maybe, is that okay, kind of, don't do that. Instead, speak clearly and definitely. I feel, I want, I know. Those kinds of words are clear. And don't interrupt. Interrupting is protective, not connective. Often we're just reacting without consciously thinking of our reactions or the motivations for them. So now that you're aware, you can protect yourself if necessary, and you can connect at the same time. It might be difficult to move away from protective behavior in relationship, but with conscious intention, you can succeed in making a space for true Truth and honesty that needs no cloak of protection, my friend. You've got this. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Broken Places. We're not fixing them, we're fixing you, and that changes everything. Subscribe, share this episode, and I look forward to connecting with you on social media. Hit me up and have a strong week.