How Can I Help My Partner Feel Worthy? - with Suzie & James Pawelski on Optimize Coach

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The pandemic and my wife, who is a high school math teacher. And so she is virtual. Right. But they are going to be reintroducing teachers and students going back physically into a school building. But all of this is producing not only stress, but also time spent having to plan and create lessons and teach on screens. And all this that she feels is taking away from her time with me and with Quinn, our baby. And I've been trying to do whatever I can to, you know, take care of the dishes and laundry and, you know, give Quinn her bottle and all that sort of thing. But there's this other side of her that feels like she's not doing enough and feels bad about having to spend so much time working and is frustrated, but again, wants to be the best teacher she can be and the best partner and the best mother. And so I was just curious if you had some advice thoughts on that of like, I asked a question last year from the first coaching class and about relationships, and Brian just told me, focus on yourself. Don't worry about her. So I've gotten that part down, focusing on me doing what I can unilaterally wise. And I still notice things that my wife does that I intuit are not beneficial, like looking at screens, late social media, things like that. But I'm not like, pushing her away from them. I'm just kind of like letting them happen, but just being exemplary in my own lack of using those things. But outside of that or maybe connected to that, I'm just curious if you had thoughts on helping someone else feel more worthy as a partner. Like, I'm trying to show gratitude for the work that she does, but there is that sense of not enough. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, Steve, thank you for sharing so authentically where you and your wife and Quinn are at. I think it's important, obviously, as you know, your story and I think that there are a lot of people who are watching this who can identify. I mean, I can identify. Susie and I can identify in our own way. Right. Because pandemic times are really radically changing schedules and creating a lot of new challenges that we have to face, many of which we're not in control of. Right. So could I ask you one particular question that will help us to respond. How do you feel about your wife's need to focus on preparing her math lessons and thus not being able to be as present as she would like to be with the dishes and other kinds of things?

Sure. I don't have a problem with it. Like, I understand this has sort of been an issue for her for several years as a teacher. Like her feeling bad, needing to spend time on the weekends to do work, lesson prepping, grading, things like that. And it's like, I get it, you need time to do that. But she doesn't want to do those things. She would rather spend time with me.

That's a good sign.

I hope so. But yeah, I'm usually like, understanding of her need to do that and her desire to be as good of a teacher that she can be and also recognizing that now it's extremely difficult to be even remotely close to the level of teacher that she was because of zoom, because of the added workload of preparing online material versus just being in a class environment and having like the stuff that they've already created. So does that answer your.

Yeah, yeah, it's very helpful. So that puts the context, that puts the light in a particular way. If you were resentful of that and were, you know, then obviously our answer would be different. But it sounds like it's a situation where she's probably feeling like she has these impossible demands. It's. It's a full time enough kind of thing being in a relationship. And you guys have been in this relationship for 14 years. It's beautiful. Right? And it takes time and you want to take time in that relationship. Right now you've got on top of that, Quinn and being a mom, being a parent, but being a mom, Suzy, you can speak to this in a second. Being a mom, that's a whole other level of complexity and responsibility and full timeness about it. And then on top of that, there's this job which now, because of the pandemic, is expanding in ways which is already was too much and now it's even way more too much. Right. So I imagine that she may just be feeling pulled in all these kinds of directions and feeling like, you know, she ought to be able to or there ought to be some way of fulfilling her ideal in all of these different directions. Right. And so I think what you're doing in terms of trying to reassure her that you are fine with stepping up and by the way, that's so commendable. So the way it ought to be. And so congratulations to you for doing that. And, you know, I'll just say one thing and then turn it over to you, Susie, to see what your thoughts are, particularly from, you know, from a mom's perspective. But it may be useful to, as a part of your reassurance, to say look, because nobody wants to feel like they're on the take.

Right.

And so I'm guessing it seems like maybe your wife is feeling like, oh, my goodness, I'm leaning too much. And so a way of addressing that is to say, look, this is where we're at in 2020. Like, the pandemic, hopefully, will not be lasting. 5, 10, 15, 20. Right. And so things will even out. Things will shift. Right now, I'm happy. I can do it. I'm happy to take on a little bit more of the load. You need to focus on, you know, the preparing of the lessons and so forth, and being with Quinn as much as you can. I get that in the long run, it'll even out and it'll be fine. Right. Maybe that could help her have a sense that she's not permanently on the take. It's just a temporary shift of things, and then things will come back around again in the future. But, Suzanne, I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Yeah, I thought that was great. That, I mean, everything you're doing, you're not resentful. So I can completely relate to. To your examples of my husband being a professor and being online all the time, even more so. And having a child. And I can relate to your wife because I think, just speaking as a woman and a mom, I don't know how dads feel, but I think we stereotypically always feel we're not doing enough, we're working. And if we're not with our kid enough or not with our spouse enough, and we're not doing the dishes and we should be cooking and we should be doing. I mean, we shared the example earlier about the dinner that I screwed up on. Excuse my language. And my husband loved it. So I think, you know, having her feel better at the things she is doing, maybe just acknowledging the small moments. There's so much research on savoring. We talk a lot about that in our work, about it's the small moments together. Right. So maybe your. Your weekends are completely different than they used to be. Okay. Maybe you're not going on those outings or whatever you used to do, but I think it's an opportunity with all three of you at home. I know for us to have those little connections, even if it's 15 minutes of quality time. Maybe you don't have the three hours. What can you do in those 15 minutes? We were baking a little bit when Liam was home, and James is on conference calls. And we were trying to integrate some our lives together in a way that made sense. And we had some touch points trying to have higher touch, lower tech. I guess right now is something really important to me because I feel like all three of us are on technology. So is there something you can do? A. I mean, you're already doing an amazing job telling her you don't care about taking on additional chores and then what other things to make her feel good? How can you guys connect? Thinking of some activities, maybe that you could all join in and just acknowledge your appreciation for those small things she does do on a continuous basis.

Yeah, I think that's really good. And just one other thing. I'll just say, Steve, that occurs to me, and, you know, your wife. Obviously we don't. So we're just kind of trying to brainstorm ideas, but take what seems useful and the rest of it leave. Sometimes I think those feelings of we should be doing more or we should be doing those things are oftentimes they kind of wear at us kind of subconsciously. They're kind of these feelings of guilt, like, oh, I can't believe I'm not there. So maybe, I don't know. Just a thought. Maybe it could be useful to say, okay, if you were the kind of mom that you want to be, what would that look like? And what percentage of your time would that take?

Right.

And I'm guessing that that would be a very large percentage of her time.

Right.

And then say, okay, if you were the kind of wife that you would want to be, what percentage of that time would it. Of your time would it take? I'm guessing based on what you've said, that would take a very large chunk of her time. And then say, if you were the math instructor for your students that you would want to be, what percentage of that time would it take? And I'm guessing that we're now up to probably 30, 40 hours a day. Right, Right. And then that becomes apparent like nobody has. Personally, Steve, I have put in a request to get three more hours every day, but I've not heard anything back, so I don't know. I'll let you know. If it turns it right. We don't have more than 24 hours in a day. And so if it can maybe be kind of a. That kind of, like, it's not feasible. It's not possible. Then, okay, what? And to. To be. To feel like you should when you can't, can then actually make things worse, which is why we're having this conversation. Because now you feel like, oh, my goodness, she's not. So maybe that can help her to see, like, okay, at this stage of her life, she's going to need to satisfy us a bit. And so, you know, pull back and fit her life into 24 hours in a day. And again, maybe that will help to bring out of the subconscious some of those things into the light of day and be able to work on them.

And I think just piggyback on that, just quickly putting things in perspective and maybe finding, again, we're talking green cape. What is one thing from that huge list of being a great mom and wife as a family that you could do? So maybe you're not having all your meals together. You're doing everything that you used to do, but you can create a new routine. Maybe you're all connecting for a certain time in the morning, or you're putting your child down and you're reading a book together. What can she do? And maybe she'll feel more of a sense of control and you'll feel a sense of connection as a family by practicing that small habit every day. And you can look forward to that and anticipate and having some sort of plan in place.

We hope you enjoyed that. Part of a live coaching session from the Optimize Coach program. For more info, head to Optimize Me Coach.