Help Yourself Draw a Line

Time away worked well for us because when I started doing it, it really got his attention immediately. And he would call me and be like, come back now. I get it. I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I would say that's the bummer of it is I have to stay gone because I have to not just fold when the instant you stop, I have to remember this keeps happening. So I'll see you in another two and a half hours. I'm not any happier about it than you are, but this is what I need to do. And by holding that boundary, he really got it and he started catching himself. And so if it started to happen and I named it, then he would go, you're right. Give me a minute here. And then after a while, it didn't happen at all. It just got better. Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in light. Together we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure, and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is about how we get our partners on board with something that we really want, but that perhaps you've spent years trying to get through to them about, and it hasn't worked. So I'm creating this episode in response to so many clients and members of my audience who have asked me questions like, I just need him to get a job and nothing I've tried has worked or her drinking is really concerning to me. It's not concerning to her, though, so she's not about to get into recovery and I really need her to because it's really affecting me. People tell me my partner is just really sexually immature and doesn't really show up erotically, and I don't know how to get them to do that. My partner doesn't take very good care of themselves, and it scares me for the future because I'm committed to taking care of them. But if they aren't taking care of themselves, how are we going to thrive over a lifetime? So there are some serious ways that our partners can be stuck, and we may be the only voice or the loudest voice asking them to change. And it's very reasonable that when it feels like your partner is asking you to be something you're not, or to change in a way that you don't want to, you might not be able to say this, but you might feel terrified to make a particular change in. For instance, if you're relying on alcohol to cope, then letting go of that might feel scary. Or if you're using pornography and your partner doesn't know that, but that's a part of what has you not be all there erotically or emotionally in terms of intimacy, then that's really hard to get to the bottom of. My partner, years ago, had an anger problem. I don't know if he would have talked about it that way, and I have his permission to talk about this now, but he used to kind of throw tantrums. And I may have talked about this on the podcast before, but I was at a real place where I was sort of at the end of my rope in terms of thinking that I could live with it forever. I wasn't ready to give up on the marriage, but I just knew this wasn't right for me. And I think that's the essence of what I want to impart today in my work with clients. When they come to me, it's because they've both agreed, yeah, we want to work with Michelle. And lots of them have been to that place before with someone else. You know, whether a coach or a therapist or if you're like us, multiple different people that you've tried. But what often doesn't happen when someone agrees to go get help is that they really agree to change. That's the thing that's different when they work with me. And because it's baked into the process. What we do first is get really clear on the decision to create not just good enough love, but great love. And you get to define for yourselves what that is individually. And that's where we start to see if you're on two different pages about what you're actually up to in the relationship, what you're trying to create in your life. And a lot of couples aren't on two different pages. And so it's really cool for them to compare notes at the end of the decide stage of my work. But once you've gone through really tapping into your values and your vision and I guess sort of called the third one vulnerability, just because I love the alliteration of it, but really the vulnerability piece is around having a growth mindset, not Just clinging to what you already know and you're already good at, but sort of saying, oh, yeah, I'm not good at that yet, but I'm going to be. I can learn. And reframing vulnerability as something to be avoided into something to be sought, that we want to find those edges of discomfort because those are the learning edges. Those are the places where we can claim new territory. So once you've done those three steps, then we compare no's and we really look at what each of you is up for creating. Because in the next stage of my work, we get into unsticking all the obstacles to the ultimate intimacy that the two of you envision for yourselves. And. And so it's hard work. You know, the unsticking part is where we go about making changes. But if what you're really here for is to tick the box of like, yeah, we're working with a coach, it's great, and you're not really up for changing, then it won't do any good. And I don't like that. I want to be here to make a huge difference for people. So before we move on to unsticking, we make sure that we're both really skin in the game, that we're really willing to let go of things that don't work for the intimacy. Because really, if it doesn't work for your marriage, it doesn't work for you. So I guide couples through that. But in this episode, I want to help you with or without me, even if we never work together, I want to help you get to that place of clarity within yourself, because that's the real thing that every partner has to get to. I can't make your partner willing to change. Even if we are working together in a very intimate way. What really helps partners let go? What helped my husband let go of that tantrum tendency that he had at that time in probably 2008, 9 Cooper wasn't very big at all when I realized I can't deal with this. And I found the clarity within myself to recognize that I was going to have to make sacrifices, that I was willing to make sacrifices in order to draw a line in the sand about this behavior. And that's really what it takes to get leverage. It's not about control over your partner. It's about clarity within yourself. And with this episode, I want to help you find that. So we're going to look at. I guess I can share with you what I did. Sometimes we would be on a normal weekend afternoon, say, and Kurt might start into a project and then get really grumpy. Something would get triggered in him, and he would start yelling and swearing, maybe throwing things, or. It might be subtler than that. Might just be this. I called it like the black cloud. There might just be something really dark that came up in his mood, and it felt yucky to me, and it felt like it didn't have a whole lot to do with me or our baby boy or anything going on here and now. It was something he needed to address. So I wanted to accept him as he is and love him for who he is. And I didn't want to reject him for this behavior, but on the other hand, made me really uncomfortable and unhappy. And I would also often wind up with an emotional hangover afterward, even if I didn't escalate. So that was the first thing that I learned, was to not, like, throw gasoline on the fire. And that's the first thing that I would invite you to look at, too, is in what ways do you interact with the thing that you want to have your partner do differently, that accelerate it, that amplify it? How are you escalating the challenge? You know, if it's about drinking, how do you enable the drinking, or how do you participate in it? If. If it's about conflict and their conflict style, how do you escalate conflict? So really look at your part of it. But I think that a lot of people stop there, and particularly in religiously informed couples counseling, that's most of what women are taught about how to deal with a lot of, frankly, bad behavior on the part of men is love him through it, and you change you. He kind of gets to do whatever he wants. And I'm speaking here to people of all genders, you know, so whatever's going on for you, it might be with a partner who's male, or it might not. But I invite you to start by cleaning up your side of the street. But know that that's not enough and that you do have a right. It's not controlling of you. It's not you micromanaging them. It's not you not loving them as they are. To say, hey, there's a lot more available to us, but not with this particular rock in our pockets. It's weighing us down. And generally, if something doesn't feel right to you, it's pointing to something that's not good for them either. And there may be things you don't know that are going on, that would only be uncovered if you really stuck to your guns on this and beg the Question. Why aren't you showing up for me? Fully emotionally available, fully sexually available, sober, present, financially responsible, you know, fully functioning as a parent, as an earner, whatever it is that your partner is under functioning on, you get to say that. And when you say it, you may be the thing that makes a difference in their lives. So, you know, the hero's journey is something Joseph Campbell has written about and it can be traced into pretty much every great story from, from throughout time. If we look at ancient literature, up to modern literature and all the great movies, they're rooted in a hero's quest. And the hero's quest always starts with the call. The hero is comfortable or uncomfortable, but they're in kind of a status quo situation. And then something happens that invites them to go on a journey of discovery on a journey of evolution. They become larger because they have to leave their comfort zone. And marriage is often a comfort zone. And if you're comfortable in a way that's not super high functioning, it's at the expense of your partner. And if your partner will do you the favor of saying so, of saying, hey, there's more possible for us and I want to reach for that and I'm asking you to come with me, then that can be the call on your hero's journey. But if your partner instead tries to be nice and swallow their own discomfort and adapt to your low functioning, earn more money themselves, find ways to laugh off your alcohol induced antics, get a better vibrator, and just take care of themselves sexually, none of these things contribute to more aliveness for either of you. They're just coping. They're red herrings distracting from the real evolutionary journey that you're being invited on. So as the partner who's the canary in the mineshaft, who's seeing like, oh, I want this different. I really want to encourage you today that your discomfort is a voice of wisdom. And I'm not talking about if you're nitpicking and you want your partner to dress better or be taller, you know, do something superficial that would make you feel less insecure. I'm not talking about you demanding that they share your interests. I'm not talking about preferences. I'm talking about places where you are having to contort yourself in order to make your shared life work, where your central needs aren't being met because your partner's not present, where something's funky and you might not know what the funkiness is. A lot of times, pornography addiction or a sex addiction is a secret from the partner. A Lot of times, steady marijuana use or alcohol use doesn't have to look wildly excessive to be pretty debilitating for a partner. So whatever your point of pain is, when you really stand clear that you don't want to live like that anymore, you may begin to unravel something that is not visible to you. But it has to start with being on your own side about the discomfort, with really naming what you really need. So I want to give you some guidance on how to do that. Some of the things that we need to say, we say in a complaining way or in a way that sounds judgmental or accusatory. And the only viable response when you're being attacked is to defend. So you don't set yourself up for success, and you don't set your partner up for being able to hear you if you communicate that way. But I want to give you a couple of sentence starters, kind of ways that you can talk to your partner about this area that are likely to be productive over time, especially if you've got that inward clarity. I deserve this. This makes sense. I'm asking for this in love. I'm asking for it not because I disapprove of my partner, not because I think I'm smarter than them or better than them, but because I know that more is possible for us, and I know that they might not really feel a choice around this right now. They might be kind of on autopilot with it, but the autopilot is malfunctioning. You know, it's taking us to a destination we don't want to go to. So I'm going to be the one who steps in here and kind of takes the plane off autopilot and asks them to captain with me and guide us to where we really want to go. So when you get clear on those things and you feel you have a right to ask, and you feel that it's out of love that you're asking, then you're willing to communicate in a loving way. The other thing you have to decide before you have the conversation. I know I promised sentence stems, and now I'm backing up a little bit, because the other thing that we need to have before we have the conversation is clarity on what our options are. So, you know, in negotiation, you need to always know your best alternative to a negotiated outcome. What's your fallback? What's your plan B if you can't close this real estate deal or whatever? Right. You want to be grounded in what your option is. So that was the thing when I started to Say to Kurt, I don't like this direction that the emotional field in our house takes. When you get triggered, I need you to figure out how to arrest that. I need you to do whatever you need to do to get to the bottom of what's going on with you. And I had to figure out what I was going to do if he didn't. Because, you know, chances are when you first ask, they're not ready to change. And if you just say pretty please, that's not enough. And you've probably had experience of that. If you're listening and this sounds like it pertains to you, you've probably already asked. You might have already whined or complained or thrown a tantrum or threatened or thought about leaving. You know, really thought about more like nuclear measures. And what I'm talking about is really a way of love. Love for yourself, love for the vision you have of the relationship, and love for your partner. So the possibility here is that you can invite them into a picture that you paint of what's possible and you can let them know that you are going to do things differently than you have in the past if they can't get on board because your need is legitimate and you're going to have to do something to reduce the cost to you or to meet the need. So in my case, I did not like this, but that's what makes it a good example, is that often we have to do things we're not comfortable with. When what I said was, I'm having a hard time with these outbursts. And so if you continue to do them, I'm going to have sort of a three stage way that I communicate with you about it. I'm going to say, oops, it's happening. And I'm going to try to stay as calm as I can and just, oh, you know, point of order. Little note here. That thing that we talked about is happening right now. Can you please stop? Can you please gather yourself? So I wasn't going to escalate. I wasn't going to get into it with him. I was just going to name it and ask him to calm down, give him the space to do that. And then if he didn't, which at first he didn't, he would escalate. You know, when I did that, he would argue louder and, you know, resent that I was saying anything about it. So then I would say, okay, I'm noting this and you seem to be turning up the volume. So I'm naming it now, if you can stop now. Then I can stay. But if you can't, that's okay. But I'm going to have to leave for three hours. And it took maybe eight or nine times of that happening, but, you know, it would happen once or twice a week. And so I started, you know, noting it, warning, and then leaving. And I wasn't threatening to leave. I was just saying, oops, this is happening, okay, so I'm going to have to leave. And I was leaving not just to, like, cause a consequence for him. I was leaving to put a bookmark in my own mind, to really get clear with myself, I can't live like this. This doesn't work for me. This is too painful for me to just live inside. I have to notice for myself that I'm in a marriage where I get emotionally gutted by my husband's behavior. That's why I'm not at home right now for these three hours. You know, it was really to get myself into a place of reality with it because I didn't want to see it. And you may be the same way. You may not want to see what's going on with your spouse, what. What they're not willing to address. And so finding a plan B, a consequence, an alternative to business as usual, that underscores for you what's really going on and breaks your own denial and sort of suppression of your awareness of how painful things are really helps in my experience and in the experience of many clients I've helped in this way since that time. So you want to know what your next plan is, and you might make a list of a range of options because you don't want to have your hands tied or you're not making a threat here. You're not like, well, I'm going to divorce you if you don't. Da, da, da, da. If that's not really what you want to do, if you're not ready for that, if what you want really, really, really is for them to get on board, then establish some things that you're going to do differently that are going to get both of your attention. And this might have to do with nice things you do. It might have to do with you being in the house. It might have to do with you sleeping in the same bedroom. It might have to do with cooking and cleaning and that sort of thing that you might contribute to your household. And you want to do things that don't wind up neglecting your children or making your own life messy, but you want to get your own attention and your partner's. So Time away worked well for us because when I started doing it, it really got his attention immediately. And he would call me and be like, come back now. I get it. I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I'd say that's the bummer of it, is I have to stay gone because I have to not just fold when the instant you stop, I have to remember this keeps happening. So I'll see you in another two and a half hours. I'm not any happier about it than you are, but this is what I need to do. And by holding that boundary, he really got it and he started catching himself. And so if it started to happen and I named it, then he would go, you're right. Give me a minute here. And then after a while, it didn't happen at all. It just got better. So, I mean, I'm leaving out the details of the work that he did himself to ground himself, to discover more about his triggers, all that. But, you know, it started with that call. The hero's journey started with the call that I was instrumental in issuing. And that's what I invite you to do, is be the call for your partner. Whatever it is that's not working well for you. You get to help yourself to help them, to have the epiphany around this part of life, because it's not working well for them either. If it's not working well for you. If your partner is under functioning in some way, not healthy, not happy, not vibrant and wildly alive, who else is going to invite them up to that? There's a saying in the Talmud that every blade of grass has an angel that stands over it. And whispers, grow, grow. And I think that in marriage, we are that angel for each other, standing over our partner and whispering, grow, grow. I love you. I know what's possible for you. And of course that's evolving. I'm not the expert on what's possible for you. I just have a piece of the vision so I don't have to be attached to my vision of it. I just have to invite you into that and then be open myself to changing in whatever ways I need to change, to have that come about. And you might tell me what some of those ways are. And certainly time and again, Kurt has confronted me with things that I was doing that were not my optimal functioning and therefore did not create the ultimate relationship for us. So I'm learning every day how to, like, when I'm frustrated, not start communicating in a strident way, how to relax and be More playful, how to have fun with him and the kids. We all have our learning edges and so it's a mutual evolution process. So let's get back to those sentence starters I encouraged you to play with. One of the things you can say is, here's what I would really like. And then just describe what you want them to do at a behavioral level, not what attitudes you want them to have, not what you want them to not think anymore. Things you can capture as a video camera, concrete things and then express. I'd really like that because I need. Talk about your own needs. What is it that you need now? For me it was. I need to feel safe in my house. I need the predictability that there's not going to be a big kerfuffle out of the blue when I haven't done anything wrong. But there's just a lot of anger and negativity all of a sudden. So describe what your own needs are. And it's legitimate. I had to learn this in my body. It's legitimate for me to have needs that maybe somebody else wouldn't need. You know, I need a level of emotional safety because my nervous system is kind of high strung enough that I'm not wired for a lot of loud conflict or negativity. I need relative peace and serenity. I think everybody needs that to some extent. But maybe I need more, but it doesn't really matter. It's okay that I need what I need and it's okay that you need what you need. The next thing I encourage you to say is when you do this thing, what happens for me is this. And so that's uniquely personal to you. You're talking about yourself. You know, you're not pointing fingers. You always. And you never. And you gotta. You're saying, when, when this happens, here's what happens for me. And then you can say, if you did this thing that's different, it would provide this for me. So I would feel this way. What would happen for me is this. So, you know, I told my husband, if you could calm down when you got triggered and not take it out on me, not act it out. You know, if you could recognize the trigger, feel your feelings and not act them out, if would provide more safety for me and I think for our little boy, you know, no mistaking that. Definitely more safety for a little boy. And, you know, he wasn't taking it out on him directly, but you know, children, animals, everybody feels everything that happens in your house. So it's really relevant. No matter how young the child Is. And then the next sentence starter I want you to use is, how can I help you? Give me what I'm asking for. How can I contribute? What would help you do what I'm asking? Because of course we want to contribute to it. We don't want to just make demands. And so often it takes two to tango. And our partner is going to have something where they go, well, you, you know, or here's what you're doing that makes me go to that thing. So we preempt that. We say, I'm sure there's something I can do that would help you to move in this direction. Tell me what that is. I'm happy to do it. And then you want to talk about that plan B. Here's what I'll do. If you can't or won't move, move in this direction with me. This is my range of options. This is my plan B. And then you want to close by affirming, I really love you. I want us to be as happy and healthy and vibrantly alive together as we can. I want us to have a lifelong love that just keeps getting better and better over time. And I really believe that the way that we'll create that is to let each other know what will help us thrive. So that's the spirit in which I'm asking this. I'm letting you know what will help me thrive, I really hope. And what I want is for it to contribute to your thriving, too. That's why I'm asking. So please consider it. Take your time. And then that's the thing to know, is that it will take them some time. It takes all of us time to deal with anything. I get to see it when, you know, my kids are complaining about something or asking for something, Some part of me almost immediately goes, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to do that, or this won't work because of this. You know, just has the negative or the objection. That's what often arises first. But I've learned to let what comes out of my mouth first, sometimes not perfectly, be, okay, cool. And then, you know, take a beat, take my time, think about all the objections that arose in me and see if some of those need to get articulated to my child. But when you're asking your partner, yeah, I really need you to look at your marijuana use or the financial pressure of being our sole breadwinner is really crushing me. I need you to figure out how you can make some money that's going to be confrontive for them. It would make sense that anybody presented with that kind of request would have some reaction, would need some time to process that. And the first thing they said might not be very constructive. So before you have the conversation, that's a really great thing to brace yourself for, to get clear on, oh, yeah, they're going to do that. Michelle said it, you know, told me to say it coming, and I do see it coming. And it's okay. I welcome their dynamic experience here. It's okay that they have a range of reactions and I trust that they're going to come around. So I'm just going to give them the space for that and I'm not going to react. You know, you put up the Teflon shield, put up the plexiglass and let their first reactivity wash over you. Just try to hear them, you know, just acknowledge that you're asking something really big and it's a change. You haven't been like this before. You've been more kind of coping with it and maybe grumbling about it, but never saying, here's what I'm going to do differently. That's spooky. And so grant them that, give them the space for that. So do whatever it takes for you to be able to give them that grace. And a lot of times that means having good other support. So talk to a great friend, utilize a coach, do what you need to be able to take that on an even keel, to stand firm through the fire of your partner's initial reactivity. Because behind that, they're going to feel that love and that clarity. They're going to see that you mean what you're saying, all of it. You mean that you love them. You mean that you're going to do things differently. You mean that more is possible. You mean that you're no longer settling for less and that they're invited to come into the new land with you. So they're going to go through a reckoning. They're on the hero's journey now because you called them up. So honor that, you know, and maybe take some space away from them during that reactivity time and just envision it for them. If you're someone who prays, send prayers and best wishes for their growth. And if you're not, just write notes to yourself about how much you hope and want for this to create a great outcome. If you direct your mental energy toward the positive, it can't help but contribute to their coming around to the positive. And if they don't, that's really great information too, because really, this is the question you've been avoiding calling by never getting to this point of clarity before, right. You weren't sure if they would be willing to get on board if you got really clear. And if they really don't get on board, you need to know that you only have so many days on this planet. And I know the feeling of being afraid that you can't live without this marriage, that you don't want to end the marriage to the parent of your children, that there will be financial hardships and perhaps loneliness and will you find someone else? And there's lots of things that are scary about creating a disruption in your current relationship that might end it or might not. But I assure you, you were built for more. If you are living in a way that is hobbled by your partner's under functioning, under living, they deserve, and you deserve so much more. And no one's better positioned to be that call to the hero's journey than you are. So take heart, get support, find community. You can reach out to our conscious couples community. My free community on mighty networks. No ads, no Facebook weirdness, just connection with people around topics that we talk about in the podcast, including this one. So I see so much brightness ahead for you and so much strength that you'll gain from exercising the courage it takes to name what doesn't feel good for you, to point to the possibilities of what becomes available if you do have your needs met and to invite your partner into that. I've done it myself. I've helped hundreds of other people do the same and help couples get to where this kind of invitation is just a working part of who they are. They keep leapfrogging into new possibilities, erotically, emotionally, career wise. If we can support one another to address the blinders that we have, then we can begin to support one another to address the other. Limiting beliefs, stories, places where we're not living the very fullest of what's possible for us in this lifetime. So this is a never ending road. Not of difficulty and pain, but of potential and joy, growth, freedom and pleasure. And that's what I want for you. So take the first step. Get clear on what you can live with and what you need to have be different. Get clear on your vision of what's possible, how you'd really like it to be, and then explore what actions you will take as an alternative to how you've been responding in the past if your partner doesn't step forward with the change you're requesting. Do one thing different. When anything in the system changes, the whole system has to change one way or another. So I wish you all the best in this and if you want more support in it, my great Passionate Sex Program walks couples through this with an exquisite amount of education and handholding, community coaching and love and helps create lasting change, giving you all the tools you need in 90 days to create a love that gets better and better through the years. So reach out if you want to know more about that and I'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My Free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizendary.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to, so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode and until then, may the light with it in you illuminate the world around you.