How does your partner know when you disapprove?

Hello darling. Welcome back to Sex Love Power. I'm Michelle Isenberry Christensen and I invite you here each week to join this conversation because the topic of having a great, not good, but great relationship isn't really talked about enough. You can find religiously based advice and you can find guidance on how you should communicate or tips for which positions or costumes are going to spice things up. But what we deserve is is real conversations about the real challenges that smart, ambitious women face in sustaining the spark and passion that we really want in our marriages. This podcast is where I drop the seeds of those crucial conversations. You talk back in the discussions inside the episode thread on our private free community the Secret Society, which you can join@society.lizenberry.com or by calling 206-659-9865. That number and that link are in the show notes@lizenberry.com in episode eight, we talked about some of the reasons it's hard to ask a man for something different in love or sex and what we can do about it. Today we're going to take a completely different angle on a similar situation because a lot of women have been unsuccessful in getting what they want in their relationship despite doing a whole lot of asking. This episode is for you if you feel like a you've tried a thousand ways to ask for what you want and they've never worked for more than a minute, or b your spouse is super critical or negative or nitpicky with you. If we want to be able to get more of what we desire in love and sex or anywhere, we need to talk about disapproval. Disapproval or the threat of disapproval never motivates anyone to do anything. And yet it's such a pervasive theme in our cultural way of relating that when clients begin to see that disapproval flying toward, from and around them, they're often awestruck. They've told me things like I never realized how often I use my disapproval or the threat of losing approval to get my kids to do what I want. Oh my God. At work, I'm seeing how much my boss metes out approval here, withdraws approval there. It's like this giant cattle prod electrified by judgment, and we all just let it herd us up. Another client said to me, you invited me to listen to myself more carefully when I speak to my husband. It's embarrassing. I see how much I complain. I I tell him how much I disapprove of what he did, or I tell him how much more approval he'd get from me if he did something different. Or I ask for what I want him to do, but in a way that says I'm pissed he already didn't do it. I would just hate me if I were him. When I said, do you hear the disapproval of yourself? I hear there the client who'd given me that last example laughed so hard she spit out the tea she was sipping. Even as we're working on seeing and reducing the disapproval we inject into our relationships, it's so tempting to then turn around and use disapproval of ourselves to motivate us too. It's ridiculous. But I do this, you do this. And in the political environment right now, disapproval is rampant, it's at an all time high, and all it does in any arena is rouse defensiveness and counter judgment. Let me be absolutely I flatly reject many of the policies and attitudes and bigotries of the current administration, and I will not stop fighting to hold them accountable for their falsehoods, their collusion with the foreign government, and their conflicts of interest. But all of those are behaviors I can point to the behaviors I want changed, I can point to their effect and I can say what it will provide for me and others when the behaviors change. But judging the human beings name calling, presuming intent, construing agreement with the same policies I want changed as evidence of stupidity or other meaningless and or ableist pejoratives is just not helpful. So on the personal level, disapproval makes us feel less at home, less safe, less able to say nothing of being willing to take risks. And all change is risk. So when we layer disapproval into a request, we reduce our listeners ability to deliver what we desire. They can't make a change because they can't afford to take a risk because they feel less safe when we build and when we simply complain or express disapproval instead of making a request at all. It's like we're planting rat turds and expecting flowers to grow from them. When we build our approving muscle, we unlock tremendous capacities for effecting change. When we build our approving muscle, we unlock tremendous capacities for effecting change. No resistance needs to arise in the face of our desire or vision because we're not rejecting or assaulting the status quo. We're not personalizing or judging what's here. Approval is like warm sunlight. The possibility of the vision you're putting forth to yourself or to someone else feels like cool water. It's refreshing and welcome, though it could just as well feel shocking and punitive in the icy context of disapproval. What does approval look like? Here are some with Our lover. Hmm. I am loving your attention. I can feel you right here with me. Would you please move a little to the left or in response to political news I'm deeply concerned about the upcoming election. I want an honest and respectful political dialogue and I want voting rights and easy access to polling for everyone. I will take action to help others understand the importance of voting in this election and with ourselves. I can see how busy I was today and I was such an earnest, hard working sugar plum tomorrow. I'd love to do that and create a break that will allow me to nourish my body and my mind with a lunch that contains plants. Two Approval contains compassion. Approval understands Approval says I know how it got to be this way or this makes sense. It doesn't require, this must never change or even imply. I like this. Approval simply refuses to resist, judge or disapprove. So as a result, it's sheer magic when we want something to be different, or we want someone to find the capacity to change, or we want them to see our point of view. As I began to practice approval as a foundational stance, I saw how much I feared that removing disapproval would convey to myself as well as to others, acquiescence to the things I didn't desire. But when I was nudged further by my teachers, I entered this astonishing territory where I could work with things I absolutely hated without disapproval. I faced things I needed to see change in myself, in others, in the world. And rather than disapproving of them, I poured my oh yes, be just like that on them. I said to those things, I see you, I see how you are. Yes, that is what is up. Absolutely. The experience was something akin to the feeling inside. My best Moments with the Work of Byron Katie. Katie boils down the experience to the title of one of her books, Loving what Is. It's like that when I approve, I can love. I can even get off on what is here, even if I'm devoted to seeing it voted out of office. Oh, I mean seeing it eradicated, changed, evolved. Now I know that sometimes appropriate anger arises and it's going to be a part of our felt experience and perhaps a part of our communication. But even anger can be expressed without disapproval. Anger is the physiological response to a limit being exceeded or to a boundary being crossed. It's self protective, it's automatic, and it's highly useful. It's a signal to us that something is too much or it's not right. But acting out our anger, expressing it in our behavior, is counterproductive because it compromises the clarity of the situation. Even talking very much about the anger itself is often counterproductive because it's so triggering for other people. Rather than expressing disapproval or anger most of the time, we can focus on conveying approval. When we want a change, we can add a request to that steady stream of approval requests, make it simple to respond and create mutual satisfaction. The There's a way to win, there's a clear way to counter offer. But if we're going to express a big intense feeling, we need to make an explicit request like I just need you to hear my feelings and let me know that you get it. Or if we're really, really lucky and the person we're expressing to is really skilled, they can make that translation without us even asking. I teach clients to do this when they can, and I'm personally working on this Bodhisattva level skill myself because it's a cool and stress reducing skill to have and to be able to translate anger to a really peaceful kind of expression. But I can count on one hand the people I know who can do this reliably and I am not yet one of them. So we want to try to frame our anger up well as I just need you to hear it and let me know you get it when we can. Without that frame up or the right listening capacity, big intense feelings expressed loudly will just elicit frustration and defensiveness in whoever's hearing you. So the bottom line, it's helpful to subtract disapproval, shame, name calling, resistance, judgment and free floating negative emotion. And it's helpful to add approval even of things you don't like in spades. It's helpful to add clear requests and it's always helpful to add breath. Ah, you know what I approve of heartily. This is the 10th episode of a podcast. I was scared to start because I was afraid I wouldn't be consistent, but I have been like clockwork. With a new episode live every Thursday at 5am Pacific, we can all build new things into our lives. With enough desire, focus and support. I would love to help you build in the kind of love and sex you really want in your life. If you want to talk about relationship coaching with me for you and your partner, or just for you, go to lizenberry.com coaching to apply for a consultation. And that's it for today's episode. I hope it helps you see in the coming hours and days where disapproval rears its head, posing as a helpful approach for you and for others, and that our conversation here helps you discover other approaches that turn out to be more life giving, and I really hope this is just the beginning of our conversation about this topic. I'll see you in the secret society@society.lizenberry.com or give me a call at 206-659-9865 and tell me how have you been using disapproval? Or how have you been on the receiving end of it and how's that been working? The final thing is, are you subscribed to this podcast? You can make sure that you never miss an episode by subscribing, so please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and and hit that subscribe button so you always get notifications of new episodes each week. Thank you so much for spending this time with me looking deeply at your own patterns. I'm in awe of your willingness to discover your own light and shadow. I know that that openness serves you well and it delights me to no end to be witness to your miracles. I hope today's conversation breathes new life into some sticky or itchy corners of your life and love. I'll see you here same time next week, and until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you. It.