A short radio/YouTube segment (Confession Tuesday) where life coach Rebeccah Silence and host BIG PAPA respond to a listener asking how to emotionally reconnect after children leave home. Silence outlines a relationship-stage framework (fresh love/honeymoon → disillusionment → power/conflict/control → unconditional love → reinvention), emphasizes mutual responsibility (each partner 50%), and recommends a concrete homework: each partner write down how they contribute and what they want, then renegotiate balance. She urges couples to "get closer" when triggered and not to let boredom or resentment fester.
I, it is Confession Tuesday. Local life coach and birthday girl Rebecca Silence in in studio. Happy birthday.
Thank you.
So, yeah, I, I, I had something and I forgot to pick it up. So. Yeah, it's called getting home from like Macklemore and Ryan Lewis at like 12:30 last night.
Yes.
And I was like, I, I need to sleep. So there, there is, there is something.
Oh, you are so funny.
It's just not physically here.
I like extending the birthday celebrations. It's all good.
I know. Are you kidding me? I know people that extend their birthdays for like, like a week, a month even.
I love that we get to do confession Tuesday on my birthday this year. It seems so fabulous.
I'll tell you what the, the going from last birthday to, to this birthday, what a year you've had.
It's like a lifetime in a year. It's wild.
It's absolutely incredible. It is inspired results coach dot com. Rebecca Silence is a life coach. She helps you get out of your way. But it's more than just working one on one. There is, there's corporate things. She'll come and speak to school. She'll speak to a department at your work. It's it. You really have, you've traveled all over and you've spoken to everyone from individuals to families to children to hundreds and thousands of people all at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah. And the corporate trainings are so much fun. It's a different approach to making productivity and efficiency happen. So if you're interested, definitely check it out on the website.
Yeah, it's inspired results Coach dot com. All right, so how this works here on a Confession Tuesday is you submit question or you tell us what's going on in your world. We keep it confidential and we break it down here on the radio for free. All right. And are you ready?
I am so ready.
All right, here we go. Dear big Papa and Rebecca, how do my husband and I reconnect and build an emotional bond now that the kids are grown and out of the house?
Great question. So you guys have heard me talk extensively about the four stages of relationships, right? There's fresh love, tall honeymoon. It's disillusionment. Next where we panic. What was I thinking? Next is power, conflict and control, where everyone's trying to be right and, and win and come out on top, which always leaves somebody on the bottom and not in a good way. Then there's unconditional love.
I love the fact that you took the joke. You took it right away.
Occasionally I made a joke once in a while on my Birthday. I'll make a joke. But so then there's unconditional love. And after unconditional love, this is what we don't talk about very much. After unconditional love, that's where we have the opportunity to reinvent and recreate our relationships.
Okay, okay.
You and I have done it, right? We recreated this year. We have Confession Tuesday live. Now that that's new.
Okay. All right. You. Right, well, remember, I'm still, I'm still stuck on the joke about, about people being on the bottom and, and, and whatnot. So, so, like, I'm still there. And then you're like, yeah, we did that. I was like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
So recreation and reinvention is another stage of relationship.
Absolutely.
Now we've gotten through power, conflict and control. We've decided, oh, even though we have flaws, we're loving each other anyway.
Right.
And recreation is where we can come to the table each side. Because remember, in a relationship, each person is 50% responsible for the relationship. So no one can ever be 100% at fault for screwing up or repairing a relationship. It's never on one person.
Right.
It's gonna take two. And they both have to be willing.
As much as much as certain, you know, certain times you want to blame, you know, 100% on the other person. It takes two to tango.
Well, and it's 50% because here's why. Both sides have chosen in to every single experience that has gone on in that relationship. So if I tolerated things or whatever decisions I've made, I am 100% responsible for my half, but not the entire relationship, not the outcome for the entire relationship. And you don't have to believe me. Check it out for yourself. But I'm so clear in my couples work and even the corporate trainings where we're dealing with office drama, it's 50 50. So in the recreation phase, I have a brand new homework assignment that I actually did with my husband recently. We're in a recreation reinvention phase ourselves. And here's what we did, and I thought it was brilliant. What we did is we took some paper and we wrote down each of us where we're contributing to the relationship. And then we started talking about what we want that's not currently in place. Then we started looking at, is there balance here? Okay, Is there balance? Is this a win on both sides? Is this feeling complete and balanced? And we had a great talk, took about an hour, and we renegotiated things and really came up with balance on each side. And we Each had some things that we want a little more of. We talked about one or two things each that we're gonna strive towards. Putting it on paper is a really, really unique way to make it real now, like, oh, we're gonna actually address this, or. Or we're putting down what's real that we know needs to shift.
Well, you know what? It is, too. And as much as I break your chops for making lists and, you know, and making lists and writing it down, even making more lists, a lot of things, especially dealing with stuff like this, it's emotional.
Right.
And it's hard to put those emotion into words where if you make a list or you write it down, it forces you to do that. And if you have words now, it's easier to communicate with whomever you're having the issue with or whoever you're trying to express that to. And that's. I think that's like the big. The big, big plus on this.
Yeah. And, you know, there are so many opportunities to recreate relationships. Somebody gets a new job, somebody loses a job, the kids are leaving the house. I mean, anytime things are starting to feel stagnant. My homework assignment is get closer and address it. Anytime you're triggered, whether it's things are getting boring now or you're just really angry, get closer. Because otherwise it festers. And it festers and it becomes even more toxic.
Oh, yeah. Then it'll blow up.
It's not going to be okay. If we just don't talk about this this month, then next month our relationship will be better.
No, no, no.
I've never seen that happen. And it's the most common strategy I see walking through my office.
Yeah, we'll. We'll figure it out later.
It won't happen.
We'll figure it out later.
Later won't come. So get closer so that you have a shot at actually getting through whatever this little rocky time is or boring time. Boring is just as bad as the rocky stuff, in my opinion.
Well, what are the two major reasons that people stray? They're either bored or things aren't good.
Mm. And you have an opportunity to recreate. And, you know, there are different types of recreation in all relationships. Some people might want to go from being monogamous to polyamorous. I mean, it doesn't matter. If it works for you. If it works for your relationship, that's great. I don't think any relationship is going to have the same types of ground rules or needs as any other one.
I love the fact that within the same segment. You dropped a good being on the bottom joke and then dropped a polyamorous line and just kept going. You're feeling feisty on your birthday. I like this.
I like my birthday this year. But it's so true. I'm very serious about these things because what works for my relationship probably wouldn't work for a lot of people, but that works for us, right?
Absolutely.
They're all different. So whatever works for you guys. I'm saying awesome. Go for it. Just talk about it so you can have it.
Local life coach Rebecca silence. Inspired results. Coach.com. what's going on in your world? Shoot us an email. We're going to cover.
