Help For Lesbian Couples: Stop the Fights and Hurt, and Strengthen Your ❤️ ❤️ Love

So I was just talking to a friend about something I see happen a lot between lesbian couples, and it inspired me to want to make this video right now while my girlfriend and her family are out of the house at the beach. Because oftentimes, you know, we give our relationships our all, and I'm speaking about lesbians. Well, women in general, but, you know, lesbians, women times 2. We work so hard in our relationships, but often we're not working in the right direction. And so let's take a classic example. You know, one person gets triggered more easily. Lots of reasons why that happens. You know, it could be that you have a highly sensitive nervous system. I know a lot about that. Uh, could be that you had a traumatic childhood. I've had some of that myself. Could be that you're just a really smart person, and really smart people often just have a lot more information coming in all the time. So sometimes we also get more reactive. So let's say one person in the relationship, um, is really sensitive, you know, and so Your partner's tone of voice or the things she says or something that she doesn't do or a particular gesture or facial expression can really trigger a big impact. And let's say you're the other person in the relationship. Maybe you're a little bit less sensitive. You're a little bit more even-keeled. You might end up working really, really hard to keep things okay. Keep things more steady for your more easily triggered partner. That can seem like a beautiful, noble, generous act. And you can be hoping as you do it that over time her nervous system will relax and come to trust you and feel safer with you. And, um, and then you'll have an easier, happier relationship. Unfortunately, that logic is flawed. And when I— I've had some chronic health issues at times, and there was a period when I was super sensitive to all kinds of foods, a lot of food allergies. And I started reading online about, you know, how can I cut out absolutely everything that makes me react? And what I found out was that the more people go in that direction, believe it or not, the more reactive you get. So I found online stories about people that were literally eating like, you know, brown rice and chicken and one other thing because the more they tried to cut out what they were reacting to, the more reactive their system got. I've actually seen the same thing happen in relationships. And yet on the other side of it, obviously, when somebody is having a reaction, An emotional reaction. They're feeling really hurt or sad. Or a lot of times we may not realize when we're scared. We might feel like we're just angry or like we're not getting treated right. We're not being made enough of a priority. Somebody isn't respecting us enough. That's a lot of times how— I've experienced these things in the past and I've seen a lot of other people experience them. Underneath that is usually fear. So when these kinds of incredibly raw, painful emotions are getting triggered, just doing what you're already doing is not the solution because, you know, it's like the tires in the sand. You will get more and more stuck. You will dig the grooves deeper and deeper. But having one person start trying to caretake the other person or walk on eggshells to try to avoid these triggers, Also is not the solution because you will create an unsustainable relationship dynamic where you know eventually the person walking on eggshells is going to get tired of having their their foot stabbed up by these eggshells. The other person is not going to have their nervous system ease up from this behavior. It just doesn't work that way. So. What does work? I believe, as my mentors have taught in attachment theory, that these kinds of moments are actually golden, precious opportunities for healing, but only if you are working with somebody who, A, understands the dynamic of attachment, and B, understands lesbians because we are And I say this with all great love, uh, you know, for myself and, and my past girlfriends and my present girlfriend and all of the, the many hundreds of lesbians that I've worked with. We're a special breed. We are more intense, and what plays out between us is more intense than what tends to play out between heterosexual couples or gay male couples. And as a lesbian, at The intensity is part of what I love about being with a woman. To me, men are kind of boring. But of course, I love the good intensity. I love the bliss. I love the connection. I love the intimacy. I love the sharing. I love the passion. I don't love, and you probably don't love either, the intensity of fights, how quickly we can cascade into, from one person's trigger to another person's trigger. And pretty soon it's like we find ourselves uttering those phrases like, you never, blah, blah, blah, or, you always. And sometimes for me, I've been in fights where part of me, the angel on my shoulder, is whispering, don't bring that up, or, don't have this conversation now. You know you're tired. It's late. You know you're hungry, or she's hungry, or, you know there's something else that needs to happen now. But sometimes the, uh, the other being on the other shoulder who is not the angel, um, it's like this itch inside me that gets me to bring the thing up anyway. And then we find ourselves sometimes in a long, painful, not productive conversation. As many of us lesbians call that processing. And that's the kind of intensity that I bet you don't love and don't want more of. At least I know I don't. So as lesbians, we are this more intense breed. We, we bring things up strongly for and with each other. As I was saying earlier, there is a golden opportunity in that, but only if you seize the opportunity rather than continuing to dig your tires into the sand. So what do I mean by seizing the opportunity? If you go work with a coach or therapist, I think the credentials don't matter so much as the training and the experience. You need to work with somebody who really understands attachment theory because why things start to feel so bad, so aggravated, so agitated so quickly is because when we're attached to someone, which often happens really fast in a lesbian relationship, Our brain starts to process that person as being part of ourselves, literally. And that is why it is so threatening when your girlfriend or partner isn't giving you, or you're not experiencing receiving, the kind of love and connection and safety and also space and room to breathe that you need. It can feel to the part of the brain that attaches It feels life-threatening. And if you're in love with somebody and something feels emotionally life-threatening to her, it's going to feel life-threatening to you very quickly too. Some of us will have patterns of being like extremely emotional, um, and, you know, maybe we're the ones that cry more or that, you know, say the more bitter things, accusatory. Hurt things. We just emote more. We talk more. Some of us will also take the pattern of being the one who seems calm and rational in this moment, and we don't change our tone and we don't raise our voice and we try and just stay really steady, hoping that that will make the other person calm down. But— and I, I've been on both sides of this equation in different relationships— it actually agitates the other person more. Because when you're being so calm and steady, even though your conscious or unconscious intentions are good, you're actually scared. And as you should be, right? Because your attachment is threatened. So the other person responds to your fear, doesn't feel connected, can even feel condescended to or patronized by your calm. I I tried to explain this to my girlfriend once. To her credit, she listened. Because I said, it seems like you're being condescending to me. I know that's not your intention, but that's how it feels. And she says, wow, my last girlfriend used to say the same thing. So then to her great credit, she got curious about what was it she was doing that, that was landing in me like condescension. So you need somebody in these tender moments who can help you both feel Soothed, both feel safe enough to be able to do a real pattern interrupt, not the pseudo-pattern interrupt where one person is taking on more than their share of the burden or forcing themselves to stay calm while instant— inside they're actually kind of detaching, shutting down self-protectively. By the way, all props to that defense mechanism. It can be life-saving. I've got it too. Um, the other person who is emoting more is also in a life-saving or potentially life-saving coping mechanism, which is, you know, expressing pain, expressing need, expressing hurt, hoping that if you express it long enough or loud enough or clearly enough, it will get you what you want. Um, tragically, 2 people often get caught in these spirals. So if you just go— well, first of all, if you do nothing, it will just keep getting worse, right? If you just keep doing what you're doing, it will keep getting worse. If you just go off and work on your own therapy or coaching, you might think, okay, well, I'll get better at my piece, she'll get better at her piece, then we'll be able to come together. Ironically, that tends not to work. Because, you know, although individual therapy, individual coaching can be incredibly powerful, it is not likely to be able to get at these levels of trigger that can happen between us literally just in a fraction of a second because of how attachment rewires our brain. So that's why I recommend that you work together With someone who is trained to spot and help you interrupt these reactions that you start having in a fraction of a second. Because when you do that, you have a profound opportunity to actually heal each of you, the underlying wound, because there always are some underlying wounds for each person in this dynamic. You could be sitting there with a therapist or coach individually for years and not get to this place of rawness, the place of pain, which is also the pain of possibility of literally rewiring these neural pathways in the brain. So that's why I am so passionate about attachment-focused couples work. Some therapists are highly trained in it, highly skilled. Many therapists are not really trained in attachment work. It's, it's a newer body of work. Many therapists are not really good with couples. There's kind of a dirty little secret in couples work that a lot of couples therapy makes problems worse between couples. So you really need to not just look for a therapist, And not even just look for a coach, but look for somebody who really gets attachment. Because what will help interrupt these patterns is when the helper person, coach or therapist, is able to basically serve as an attachment object, a surrogate attachment object for each of you. In these heightened trigger moments and use their own nervous system. Like when I work with clients, I'm using my nervous system to help each person in the relationship feel heard, seen, accepted, appreciated. And then I help them build the bridges between them. Mm-hmm. So that they can help each other feel heard and seen and accepted and appreciated. I love the work of Stan Tatkin. He's a very well-known attachment theorist. He has several kind of pop psychology books on attachment, which I don't find as profound, but he has a clinical book called In Love and War: Mutual Regulation and Dysregulation in Couples Therapy. That book is one of my bibles. And one of the things that he says is that couples will come in for therapy or coaching saying, you know, we can't agree about where to take a vacation. We can't agree about where to live. We can't agree about how to raise the kids. We can't agree about where to spend the holidays. We can't agree about money. We can't agree about sex. And if you've had a hard time in a relationship, or if you're having a hard time now, you may identify with that. You may feel like, well, yeah, we always have the same fights about where to go on vacation. That's our problem. What Stan Tatkin says, and what I do when I'm working with couples, is dive underneath the surface of the, the proximal cause of tension And get to what's really happening underneath. Because I strongly suggest to you, and I invite you to check this out for yourself, see if it feels true, um, that what is happening underneath is always that people are starting to feel despair. Despair that I will ever be able to get my needs met with and by you. Despair that you will ever see me, that you will ever care about me in the way I'm yearning to be cared about. Usually both people in the couple are having that same kind of despair, even though we may have opposite strategies for responding to it or coping with it. And so you could spend, you know, months or years— and people do spend months and years in ineffective couples therapy— hashing out compromises or agreements or plans about The vacations or the money or the sex or the child raising and still don't get to this underlying thing of, can I really trust you with my heart? Can I trust you and feel safe with you with my need for connection? And can I trust you and feel safe with you with my need for space? Like right now, as I said, my girlfriend and her family are off at the beach. She got that I needed some quiet time. She doesn't know what I'm doing with it. She doesn't know I'm making this video. But when she comes home, she will be supportive. And if she had really needed— well, she wouldn't have really needed me to go to the beach because I know her. But what she does need, what her love language is, is touch. And so when she comes back, if I rub her back for a little while, if I hug her, if I kiss her, that's going to meet her need. We are in a good place in our relationship. We are not at odds. So it's pretty easy for us to do that. But I have been many times in relationships where the scar tissue and the sense of wounding had built up so we couldn't get to these simple ways of stating our needs, accepting each other's needs, meeting our needs. And that's what I am passionate about helping couples do. So if this speaks to you, I would love you to consider doing a package of coaching sessions with me or seek someone else again who knows lesbians and the dynamics between us and who knows attachment, because I believe that that is how you are going to be able to get from a painful place where you may feel stuck and marooned and afraid the bridges have been burned right now, not seeing your way back. Um, a miracle is a change in perception, as they say in A Course in Miracles. And, um, when we start being able to perceive our partner as safe again, our hearts can go out to them in this struggle. It stops even mattering that their sense of struggle is about you. Um, You become able to want to help them. A natural generosity can emerge again that can really turn the Titanic of your relationship around and get you back to trust and ease and reconnection. So I hope this video has been helpful to you. I'm at consciousgirlfriendacademy.com. My name is Ruth Schwartz. I didn't introduce myself. I am the director of Conscious Girlfriend Academy. And would love to support you more in your relationship. We also have all kinds of classes. Most of our classes are largely attended by women who are single because most women don't get hold of this kind of relationship-saving information while they're actually in a relationship. So if you're watching this now and you are single, I would love to support you also with learning how to heal your own attachment style and learning the communication patterns that can really Keep your next relationship strong and healthy and, and also help you find that next relationship. So if you're a lesbian, queer woman, a woman who loves women, and you want some help for your heart, Conscious Girlfriend Academy has got you covered. Lots of love to you.