#226: Your Emotional Survival Mode Is Sabotaging Your Relationship (Here’s How to Stop It)

Have you ever caught yourself saying something.

In the heat of the moment and then instantly regretting it?

Or maybe you shut down or go silent and think, what's the point? They never listen anyway. When your relationship feels like it's one big long loop of fights, silence and misunderstanding, it's not because you don't care. It's because you're in emotional survival mode and no one ever taught you how.

To get out of it.

Welcome to Love Shack Live. The the podcast for people at a relationship crossroads. If you're struggling with daily conflicts, distance, or the fear that it might be too late to fix things, you're in the right place. I'm Stacy Bartley, a relationship mentor and an emotional skill builder. Here with my lover Tom and our daughter Brooke, we've helped thousands of people rebuild connection not through magic, but through skills. In today's episode, I'm sharing one of the most powerful tools we teach inside of the love and limbo 30 day roadmap, a concept called the window of neutrality. The it's the skill that can change everything. Because when you learn to stay grounded even in the messiest conversations, you stop reacting, start responding, and finally see what's.

Really going on between you.

So what's your default mode? Do you spin up and do you try and fix everything or do you shut down and disappear? Let's find out together.

Hey, thank you for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, it's Brooke. Just a quick heads up before we get started. What you're about to hear is actually a full length video training pulled from our love and Linda 30 day roadmap. So it's a little different from our usual podcast episodes. If you want to see the visuals Stacy's referencing, like her slides and diagrams, you can watch the full video on the Spotify app or over on our website. We've linked it in the show description for you. We're diving into one of the most powerful tools we teach how to stay calm and clear when your emotions are screaming. Say it louder. Slam the door. Send the text. Spoiler alert. Better communication doesn't come from better words. It comes from a more regulated you. Let's go.

What I want to teach you is a deep dive into the emotional weightlifting portion of the principled pillars. Because this is where it is we need to go in order to give you your first skill. Now, you might be wondering, okay, come on, Stace, why aren't we talking about communication? Isn't that why most relationships struggle? And I want you to know, yes, that is true, but the Reality is communication isn't a place where we can begin. Communication is something that we can only improve once we learn how to get better at that emotional regulation or weightlifting with inside of ourselves. Because here's the thing, I could give you the greatest communication frameworks in the world and believe me, I have many of them and they are fantastic. But when your emotional back gets pressed against the wall, you're not going to use them, you're not even going to care about them and you're not even going to remember them. What you're going to do is probably a lot of what you're doing right now. You're going to emotionally react, which is what's going to create the fight, the disagreement, the conflict. Because here's the truth as a response, as a, as a human being, in our attempts to be responsible, we don't know what we don't know. And so emotionally I'm going to probably react the way I always react because I don't understand why that's not going to work. And it won't be until you learn how to do some emotional weightlifting that then those communication frameworks can become valuable to you. So that's why we're going to start where we start today. Emotional weightlifting is absolutely a critical first stop skill that we have to get good at and a lot of other experts really bypass this point. So I want to introduce you to the reality that we have an emotional survival mode inside of ourselves as a human being. Just like we have physical survival modes, our emotional experiences have a mode that we, we go to when we don't know what else to do. Emotionally, it comes up when we're faced with situations and we don't know what to do. And so we flip into this emotional coping or this emotional survival mode with inside of ourselves. Survival mode doesn't solve our problems or challenges, but it absolutely does buy us time to gain new understanding and to try different remedies, which is what we're going to do today. So I want to introduce you to the two primary modes of emotional survival that we experience as a human being. Their control and collapse. Now I want to tell you about each of them independently. So let's talk about control survival mode first. Control is a survival mode where, okay, when my emotional back gets pressed against the wall, I'm going to flip into doing mode. The idea is here inside of us that something's got to be fixed, something's got to be done and we've got to get this handled immediately. If I am in a control survival mode, I'm going to probably be out on the Internet. I'm going to be doing all the research, I'm going to be taking all the quizzes. I'm going to diagnosing myself and my partner about what the heck is going on here in our relationships. I'm also a person who might tend to be pushy, and I want to be in charge because I got it all figured out from my research. I've taken the quizzes, I've got the information, I know what to do. And so I'm going to be the person in the relationship that is trying to enroll the other person into going, come on, come on, come on, we got to do something about this. I know what we're supposed to do. You have to do it like this. It has to go down like that, and it's exhausting for you, but you don't know what, what else to do. And here's the thing, your person tends to pull away from this particular kind of survival mode because they feel like you really are being bossy, pushy, demanding, critical, belittling, etc. Now, the sweetheart message underneath this particular survival mode is, I just want things to change. I want things to get better for us, for our family. I want to stop this crazy fighting and conflict that we are consistently living in. I can't do it anymore. And so there is a sweetheart message to both of these survival modes, but the way we go about doing it is actually hindering our progress. The second form that I mentioned is collapse. And collapse means I don't like conflict. I just want to get along. I'm emotionally exhausted. I don't know what to do. I can't take any more. And instead of doing the doing part right, there is a collapse part where I start to mentally check out. I start to want to run away, I start to want to dismiss and disengage with you. Just let me breathe for a minute. And then I think maybe I could pull it together long enough to get about doing some of those things that you're telling me I need to do. So collapsers, they want to find an escape hatch and they shut down. And they're afraid to say much because they don't want to say the wrong thing. The sweetheart message here is that I really want things to go well. I want to do my part. I can be exceptionally patient, and I can be a person who can go along with a lot. But then there's a place where I can't take it anymore, and I just want to get the heck out of Dodge. And so when you're talking to me, I might shut down and go missing in my head mentally, emotionally. And then I might actually need to physically remove myself to go for a walk, go for a run, go for a drive, just to kind of regain my sense of balance here. I want to tell you about myself because I've been in both of these survival modes personally and I think through my sharing of my personal experience, you might be able to see yourself and what it is I'm describing here in these two survival modes. This is a woman back in 1997 who, as you can see there, has a darling family and many young kids and a couple of teenagers at this point in time. I had been married for 13 years. This is the last family photograph that was taken of my family at this point in time. We ended up divorcing about six months after this photograph was taken. And I had come to the end of my road of being a collapser. I couldn't do it anymore. And I had gone along with and put up with a codependent form of behavior and also compensation for my husband who was struggling with mental health challenges and also many addictions that just were playing out in our relationship unbelievably. He was more of the controller personality at this point in time. And I was very much the pleaser, just trying to go along with, trying to fix, trying to make it look normal, trying to, to make the harmony happen in the home. I very much felt like I was stuck in this place of trying to protect the kids and trying to keep my marriage together. And then there was finally catalytic event like there is in most relationships, where I had to admit that I could no longer do this because I was in a mental health crisis of my own. I was starting to really struggle with my own mental well being and that was playing out and really impacting my children at the time. And so finally it was not even for my own benefit of taking care of my own needs, but because the, of the impact that I saw it having on my children. I decided I needed to end the marriage and I needed to go in a different direction for everybody's well being. And this is me about seven years later where I had come out of that experience. And quite frankly, I was so angry about my realization of being a collapser that I actually swung really hard into control. And I didn't understand survival modes then. I didn't understand, you know, a lot about relationships or quite frankly any of the work that I do. I was trying to figure it out for Myself and I had started a business and I decided that I was going to call the shots, that I was never going to be put in a situation where I was going to be reliant upon another human being ever, ever, ever, ever again. And I'd also come to some conclusions about all men are this. And so I'm going to be an independent woman who doesn't need no man. And I'm going to do this thing for the long haul, only to find myself several years later in an opportunity where what I longed for most, because I am very much a relationship person, is to be with a special someone, to build a life with, to to have somebody that I can co create with that helps make me a better person and them a better person as well as this of a community, a family that gets better along the way as a byproduct and result of that. So I just want to take a time out here for a minute and let's talk about this. If we keep resisting the understanding of emotional survival mode or emotional weightlifting, your relationship is going to continue to break down and it won't matter if like me, you're in the collapser or control side of the equation, because both of these take a toll on ourselves and in our relationships. My life when it came to relationships didn't improve because I was a controller finally and took charge and become an independent woman. Eventually what ended up happening is I was able to find some balance between knowing when I did need to pull back and when I did need to show up and advocate for myself. But I didn't know that at the time. So I was just swinging from one extreme to the other, trying to find a place to rudder myself because I didn't understand anything about emotional survival mode or emotional weightlifting. And so I need you to that in order for us to get what it is we want in our relationships, to get the connection back, the passion and the experiences that we desperately desire as a human being. That is absolutely a principle of understanding how relationships work and the skills that are needed in order to navigate them. So many of my clients come into my office thinking that instead to save their relationships, they need to get their partners to change or their partners are trying to get them to change. And I need you to understand that it's not about that. Yes, change needs to happen, but the change needs to happen from within ourselves, not somebody policing another person. That turns into a game of power and control and manipulation. And unfortunately, in that emotional survival mode, we end up taking our relationship emotions out on each other, which Never makes us feel good about who it is we are and how we're showing up. It isn't until we learn this concept, this basic concept, and there are several more, when it comes to emotionalism, emotional weightlifting, that we can begin to see our role in the relationship puzzle. It's not so much about attacking my person and getting acutely aware of what they're doing. It's more about understanding where I go in my own emotional survival mode and then how I need to work with that in order to feel better about the person I am and how I'm showing up in the relationship. I'll never forget one of my clients busting out of with intense emotion in one of my sessions with her, and she states, oh, my gosh, I am turning into a monster of myself that I don't even recognize. Because even though I feel like because of how I'm being treated in my relationship, I make up a story that now it's okay for me to say and do these things to the person I love, I feel terrible about myself and the person that I'm becoming. And that is so true for all of us. Us. Like, yes, I get everybody is saying and doing things that are difficult and hard and quite frankly, really messed up. And the more that that plays out, the more we start making up a story and a narrative that now I get to say and do things that I don't feel good about as a human being with inside of myself at the end of the day. And those are the things that are going to cause us to break down. Remember me saying, we show up in our relationship as good as I feel, and if I'm not feeling good about how I'm showing up, what I'm saying, how I'm behaving, I am turning into a monster of myself. Do you resonate more with a controller or a collapser? And the thing I want you to understand is, guess what? We do both as a human being. So if you're maybe on the fence and not quite sure because you do both, well, just know that's normal. If you do have a particular favorite. Yeah, that's typically the case as well. That we begin when our emotional back gets pressed against the wall, and then we cycle through them both. And here's how that works. Let's say if I'm a controller, I'm going to push and push and push and research and diagnose and try and come up with the answers to move this forward, to solve these problems. And I'm going to do it to the Point of emotional exhaustion. And then I'm going to collapse and it's usually going to be in a puddle of tears or a fit of rage. And I'm not going to stay there unfortunately very long because here's the kicker, I'm a controller. Nothing gets, gets done in a collapsed state. So that's very maddening and frustrating as well. And I go, ah, somebody's gotta save this relationship, somebody's gotta do something. And I guess nobody's gonna do it but me. And so that puts me back into a place where I'm back to pushing and doing the research and reading the info scrolling social media. And so this becomes a very habitual cycle in and of itself that is emotionally exhausting. Now emotional collapsers, they have their cycle too. They're going to stay in a collapsed state until. And you're not going to see it coming. There's like this little trip wire, they don't know it's coming, their partners don't know it's coming. But there's like this little trip wire that gets crossed and when it does, they flip into control and it's almost like they go to the closet and they pull out the bat of truth and they start swinging it really hard. And you're not just going to hear about what's going down today in this moment. You're going to hear about the last five. Like it's all coming out idea with a collapser because they've been sitting on so much for so long trying to get the peace and the harmony and avoid the conflict for so long that it's like, you want to push me here? You want to know how I really feel? You want to know what I really think? Well, okay, here it is. And man, they start swinging it hard and they tell you all the nitty gritty emotional discomforts, upsets, betrayals, disappointments, and then there's this look of devastation on their partner's faces, the people that they love faces and the idea that goes off inside of them is almost one of like, see, I shouldn't have said anything. I should have kept it to myself because this is terrible. What I have done instead is terrible. And they go back to a collapsed state. So this is what I call a perfect match. When you have a relationship that has the components of a controller, somebody who's pushing, pushing, doing, doing, doing, and a collapser, somebody who's trying to keep the peace, create harmony, go along with, be patient, and it's perfect match I call it because there's a balancing act here. Emotionally, if you pay attention, there needs to be somebody who is kind of the spearheader and driver in a relationship, and there needs to be somebody who plays that stabilizing force of balance in a relationship. And that is why I call it the Perfect Match. Not because you're going to ride off in the sunset and live happily ever after, but because there's a balancing force here that if we learn how to really, really work with it, it actually creates more balance and harmony with inside of ourselves as individuals, as well as in our relationships. In my relationship with my husband Tom, I'm the controller and he is the collapser. He is the one that will, at cost to himself, try and do everything he possibly can to maintain some sense of peace, some sense of harmony. And he's a very grounded force for me, where I'm more of the person who's going to figure it out and we're going to go and we're going to do it now. And us being able to learn how work together with these things creates a better us. It creates a better me. And that's the case for you, too. Now, these types of pairs are the most common in relationships, and they also contain the greatest chance at longevity. They're polar opposite complements and they complement each other, which, as I have already said, leads to a deeper experience in our relationships, both with ourselves and each other. But what if you're both controllers or collapsers? Does that mean. Mean that you're doomed? Maybe you're sitting there with your partner right now and you're realizing both of you are collapsers. Now, I am grateful that Janet and Rich are still very strong participants in our body of work online. And this has probably been, I want to say, four years now, and they are happily married. And after learning what they needed to understand in those principal pillars, those six principal pillars, they were able to understand that, yeah, we can be two emotional collapsers. But then we have to understand when it's time to finally show up and have those conversations and say what it is we need to say. And we can do that with skill and understanding instead of just trying to drive each other to a place of exhaustion and frustration before we finally show up. And that's possible for you, too. So, yes, two collapsers absolutely can make a run at longevity and happy, thriving relationships. And quite frankly, so can two controllers. Two controllers can do the same thing. It's just going to be volatile. You're going to have two strong, very passionate people who are wanting to basically figure it out and enroll somebody in Doing my ideas. And so there's going to have to be somebody who acquiesces from time to time. There has to be some negotiation that happens. There's, there's some give and take that has to be learned in two controllers. As the saying goes, you know, the sex is epic and so are the fights. And so there's a place where we have to emotionally regulate in different ways so that we can create that balance in our relationship. So yes, regardless if you're two controllers, two collapsers, or you have that perfect match, control and collapse, if you understand how relationships work and the skills that are necessary to navigate through them, you absolutely can do that. But it begins with understanding and skill. So let me give you the first skill that I want to give you today that's going to make a huge difference in regards to you navigating the emotional survival mode that is absolutely playing out in your relationship right now. I call this the window of neutrality. It's a state of emotional balance where you're not reacting or defensive. Then you can simply approach situations that occur in your relationship with some sense of open mindedness and a willingness to understand. So here's a square. And if you were in my office right now, I would be drawing this. But since it's a slide here I. Here you go. But here's the window and I'm going to draw a line down the middle and you can see that it says neutral. Neutral is where you are right now, listening to my voice and, and maybe sitting alone or with your partner watching this workshop. It's a place with inside of you where we can listen, can learn, and we can share. This is neutral. And I want you to get in touch with what that feeling is inside of your body. Because for productive conversations to happen, we must be in a neutral space. If we're not, we're going to fight. So it's unrealistic that we're going to be able to maintain neutral as a human being. So the emotional experiences in conversation and communication with each other are going to look more like this. There's an up and a down to it. We all can relate to the experiences of starting a conversation and having our emotional experiences, you know, rise and fall and rise and fall. And I want you to know that's normal and that's going to be the goal. The goal is just going to be able to stay emotionally in that neutral space. Because the moment I can't listen anymore, the moment that I do start to rip somebody's face off and escalate is the moment that we are no longer in that window of neutrality and we are absolutely now going to escalate into the conflict that we are desperately trying to avoid. So I want you to think about this on the right side of the, the slide here. You're going to see there's increments. How this typically plays out for us as human beings is we start that emotional rising. If I'm a control person, right, I'm going to start to like spin up and escalate. And if you're like most human beings that don't understand this and how it's playing out, we just try and hang on for as long as we possibly can. It's like, oh, here I go, I'm escalating and I'm just gonna hang on until absolutely lose my mind and say or do something that breaks down the communication. And I sometimes might escalate in order to step into that, that prove or demand space, you know, that powerful space. And every time I do. Have you ever, ever received the experience of aha, I finally see the light. You're so right. That's crazy because that never happens and it never will because what happens is we just go into our emotional survival modes and then any productive conversation or communication is dead in the water. And it happens the other direction too. You can see I have lines going down the other way towards the bottom of the window. And that's for the collapser to highlight the collapser. And, and that happens in incremental stages too, where in the conversation I just start to check out, I just start to mentally stop listening. I just then start to make up a whole narrative and I get lost in my own thoughts or I'm trying to think of a reply instead of listening. And then I bottom out and I might say, I've had enough, I'm done, I'm leaving, I'm gonna walk out of the situation if I'm a collapser. So we have hypo on the bottom, which is a collapser. That just means I'm hypo aroused emotionally and we have H on the top of the window, which means I am hyper aroused or control spinning up the other direction. So in order to work with this, what we need to do is sooner rather than later. Whoops, disclose where I am. I need to disclose if I'm spinning up or shutting down as the controller or collapser in the communication. And I can do that very simply and easily by just saying, saying, hey, you know what? I'm, I'm spinning up. I'm going to pause right now. And I'm going to come back to this conversation in we must declare a time. Or I can say, you know what? I'm shutting down. I'm not listening anymore. I need to pause. I need to come back to this another time. And as you're first learning this, I want to encourage you to use this sooner rather than later. Like, don't wait until you're just shy of blowing the window and then attempting to do it, because then by then you're too shut down or you're too spun up. It's like when you notice you're starting to go that direction of control or collapse. Declare it then and give yourself lots of space to not blow the window. Because here's what happens when you blow the window. It's going to sacrifice the emotional safety to share to come back around to the conversation. It's also where conflict and fighting happen. And so the only way we're going to be able to make progress is by us being able to practice staying in that window of neutrality. Okay? We can ebb and flow in it. We just don't want a red line at the top or the bottom. And so work with that. As you see those incremental shutting up or shutting down take place, this is called a brake pedal. You have the ability to use it, and here's the thing, you need to use it. It's going to be better for you to pause the conversation and come back to it than to just continue trying to prove your point or trying to avoid the conversation until somebody sacrifices that safety I talked about. This is the cycle that continuously plays out in our relationships that break ourselves and our relationship down. And notice that in that window, we can't maintain it, the more aggressive and the more it wears on. So if we can develop the ability to pause in our relationships, just a simple pause by being able to be in tune with ourselves that we're spinning up or shutting down, then it puts us in a place where we can have more productive conversations and we're more. More reticent to come back around to have the conversations that we need to have. Unfortunately, for most of us, we have a very difficult time putting the challenge on the table to solve. So when it finally gets talked about, we feel like we have to solve it in one round. And unfortunately, that's a disaster because especially challenging situations that we're navigating through and attempting to solve and understand, they might take many rounds of conversation to solve or to understand. And unfortunately, if I feel like I got to do it in one, then we're probably not going to accomplish what we need to accomplish in that understanding or fixing it conversation. I'm just going to push it until I blow the window and then we're going to do that thousands and thousands of times. And this is why as a couple, we continue to have the same old fight over and over and over again. So think about it as rounds of like a workout. And every round counts of communication. And every round that you practice staying in the window of neutrality is going to give you another little piece of understanding, another little piece of some clarity about where we need to go and what we need to do in our relationships to turn things around and establish all those wonderful things that we know we want. When you're in the window of neutrality, you can communicate more effectively and you can listen actively. And you're going to also start to learn where your triggers are and how to better manage your own emotional responses. You're going to also be able to start understanding your partner's perspective and needs without judgment and defense, which is critically important. Because here's the thing, this is what you're going to need to do in order to bring back the connection and the trust and the intimacy in your relationship. Again, like, and if it takes us 50 rounds to get to where it is we need to be to understand, to decide how it is to better support ourselves and each other through the inevitable ups and downs of life, then take the 50. Heck, take the 150. Because every round, I promise, promise, will help you understand more about yourself and your person. The truth is, healthy relationships don't just happen. They are truly built on skills and tools. The reality is you've probably just never learned them because I don't know where you go to learn them outside of my work. Yes, you can get a little piece here and a little piece there. That's what I had to do. And I had to collect what works and what's effective. And then I could put it together in a way that with my couples I work with, my families work with, there's so much teaching that goes on in addition to the quasi therapies of talking about how to do the emotional weightlifting or the emotional regulation and understanding of those things. And let's be honest, I mean, we don't study relationships like we would driving a car or learning how to cook or, you know, becoming masterful at our careers. And yet it's the kingpin of life. When things go wrong in my relationships, whether it's with myself, myself or my person, it affects every category of my life. And yet we spend so little time there, learning, practicing to create a solid foundation with which I can co create my. My partner with my partner. And so that first step is the window of neutrality that I've given you today. Because the reality is when you can understand how to stop, how to use your brake pedal, when it comes to conversations that are absolutely crying to be had, then we can go any, anywhere. I can trust myself to know how to regulate myself. I can trust my partner that they can do the same. And we can support each other in this. And there's no right or wrong in it. Right, control and collapse. There isn't one inferior or superior to the other. They're just emotional coping skills that we have learned and acquired and practiced because we haven't known what else to do. Using the window of neutrality is the next option. It is the what to do instead. Instead. And when I pause and I say, hey, let's come back to this in 30 minutes. Let's come back to this tomorrow over coffee or tomorrow night after we put the kids to bed, or let's come back to this when we have our session with Stacy. Then, then you're in a place where we can pause it and not have that escalation and that conflict happen and take place in our relationships. It creates a sense of safety inside of ourselves. So this is a very, very first step, an important skill for you being able to make progress. Progress. And I just want to say here, the key components are tap out sooner rather than later. Make sure that you declare a time, you're going to come back around and attempt the conversation again. Again. Think of it like rounds of a workshop or of a workshop of a workout. Think of it as rounds of us getting better at understanding ourselves and each other. And we're going to take as many rounds as it takes. It's okay to take many. We don't have to do this in one shot. Some of the worst advice in the whole world was don't go to bed mad. I would say go to bed mad. Rest, think about what's happening and what's been said, and then let's come back around and approach this in a new way later. Okay? That's the first step.

If today's training hit home and you're.

Thinking, wow, I've definitely been in control or collapse or maybe both.

You're not alone. Knowing your emotional survival mode is the first step towards changing it. That's exactly why we created, created the space and Separation communication playbook inside you'll find a powerful self assessment to help you figure out how you are showing up and what to do instead. It's just nine bucks and honestly, it's a no brainer. And when you're ready to stop spiraling and start feeling steady and grounded again.

Not just in your head, but in.

Your heart, come and join us inside the love and limbo 30 day roadmap. It's our self paced program that walks you step by step by step through what to do when someone you love asks for space. You don't have to figure this out alone. And if you want extra support while you're doing the inner work, you can also add on the Better Love Club. It's our private community filled with people who've been exactly where you are.

They get it, they've lived it, and.

They'Re rooting for you too. You'll find links to everything right here in the show notes. Because better love is isn't just possible, it's learnable. One skill, one pause and one step at a time. Our follow the fun today is learning to pause. So we wanted to also create something joyful to help you pause too. So my challenge for you today is this week.

Practice the pause.

Not just in hard conversations, but in your everyday life life. Pick one moment where you feel yourself.

Spinning up or shutting down and instead.

Pause and do something that brings you back to neutral. Take a slow sip of something warm, put on a favorite song and move your body. Step outside and name five things that you can see. The point of all of this is interrupt the pattern and remind yourself that regulation isn't just for conflict, it's for life. The song that we chose for this week is Shake it out by Florence and the Machine. This song is a no brainer when it comes to just realizing that a pause is probably your next best option. When you're spinning up or shutting down, stay in your window.

At least practice it.

And I gotta be honest, you're gonna probably blow it.

Not because I don't believe in your.

Ability to do it, but staying in.

The window of neutrality takes practice.

It is very much a practice process, you know. And the power of a pause, that's the first place. Remember, you have to slow down. We have to equalize our physical body and our emotional bodies. So if you forget everything, just remember the power of a pause.

Yeah.

And it sounds simple and it sounds easy logically. And then stopping emotion that is in motion, it's going to cause you to do that emotional push up we talk about often. So thank you so much for being here with us. It's always a joy and a pleasure to connect with you, our listeners, and if this has resonated with you, we're.

Going to ask with all the love.

And respect in our heart, to share it with somebody that also needs to understand and know what survival mode looks like as well. Until next time, we look forward to being back here with you again.

Bye Bye.

All right, it's time to leave the Love Shack, but before we part ways, we want you to know our door is always open and we'll leave the porch light on, ready to welcome you back whenever you need a dose of relationship wisdom. For more resources and tools, Visit us at loveshacklive.com to dive deeper into the topics we've explored and find additional support for your relationship journey. Stay connected by subscribing to our podcast Podcast thank you for being part of our Love Shack Live community.