#69: The Secrets to Amazing Communication in Relationships

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, it's welcome to the Love Shack, a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and ease, drop on juicy conversations and uncover the mysteries that nobody talks about but absolutely influences our relationships. If you are struggling with your special someone and or desire to create love that lasts the long haul, this show is dedicated to you. In Today's episode number 69, we're going to share with you the secrets to amazing communication that will help you right now in your relationship. I'm Stacey Bartley and I'm here with my Tom person, my lover, my. My friend, my Tom person co host. I am an integrative couples therapist in a divorce creator and it's a pleasure to be here with you today.

And I'm Ed McMahon. No, I'm just kidding.

Most people think that good communication is all about talking more, but that's not always the case here in the Love Shack. Today, we're going to give you some tips on how to listen better and understand your partner on a deeper level. Most of us are aware of the reality that if we want a healthy, happy relationship, then communication skills are essential. But let me ask you this. How do you develop these skills? Did you ever take a course in school on communication for love? Have you ever studied it at least as much as driving a car or becoming masterful at baking those chocolate chip cookies and pies? The sad truth for most of us is probably not. We have not stepped in to study this very important skill that we know is critically important to our relationships. And if we are lucky enough to have studied some sort of communication class, have you noticed it's commonly taught as debate negotiations, perhaps sales? Not to step on anybody's toes here, but these types of training are not going to help us with our communication when it comes to our intimate relationships. Why? Because these are manipulative approaches to communication. Ouch. I know that. But here's the truth. I don't know of a person on the planet who loves the feeling of being manipulated. It's why more times than not, instead of finding solutions to the challenges that we face and the differences that we have in our relationships, we fight instead. So today we are going to change all of this. We are going to pull back the curtain of communication and share with you the anatomy of how it all works so that you can finally understand that you really can say what it is you need to say. And now you can begin to say it in a way that it can be heard, too.

And I would just Add it. You know, if you're listening to us live, thank you so much. And you think, okay, this doesn't apply to me, but maybe because I'm not in a relationship with a special someone right now. But I would bet that you're in a relationship with a family member, a neighbor, a co worker, a business colleague. So these are all intimate in the sense, these are much more closer to the layer of who we are than just a standard conversation. So this will apply whether you're in a very, you know, intimate marriage, long term relationship or if, if you're in relationships with, with what I just shared. So stay tuned. Don't, don't just check out because. Very, very relevant and actionable. We may not even get through everything that we've slated for today. So take a pause, grab your favorite beverage and we'll be right back.

I met Stacy and Tom about two years ago. I was at a point in my relationship where I was ready to file for divorce. Not that I wanted to, but I just felt hopeless and helpless. I'd been through other counseling and coaching and didn't find any success with Stacy and Tom's methods. I was able to eliminate insecurities, set boundaries, plant my flag, eliminate rabbit holing. I was separated from my wife for a year and I have since moved back home for the last six months. Now, I still refer back to a lot of the teaching that Stacy and Tom provided and it's helped me. It's well worth it.

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Welcome back inside the Love Shack, episode 69. Great to have you here. We are Tom and Stacey Bartley, host of Love Shack Live, along with our awesome engineer Eric Rider at the spaceship Control kknw. And just a quick reminder and place of appreciation if you know of someone that may be struggling in communication and be honest with you, ladies and gentlemen, this is the number one place people come to us because they think they are struggling. Well, they are struggling. Excuse me, they don't think they are. So we're going to take a little different approach on that. And number two, if we're throwing a lot at you and I know we will be, maybe you're driving in your car again. Thanks for listening. You don't have to worry about driving or, excuse me, writing while you're driving. That's not a safe practice. Everything that we talk about is meticulously put into our show notes as well as we are now transcribing. So if you don't want to listen to it, you can read it. And that's all done by one of our wonderful daughters behind the scenes, Brooke. Thank you Brooke. We love and appreciate you. She makes us look good on the front side. So there you go. Don't have to worry, everything is all in one place and we'll remind you about that at the end as well.

If you're just joining us, I want to remind you that we're talking about the secrets of amazing communication and our relationships. Listening, understanding and being compassionate are essential ingredients to amazing communication. It's true, we've probably all heard the same communication is key, but what does that really mean exactly? You know, this always reminds me of when I was jumping into trying to put the wheels back on my own life and people would say, well you just got to love yourself. And I would go, okay, I hear what you're saying, but what if I don't? And communication and the conversations around it are very similar. Like I know that communication is key to relationship, so why is it is so hard? Like where does it go awry? And if I were to tell you the first principle of communication is it's important to understand communication is a two way street, that it takes two people to communicate effectively. One person to send a message and one person to receive it. In order for communication to be successful, both parties need to be open and willing to listen. We can all go, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I got it, I got it, I got it. So, okay, if you. It's pretty straightforward, right? So again, where does it all go awry? Where does it all go haywire? And this is the conversation that we want to have with you today. I could give you all kinds of special ways to say it, and we have a communication framework that we're going to need to share with you in part two. But until you get this piece right, until you understand all the intricate aspects or the anatomy of communication, all of those incredible frameworks that I would share with you about say it like this, do it like this, are not going to help you. Because when we get pressed and our back gets against the wall and we get frustrated and we're having this conversation for, I don't know, the hundredth time and we're losing it, right? You're going to go back to what it is, you know, and you're not going to use any of the communication words and frameworks that I'm going to give you. So today we're going to peel the curtain back and we're going to help you understand more of the nuances to what really drives our communic so that we can finally make some progress in this thing we call communication. Sound like a good idea? What do you say?

Love it. Love it. And again, this is an important distinction that we can't overemphasize. I mean, just take your, you know, take yourself into a situations where, you know, I know I would say all of us. How many times or have you ever said that would be a better context. Gosh, after those words have been mouthed by us, I wish I wouldn't have said it or said it that way.

So in answer to the question of where does it all go awry, it goes haywire right here. Logistically, logically, we can understand that, okay? Communication is a two way street. I need to listen as much as I need to share. All makes sense to me. Okay, so where does it all go haywire? It's right here. It's called emotions. The emotions of it all is where it all starts to hit, skid sideways.

And let me just add for those of us that maybe that, that word is like, oh God, here we go again. You could interject feeling, you know, emotions with that, right? Mrs. Ms. Bartley is the scientist of the family, okay? Yeah. So could we synonymous? Is it is it's a synonym?

Well, I want you to think of feelings being the individual parts of emotions. Like emotion is a whole cookie. And if I were to break down the feelings in that emotional cookie, it would be all of the variety of emotions. What we don't are feelings. What we don't realize is that we can have many, many different feelings going on at the same time. Just like a cookie has many, many different ingredients in it. So emotions are the totality of what we describe the feelings we are experiencing. And the feelings are understanding its individual parts.

And they're fast and furious, right? They're moving at unbelievable speed and they change all the time depending on what has is the triggering situation. So hence why this is not all that easy and takes some gosh darn good old fashioned practice.

Well, it's right here where communication is either going to work or break down. And because we don't have these kinds of conversations, more than likely it's going to break down. So let's talk about emotions for a minute. Okay? Emotions are fluid. They're invisible, they're dynamic. And as Tom already alluded to, they travel super fast. My body has the ability to feel a tremendous amount of emotion, but my brain can't keep up. So I feel overwhelmed, I feel confused. I start to check out or I start to escalate, right? And feel like I need to react, I need to do something. Both of these are very, very normal responses to feeling the overwhelm of emotions that go on in our lives. Okay. So our bodies again, feel it like super fast, like, boom. That's why we have the superpower of being able to walk into any kind of an environment and know I can't logically describe why it is I'm safe here or it feels tense here, but I feel like I want to go now or hey, I feel good. Let's just sit down and get comfortable here, okay? That's all happening from the emotion in the room that we can like do in nanoseconds. Here's the challenge when it comes to talking about things, right? This is playing out as well. And it doesn't take much for me to feel overwhelmed or not understanding what we're talking about or what we're feeling. Because my brain processes emotion or information much, much slower than my body can feel emotion, that's where we get into trouble. So I need to be able to allow some space and some time for my emotions to be digested down by my logic to make sense of why it Is I feel the way I feel.

So let me just. For those of us that you know, again, I. I don't. Just doesn't. I can promise you it doesn't. I don't absorb this as fast as Stacy does. And so I'm going to be here to help us for us lay people, if you will. So would it be correct to say that feelings travel faster than thought?

Absolutely.

But yet thought is what makes us feel how we feel.

Yes.

You know what? That's not even fair. I mean, so it's not. I mean, really hear that. It's like, wait a minute. You didn't. I didn't misspeak again. We had the scientists just confirm that. So really. And all kidding aside, this is why it's almost set up to trip us up.

Well, no, the only reason why it trips us up is because we haven't been taught this. But again, we should be studying this, like, in grade school. We should be. When we're talking about, this is what little girls are and this is what little boys are, we should also be talking about, here's your physical body and here's your emotional body, and this is how this works. And I can't get into that today because that would take us on a whole nother tangent. Maybe someday we'll come back and we'll talk about. Right. Why that might be so historically, but today, let's just stay to the idea that emotions do travel faster than our brains can keep up and process. And so this is where everything starts to skid sideways. So in our attempt to get through difficult conversations, what we tend to do is either shut my emotions down or I try and shut somebody else's emotions down so that we can have the logical conversation that makes sense in our minds. Okay, this is where. Okay, cue the fighting response right here. Because the minute we try and shut somebody's emotions down, like it or not, we feel negated, we feel slighted, we feel set aside, we feel manipulated. We feel like, I could go on and on, but this is where it.

Like, switches off and said in another way. Would this be like, you know, rules number 101? You never do. Don't try to say, you know how.

Someone else feels and don't try and shut them down by how you feel is so silly or stupid or ridiculous. Oh, how many times are we going to talk about this? Right as I roll my head. Okay, that's. You're going to cue the fight right there. Because again. Right. Our emotional bodies are just as important to us as life it is life for us, right? Especially if we are an emotionally prone human being. So when you negate my emotions, you're negating me. You're, you're essentially sending, I don't care about you, I don't care about how you feel about this, I don't care what's going on for you. And you dismiss the whole argument whatsoever. And so that's going to cue a fight and, or a pulling away, which is what you don't want. That's exactly the direction that you don't want. So let's pause for a bit and let's pull back the curtain to help us understand this a bit more, shall we? Because I know that this is like, oh, gosh, here we go. And it's only because we don't talk about it. It's only because this is new. So you may need to come back and look at this and read this as Tom had suggested, and, and listen to this a few times before this really starts to set in. But I can promise you that if you will take the time to really understand this, it will change the way you show up in your relationships and your communication will be improved a thousand fold as a result to this. So here are some very important principles that you probably have never heard before about communication. And we're going to take them one by one and we're going to do our best to get through them. And if not, then that just means we're going to come back and have more of this conversation. Okay, here's the anatomy of communication. It's only when, number one, we share our emotions that we feel and build connection with others. So wherever you might be in your relational experience, I want you to just travel back in your mind's eye and I want you to think about when you build a new friend or a new lover or connect with somebody that you work with. What were the conversations that made you feel like you're connected? That they got me that I really like this person. It's generally when we're sharing our emotions.

What could I, could I use? I'm being the synonym king right now. Could I use vulnerability? Would that be a similar place, sharing my vulnerability places? Maybe. Would that be with someone? Would that.

Sure. I mean, we use that word when we talk about emotions for sure in our society. But let me give you some realistic examples. When I say, hey, I really like you, we go, ah, really? Tell me more. Or you say, hey, you know, I, I really appreciated you, or hey, you had a good there. Or hey, I want to do this. I want to dream and I want to have a ranch and I, I want to have some cattle and ride horses and somebody goes, me too. Oh my gosh, I, I dream about that all the time. There's an emotional connection or hey, have you heard this great song? I love that song. Really?

You do?

I do too.

Emotional connection or about, hey, I lost all my money in a bad business.

Deal and you go, oh gosh, me too. I know what that feels like. I'm so sorry. Emotional connection. I want you to see that these things are the sharing of some of these places, which, yes, are vulnerable, but those are the things that create bonds. And when we're coming into creating relationships with somebody that we're going to actually create life with, this is what we do. And we can barely get it out fast enough. Oh, my gosh, you love that food. I love that food. Oh my gosh, you want to go there? I want to go there. You love that poet. You love that song. You love that mov. Oh my gosh, me too. We're sharing the emotional attributes of ourselves about what we love, about what we like, and about what we dream of for our future. And we create these emotional threads that then when they're thick enough and it could be a strand or it could be miles deep, we say, hey, let's build a life together. And we didn't realize what we just did there in the communication factor. We didn't realize that what we were talking about and what we were sharing over and over and over again is an experience of our emotions and what we hope for, how we want to show up, who we want to become and the life that we want to live. And we start going, me too, me too, me too.

And we, we're going to step right into this. We also don't realize as things start to deteriorate, if we have any time of time, you know, history with a partner, that those conversations are not as frequent as they used to be.

While long term relationships, the sharing goes down typically. And this is because when we start to talk about those emotions, when we start to build a life together, we don't know how to get through the difficult ones. It's easy to talk about the good ones and the dreams and the hopes and the endeavors of the future and where I'm at now. But as this starts to play out over time and things start to happen that I don't really like right. Or that hurt my feelings or that discourage me about what we're traveling towards is not possible anymore. And I start to experience fear and doubt with. Inside of myself. Well, then we fight. And I become more and more intense about trying to communicate where I'm at and. And I become less likely to understand where you're coming from because I'm too busy wanting to push my agenda emotionally. And so we just stop sharing those emotional aspects and our conversations become more logistically driven. Like, are you gonna pick up the kids today? Yeah. Did you pay that bill? Yeah. Hey, you're gonna take out the garbage, right? Hey, I thought you were gonna clean the toilet, man. I got home and it's not. Not done. So que pasa?

So speaking of children or grandchildren, would you say the same. Could the same dynamic applies? Meaning? Think about the first, the types of conversations that were very emotionally based with our young children versus when they're older.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And our kids grow up and sometimes we don't know how to handle that. And we can't change our emotional sharing to match that. They're now adults and they're not six. Right. So there is a progression. Right. And you're getting pretty deep here, Tom. I don't know that we're going to have time to dive into all that, but absolutely, you're on the right track. Where our communication emotionally needs to grow and transform over time. But that's a conversation we'll dive deep into at another point in time. But suffice it to say that emotions are what are driving our show and that long term relationships, Right, become broken down because we don't know how to have the conversations about the stuff that doesn't work, the stuff that hurts my feelings, the stuff that I know is going to probably hurt your feelings or is driving me crazy. And so we just stop sharing the emotional parts and we start talking about all the logistics about life and what needs to be done to maintain it. Essentially what happens is we're going through the emotions, not emotions, but the motions of life and living.

And do you find that people that our clients feel like when they're having these logistical conversations, as we like to call it, they think that that's. That's the same as the conversations they had when they first came together.

Absolutely. And to try and convince ourselves that we're all in solid ground, we're going to post on social media about us having really good time. But the truth is we're not really sharing anything that makes me feel more connected to you. I'm just trying to do my best to put on the illusion more so for myself, really, that we're okay we're going through the motions of. See, we do dates on Saturday night. See, we do vacations in the summer. See, we're happy. Just take a picture.

I love that. Going through the motions versus connecting emotionally.

And this is, again, because we don't know how to share the tough stuff emotionally. So we end up in a fight over and over and over again. And this creates emotional prisons that we make up. Okay, we can't talk about your mother. That's always a sideways gig.

Mm.

We can't talk about the finances. Can't go there. We can't talk about little Johnny anymore and how he's doing in school. And so we create these emotional prisons in our relationships where we can't talk about this, we can't talk about this, we can't talk about this. And then pretty soon all we can talk about and share is the logistics of life. So if that's where you are, I just want to affirm for you that this is normal. This is usually where unless we know what we're sharing with you today about the emotional journey, we're all going to end up at some point in time. And this is about the point in time people show up at my door going, our communication is just so broken down, we can't talk about anything. And I feel so disconnected. And I go, ah, let me tell you why. Let me tell you why that happened. Because you can't share your emotional cells with each other. Okay? So this is going to take us to number two. And number two is. Okay, so we can get our head around. Sharing ourselves emotionally is key for creating connection threads. And it is. That's how it happens. No way around that. So why do we stop emotionally? We've kind of touched on that, right? It's because we start talking about or experiencing things that don't work and we don't know how to share those things without everybody going, ah. And the fight ensues. And this is because we don't understand that in order to share myself emotionally, there has to be one core thing, and that's emotional safety. Okay, I want to talk about safety for a minute. Because where we tend to go is physical safety. I'm going to assume you're physically safe because if you're not physically safe, right, you're obviously not going to be emotionally safe. Okay? If we are physically safe, then what we need to focus on is creating the emotional safety, which is the piece that gets over overlooked. Emotional safety is critically important because if we don't feel emotionally safe, we will not share ourselves Emotionally. And that's a big, hard period at the end. Like, period. There's no negotiation here. If I don't feel safe to really say what I want to say with you, like I did in the beginning, then I won't. I will go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, honey. Got it, got it. No problem.

And what is a. This is a word that even trips me up, ladies and gentlemen. I can tell you. And I. I always remind and encourage. Stacy, give me. How do I. Meaning, do we not feel emotionally safe? Because maybe in previous conversations when we've chosen to get courageous and share how we're really feeling, we get snapped at, shut down, told we're ridiculous.

Well, absolutely. But, I mean, what creates safety? And in that word, this is unconditional love. People, like, if there's anything you take away from this conversation today, recognize and realize permission is unconditional love. And you might go, oh, so that means I just have to go along with everything? That doesn't work for me. No, that's not what I'm saying. It's. I have permission to feel the way I feel. That's critically important. I give myself that. And I also give permission for you to feel the way that you feel and to see it differently. That's where it goes sideways.

Now, how does that. I just had a flood of a thought here. How does that differ? Or to agree to disagree?

Okay, that differs from agree to disagree, which. Okay, yeah, we can agree to disagree, but I'm more interested in helping you gain the understanding that is possible here. We're going to jump into one of our frameworks here called the movie framework. But essentially, we all have an internal experience that is just ours. It's just ours. We know it, and we can decide when to share it and when to not share it emotionally. And I can also meter it. I can shut myself down and I can share parts and pieces of it, and I can dance around how I feel, which is what most of us do, or I can just cut to the jugular and say, this is what's going on for me. More and more, we want to get you to a place where you know how to create safety or the permission enough to say what you need to say, because the specifics are going to become critically important if you don't give me a specific that I can understand. For example, if you're trying to convince me that you're not upset when I can visibly see that you are. It creates this void or this place where I go, yeah, that doesn't feel right. I Know, I hear the words that are coming out of your mouth, but visually it's not aligning with what I know to be true in my experience. And that creates an unrest in us. That creates, like, a conflict inside of us. And so we're constantly trying to figure out what the backside agenda is or why it is that these two things don't line up and make sense to us. And unfortunately for us as human beings, we will fill in the void of that disparity between what I see and what I feel. And that void is going to be filled in with probably something that's a fear and an insecurity for me, which means this is where I go, you don't care about me anymore. Obviously you don't want to talk about this, and you don't care about me. Me. That's me filling in the void. That's my greatest fear, that's my greatest insecurity, is that you're not going to need me around anymore. You're going to be able to toss me out with the wind and go on to number two or number three.

And everything you're describing, you're in the filling in the void is all coming from you. Rather than knowing by asking strategic questions in a way to your partner what's really going on, you're filling in the. In the blank versus having no idea truly, what's going on with your partner.

Exactly.

Okay.

Exactly. And so the permission to say, hey, this is where I went. Is this true? You're betting out the specifics would be a great example of in those moments of wanting to maintain permission of how to handle that disparity. Like, oh, my gosh, I just went to the worst possible thing that could be happening for me is happening right now. You know, could you help me understand what's really going on here? Right. I. And. And this is where the critical pieces of why would you go there? Like, I show you all the time that I love you. One of my favorite stories about Tom and I in our relationship, where this got driven home for me big time, personally, is when I came home sick and Tom said he was going to be up to watch a movie with me. And so I was trying to wait to fall asleep because I just wanted that 2.2 seconds of being wrapped up in his arms. And that 2.2 seconds I made up in my own mind turned into two and a half hours in Tom's mind. And in that two and a half hours, boy, did I make up and feel in the void a lot of, like, self deprecating our relationship is over. Obviously, you don't care about me, in spite of the fact that Tom and I had been together 10 years and every day. Honestly, babe, you, you know, you show me and demonstrate to me that I am so valuable and our relationship is so important to us. And inside of about two and a half hours, I flushed, let's just say one a day for 10 years, 3650 demonstrations that I'm valuable, and I flushed all of them to fill in the void in about two and a half hours. So that shows you where we go emotionally. And the things that we start making up inside of ourselves that simply are not true, but are coming from our own fears and insecurities about being vulnerable, about sharing ourselves emotionally, about being in this most intimate experience that we can experience in this experience of humanity, which is a relationship, an intimate relationship. So safety is critically important, and to maintain that permission is something that we need to get really, really good at, because, again, if the safety goes right, my metaphor, my favorite metaphor for this is the balloon analogy. Okay? And I just want to paint this picture. If we had a man, you know, like a handheld balloon, it would take lots of puffs of oxygen to fill it up. Like, how many depends on how big the balloon is. Let's say it's a pretty good size. We're going to spend a fair amount of time filling it up, filling it up, filling it up. Once it's full, it's much easier every now and again to just go and keep it full, keep it full. But if I turn into a place where I am critical, I'm taking my emotions out on my partner. I'm judgmental, I'm belittling, I'm. I'm secretly coming back behind. I'm. I'm acting out like I had just described. It takes nanoseconds to let the air out of that balloon, and I'm back to square one. Like, all the air comes flying out in nanoseconds, and that's how we emotionally backhoe our relationships, as we don't really understand, A, how to put air in that balloon, and B, how it is that the air comes out so fast in forms of betrayal, in forms of criticism and manipulation and leverage. Most of us don't even realize we're doing it it. And until we get that piece right, it's going to be really difficult for us to have effective communication, because what's running the show is all the emotions behind the scenes. Okay? Very important. Which takes us to Principle 3, why we have a Whole work and framework and practice and learning called emotional weightlifting. Because until you can learn how to do some emotional weightlifting, covering everything we just talked about, talked about communication, effective communication is going to continue to elude you.

Yeah, no, that's just, you know, many times when station I get into a heated place, I say, honey, you got to give me 20, you know, so. No, okay. We, we use it and we, we give some context. It's an emotional push up, meaning it's no different than for those of us that have spent any time really in, in irl, in real life. That's pretty good. I kind of, I mean, you know, I'm getting there. Irl. You've gone to the gym, you've gone to the health club and you've done some push ups. I mean, the trainer says, give me 20, you know, but get that, get that metaphor, get that context around you. Think about it. You know, emotional resiliency and emotional improvement is our ability to practice these places of difficulty and knowing they get more and more confident. Confident, excuse me, around and competent around them by practice. And, and so that when we share that, that usually can give you a new ability to think. Oh gosh, that makes sense. I've not spent a lot of time with emotional push ups and getting better and more resilient and understanding how I can become more comfortable with these places of great discomfort. Let's just be honest, they're places of great discomfort. I can remember when Stacey and I first came together, like, especially when we were on beyond the Phone and she. We had nothing, was off limits for talking and, and I thought we were done about the conversation. Oh, no, no, ladies and gentlemen, we were not done. We were gonna get it worked out.

I had a lot more to say.

Yes. And so it forced me to like, oh my gosh. You know, and just like anything, like, they used to really scare me. They used to terrify me, to be quite honest.

Wow. Really?

Yes.

I did not know that.

Yes. And there really is an art to a difficult conversation, just like there's an art to other things.

So what did you think was going to go awry?

Oh, God. I mean, just, you know, it's like just the, the enormity of taking it on really was just the bandwidth required was like, oh, my Lord, here we go again.

So the emotional aspects of what was.

Flooding you, like, I don't know if I can take that on right now.

That's, you know, that. And that's just such a perfect example of what it is we've been talking about. Like the enormity of the emotional flooding. And if I don't know how to navigate that emotional flooding, it is going to feel overwhelming. And then I am going to be acting it out. I am going to be taking it out on the people that I love, not because I don't love them, but because I don't know what else to do, right. And I'm going to try and shut the conversation down. I'm going to try and, right. Escalate the conversation if it's one that I want to have. And both are going to send us into that fight because there's not the permission to just be where we are. And so I don't want to paint the picture. It's simple to understand and it's going to require practice to do, but it will change your life forever. It's one of those things like driving a car at first, right? It's messy. It's. I'm going to drive over the curb, I'm going to ding bang the garbage can, and, and maybe in my practice of backing the car up, I'm going to end up on the neighbor's yard, right? But going through it, right, doesn't take much time. But then once I have the ability to drive that car or to express myself and do the emotional weightlifting that's required, required, it changes the rest of my life.

Well, and, you know, with some repetition, just again, you use the physical example, you get that baseline, you know, you get that baseline, you know, again, if you've had any, you know, made some gains in the physical side, that's what you do. You get that baseline, you know, of practice and stressing your body to get used to something maybe it's never done before. And then, you know, then it's. Even if you say, go off the path a little bit, you can easily get back to that baseline without too many additional reps. But you've got to get. Get in the bicycle world. I spent 27 years. You've got to put in the miles.

Yeah, well, and here's the truth about communication. Good communication means you either studied emotional weightlifting, which is the ability to regulate your emotions that are firing off much faster than I can think. This is why we say things we don't mean. We come back around after some time of sitting with it and go, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't said that. I didn't really mean it. It was more like this. That's because your thinking, your brain's ability to process your emotions has now Caught up with the way that you were feeling initially. And so emotional weightlifting will be required for you to have good communication in your relationships. And this is the piece that nobody talks about. It will be required to protect and build emotional safety that is necessary and required for you to continue to, over time, build and continue to have that sense of connection to each other that you had in the beginning. That's what got you in this mess. Remember, hey, let's. I think I love you. Let's move in together. Let's build a life together. That was because there were very, very strong threads of connection emotionally that brought you together. And then as we get into it and things start to become challenging and difficult for me, it breaks down over time and. And we pull out emotionally and we start living these lives of logistics instead.

Let me ask, so in our emotional weightlifting practice, do we. Are there times when we're doing emotion, emotional weightlifting individually and then emotional weightlifting with our partner?

Most of it's done emotionally inside of ourselves. Okay. The weightlifting happens with inside of me. And let me just give you an example of how that might look. Tom and I are having a little conversation this morning. It's going along famously. And then all of a sudden, he says something that triggers me emotionally. And I all of a sudden, known man, I'm starting to get fired up, right? Rather than just allow myself to react to that moment, I want to pause. And if this is the number one step of emotional weightlifting, pausing sounds super simple, but when I'm fired up, it's hard. It's hard to stop, stop, because I want to react. That's how we've been taught to and modeled how to handle the emotions that are flooding our bodies. But if I can just pause right there and think it through, let my brain process down what it is that just happened, I'm going to be able to come to where I went number one. And number two, what I took away from what it is he said. So this morning, for example.

Yeah, IRL in real life. What I was just saying, sorry, you know, I'm kind of late to the party. I can't help it, you know, oh.

You'Re so cute, but we're gonna go for a walk. And this is trying to figure out work. And he wants to go, but he can't say, hey, I want to go. Will you please wait for me?

Well, and just so you know, I thought I said that, but apparently I didn't again, you know, so.

So here we are. I'm all ready dogs.

You know, we have a wonderful Thursday routine for our show prep. Yep. You know, we had to walk our coon dog. That's part of the thing. I had a last minute appraisal issue. I'm a real estate appraiser. For those of you.

He's starting to spin up.

Oh, man. I'm like very fast.

He's getting a little spicy. And I say, hey, I'm just gonna walk across the coffee shop. I'll meet you there. I go across the coffee shop, I get my coffee and then I wait about 10 minutes, right? And I'm thinking again, it's going to be a minute or two. So here's my pause. I'm like, okay, I know this is not intentional. He's not wanting to say, hey, I'm not worried about you, or I don't care about you. He's over committed. I want to do all of these things and I can't let myself. Right. Play until I get my work done. That's how Tom operates. So I circle back to the house and say, hey, honey, you know.

I'm here. I said, oh. And just so you know, like, oh, gosh, like, dang it, I'm not quite through. There was another thing or two that just kept arising with this wonderful, you know, person that my, my client. I'm thinking, oh, gosh, you know, But I really did. I wanted to go, but it's beautiful. We live in Northern California. Beautiful day out. I wanted the fresh air again. I, again, guys, we've been through this thousands of times. So I said, honey, just another minute. I mean, that, that's my famous another minute. And say says, are we talking a minute or three minutes or five minutes?

I mean, very 15 minutes, 30 minutes.

Sometimes it's hard for me to know because this is a brand new situation too.

For the.

This was a brand new even. I've been doing this for almost 25 years. It was a brand new specific situation within a larger situation, if that makes sense.

So, okay, remember we just talked about filling in the void. I'm going to start going places and he's going to start going places. And it's in our ability to talk about where it is we're going that determines whether we're going to get through this or not. And so I said, hey, there's a thousand ways we can do this. And I can meet you after. I can go for a walk, give you another 40 minutes. Right. What's not working for me is me standing on the corner for 10 minutes thinking that you're coming and you're coming. And you're coming, and you're coming. And so he launches into, well, it's lovely to be on vacation. Right? Because my. Our son is here visiting from Utah, and I've taken some time off to be with him. And I knew that. Right. That's a firing off, Right.

We call that one across the bow. It was done respectfully.

And I said, hey, wait a minute. I'm not trying to intensify your pressure that you're obviously putting on yourself. I just need to let you know that I'm on your side. Like, I'm cheering for you. I'm not wanting to intensify your pressure. I'm just wanting us to create a strategy that is going to work. So what's important to you? And he says, I really want to go for the walk. I said, okay, then you think you. Minute, two, three. Three minutes. Okay, great. We can wait three minutes. And so we did a couple of rounds around the block, and. And Tom was able to finally, you know, meet up, and we were able to take that walk. But I just want you to see that this isn't something we just talk about. This is something that we practice right along with you. Because guess what? We're human beings with emotions, and we get fired up, too. The only difference is that we can get through them much faster because we understand what we're talking about that with you today, rather than find ourselves in a fight and the whole thing is broken down, and then not only does the walk not happen, but we are in a hot mess. Coming to you live today on the radio show.

Well, I would say many times we hear from clients like the good old silent treatment.

Well, that's making us pay. That's manipulation. I want you to see that we push people away when we're trying to punish them.

Yeah.

And we punish ourselves at the same time. Time. So emotional weightlifting, people, is going to be required for you to protect and build emotional safety, which means you have the ability to develop and strengthen so that you can navigate and regulate your own emotions, that you can digest them down, you can articulate them, you can fill in the voids and that you can share them with your person or that you are and you alone can understand them. It's essentially the ability to translate those feelings that Tom was alluding to earlier into a language that first, you can understand. And so when we work with our private clients, this is where we begin. We must. Because if I don't know how I'm feeling, if I don't know what's going on, for me, if I don't know what's firing me up, how in the world are we ever going to navigate this? You won't.

And I would add, not only do we work with our private clients and start here, we continually to revisit and we revisit and we revisit and we revisit. We really do. Because that's how crucial it is to the backbone of everything else.

Yes, gaining the ability to understand and translate your thoughts and feelings into a language that first you can understand so that you can then share them, I just want to point out is very different than taking your thoughts, thoughts and feelings out on another person because you don't know what else to do. If you've ever felt confused about what someone has just had a meltdown over and, or you were criticized, belittled, judged, etc in the process, this is your sign that you or someone you know just took their emotions out on you. That's how that rolls. And that is a very common, normal thing for us to do when we don't know what else to do as emotion.

And if you're on the receiving end, excuse me, if you're on the receiving end of that, let's just be honest, it doesn't feel very good.

And so. Okay, more emotional weightlifting please. That's the sign that we need to get better at this. And until we have a basic acumen of emotional weightlifting and these principles that we shared with you, let's just go over them one more time before we end our conversation today. Number one, the number one thing we need to understand is it is the emotional experience that is driving our communication. And until we can learn how to work with the emotions, the communication that we know is so critically important is going to continue to elude us. Number two, if you want me to share emotionally, there absolutely has to be some safety. And safety, well, that's created with permission for me to feel the way I feel and to find the ability for you to feel the way that you feel too, which is too gonna lead us to the need, need and the requirement for emotional weightlifting that's going to be critically important. And if we don't know how to do that, we need to gain the ability to learn and practice it because it is the rudder that will determine our success or not. And now, now we can start teaching you. So I'm giving you a frame, just some communication frameworks that was tough for me to get out. So. All right, we've given you a lot here, but those are the takeaways, right? The Emotions are going to drive the show, whether we're trying to shut them down or overpower them. So we've got to learn how to dance with them.

And again, I'll remind you, that was a lot to take in. Don't worry about it. Go. You know, all of this is going to be in our show notes and our transcription for you to revisit and revisit and revisit. So, and that's all right in one place for you, designed to serve you and really, really have you gain some benefit from everything that we're doing for you.

Yeah. So we're going to take a quick break and we will be back with some fun. We're gonna do a giveaway today. It's gonna be so exciting. I know. We'll be right back in a minute. Take a breath. Pause. Hey, babe, did you know that the average couple spends only two hours a day with each other? And the majority of that time is spent eating, watching TV and surfing social media rather than connecting with each other. And if children are involved, my gosh, it's even less time than that.

I know, babe. That's why you created our conversation cards for connection, because they're the perfect conversation starter. So the next time you're sitting on a couch, rather than turning on the TV or grabbing your phone, pull out a card and get ready for some good old fashioned laughter and loving connection.

Now you can get your cards@stacybartly.com talk radio. That will get you thinking.

Alternative Talk 1150. Hi. Welcome back to the Love Shack. Tom and Stacy Bartley. We are now going to step in to follow the fun. And this is the first show of every, the first Thursday, the first show of every month. We have a giveaway.

That's because we have a fun list and we give things away to people who are on that fun list. So if you're not on a fun list, I'm gonna encourage you to go on over there. Today what we're doing is we're giving away a book called Fork Me, Spoon Me. This is a wonderful book by author, incredible gastronomist Amy.

Now, there you go.

Oh, right. And she has a cookbook that provides a method for us to incorporate arousing ingredients into food inspired foreplay. Now, I don't know if that makes you go ooh la la or what, but it sure does me. And the really great news is that Amy's going to be here next week inside the Love Shack with us as our guest for a special Valentine's Day episode. So don't miss it.

Did you all aphrodisiac up for Valentine's Day. Is that aphrodisiac?

Yeah, that's. Yes, it is now, honey. So Eric, I need you to choose a number. Our incredible, wonderful engineer behind the scenes. I need you to choose a number between one and.

And you can't choose a number you've used in all the prior third, first Thursdays of the month.

You have to do a lot of giveaways in December. So that might be asking a lot of you, but I know you're up for the task.

Okay, what's the name of the book? One more time.

Sure.

Fork me, Spoon me. Did that give you a number and add some inspiration there?

It did.

It did.

Because so a fork has four tines. So let's go with four.

Incredible engineering mind of yours.

1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, it is going to the first.

Part of the email, please.

Yes, Jennifer. Oh, her email is her name.

Well, don't, don't give.

Okay, but it's at hotmail. So Jennifer, if you have an email that is hotmail, you are the winner today. And don't worry, reach out to you. We are going to reach out to you via email to get give you your personal copy of Oops. Fork me, Spoon me. I know, it's such a title.

Is that a title that's tantalizing?

Oh, I, I titillating. No titillating. I think it's titillating. Anyway. Okay. Because Amy's going to be here. Let's let Amy talk about what she does and kind of create some title your own vocabulary. I love it.

See what I'm dealing with, Eric?

What a titing Episode.

Episode.

So if you could bring up Amy's clip.

Bring up Amy's clip. I think me, Amy needs to bring us home about this tidalizing experience. That's tantalizing. Oh, behave.

My name is Amy Riley and I'm an expert on aphrodisiac foods. I look forward to being inside the love shack with Tom and Stacy really soon as a guest best. And the thought I am having today I would like to share with you about love and relationships is slow down and savor. I look forward to being together again with you inside the love shack.

There's something about her voice that just makes you go, oh, slow down and see.

Well, you know what? And how appropriate again, we didn't, you know, know, slow down is exactly what we just said. If they're slow down and savor where you're at. How about that? And really, you know what? Again, it's proven. This is not us. It's scientifically the very fine. It's that power of the pause. And I can promise you that pause can feel like about 17 minutes versus about 2.2 nanoseconds.

Yes. And. And we feel like what we want to do is speed up so that we can get ahead of it, so that we can shut somebody down so that we can write, figure out the problem if we spend fast enough and it's that spinning fast enough that eludes the fact of ever getting strategic and solving the problem.

Or as if we could get sped up fast enough to get ahead of how fast we're already sped up anyway. You can just see that that's kind of crazy that that's not going to happen.

So anyway, slowing down and you know what? Her wonderful book, I love it. I. She has wonderful recipes in here, but it really is all about in just slowing down and enjoying and savoring the moment. I'm so excited for her to be here with us as she shares her journey, as she shares her recipes. And we are going to make a titillating, tantalizing, incredible, right, Slowing down of your Valentine Day. I promise to don't miss it. She's going to be back here with us next week.

So speaking of feeling and slowing down is why we, you know, can you feel it is a very, very intentional part of our, our, of each of our episodes is because we bring in music.

Music is the easiest way that we have to feel the emotional aspects of ourselves. That's why it's been coined as the right universal language, because we can all connect and understand emotionally through music. There's nothing more powerful there. And if we're going to start talking about getting in the mood for Valentine's Day, there would be a powerful way through that door, through the music that you choose. But every episode, we choose a song that represents the conversations that we are encouraging you to explore and deepen with inside of yourselves and inside of your relationships. And we found an incredible one for today's episode that's very different if you've listened to our Spotify playlist than anything that we've ever brought to the table here before. But I can promise you that it is an emotional song that will cause you to feel like you just can't get through in your communication. Right. In fact, the words of the song are right, Turn it up. Which is what we tend to do. That's our first solution. Turn it up. Get intense overpower, shut down. Right. So turn it up. Which is what we do when we feel like we're not being heard. And then it proceeds to get more chaotic. Like, the song is very, very chaotic. And the words to the total song are these. So all we ever hear is blah, blah, blah. So all we ever say is yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, honey, yeah, yeah, no problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Yeah.

As in my effort to get out of the conversation and do what it is I feel like I'm gonna do anyway. I'm just not gonna ask for your permission about it anymore. And so this song really drives home the point that we're trying to make here in the love shack today about importance of communication begins with our emotions. Otherwise we find ourselves just as this song is portraying, talking about blah, blah.

Blah, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would add, if you're a parent, really, I listened to this literally right before I hadn't heard it. Stacy shared with me about it why she chose it. If you're a parent, prom really do yourself favor. You listen to the. To the song, have your child or children and listen to the song and then come together and have a real honest conversation. Because I can promise you, both of us, on each side of our conversations in the journey, being a parent, being a child, we're going to really, really resonate. And again, guess what? All of our songs for every single episode is right on our podcast page of our website, right on the side. And then each individual episode, you can find it. So this one, though, I'm telling you, this is when I heard, I think, oh, my gosh, you know, it really is powerful. It will be from both sides of the, of the, of the perspective, if you will.

Yeah. And it's this really good conversation starter for you and your. Your partner as well, you and your lover, because everybody can tell the truth about going to that place of blah, blah, blah. I mean, like, I checked out a long time ago. I don't. I don't even care what you're saying anymore because I don't feel like I'm being heard and listened to. And I'm gonna go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Yeah, whatever, whatever. And then I'm going to go and do what it is I want to do anyway. And this is. This is how we start stacking on living lives of that logistic nature and lives that have a canyon divide in between. And our connection, our emotional connection that we once had begins to slip away through our fingers like water. And that's how it happens. So, unfortunately, it's time for us to say goodbye. As we wrap up this episode, we're going to encourage you to listen to this a few times. Breathe, pause, take time. There's always enough time to solve these problems.

And if you know of someone in your circle that's struggling with some communication, you know, in their relations intimately, relationship with a child, with a neighbor, a loved one, a co worker, please share this episode. We so appreciate you listening to us and helping us and supporting us. And if you could spread the word, we'd even appreciate that just as much as well.

And come on back next week. We're going to be here with Amy Reilly for some some titillating.

Don't miss it.

Yeah, you got it. See you guys.

See you next time.

Great to be here. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com SL podcast. Love the show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.