How To Stop Controlling Your Partner And Save Your Relationship

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

Welcome to the Love Shack, a little old place where we can get together and explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influence our relationships. If you are struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this is the show for you. My name is Stacy Bartley and I'm here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and fear less in their relationships, but both with themselves and others. I want to give a quick shout out to our podcast listeners as well today.

Absolutely. If you're, if you're, if you're joining us through the podcast, we sure appreciate that. Just a reminder, we're live every Thursday at 1pm California time on the beautiful KKNW radio station. We share that with you. If you'd like to ask us a question live, we'd love, or you can text us a question, we'll do our best to answer it. Bottom line is, wherever you're choosing to spend a few moments with us, we sure appreciate it. We've got an excellent episode that is really filled. We'll do our best not overwhelm you. We're excited for to be here with you.

Yeah. So let's talk about the topic today. We're going to talk about how to stop controlling your partner and save your relationship. Now, if you haven't had the chance to go back and listen to last week's podcast, I encourage you to after you listen to this one because this is kind of a stack on that and so they can stand alone on their own. But boy, if you really want to enhance your understanding of what it is, we'll be diving deeper into today, I really recommend that you go back and listen to that previous episode as well. But most of the time, bottom line is when we're trying to save our relationships, we tend to focus on all the things we think our partner needs to do differently, don't we? Like when you stop doing this and start doing that other thing, everything's going to be okay. And we have this intent focus on that. But what we don't realize is that attempting to enroll or control your partner is always, and I say that boldly and loudly, going to lead to more fights, more pain, and more problem. So what in the heck are we supposed to do then, right? What do we do? When we need to solve.

So in the absence of thinking someone else is the cause of our problems, what the heck do we do?

Yeah. So we have to accept that pain is part of every relationship, no matter how healthy it is. And we need to stop constantly running from it and driving ourselves crazy by attempting to fix every issue based on what somebody is doing or not doing. We're going to dive deep into that that conversation in just a moment. So stay tuned. We'll be right.

Ready.

To learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today, go to stacybartley.com fairydust staceybartley.com fairydust this is the number one thing Stacey teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship today. Learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguments in their tracks, Rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to easy street.

Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to staceybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S T A C I B A R T L E y visit stacybartley.com today. There's a reason they invented the Internet. It's called 1150 kknw.com.

Okay, welcome back. We're gonna dive into a juicy topic today on how it is you can stop controlling your partner and save your relationships today. Now, I want you to know for those of us who are listening out there, this is true for not only our romantic relationships, but this is true for a parent, child relationship. Right. Maybe a friendship relationship. And I want to just acutely point out again, as we did before the break, what we tend to do is think to ourselves, if I can just get them to start or stop doing that thing I just know is going to turn this whole thing around. That seems to be where our conversations are focused. So we spend an awful lot of time emotionally, mentally, energetically trying to get somebody to see the light.

You know, I was just going to add that, you know, everything realized when we're sharing, you know, none of it is designed to make us feel like, well, good gracious, I've been doing that a long time. So all of that's been wrong. We would say, no, it, it's maybe not as effective as it could be. And we simply haven't been shown another way to do this. And especially in a place of upset, you Know you really. That's what most of us. What's mostly modeled to us. It's what we see out there and wherever we're getting our information or our are modeling from. Meaning you're not. It's not your fault. You're not doing something wrong. You just haven't been shown a better way to do it.

Yeah. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because we haven't been taught how to govern our emotional bodies. And we talked a lot about this in the previous episode. Right. That we do have a physical body and an emotional body and these are real. And actually there are human navigation system and we tend to use one versus the other. For example, somebody who is very logical. Right. Very, very much wants to stick to the facts. Right. Tends to focus on what we would call circumstantial evidence. Right. This is. This is the way it is. This is the way it went down. No questions. And that's how I govern my life. And they're going to constantly be banging on a person that they're in a relationship with. By the way. These two things, these two pairs love each other. You're typically in a logical. One party in the relationship is logical and one is very emotional in romantic relationships. Just want to that out. So the logical person is constantly trying to enroll the emotional person into being more logical and then everything would be okay in our relationship while the very emotional person in the relationship is trying to always encourage the logical person to be in touch with their feelings, with their emotions. And that's what's going to turn the relationship.

Yeah. And also just. Just a reminder, look, when there is upset, you know what Stacy and I are going to share with you today is. Is not to. To minimize or not to say that whatever place didn't take place, of course it took place. So realize we're not saying you just forget about. But what we're really looking to challenge you and impart to you and encourage you is to realize rather than banging around on all the circumstances of this particular upset which actually happened and yes, they hurt. How can we more effectively get through that and get back to a place of understanding with each other rather than have this escalate and escalate and escalate and drive more division and division and upset.

Yes. And that we all have the capacity to do both. Whether you're a logical being or an emotional being, we need both. And our. On our hope and our desire in sharing these tools and this information with you is that you will embrace. Right. The ability that you have inside of yourself to, to develop both, right? There is not one that is superior to the other. We need both. It's our navigation system. Sometimes when I get drowning in my emotions, I need to get a little logical and sometimes I can so logical I lose touch with the zip, the zest that keeps me feeling good and excited and that emotional place of love and connection with right, this person, these people in my life.

And life is going to give us tremendous amounts of continued opportunity to practice this. Because meaning, you know what, so if we're human, we make messes and meaning we get upset, we get triggered. So it isn't just a one and done thing. So you get through this one particular upset. You're good now. No, you're not, you're not good. So this is why we're so, so empower passionate about this. To say we're really excited to be here and excited about this, that may be a little bit of a stress for you. But more importantly, we're just looking to have you realize hopefully and understand how important this is. Because to get back to the sweet spot of life, we want to get through this upset and honor and hear and acknowledge everyone, but get back to the place to where we can get moving on with life. And we're going to do this over and over and over and over and shall I say over and over and over. How many times have we done this, Mrs. Bartley?

Oh, many. But here's the thing, listener, I want you to know is that there is a way through conflict and it's going to require you to utilize your navigation system. And as we take an examination and a look at our physical and our emotional bodies, the really good news is our emotional body works just like our physical. Now, we tend to highlight the physical because it's the thing that makes sense to us, right? We can compare notes, we can compare evidence, which is why we always talk about the circumstances in our fight or who said what, or the book said. Just notice those are all physical, the emotional part of ourselves, right? There's not a lot of agreement there. Like the way I feel is the way I feel. It's very unique to the person. And not only that, it's invisible and it time travels on us and it moves very, very fast and we need both. And as I had said last week, when things make sense and when they feel good, then we take a step. But with only operating from one side or the other, very often we find ourselves in a place that we really didn't want to be in and I can get so wrapped up in the logical that the people that love me the most and that I love the most don't have anything emotionally to connect to. And I can be so drowning in my emotions that I can't get about accomplishing the dreams and the hopes that we plan to do, which are the thinking, strategy part. So I thought it might be really fun for us to share with you a personal story that actually took place in Tom and I's life so that you can see firsthand how these things play out if we don't start really understanding and gaining the skills that are necessary to navigate ourselves through using our human navigation system, our physical bodies, our thinking and our emotional bodies to such a degree that we can understand how to get to the other side of conflict and upset. And then we'll talk about what it is we typically do, and then we'll talk about the next steps to help you. Okay, so that's kind of where we're going to go today. So I teach this, and I often jokingly say, not really. I teach this because I need it more than most, which is really true. I want you to understand that relationship skills are just like anything else in our lives, that we do them and do them and do them, and you never get them all done. It's kind of like eating and sleeping and drinking, right? These are things that we do every day, and they're never going to stop. As long as we're alive, it's going to be happening. And so it is with our emotional weightlifting skills. So I came home feeling really sick one day, and I turned to Tom and I said, all right, here's the deal, right? I got skills, I teach skills. I'm going to use my skills. And I was super excited he was home because all I wanted was for him to wrap me up in his arms and hold me tight to his, what I call wubby, his hairy chest, so that I could fall asleep. And it was the best thing that I could think of as a remedy for my physical ailment. Wasn't feeling so great. So I come home. He greets me at the door. I ask him, I lay it out, just like we encouraged you to do last week on this episode of Love Shack. Hey, you know what? I'm not feeling so great. I want to go upstairs. I really want you to come up, join me. I want you to hold me in your arms. I want to just fall asleep in your arms. Do you? Could you do that? And he said, yeah, no problem. I'm totally on it. I'll be up in a bit. So I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. I put on my PJs, I climb in my bed, and by the way, I bribed him right by. You can pick the movie. You. You watch the movie, and I'll fall asleep. I had it all planned out in my head. It was lovely. I climb the stairs, as I said, put on my pj, slip into the bed, and I'm waiting. And remember, I'm not feeling so great. So I'm really wanting to fall asleep, actually. But I'm fighting back the sleep because I'm waiting for that 2.2 seconds of his arms coming around me and me laying in his chest. And ten minutes go by, and I'm okay. I got skills. I'm breathing just like we tell you to. I'm pausing, right? I'm trying to do my own emotional push up here. Right. Maybe he got caught up. I don't know. It's going to be okay, you know, don't worry. Don't worry. 30 minutes goes by. I'm really starting to kind of. No. Okay, but don't go anywhere, right? You're starting to think horrible things. Just. Just stay with it. You're okay. Okay. An hour later, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm really starting to turn into a hot mess. And what's starting to really play out for me emotionally is, oh, my gosh, I can't believe he's going to tell me, stand me up. Like, he's really not coming. Like, now, instead of being tired and wanting to fall asleep, I'm starting to get angry. I'm starting to get plugged in because I'm starting to buy into this narrative I'm making up about he doesn't care about me and he really doesn't want to come up and he doesn't want to be there for me. And I just want you to see these start to trickle into places where I start to feel really insecure and inadequate.

And some serious compounding takes place very fast.

Oh, my goodness. Yes. So it wasn't just a few minutes later that he came. It was two hours later. And some whoopsie daisy, like, we were coming on, like, three hours. And you guys, I was really starting to, like, lose it. Like, I had really made up a whole narrative about, oh, my gosh. I guess the evidence is in. You really don't care about me. I guess all of this was a lie, because if you really did care about me, you would be up here and all of a Sudden, I could hear some noise happening downstairs. Our bedroom sits above our kitchen. And I could hear some, like, banging around. And it'd been quiet for a while, and. And I thought, that sucker. But again, trying to use my skills, I thought, okay, I'm gonna send a text. That's what I'm gonna do. And all I could muster out that I thought was pretty good for the way I was feeling was, look, if you didn't want to come up, all you had to do was say so. And I hear the ding downstairs in the kitchen. And all of a sudden, I hear whatever he was doing hit the counter, and dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Up the stairs, door flies open. And he looks at me, and I'm like, where have you been? And he says, what are you talking about? At least you could be grateful. And I was like, grateful? Grateful? You gotta be joking me. Grateful? But you guys, that's your sign. Whenever you're finding yourself on separate pages, that's your sign that you're actually not having the same emotional experience. Remember, I just said a minute ago, your emotional experience is very unique to you. So Tom had a completely different emotional experience playing out. But what we tended do, especially in my previous relationships, and I bet you, too, and the clients we serve is you tend to go, where are you? And I'm going to start talking about all the physical circumstances, about how you should be here. Why weren't you. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe you would leave me hanging here like this. And we would totally miss what about what's about to play out? So why don't you tell them about the emotional experience and all of this circumstantial evidence that I have against you, my dear.

Absolutely. I'd like. I'm visualizing if we were watching a show, how they rewind back, you know, rewind back. Okay, here's what happened in my side of this story. Stacy came into the door. Was, ladies and gentlemen, wiped out. I mean, we both are blessed. We don't get sick very often, but I could tell. I was like, oh, man, you need to, like, go to bed, like, right now. Do not pass go. So, you know. Yes. I said, my God, babe, you're. You know, get to bed, you know, and so she agreed, like, she had shared. And, yeah, I'll come up. But thinking, like, she's, you know, hug you, you know, hug me. Hug you, and you watch a movie. That's like, she won't even hit the covers, and she'll be sound asleep. So I said, okay, well, what I would really like to do and need to do would be, you know, I like to fill up the. Our car with gas because, you know, that's before we lived real close to our physical office. You know, we need some groceries. I know Stacy's hungry. Let me take care of all that. And she can. She's going to fast asleep, and I can get all that done. And then when she wakes up, you know, I'll have some food made and I'll go upstairs and we can have a really nice, you know, evening, you know, and she'll have had some rest, and it's going to be awesome. And I can take advantage while she's fast asleep.

So when he says grateful, I say.

I felt like an Amazon driver with 27 stops in about 15 minutes. I was out doing so much in that time that she was. Was asleep. I was exhausted.

Grateful. And I. And I. And just so you know, as we recap, I'm like, grateful as I've got this whole narrative in my emotional body playing out about how much he doesn't care, how much he doesn't love me. He's, you know, just like all the other men in my life. They never there for me. I can't believe that I'm experiencing this. And he says, grateful. And I say, thankfully, with some skills, grateful. Why should I be grateful? Help me understand. And that's the kicker. And he was able to say, well, babe, gosh, you know, since I saw you downstairs, I. I ran around to fill your car up with gas, and I stopped by CVS and I picked up cold time, you know, at nighttime, daytime, cough time, middle time, and in between, by the grocery store, and I'm downstairs making you something to eat right now. Yes. At least you could be a little grateful. Why are you banging on me about how long it's been? And I went, oh, gosh, I am grateful. Now, a couple things I want to point out here. Number one, Tom and I have been together for a decade. So if we were to just say he did one act of kindness to show me how much he loved me every single day, let's just take 365 days for a year times by 10, it's easy math. 3650. 50 times. He's demonstrated to me that I'm important to him, that he loves me, that he cares about me, our relationship is valuable to him and his life. And there's this one time where he didn't, or I felt like he missed the mark, and I flushed those 3,650 times. That's how easy this happens. And it's amazing. When you get into your hot mess emotional place of pain, you totally forget about all of those great times. 3650 of them. And I assure you Tom does way more than once a day to demonstrate, so that number would even be greater. But when we get into our emotional places of pain, we go crazy. Places in our body of work, we call it our movie because we make up a whole narrative that may not be true. And the tragedy happens like this. Let's say, for example, Tom and I didn't have the skills that we just talked about, that I didn't have the ability to pause in my emotional weightlifting and say, grateful. Wait a minute. Help me understand why you think I should be grateful. What typically plays out is I would say grateful. I'm not grateful, you blankety blank. I can't believe that you didn't come up and you weren't there for me. We all know the truth. The evidence is in. You know, Scram, Sam. Isn't that what we do? Or I could have somewhere along the hours that were ticking by in minutes, which seemed like days for me, decided that, forget about it. I'm going to roll over and go to sleep. Forget about it. I'm not going to address it. I don't know how to address it. I'm just going to go to sleep and forget about it. But I don't forget about it because what is running in my emotional body is this narrative, this story that I have made up. So the real tragedy happens when the sun comes up the next day and I wake up with this story and this story says just what I've described to you. He doesn't care about me. This relationship is important. After all, the evidence is in because I don't know any better. And what happens is then I live that day as though that narrative is true. This is what we mean when we say we show up as good as we feel. And when I show up as good as I feel, I'm showing up like he doesn't care about me. Well, then I make up a narrative like, I don't care about you. All right, push. I'm pushing him away. I'm not wanting to talk. I'm not wanting to engage. I'm trying to give him the clue and the sign that you've really hurt me, but I'm not going to say so. So I just push you away. And then I build and I stack on that and I look for more evidence to Support that experience. And guess what? Tom is going to do the same thing. He is going to get pushed away after running his fanny off for me, and he's going to go, what the heck did I do wrong? Why isn't this working? I mean, gosh, I just wanted to be there for you. And now you're pushing me away and you're treating me like I don't matter and that what I did doesn't matter. And so now he's going to make up a whole narrative about that himself. Right? And then we're going to go about gathering that evidence we talked about.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

I'm going to go tour doors down to my girlfriend's house, and I'm going to knock on the door and I'm going to say, you know what he did? Because I'm still upset, I'm still hurt. I'm still dealing with this emotional experience in my body, and I'm going to go, I can't believe it. I laid it out for him. I told him what I needed. I told him to come upstairs. I told him all I needed was for him to hold me in his arms. I was feeling crappy. And you know what? I waited for two hours, Sally. Two hours. And he never came. So I finally just got ticked off and rolled over and went to sleep. Can you believe that? And she's going to go, oh, man, what a jerk. And Tom's going to find his evidence, too.

And I'm. And yeah, I'm going to talk to my bros and think, you know what? I've ran around like a dang Amazon underpaid driver. Bless you, Amazon drivers, so much for what you all do. And I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Nasty cold winter night, getting all types of tonics and lotions and cough syrup and gas filled and. And that's the way I'm treated. And like, yeah, you know, them dang women, we can never figure out what the heck they want us to do. You know, they want us. What was it we hear? Not to be chauvinistic, but I cannot read their mind.

Yeah, I got one of those, too. I got one of those women that don't appreciate me either. You know, I'm trying to jump through all these hoops and please her and. Right. Get on after it. And heck, I'm in the same boat, man. I got one of them in my house, too. Poor thing. You poor thing.

So there you go. We can all do it. And confirmation biases everywhere, all around us, all the time. So, yeah, I mean, and it's again, it's not to dismiss. I'm going to be redundant here. It's not to dismiss that, you know, what took place. It took place and it was a very difficult place for both of us because we were, both of us were way off. That's the thing where we're way off to the truly what happened. And a great little side note, one of the greatest things, if you forget everything that we've been sharing with you in this episode, the greatest thing you can do is take that pause. And when you want to lash out, take that pause, get some breath, change your physiology and ask the question, help me understand. See, now you're not accusing. You're being asked to be invited into their experience. That's a huge. It be a game changer if you can just remember those. You can attach anything to the front or the backside of that. Help me understand.

And guess what, we're going to take a break for a minute, but when we come back, we're going to talk about what we typically do, which is control and collapse. And we're going to talk about, okay, how do we start, like setting it up so that we can have some wins out of this instead of stacking on a story that isn't really true and get to the heart and the bottom of what actually is driving your relationships. We'll be right back.

Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your your partner and create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacy bartley@staceybartley.com checkup. Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to staceybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S T A C I B A R t l e y.com Visit staceybartley.com today.

Ready to learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartley.com fairydust staceybartley.com fairydust this is the number one thing Stacy teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship today. Learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguing in their tracks. Rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to Easy Street.

Make us part of your daily routine. Alternative Talk 11:50.

I don't know where.

Hi.

So, welcome back. We've been talking about a story that Tom and I actually experienced in our lives about, gosh, you can get so lost in the circumstances and we fight about the circumstances, but it's actually the emotional experience that we're having that we don't know how to talk about that is playing out over and over and over again. And those emotions cause us to make up a narrative that in our particular case wasn't true. And then the tragedy for us all as we start stacking on that narrative and that experience emotionally without vetting it out or knowing how to talk about it as though it really was the reality, gathering evidence to support that. And if you've ever wondered how it is, you were so in love in the beginning and six or seven years later, you are so at odds, this is how it happens. Because we don't know how to talk about the emotional experience that I'm having. Nor did we realize that talking about the circumstances is always going to lead to a fight, not the solution that we're looking for. Now, last episode, I keep referring to that, but it's so important. We talked about the comparison of knowing how to manage our emotional bodies with the example of relating to our physical bodies. And thankfully for us human beings, the care of one, our physical bodies is just like the care of the other. So if we ever get confused about what to do emotionally, we can look to our physical and how we handle our physical pain as a benchmark, as a way through. Right. It's. It works the same. It's same, same. However, we don't realize that this might be the first time you're ever hearing that. And that's okay. Right. But what's important is that we understand we've got to learn how to do this emotional weightlifting piece and that's going to make all the difference in the world. Because then when it comes to solving our emotional problems or our emotional pain, we're going to know how to get through it. And we're going to walk you through that right now.

Yeah, and a quick emotional weightlifting. We say that we use that a lot on our body of work. Just think about it. It's working through your upset, working through your feelings in a way that's usually quite atypical, certainly in the beginning. Meaning someone doesn't have to be wrong and someone doesn't have to be right. There doesn't have to be shouting and all types of other interesting behaviors when you're working through upset. So this is. Most of us have little or no experience doing that. So emotional weightlifting. Just think about if you're into the physical part of your life and you're an exercise or whatever. We've done lots of different repetitions over and over again, and that builds resiliency and confidence. It's the same thing here. So we use that analogy because everyone can get their arms around it really easily. So we're going to give you some strategies to do some emotional weightlifting when you're feeling upset. And rather than banging around on who did what, and she said this and he said that. Really what's behind it, the feeling part of it, you know. God, that really hurt me. You know, I felt like. Like Stacy shared. She felt like I didn't care about her. I'm thinking like, what are you thinking about, for God's sakes? I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

So where are you?

We. We didn't bang around too long because we've been doing this a while around the circumstances. And we both realized we were totally off base as to what was going on. For our own narrative would be synonymous or the same as a story or whatever. We. Our experience was. Was quite different. We like to say, you know what? We think everyone else is at our movie. You know, our experience. You know what? Most of the time, no one is at our movie. Everyone's at their own movie. So that's another analogy we use. So we're going to help you try to quickly understand how powerful it is to get into the meat of the matter. What's going on with you and your loved ones so you can get to the other side as fast as possible.

Yeah. And it's always emotional, you guys. Whether you like it or not, the emotion that we feel inside of ourselves drives the show. I want you to think about that for a minute. The way I feel emotionally determines the action I take or don't take. It's driving the show. And yet we have such a difficult time wrapping our head around our emotional selves. Again, because it's fluid, it's invisible, it's dynamic. Time travels on us. I mean, and we don't have a lot of places where we can go to have this conversation. About what the heck do I do with this emotional experience I'm having. And so we try and solve our emotional experiences through the evidence based experience in our lives, just like Tom and I. Now, there have been times in the past where I would absolutely say it you, three hours to get up here to let me know that you cared. That is not acceptable. That is not okay with me. Right? And we might even think that we're drawing a really good boundary by saying that, right? Tom, in the future, when you tell me you're going to be there for me three hours later is not acceptable. And you, he's looking at me right now. You guys ought to see his face. Like, okay, well, he's feeling negated now too. Why? How? Because in his movie, in his emotional experience, he's feeling like he's just been running his fanny off for the last three hours. For who? Him? No, me. And so all that's running in his emotional experience is you. Ungrateful, unappreciated. What is it going to take to please you? Instead of appreciating me, you're, you're not appreciating me, you're demeaning me, you're chastising me. You're trying to control me. Right? And so now he's got to rectify all of that. Like, wow, I mean, she really doesn't maybe care about me. And wherever it is, we feel like we have an emotional hole that tends to be the place that we go. So it's all being driven by an emotional experience. Now, how we typically handle our emotional pain, which is where I want to go with this conversation. There's lots of places we could go. But where I want to go today in our conversation is I want to go to where it is we typically go with our emotional pain. If we were to pull out again, our analogy of our physical and our emotional body, our physical pain we would look at acutely. Like, if something was hurting in my physical body, I would absolutely go hunting for it. Right? And I would also go hunting for how I arrived there. If I had a stomachache, for example, I would say, what did I eat? Right? We ate the same thing. Did it affect you? I'm gonna be doing all of this analysis about why it is I have a stomachache. And then once I realize and accept the fact that I have a stomachache, I'm gonna go to my remedy. I'm going to go try, right? A little bit of tea, maybe a mint tea, or maybe I'll take some Pepto Bismo or Right. I'm going to, I'm going to go to set about the remedies that I've utilized in the past that really served me and gave me an ease or relief with my pain. And then I'm going to watch it and I'm going to continue to kind of monitor it and be with it and analyze it until the pain is gone. Okay, now let's think about the emotional pain for a minute. What we typically do with our emotional pain is not anywhere near that, right. Number one, we don't dive into it and go, okay, why does this hurt? Why am I having a tough time? Why am I struggling? Right. Oh, we try and just ignore it usually, right? We're not going to talk about that because that's uncomfortable. We're not going to go there. And heaven forbid. So then you just. All those other steps I talked about in our physical pain, we just negate all of those. So I can't talk about it, I can't apply a remedy, I can't watch it, I can't monitor it. I just throw the whole thing out and hope that it's going to go away and that things are going to go well. Which throws us into two places, control or collapse. Now, control. These things become vicious cycles in and of themselves. And by the way, as human beings, we all do both, but we have a particular favorite. If I am more of a logic person, more of an A type personality, we would say in our culture, I would try and figure it out. And I'm going to try and figure them out. And I'm going to read books and I'm going to take surveys, I'm going to do personality quizzes and I'm going to, I'm going to be after it, man. And I'm going to be on them to say, this book says, this person says, this is the answer, this is the solution. So and so says, right. And I'm trying to control the situation. I'm trying to enroll my partner into doing the thing that I've discovered on my own about what it is we need to do in order to solve our problem. And I call this person doing all the emotional weightlifting of the relationship, like they are taking on way more than they should. They're trying to solve way more than they have the capacity to. And they think that at the end of the day, if I just figure out how to get my partner enrolled in all of these things, I'm finding everything is going to be fine. That's a person who does control. And the thing about A person who does control is. They're going to get exhausted. So let's talk about the other side of the equation for a minute. Let's talk about the collapse side because that's the other favorite that we go to. The collapse side is the person who doesn't want conflict. We don't want there to be a problem. I'm going to just go along with, you know, honey, anything you want is fine. Right? I'm in it for the long haul. I love you. Right. You need me to do that? No problem. I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. And I. And I put up with and I go along with and I get enrolled in a lot of things that really, at the end of the day, don't work for me. I don't want. Doesn't feel good. It's not my hope or my expectation or my dream, but heaven forbid, I don't want to let that known. Right? And you're really doing some things that irritate me. But I'm not going to let you know it's going to pass. It's going to be fine. I mean, I love you. Love sees us through, right? I mean, love solves all problems until that one day when I can't take it anymore. And then I'm going to have a problem and I flip from collapse to control. Now, I'm going to point out in both types, there is a place where we're going to flip to the other side. So controllers that, pushing that, enrolling that, Hey, I got this all figured out. If you would just do this. If we could just go there. Oh, my gosh, I know the answers. I have them all. I'm not asking you. I'm not asking you about your emotional experience, even though it's different than mine. I'm just going based on this evidence and enrollment and control and push. And I can't take it anymore. One day and I realize that I'm tired, I'm exhausted, and I collapse into usually a puddle of tears or a fit of rage that I can't take it anymore. I can't believe it, right? If you would just do what I say, this would all be fine. And I. And I. I withdraw and I. And I collapse because I can't take it anymore. I'm tired, I'm exhausted. Only to find myself in a place after a moment of collapse, maybe days, hours, minutes, time is irrelevant here of saying, oh my gosh, nobody's going to figure this out. Which rolls me into being back into the control. Position. Now, if I'm a collapser and I've collapsed and I've gone along with and I put up with and I've negated what I want, what I hope for, what I need, because I don't want conflict and I don't want to expose my vulnerabilities by asking or exposing myself in any way, I'm going to collapse until that one little moment. And I don't even know that it's coming because there's going to be a moment where it's just too much, right? There's a capacity in my emotional body that we'll talk about in a minute.

It.

And I'm going to lose it and I'm going to go to the closet and I'm going to pull out my bat of truth and I'm going to tell you about every time I was disappointed and every time you failed me and every time this didn't work. And I'm going to let you have it. And it's not going to just be about this moment. It's going to be about yesterday and the last week and the last month and maybe the last 25 years that we've been together. And I'm going to. Oh, man, I'm going to let you have it if you're forcing me to go there. Oh, it's all coming out, my friend. Until I realized the destruction and the devastation on the faces of the people that I love. And I go, oh, see, I shouldn't have said something. I shouldn't have gone there. I should have kept my mouth closed. And I collapse back into a place of now trying to hold my emotional right experiences once again.

So it sounds like you have just wonderfully described what we would would call a vicious cycle.

That is a vicious cycle. And that's where most of us live in our relational experiences.

Why?

Because relationship is all emotion. But here, my friends, I want you to hear me. Our lives are an emotional experience if we will allow it, right? And we need both. I'm going back to our navigation system here. We need our physical logical capacity. That's a valuable. But I also need my emotional capacity to feel. And so the first thing that we need to understand is that doesn't work. Control and collapse. That's where we've been taught to go. That's what's been modeled. Typically for us, that's the demonstration that we're all so familiar with. And as human beings, we do both. We just have a particular favorite. So if I were to ask you right now, where do you go, what's your first go to? When it comes to solving the problems of emotional pain, do you go to control or collapse? What would you say, honey?

I would say collapse.

Yeah. And you know where I go? Control. Absolutely. I'm going to try and figure this out.

Okay.

And by the way, just think about relationships romantically for, well, any. But romantically is the easiest for us to wrap our head around because it plays out the biggest and broadest there is. If I have two controllers on a relationship, what do you think is going to happen? A lot of fighting, a lot of pushing, a lot of posturing. Right. Those don't typically last very long. And what about two collapsers? It's devoid of real connection and passion, but everybody pretends like they're doing well. These are the couples that come into my office that say, we haven't fought in 15 years. I just don't love you anymore.

Like, slow burn on that one. Oh, man.

And that's like some kind of like, your trophies coming in the mail moment. And I say, you guys have got a lot you need to talk about. So those collapsed relationships will last much longer than maybe two controlling relationships. But the dynamic that typically is attracted is a controller and a collapser. And now you can understand why, hopefully for a moment. So I want you to understand that in the control collapse paradigm, or experience, shall I say, there is a third option. And the third option is going to require what we've been talking about now for several episodes, emotional weightlifting. Why? Because in order to do emotional weightlifting, I get to shift into a place called neutral, where I don't have to control and I don't have to collapse, but I absolutely can be in neutral where I'm not going anywhere. And that's what happened when I said grateful. Help me understand why you think I should be grateful. That's a moment of neutrality where I'm not banging around on pushing and controlling and pushing the evidence forward. And I'm also not collapsing and thinking that we don't need to solve what is actually playing out.

Let me play devil's advocate here. So are you saying that we should. Does neutral mean, you know, rolling over and just being a doormat? Because I think that might come up into some people, some listeners. Like, neutral does not mean being a doormat.

I love that. And let's plaint that, paint the distinction. Collapse means I don't address it. Collapse means. Right. I go quiet. Collapse means I go along with. I don't speak what it is I want to say now the reason why I can slip into neutral is because I know after Tom talks, I'm going to share my peace. I'm going to say, help me understand. Because in that moment, I understand that we're on different planets, we're having a very different emotional experience, and I'm giving space and permission for the difference in emotional experiences. And I know the physical about what's just played out has nothing to do with it, by the way. It doesn't. The physical, the circumstances, what played out is not relevant in these places where we don't see eye to eye, because what's running behind it is your emotional experience. That's what you want to talk about. It's the difference between arguing about how you did it and then exploring and understanding why you did it, the emotional.

Driver behind it and how you were feeling as it was happening.

Yes. So when I said to Tom, help me understand why I should be grateful, that's where the truth came out about what is actually playing out. And I could see for myself where I was making up a narrative based on the circumstances simply was not true. And then I could share, and I did. Gosh, you know where I was? Gosh, the last three hours, I've been up here kicking my own fanny, making up a story that you didn't care about me and that this relationship wasn't important to you. And. And Right. And that because if it was, you would have been here. And he says to me, honey, I love you. And that's what I needed. I needed the emotional reassurance. And then the evidence gave me, oh, my gosh, you've been doing this and this and this and this and this. But what I really wanted to be reassured of is that I am important. You do love me, you do care. You do want this relationship. That's what was running my emotional show.

Yeah. And a better, you know, looking back. And again, learning that I was would have quickly. I would have come up right when Stacy came home, as she asked, got her settled, turned on that movie, and she would have been asleep in 2.2 seconds. So, you know, again, learning as we do, Stacy and I learn every day with each other. That would have been, you know, a better way now that I, you know, now that we've navigated that and understood, because Stacy would have fallen asleep in 2.2 seconds, as she does every night anyway. She falls asleep. Only person I've ever met in my life that falls asleep quicker than me, you know, and.

And there's a piece of clarity there. And because we're messmaking Machines, there's always going to be pieces of clarity, of clarity. And so like we like to say is specifics. You know, we talk about our experiences in such broad, general terms. The specifics are catnip for our souls, our emotional souls. And so let's talk about what we need to do now before our time is up, which is growing short. All we need to do is take a moment when we're feeling emotional pain, and I want you to think about why it is you feel pain, like, just like you do with your physical body. Okay? I want you to look at it. And we've accepted the fact that if I want to feel better physically, sometimes I need to feel a little more pain, right, to get to the other side. And that's true. Here. You might be going, oh, we don't go there. Why? Why the aversion to looking at what's hurting so that you can remedy it. It and realize that if you're always going to have an aversion to finding or applying a remedy, the remedy is always going to elude you. Why does it hurt emotionally? And in our story and in our example, what was hurting for me was the thought that Tom didn't care. And then the evidence came along to support it. And when I realized he was doing all these other things for me because I was able to slip into neutral, right? Neutral happens when I pause, when I take a breath, and when I realize we're on different pages or when we're banging heads about a particular, you know, subject matter, I recognize and realize there is an emotional driver that is very unique to him underneath it. So I want to know about that. And then I can stay in neutral, not collapse, because then I'm going to share with him what we was playing out in my emotional experience as well. And the highlight of neutral is if I want the space and permission to feel the way that I feel, that I need to create that permission for my partner, whoever I'm trying to be in relationship with. That, my friends, is the epitome of unconditional love. It's not sacrifice of self and substance and resource. It's permission. That's love. For me to feel the way I feel and for you to feel the way you feel and to recognize and realize. Very seldom do we interpret the same experiences in the same emotional fashion as each other, but that's what gives us the ability to share it, too, just like we did in the beginning. That creates the connection. You know, Tom and I felt more connection after that experience we had when we all Realized what we was playing out. I came to a deeper place of I love you, you really do love me. You really do care about me. You really do care about our relationship.

Yeah. And I. And I would add that the power of a pause, too. There, there's absolutely, you know, confirmed physiological benefit because it's going to slow your brain down as well. And when you can slow your brain down and bring in some oxygen, and it's going to give us the ability to listen because when we're triggered, let's just be honest, at least I know for myself when I'm triggered in a hot mess, I can't listen, even as dead on as it is. So you're. You're also playing into the. What we know how our physiological body is designed. So the power of a pause is incredibly powerful. It sounds simple. Just like many things. It's not always easy.

It's gonna be the hardest thing you've ever done. Why? Because.

Take it. You know, it's gonna be very powerful.

Yeah. A pause is easy to talk about neutral. We're talking about neutral. Not control, not collapse, but neutral. The easiest way for you to go to neutral is to take a breath, close your eyes, and pause. That's going to buy you some time. And the time is needed because feelings travel faster than thought. My brain only has the ability to process so many bits of information all at one time, but I feel it it instantly. And so I need to give that brain a chance to kind of catch up. And that's where we start looking for, why the pain? Why does this hurt? And then probably something you've never thought about doing before in your emotional experiences. What's the remedy? We don't have remedies because we don't think in terms of remedy. Like, what would ease my emotional pain right now? What could I ask for? What could I experience? What could I share? What could I understand that would ease my emotional, like, conflict that's happening inside of myself? And without that pause, you're never going to be able to get there because. Right. My brain is scrambling. I've checked out a long time ago. You're still barking at me. And I'm now dropping into emotion, and that's running my show. And I'm speeding up thinking that if I speed up, I'm going to be able to get ahead of you.

Yeah. And I would add another P to that. It's pause. And then it's practice. Because again, it sounds real simple. And it is. But because of how fast things are moving in this place, of trigger that we all experience many times a day. But I promise you, we promise you with some practice, and if you need some help and many times people do, then reach out to us. This is what we do. We create some safety. We create and establish the permission and safety with individuals, single people, and couples to help start these types of conversations that typically have never happened before.

Yeah.

But speaking about permission and speaking about something exciting, what do we have to share?

Oh, my. Oh, are you talking about the challenge?

Yes.

Oh, well, so, okay, if you want some real support with this, you guys, if you really want to immerse yourself in and what we're saying makes sense to you, then what we want to do is we want to invite you to come along and sign up for upcoming challenge that happens from March 8th, 8th to the 12th. Because this is going to be a place where you get to actually re. Push the reset button, Literally. And it doesn't matter if you're currently in a relationship and you need to hit that reset button, like, super fast or you're thinking about pushing that reset button because you're either stepping into a new relationship or you want to. Definitely want to. You definitely want to hit that reset button before you step into pursuing a relationship. And five days flat, no kidding. We're going to walk you through some very distinct steps of being able to begin this practice of emotional weightlifting. I hope that you're starting to see through our conversations and our examples that it is so important, that it really is the number one killer of all of our relationships that are valuable and important to us. We can no longer solve the problems of our relationships through the lens of control and collapse. It's always going to take us to a fight. I mean, has it ever failed you? Have you ever said one more thing, one more conversation, or banged one more time on the circumstances and had the person that you're trying to enroll and control go, aha. Oh, that makes perfect sense. No, it always takes us to a fight.

So where's that information? Is that staceybartley.com yes.

Staceybartley.com S, T, A, C, I, B A, R, T, L, E, Y, forward slash, resetreset. You can get on the early bird list. There's some things that you can get started practicing and doing right now.

And there's free.

It's no charge.

It's going to be a free challenge. It's going to be awesome. We're going to be going live every day and just really, really expanding and deepening what we share here on our radio show.

Yeah, and just to give you like a wet your whistle taster is the first day is transforming your hot mess. So we're going to start talking about some of these principles we share here on the, on the show. Day two is getting back to your, your partner, your dreaming. Day three, right, what to do when you're bumped into arguments. Day four, turning to bliss and then putting it all together will be the day that we culminate this. And so if you or yourselves or your family, anybody you know needs some help and support in this, then please absolutely go and sign up for this. We're going to close out today's show and I can't believe we're to the bottom to the end. There's so many things I would love to still share for you. So please come back next week a Valentine special. But our song for today is absolutely a song that I chose by John Legend who says if you know you, I'm flipping love me now because now is all we have, you guys. Now in this moment is all we truly have to experience love. And as John Legend says in the song, right if, gosh, I don't know who's going to love you later, but I'm not going to think about that right now. I'm just going to love you now. I encourage you to not only listen to this song right from a place of loving someone, but listen then again from a place of like, loving you apply it to yourself, right? To hear I send you off with extraordinary love and the power to create it today. See you back here next week.