Three Ways To Make Difficult Conversations Easier In Your Relationship

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

Hey, welcome back to the Love Shack, a little old place where we get to get together and explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influences our relationships. If right now you find yourself struggling in your marriage or your relationship, 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've been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and feel less in their relationships, both with themselves.

A quick shout out to our podcast listeners. We appreciate you wherever you are. If you'd like to join us live, we are live every Thursday at 1:00pm PST and I share that with you in case you ever want to catch us live, ask us a question, text us a question. We love you to, you know, to join us live. Bottom line is, wherever you're listening to us right now, we sure appreciate you taking a few moments of your day and spending it with us.

Yeah. And that live place is 1150 KKNW. That's where you can tune into and call into. And as Tom said, wherever you are, thank you so much for listening in. It's great always to be here with you. This is something that Tom and I look forward to doing each and every week. And today we're going to be talking about a big topic, a tipic about three ways to make difficult conversations easier in your relationships. Because after all, it's kind of the difficult stuff that really kind of chews us up and spits us out in our relationships, isn't it? I mean, when it's going well, it's going well, and we're so thankful it's going well. And then, you know, when we start to have those difficult moments and things start like, showing up in our relationships, most of us, unfortunately go to a place where, oh, crap, maybe I've made a mistake. You know, we start doubting ourselves in ways that we couldn't have imagined, especially if we've been banged up a little bit in relationship.

I was gonna say, I think we've probably lost all our listeners because of the topic. It's like, drum roll, please.

You know, now listen, take a breath. Don't, don't go, oh, gosh, this is going to be too heavy for me because, you know, I promise what we're going to do is we're going to give you some really interesting new perspectives on this. Remember, that's what we promised. And then we're going to give you some three step easy things, three inspiring, easy things that you can do to begin working with this.

And we're not going to try to tackle this kind of large subject in one episode. We're going to spend a few episodes with you to really, really give you some actionable things to step into these places of difficulty. Because let's just be honest, ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing wrong when something is, is, is less than pleasant going on in our relationships. You know, we find.

Wait a minute, Tom, is that true?

Yes, yes, it's very true. Even with Stacy. And I know, all kidding aside, we find our private clients, they'll do anything to avoid conflict. And I mean anything.

And the reason why is because we've never been taught how to move through conflict. And so conflict becomes this elephant in the room. You know, that thing that keeps bothering you and maybe has been bothering you for little while and you have no idea how to bring it up with your partner. Yeah, yeah, that, that gnawing thing. And listen, we know that most of us are cooped up in our homes with our partners, our children and our pets, attempting to survive one of the most difficult years of our lives while we struggle to be good at communication. And this doesn't have to be a bad thing, but some of the things that we're communicating about right now can be absolutely challenging and draining and require a bit of skill that unfortunately we've never learned. I'm going point out conversations like, you know, you're furloughed, you know, how do we pay the bills? Or gosh, who's going to supervise, you know, the zoom school today with the kids? How do we explain these events to the kids? And why is it that I still have to ask you to wash the dishes? Like, gosh, can't you just see they need to be done and do them? And why do we feel so disconnected off times when right now especially we're spending so much, much time together? Buckle your seat belts because in this episode we're going to cover several key topics to making difficult conversations easier. We're going to help you give you some simple, refreshing perspectives to help you on this journey. We'll be right back with three ways to make difficult conversations easier for you and your relationship right now. Ready to learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartly.com fairydust stacybartley.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 arguments and 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 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 stacybartley.com today 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 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 stacey bartley@staceybartley.com checkup tell your friends about alternative talk 1150.

Welcome back. Hey, we're going to be diving into the topic and three ways to make difficult conversations easier for you and your relationships. And I want to start by sharing a story about our clients. Did you have something you wanted to say, honey?

No, no. I'm just, I'm eager for the story. And just so you know, we don't breach confidentiality. We speak about story in a way that serves, but we take privacy very seriously around our neck of the woods.

Yeah, we absolutely do. So this particular client is, I think, a great couple to talk about simply because it highlights how these things typically go down when we have some difficult things to kind of bring to the table and talk about. So they had been married for not a long time, five years or so. In the world of relationships, that's a pretty short time. And they kept having reoccurring fights over money and over household chores, and they were escalating. And thankfully, after wrestling with this for about a year and a half, they decided to raise their hand and get some help and support with it. So here they are in my office, and I say to them, okay, tell me what typically goes down well. Okay, we're going to start talking about the thing that's on my mind, and I'm going to start sharing with her or him what's bothering me about that and why it's not working. And things continue to escalate, and we continue to bang heads. And then, you know, the woman would get up from the conversation, finally, after begging to have it in the first place, storm out of the room and slam the door. And her partner would sit on the couch and go, well, here we are again. And I cool down and go for a drive and maybe swing by and see my friend. And then they would come back together after a few hours and give, of course, give each other the cold shoulder for a minute and not talk for hours to maybe a day or two. And then something inevitably would come up that they would need to say. And then, you know, maybe they would say, gosh, I'm sorry, and, you know, kiss. And the makeup sex was great, but then nothing was really solved. They just go back to having the same fight and blow out. And the thing that was concerning them and the reason why they showed up in my office is their fights were getting more intense and they were becoming more frequent, and they could tell that it was beginning to escalate out of control. And as it escalated out of control, they were both very much feeling less loved, less appreciated, less acknowledged. They started feeling like, gosh, there's some things that are being said and done here that caused me to feel like I'm not important and I'm not valuable in this relationship, in spite of what they're saying and the words that are coming out of my mouth. And this pretty much, for me, sums up not only my own personal experience in fighting, but what I see again and again and again in our office. And so at this particular moment, I said to her, what is it you're hoping would happen when you storm out of the room and slam the door? And she paused for a moment and she said, you know, it would mean the world to me if he would just open the door up and ask me if I'm okay, right? Ask me about why I'm so mad and what's hurt my feelings. And about this time, her partner gasps like, no way. There is no way I would ever do that. And he proceeded to share my family. When somebody slams the door, right when things get kind of loud and boisterous like that, you get the heck out of Dodge. That's what you do. You go missing and you don't reappear until somebody reappears or emerges from wherever it is. They escaped, too. So I would never come and See how you're doing on the other side.

So the proverbial the coast is clear now.

Exactly. And we're going to work our way back from this. And this is a telltale that starts to highlight, number one, the very first challenge that we have in relationships. So many of us, we argue over whose point of view is the governing reality, which is just a fancy way of saying we attempt to convince each other that the way you experience or see things is correct. And of course, your partners is just simply, well, ridiculous. Often everybody begins then to pull out critical points to share as evidence that they're right or details as to why the other person is completely off base, regardless of whether they are relevant to solving a challenge that is currently at play. And then, of course, as we go on these challenges that we're facing that we need to find a solution to, well, they become forgotten, right? And they get all hung up in the other emotional details. And this is how we start fighting with something that's slightly upsetting. And then it digresses into things that we've done, you know, again and again and again. Simple things, usually like being late, like not paying that bill on time, right? Like overspending, like not taking care of the dishes. These things start to digress into bigger and bigger fights. And how we handle those fights is we take another stab at it. We fight, we exhaust ourselves, we fight some more, and then we finally give up in frustration and hurt, more so than even when we started the fight. And this is how things continue to escalate again and again and again. All said, right? Some things get said that are hurtful. I say some things, you say some things. And how this typically goes is we just hope that once the fight is over and we make up, that it doesn't come up again. But again, there's no real solution to anything. So the first point that I want to make out here in our story is showing up and having the conversation is step number one. A year or two ago. I'm not very good at time, but was it a year ago? I want to say a year or two ago, we did about 2,000 surveys over the phone. And with uncanny precision. Couples that we interviewed said the breakdown in communication was their biggest problem. But when asked what they do instead, they fight with no resolution or they try and avoid the topic altogether. So, contrary to many popular beliefs out there, our number one problem is not communication. Communication comes after the fact of what I like to call showing up. Showing up means I'm going to step forward, I'm going To reveal what's upsetting to me. Now, I know what I'm saying right now makes you gasp. Because that's exactly what we don't want to do because of the story that I just shared. Right. Every time we do and it doesn't go well. Right. And things escalate out of control, we decide that, oh, we don't want to go down that road again, so let's just not bring it up. Let's just not talk about it. Let me try and deal with it on my own. Right. Or let me just lay the groundwork right now and say, this is gonna be how it goes, and I don't want to hear another thing about it. Those are usually the two solutions that we go through.

Yeah. It seems to be all or nothing. Kind of of a process that most of us have has either been modeled to us or really the only. The only alternatives that we know about. But there really is a much better place. You know, again, at the end of the day, Stacy and I share often, you know, as human beings, we're really looking for three things to be acknowledged, to be appreciated, and know that we matter. So think about that. All of things are being negated. You know, when one person is right and one person is wrong, someone's going to be at the very short end of those three things, you know, or put another way, this is from Joe Polish, a wonderful man that we follow for years. You know, you cannot punish the pain out of anybody, you know, and so that right and wrong, you know, place is, you know, that. That. That's probably not going to get us too far. Yeah.

So our relationships, because of this, because we don't really know how to show up to begin the conversation. Right. And get better at our communication exists a lot in pretend and illusion. Because no one's willing to show up. We're all terrified to go there. Why is that? Because we've never been taught how to do it.

So give us an example. When you say show up, I know you just. You gave us kind of the definition, but what. What would that feel like, you know, for? So let's say you and I just had a, you know, a difficult disagreement. How about that? And, you know, how would I, you know, show up? What. What would that be like from a feeling place?

Yeah. Well, showing up in the. Going back to our story would be raising your hand and getting help, saying, they're addressing the problem head on. They're willing to say, hey, we have a problem here and we need to sit down and address it. And how many times have you either asked for that in your relationships or how many times has someone asked that of you? And the answer was, nah, you know, it's not really good time right now. Can we do this later? Or I have the gnawing, and I know that I need to address something, but I keep putting it off and putting it off, waiting for the perfect time. And I need you to hear me. The perfect time never comes. That is an illusion and a conversation that gives us the excuse to not show up. And now, look, the first thing is we've got to understand how important it is to show up, which is going to require us to have some courage. And so today, as we step onto little simple things that we can do right now, I'm just going to simply ask you to amass the courage to look at what I'm saying and to sort some things out for yourself. I'm not asking you to show up and have that conversation today. I'm not asking for you to finally come clean. I'm just asking you to take a moment and muster up the courage to be willing to look at what's not working. Ask yourself the question of what is it you would love to bring to the table, but you keep putting off and putting off because of one story or another, right? Because it didn't go well last time, because your partner doesn't really care. I'm just going to have to get good with this. Or how many times do you shut it down because you're controlling the situation? We do that too.

Or you. Or you're simply just saying whatever you. Whatever you say will be fine. And we call that the control or collapse. That's usually the only two places that people know to go with our emotional pain.

So couple things we need to show up first. Showing up as our number one challenge. It's not communication, right? And then what do we tend to do? We go back to our story. They're fighting about what happened. Okay? They do this. They do this, do this. In this particular case, she overspends. We have a new conversation, and then she goes out and she overspends again. And I don't get it. Why does she keep doing this? And in her particular case, it was that he was always running late, he was always running behind. And she would ask and plead, why are you so late all the time? It causes me not just five minutes, but 30, 45, and I'm counting on you, and you're not there. And these were the two biggest crux. Time and money in this couple's particular conversation. And so what would happen is they would continue to bang on how late he was or how much she had overspent. And round and round and round they would go about those circumstances. And never once did they. They think about having a conversation about how it feels. So the second piece that we've got to uncover and talk about here is now that I've got the courage to kind of go, all right, I gotta address this. We're gonna have up and address this. Because if not, things just continue to escalate. I've got to muster up the courage just for now to just look at it for myself. We'll decide how we're going to approach it in the communication later. But just approaching it for myself is step number one.

So the feeling part of that for me, then let's say I was, you know, rather than doing what I've always done, the feeling like, look, I know I can, you know, step in now and really turn and face and step into this. This gnawing, you know, versus the avoidance, the doing anything but that. That would be the feeling part for me.

Absolutely. And you need to look at that and be with that. Right. Just examine that. And instead, what we tend to do is we wait for the perfect time. We create a story about how it's not going to matter anyway. We cross our fingers and just hope that this gnawing thing is going to get better. And it doesn't. It just gets more and more agitated. Right. The analogy I love about that is, you know, sand in your shoe. It's not so bad when it first starts, but you walk 50 miles on it, right? It's going to start to get painful. And that's how these little things are. They just kind of gnaw at us and gnaw at us. And we start weaving a story and not allowing ourselves to show up to even address them. And if we do try and attempt to address them, heaven forbid if it doesn't go well, because then we're not likely to come back and attempt it again until I can't take it anymore. That's usually what happens. And then we're back to fighting about it. We're back to drawing out all of our evidence and all the circumstances about what happened and how you screwed it up again. And if you would just do what I tell you to do, this whole thing would go well, and I'd feel better and you'd feel better. So we spend time in our fights, trying to enroll each other into our way of thinking about things. And that's the fight. And we stay there and we bang on those things until we're completely exhausted and can't take it anymore, right? And again and again and again without any solution or without any forward movement. That's where most relationships reside, right? As they continue to break down and we feel further and further apart and that's where we go. So we have to show up. We have to be willing to look at the parts and ask ourselves, what's not working? What is it that's rubbing me raw? And this is, by the way, after you pause. There is never a time to just jump in and attack and expect things to go well. But that's what we do when we put it off and put it off and put it off and we can't take it anymore. We're going to do some version of, ah, I can't take this anymore. This is driving me crazy. And it's not that because, right. I didn't know to address it earlier. It's just that I didn't. I chose not to. I hoped it was going to go away. I hope that, right. I wasn't going to have to do it. And so then when it does come up, it usually comes up in a way that's already escalated and we don't realize that we can handle these things right. Much earlier on if we knew better, right? And we don't. We don't, we don't know better. So we wait and sit on it and then when it does come up, we just attack and fight.

So that feeling part, I think, is a huge, you know, distinction there. We have to remember, number one, the beauty in the sense that feelings are very powerful because they, they will tell us where we're at, but they travel very, very fast.

Well, you bring up a really good point here. And this is why we can't logic our way out. Things we try and that's why we talk about circumstances and what happened. That's why we bang around on those things until we pound them into powder dust. But we still have no resolution or we're not better for it. It just completely breaks down our relationships. We're not talking about the right things, the circumstances as to whether you overspent money or you were late. In the particular case of our client, it doesn't matter, really. What matters most is where you go with that circumstance. What is it that you feel and start to make up in your own experience about why you would overspend or about why you're late. And if we were to go all the way back and talk about the door, right? When the wife would walk out of the room and slam the door, what was interpreted there to her partner was, get the heck out of dodge. I guess that didn't go well. We'll come back when she emerges, when the reality of the situation is she was on the other side of the door, praying that he would come through and that he would care about her enough in order to ask, are you okay? I've hurt you? What's going on? That's what she wanted. But instead she would just act out and act out. And the more she didn't get it, the more upset she would become, the more she would slam doors and wait on the other side, thinking to herself, surely at some point in time, if he cares enough, he's going to come for me. And he never would. And so she started reacting to that again and again and again. And so I need you to understand, when we're solving difficult conversations, it's never about the circumstances of what is happening. It's about where you go emotionally with what's happening. And those are the things that we fail to talk about because again, we've never been taught how. We don't even have this conversation, right? So forget about the circumstances, throw them out and start asking yourself a better question as you turn and face this. Why is this bothering me? Why does this upset me so much? What am I making up Is true about this? Ah, now we can start to have a conversation that takes us some.

So you've gotten, you know, you've, we all, we receive these feelings, these indicators incredibly fast. And how many of us have ever, you know, because we haven't known the power and importance of a pause, we have respond to that immediacy of a feeling in the immediacy of a maybe less than a probably helpful verbal, you know, share. So the point here is use the indicator. Okay, now the first thing you need to do is pause so you can step into what Stacy just shared. What's really going on for me here. Why is it so upsetting? So, and that takes some time because remember, we, Stacy loves to. We like, they really geek out on science here. I'm not quite. But you remember, we got to slow things down. Okay. That brain is moving so fast and the feeling has flooded our system. We could get really geeky science. But the bottom line is you got to slow yourself down because you are a hot, hot, hot mess.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up again because it's important for us to highlight here a Little bit of science.

Oh, boy.

And the reality is emotions travel faster than thought. So we can be flooded with emotions in our bodies, like in nanoseconds. And our body or our brains can't process what's going on. It can't make sense of it. And what typically happens is then we react to the emotion and there's some really stupid stuff that starts coming out of our mouth right as we react to it. And that's why the first thing to practice is a pause and then face and look at the problem. What is going on? Why am I such a hot mess? And that's going to take a minute. Because our brains can only process so much information at once. This is why hindsight is always so much more superior than things that are playing out in the moment. Because again, emotions can flood my body right now in nanoseconds, but I can't make sense of what that is at all until I just kind of let it all catch up.

And here's really the almost unfair. Stacy and I, we've talked endless hours about this. It's unfair because, yes, feelings travel faster than thought. But guess what? Guess what, Guess what drives our feelings is our thoughts. Now, like, wait a minute. That's like we say, Gus, God, universe, spirit. Come on, that's not even hardly fair. So that's why we have got to slow down. Because if we can get our thought process in a better place and understand truly what's going on for us, that's going to make us feel better right there. That simple thing. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could take anything away from today, remember, pause, pause, don't react, pause.

And that might take some doing.

Oh, boy. It takes a lot of doing.

Pause. And then I've got to show up. I've got to face what's going on. I have to look. We call it digesting down our emotional cookie. We've talked about this before, but when the emotions flood my body, body, it's me. It's on me to understand what's truly going on. And that's going to take a minute for my brain to just process what happens. And what we typically go to is those circumstances. And we start fighting about that, right? We start, you know, accusing and blaming and trying to get some leverage on why it is you've screwed it up again, right? And there we're off to the races. Now, just take a moment right now as we're talking about how fighting usually goes. And I want you to realize it never disappoints. The minute we fight about Circumstances, right? And the minute we react to our emotions, have you ever had things go better after that moment? Like, have you ever been in the middle of a fight and like, all of a sudden threw down one more piece of evidence, you know, circumstantially, as to why you're right and your partner is wrong, and had them go, voila, I see the light. It never happens. It always takes us to a very special place, which is a fight that escalates and everybody feels worse after every time. It's uncanny position. I call it buying the ticket, right, to the.

You know what? We won't. We're not allowed to say that it's.

The ticket to the land that we don't want to be. And we get there by, like, express train. We can get there in nanoseconds. And then the heck of it is, you've got to walk your happy butt back. It's going to take a minute to get back to where you once were after you buy that ticket to that express train to a place nobody wants to go. And I just want you to realize with uncanny precision, you're hearing this from me. I work with hundreds of couples from around the world, and it doesn't matter what society, what culture, right? What pairing, what gender couples are. This process of fighting always takes us to the same place again and again and again, and we're never any better for it. So what we have to realize is not only do we need to pause, right, show up, pause, we absolutely have got to turn and face what's going on and stop talking about the circumstances. Because if I'm talking about the circumstances of what happened, if I'm throwing down evidence, if I'm saying things like, well, my friend said or so and so believes or agrees with me, or, right, you've done this 27 times now, and this is, you know, 30. I can't take it anymore. See, you're wrong and I'm right.

And we've talked about this so many other times, so obviously you don't care.

Yes. Then we're off to the races. We just bought that ticket to the express train to nowhere land. And I want you to see and understand that what you need to start practicing understanding about yourself so we can turn and take these conversations in a different direction is how I feel about what happened. Because when I can talk about what I feel about what happened, it changes everything. It's the difference between saying, oh, my gosh, you're such a jerk, you're late again. Look, it's 15 minutes on the clock. Right. When are you going to stop doing that? That's one way. And the way we typically do it, it's the difference between, hey, you know what? When you're late, it really hurts my feelings. It causes me to feel disrespected, and it causes me to feel like you don't matter. Can you help me understand why you're struggling with being late? Right. Because I really want to believe you care. One is going to help us have a conversation and address the being late, and the other one is going to buy that express ticket we talk about to the nowhere lands. Okay. And we can't talk about how it makes me feel if I'm not even clear about it myself. And so with our clients, we take a lot of time helping them understand how to translate their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions into a language that first they can understand. It's not about what happened. It's about where you go in your emotional experience that's driving the show that's so important. I want to say it again and again and again. Like, I want to reach through this microphone, and I want to go, look, we've got to stop talking about the circumstances. We're sacrificing that for the sacred emotional connection and love that we feel with the people that we feel for the people that are most valued in our lives. And if we can't get ourselves to a place where we can break that emotional cookie down and we can start understanding how we feel about what happens, we're always going to be talking about the wrong things, and we're going to be talking about things in such a way the solution to the challenge we face will continue to elude us as we bang again, bang again on the circumstances.

It may not be as storybook as you like, but it's why Stacy and I are so passionate about this place, because it really is the foundation of everything that we work with and teach and mentor with our clients. So I think, think it's time for us to all take a pause, and we'll be right back. As we continue this very, very important conversation.

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 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.

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 stacybartley.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. No other station delivers this much variety. Alternative Talk 1150.

All right, so if you're just joining us, we need to catch you up to speed a little bit. We've been talking about how to manage difficult conversations that need to be had in our relationships. The first thing that we need to do is understand the importance of showing up, because that's where most things break down is we wait too long to have the conversations over the little things and the big things, and then little things turn into those big things.

And let me just share what now you know, because sometimes Stacy, I have to remind her, but showing up means showing up. Of course you have to physically be there, but that's not really what showing up means. Showing up means being there, coming to the proverbial table to have these difficult conversations in a way that really serves the yes, babe, that's so showing up means having the courage and understanding that's going to go differently than at how it typically has always gone.

Well, I'm willing to just show up and attempt the conversation and I'm going to attempt it from a different place because I understand if we leave you to your own devices, you're going to put that off, as we all do again and again and again, which puts us into a reactive state before we even get started.

So it shows you the power of setting it up correctly. Again, Stacy had shared earlier, before we took our last break, that we have found in talking to literally thousands of people that they usually identify communication as the number one challenge. Actually, we would say, no, you have to first come to the table because if you're not even coming to the table, obviously you're not even giving yourself an opportunity to communicate.

Your communication skills won't do much for you. So. And so then we talked about a pause, and we talked about the fact that feelings travel faster than thoughts, right? And that it's important for us to not get hung up on what happened, but on how what happened made you feel like, where did you go, right? What. What is happening inside of you? And because feelings travel faster than thoughts, that's work that only you can do. And the best thing to do is take a pause and let your thinking catch up. Another way to remember the important principle of this is in music theory, actually, where it's said the space between the notes makes the music, right? If I were to sit and bang on a key, an instrument of a key or any instrument key, there would be chaos and mayhem. There would be no melody, there would be no harmony, there would just be noise. But if I put a space in between those notes becomes da da da da da da da da da. And now I have a melody. And. And it's uncanny how that works in our relationships, too. If I bang on the circumstances, right, it's like banging on that key again and again and again. And if I react to how I'm feeling without understanding how I'm feeling again, I'm banging on that key. But if I can take a pause and I can digest down what I'm feeling, if I can understand what it is that hurts and let the circumstances go, then I can create more harmony in my communication with somebody as opposed to the anticipated fight.

And is there a certain amount of time that a pause might be for us, for each individual?

It's very individualized. Sometimes when we're really upset and what I call a hot mess, a colossal hot mess that might take a little more time than say, something is just kind of, oh, gosh, that hurt. That hurt me. And as we get good with understanding our emotions, which is going to take some practice, right? That's where this needs to begin. Because when I understand where I'm coming from, then I can approach stepping into a conversation from a very different place. Look, the reason why talking about what happened doesn't work is we can validate anything from our perspective. And when I say anything, I mean anything. I could wallpaper the walls of my office and my house and the whole block and the neighbor's house with. With mounds of evidence that gets brought to me every single week of the work that we do. Oh, they did this they did this. They did. Did you know? Oh, my gosh. Holy cow. They did it. Oh, let me tell you. And it. And it's a story of what happened. And it's not until I usually say, okay, but where did you go? I understand. I hear you. But where did you go? What are you making up is true for you in this moment? Well, obviously, it usually goes that way. Well, obviously. Fill in the blank. Well, no, that's not obvious at all. Just like the story we shared in the beginning of the show about the woman who really wanted her lover to come for her behind the door. He had no idea. And I could tell you story after story about the misunderstanding that has happened there, where somebody internally is secretly hoping for something that never happens. And the reality is they never revealed that they were sitting around and waiting for that to happen. They'd never revealed what overspending or where I go when you don't do the dishes or where I go when you're late does for me. Right? It doesn't. We don't talk about that. We just talk about the event or the circumstance itself. Super important. The reality is the actual circumstances or what happened, nobody really cares about. We just use them to leverage and manipulate each other to get the leg up, to get what we want. The proverbial mindset is if I can just get you to do what I need you to do, I'm going to feel better. The heck you will. You won't. You won't feel better because you're not addressing what's really going on inside of you. Okay.

So I would say if that was successful, we wouldn't be in this place. We are. And Stacy and I would have no coaching and teaching and mentoring practice. So obviously, I mean, not to be cliche, but that one's not working, you know, so let's just kind of say, you know, again, not. We're doing the best we can at the given moment with the tools and skills that we have, but that one doesn't work. So that's why we're so passionate about. There's some other things we can do effectively, you know, that will move the needle in a much, much better fashion.

You think we can take the next step now?

I think so.

I think we can.

Can we pause for a moment?

Well, we. We pause. Let's. Let's just recap. Okay. First thing we gotta realize is we've gotta find a way to show up. And how we're gonna show up is when I'm starting to turn into a hot mess instead of react or try and pretend like it doesn't matter, Kick the can down the road. We're going to turn and face it. And we're going to face it by saying, okay, I'm going to take a pause and I'm going to get clear about what is going on with me emotionally about what happened. Let what happened go. We don't need to know the precision and the detail and exactly how much and what time and how it all went down. What you need to get really up close and personal with is where did you go emotionally? Like, what are you starting to make up is true about what just happened? And that's going to take you directly into the next step, right? Understanding your own thoughts and feelings and translating it into a language that you can begin to understand yourself.

And most of. Most of us, correct me if I'm wrong, babe. That's a very different place for us, right? That's a very different place for us to understand how we're feeling, number one. And number two, be able to articulate that, be able to share that. So give us what, what would that like for that, that, you know, the, the story that you had shared? What would that look sound like for the. The couple that came and saw you that were fight having those, those disagreements?

Well, she wanted to have him come for her. That was going to be what she wished she could ask for. Because she would go to a place if you don't care about me, obviously, because if you did, you would come and make sure that I'm okay. You would be concerned about me feeling out of sorts and upset. And obviously, you know, I am. In fact, I've highlighted it and put the exclamation point on it by slam, slamming the door. And so where she would go emotionally is it was actually the slamming the door was a request to actually see if he cared, if he cared enough to come and find her, comfort her. That's what she was wanting. And so where she would go in this particular situation is to a place where she would literally go slam the door and then wait for him to come for her. And every time he didn't, he didn't inquire, she would feel less and less significant to him, less and less loved, and feel like he didn't really care about her at all. And so with that emotional experience, then she starts showing up in the relationship as though he doesn't care about her at all, which. What causes her to pull away now on his side, right? He felt completely rejected, like when somebody slammed the door at his House when he was growing up, that meant, oh, man, things have really gone to heck in a hand basket. It, you better get the heck out of dodge. There's going to be some, you know, crap going down here and you better come back when it's safe and then maybe we can work through things. And that's how he understood how to handle things like that. So you start to see where he would go is he constantly just kept putting himself or he felt inside of himself that he was constantly being pushed away and that she too hated him, didn't want to be around him, didn't want to have anything to do with him, and in spite of his best efforts, just simply couldn't get it right. Now, what are the things that I'm highlighting here that they needed to talk about and that we did talk about? The fact that he was feeling rejected, the fact that he felt pushed away, the fact like he couldn't get it right. Right. And help me get it right was the conversation that we began to have. And she was saying, I feel like you don't care. Important to you. Yeah. And so you can start to see where, of course, over time, this is going to take us to a not good place. And nobody's talking about that thing. They're just talking about the fact that you overspent again. You're late again. Right. I can't believe this. You don't care. Right. You're such a jerk. You're such a, you know, E, I, T, C, H. And that's where they were left. And you can see those things don't help us solve the problem. So that's what I mean when I say, what is the emotional driver behind that? And essentially what you're doing is you're looking at the don't want peace. We have to look there first. And there's a whole thing that we can talk about at another time as to why that's the case. But for right now, you're just gonna have to trust me. Trust me in the fact that don't want is what we're really good at as human beings. We can walk into a situation or a conversation or a room and go, I don't want that. I don't want that. That's a problem. You're a liar. You suck. I don't trust you. We are so programmed and attuned to what it is is we don't want. So we're going to leverage that and we're going to start there because that's where we're going anyway. So when I look at my emotional self and I look at, oh, this is what I don't want emotionally, right? That's usually where we also stop and get stuck. Okay? So even if we do get to ourselves, to a place where we're talking about the emotional right aspects of ourselves, it's coming from a place, we don't want this, we don't want this, we don't want that. I don't want that. That doesn't work. I can't believe it. I'm there again. Here I am, I'm feeling that don't want thing. And when are you going to stop doing this so that I can feel better? And I'm. You're still doing. And I still don't want this. I still. I still can't go there. And that's where we spend our time. And notice that in those conversations, we never talk about what we do want, about what we would like to see instead. And so with this couple and the story, when they started talking about what it is they really wanted, they started making progress and their fight started to not happen. And instead they. They knew where to go instead, which wasn't about the circumstances, it was about how I was feeling about those circumstances. And then here's what I'd really like to ask you for. And so don't want. This is the next piece, right? This is the last piece that we have time to give you today. Don't Want is only valuable if we use it to help us get to what we do want. Because without getting to what I want, we will continue to digress into a fight when we're working with a difficult kind of situation. Okay? So don't want is where I go. Do want is where I want to go. Because once I get to a place of what I want, it can change the trajectory of your communication. Then we can start talking about how to say it and the words that are going to help me communicate what it is that's not working. But then we can't stop there. We're going to get stuck. And what will work, or what I think might work, or what I'd really like to do or see or experience differently.

So let's just. Just for. Just for a snippet here, because I know many of us, me included, will go, wait a minute now, how do I take that don't want? And how do I engineer that, you know, into what I do want? Because it's amazing, ladies and gentlemen, how so many of our. It's when you ask people what they want they stare at you like a deer in the headlights. So we say, no problem, let's figure out what you don'. Want first. And then how do we use that? Just a snippet. We'll continue this conversation in another episode, turn that around into what we do want. Feeling wise, emotionally wise.

Well, I want. I want to just point out is because that's what we programmed our thinking to do is to find all the don't wants, right? There's a neurological reason why it is we go to don't want. And so when we say, well, gosh, if this is what you don't want, what do you want? There's not even a filing drawer for want. It's like, what, what, am I supposed to have files in there for that? Am I thinking? You don't. Most of us don't. So don't feel bad if you go, gosh, I've never really thought about what I want when I'm upset, right? I've never thought about what a remedy might be emotionally for what it is I'm experiencing. And I need you to know that's totally okay and normal, okay? We don't develop filing drawers for what I want. So, thankfully, this whole process is really simple. If I know what I don't want, all I need to do is flip it to its opposite, and it's going to start revealing and uncovering what you do want. For example, going back to our story, if I am sitting on the other side of the door and I realize what I don't want is to be here, to feel hurt, to feel alone, right? To feel like I'm less than, or you don't care about me. Me. What do I want? I want to be with you. I want to be reassured. I want to feel like I matter. That's what I want. Now, imagine the conversation when she could come and say, I'm waiting for you to come and get me on the other side of the door, and you never come. But what I really want is for you to hold me. I want you to reassure me I'm okay. I want you to reassure me that you love me and that I matter to you. You. That fight would be over in about 22 seconds, right? That's the power of what we're sharing with you here today. So, unfortunately, right, we've got to wrap up here in the next few minutes, and I want to go over these key points again because it's going to take repetition. Just like anything we learn to do differently, we have to first understand it and then we have to implement it and then we have to practice it it and then we become good at it. And guess what? Relationships is no different. Right? And that's a lie that we've got to just vet out right now. We need skills and we need practice and we need new understandings when it comes to getting better at relationships. We don't just fall in love and then magically know how to do it. Doesn't work like that, folks. And when you have problems and conflict, it doesn't mean that you. You've wrong person, the wrong person, you're showing up as a jerk. Because the reality is we're all going to show up as a jerk. So we need some skills. And this is where we begin. So here we go. Number one. Number one, we've got to realize we have got to show up. That's our number one problem. Getting myself to a place where I can emotionally show up and address what's going on and how we're going to start with that today is all you gotta do is give yourself the permission to look at what right now might be rubbing you wrong. Like, where's the. Nah, where's the problem? You don't need to say a word. Just look at it and get clear about it. And from this moment until I see you again, I just want you to practice understanding where you emotionally go about the circumstances that are playing out.

And let's just be honest, there is a tremendous amount of new circumstances that we all have navigated as families, as partners, in relationships, in school, everywhere. So there will not be a shortage of material to draw on. This is why this is so crucially important right now.

Yes. And that's going to require you to pause. Why? Because emotions travel faster than thought. So you're going to need to sit your little butt down and you're going to need to get clear about what's emotionally happening inside of you because of what just happened. Happened.

So emotionally inside of you would be synonymous with. For those of their more simple like me would be how is it making you feel? What is the feeling that is driving you literally bonkers? Right? Yes.

So, and then you're gonna go, well, gosh, what don't I want about this? Like, what's not working? What's ticking me off about this? And if that's the case, then practice flipping it to a do want. And next week we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about, hmm, the next step, which is going to be advocating and asking for what it is you want. Now that You've discovered what that is.

Can I really ask for what I want?

You better. It's your job to teach your partner how to love you best. And if you don't know how, they're never going to get it. Right. Right. It's a hopeless affair, so we're not going to let that happen for you. So we're going to invite you back next week and we're going to continue this. But until then, do yourself a wonderful favor. Practice showing up for yourself, looking at the thing that's bothering you, getting clear about how you feel about it. Let the circumstances go. They're really irrelevant. I know people are shocked when we say that. And then get clear about what you don't want. That's not working. And then flip it. Don't stop there. Flip it to. All right, if this is what I don't want, just flip it to its opposite. It's a great place to begin, and you might have a bunch of things revealed to you that you didn't even realize you were longing for. It's kind of a fun process, so enjoy it. And then we'll be back with you next week to talk about how you step forward and ask an ad.

And in the meantime, if you have a question or you're really bumping up something that's just not making sense for you or a stumbling block, you know, there's lots of different ways that you can reach out to us. You go to staceybartley.com, our website. There's a way that you can leave a message. You know, there's all types of ways, you know, that you can get ahold of us. You can text us a question. So, you know, we're here to support you through this because this is not just a one and done 53 minute situation and you're going to have it mastered. This is a continuous process, ladies and gentlemen. This is something Stacy and I work with every single day of our own relationship. Difficult conversations we have are in the thousands. You just keep getting better and better and better.

Yeah. All right, guys, that's it for today's episode of Love Shack Live. Thank you so much for being here with us and listening in in. Come back next week and we'll take this next step. And please know that we are so thankful for you. We leave you with our song for the week. It's great. Reporter and Kim singing Holding on. Because sometimes when we're in search for the ability and the words to use to truly share our truth, we just maybe need to hold on for a minute. We'll be back next week. Sending you off with tons of love and the power to create it in your own life. Until next time. Goodbye for now.