Episode 36: Can We Come Back From This?

There's a big difference between honesty and cruelty.

Yeah, you're just being cruel.

Yeah. Yes, honesty is important. Yes, we encourage you to be honest with your partner, but there are plenty of things that you don't have to be honest about, and this is just such a great example of that. Hello, and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with over 20 years of experience.

And I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step by step techniques for improving yours.

Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. Today, we are talking about the gray areas in relationships. So we've all heard about deal breakers, right? Like the very obvious, that's it, done. The bucks stops here, boundaries broken. Yeah. Kind of thing. So we all know about those. But what we wanted to talk about today is this gray area. Times that our partner has said or done things that have hurt us. And maybe we wonder, like, can we come back from this? Can we ever recover? Can I ever fully forget that my partner said or did this?

Yeah, because this might be that thing. They said it was hurtful, it wasn't that bad. But then you find yourself continuing to think about it and come back to it, and it's like, it's haunting you. And it's like, okay, well, is it ridiculous to want to break up for my partner for this one thing? But I can't stop thinking about it. What do I do exactly?

Yeah, it's not one of those, like, obvious, I have to get out now. Deal breaker, game over.

Every single one of my friends would also advise me to do the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. But it's something that it just. It lingers in the back of your head. You ruminate on it. You can't quite get it out of your mind. So we just thought this was a really interesting, like, nuanced aspect of relationships to get into. We went over to our Instagram audience and we just wanted to, like, has your partner ever said or done something hurtful that made you feel unsure that you'd ever be able to forget it? And 60% of people said, yes.

That's pretty solid. That's a lot.

Yeah. Most relationships have had some sort of gray area type of moment like this. What we decided to do today is do another one of our advice column style episodes. So we asked people in our Instagram community, tell us what happened for you. What was that moment that has just lingered with you? You're not quite sure you can feel fully move on from it. You don't know what to do with it. Like, tell us about it. We got a ton of examples. I will say a lot of them were those, like, obvious, get out now. This was a deal breaker kind of thing. So it made me a little bit sad that I think a lot of people are sitting with some pretty heavy stuff that came up. It was actually a little bit challenging for us, like reading through these responses. Cause there was just so much hurt that has been going on in relationships. But we picked out the ones that felt to us like a gray area. And of course, gray area is going to mean something different to everybody else. But we have, I don't know, maybe like 10 or so different examples. And we're going to go through them and give our gut check. Initial reactions of, like, how bad is this? Some tips for how to move on past it, Some conversations you might want to have with your partner. Maybe some of these are going to feel like deal breakers to us. You'll get an inside peek at what's going on in a lot of other people's relationships.

Oh, boy.

Oh, yeah. And hopefully get some tidbits about how to handle the gray areas in your relationship.

But first, we are going out of the gray area and into just the awesome area where we talk about other review of the week. We compliment ourselves a little bit.

Hold on though. Because these reviews get screenshotted from Apple podcasts and they actually are gray.

Oh, sadly, sadly, Vanessa is right.

They're totally gray.

She's right there. It's a gray box with tape text over it. Unfortunately, we are still in the gray, but this is a really good gray area where people tell us how wonderful the podcast is. So today's is becoming a better therapist. Oh. I grew up feeling like sex with a taboo topic. And I felt so much shame anytime it was discussed, even with close friends. Fast forward. Years later, I became an occupational therapist and literally have conversations about sexual with my patients. Face palm. Thanks to your podcast and Instagram stories, I approach any conversation about sex with openness and better understanding. Hallelujah. Heart face.

Okay.

Thank you for your candid conversations and teaching spirits. Your reach far exceeds the people who follow you. Oh, wow. Now we have like a robot bicep.

Yeah, we got some good emojis this time.

Oh, I think this is like occupational therapist Style emojis. We have a. We have a robot bicep, we have a person in a wheelchair. We have a person who is blind, and we have two people standing next to each other. Awesome.

Good job. I thought the robot bicep might trip you up a little bit, but you got it. Also, it sort of looks like it's making.

Is it a prosthetic or is it a robot bicep? I mean, I don't know. Kind of looks like a robot arm. If we can put these type of arms on people, that's pretty amazing.

Am I amazing? Am I using amazing? All right, well, thank you so much for this review. Great emojis in this one. If you have.

Very topical for your situation.

Absolutely. If you haven't heard us talk about our little emoji game before, basically, we challenge you to put creative, unusual, interesting emojis in there for Xander so he can learn what emojis meaning.

Yeah. And this was actually great because it wasn't just like fate. There was only one. There was a face palm, and then, like, one face emoji, and the rest were other things. So someone actually really heeded your call recently, a couple of weeks ago, of like, hey, guys, we got to branch out from the obvious face once. Like, you know, it's all good and fun when I struggle to infer what a face means, but there are so many more emojis out there, so we.

Appreciate that and we really love getting your reviews. It's seriously, like, the only way the podcast can grow. It means so much to us to hear your kind words. So we would really, really appreciate if you would take the time to leave us a review if you've enjoyed any of our podcast episodes. Maybe even if this is the first time listening to an episode and you're like, you know what? I'm just gonna really enjoy the hell out of this one. Let me leave a preemptive review.

Oh, yeah. If you give us five stars, I guarantee that you'll like the episode.

These first five minutes have been absolutely captivating, life changing. And we do a giveaway every single week. How it works is leave a Apple Podcasts. Unfortunately, that's currently the only platform that you can leave a review on. Once you do that, you will be entered into our giveaway every week. Going forward, we pick a review at random, but let's just say maybe your emoji game doesn't hurt and that person wins a free mini personalized coaching session. So you can come over to us on our Instagram account, anessamarin. Therapy. Send us a question, and we will send you back a personalized coaching session with advice. All right, so let's get into it. Do you have any memories of something you've said that I had a hard time recovering from?

Oh, the thing that sticks out most to me, I. This was so early on in our relationship, and I was so young. I can't remember how we got onto this topic. I think that you were probably trying to be really cute and be like, oh, like, I never annoy you. Right. And I said something. I said something that I really regret. It took a number of years to live it down, and that was. No, you annoy me all the time. I mean, I think probably I get annoyed by you at least once a day.

I get annoyed by you once a day. Okay, first of all, it was not at the beginning of our relationship. Oh, yeah. This was like, a couple years ago.

No, it was not just a couple of years ago. It was definitely before we got married. I want to say. Yeah. And. And I actually realized. I think that I probably misphrased the way I said it. I actually probably said it worse. You annoy me every day is what I probably said.

You said at least once a day.

Yeah, at least once a day. I didn't even take responsibility for saying, I get annoyed at least once a day. I just said, you annoy me.

And you're right. I was definitely like, I don't even know what you would call. It's not like, fishing for compliments. Like, I was being cute. Fishing for insults.

You kind of were. You kind of were. I'm not sure what you were expecting to get.

I was being obnoxious. I think I was probably doing something really annoying, and I was trying to make fun of myself in the moment and be like, oh, I'm just so annoying. But I was expecting you to be like, no, babe, I love you. You're perfect. You're never annoying.

Well, after all the years of grief. After all the years of grief I got from that, and I also suffered from that. I do appreciate you taking some responsibility for the fishing a bit. The fishing expedition you were or weren't on.

Yeah, we're laughing about it now, because looking back at now, it's very ridiculous. But my feelings were very hurt, and they were hurt for a long time. Like, oh, my God, what is this relationship that I'm in that I annoy him every single day? And again, like, we're laughing about it now. We were able to have some perspective on it. We have moved past it. But for a long time, it didn't feel very funny. And there was this fear in the back of my head of, like, well, is this not the right relationship for him then? Am I not the right person for him then? Like, yes, Obviously, relationships have ups and downs, and we annoy each other, but the idea of me annoying you every single day, like, that was very worrying to me.

Yeah. And, you know, I explained it at the time, and this is still the explanation that I have for it. I just wasn't particularly emotionally intelligent when I said it. But, you know, what I meant when I said that was just little, tiny, minor annoyances, like, Vanessa left her shirt on the bed or, you know, some kind of random little thing. And I kind of, like, thought that I was maybe being really skilled in saying something like this and just sort of acknowledging that, yeah, when you're in a relationship, there's no way you're ever gonna live your life exactly the way that you would live it if you're single and, like, not accountable to anybody else. And so I was just trying to take responsibility for the fact that, yeah, you know, at least once a day, there's some random thing that happens where it's like, if I were at my house on my own, nobody else around, like, I wouldn't do this or that, you know, it would be different because, like, I always put the dishes in that side of the cupboard versus the other side or whatever it is. But what I didn't really realize was I didn't make that clear when I said that, that it was the tiniest little annoyances. And, you know, in Vanessa's mind, she's thinking of what to annoy someone means as, like, a really big thing that really bothers you. Yeah, I just wasn't very skillful in how I said it.

I was thinking of, yeah, annoy. Like, it's a strong feeling. It's like, oh, my God, stop annoying me kind of thing. And so maybe that's our first takeaway of this episode is that words can have very different meanings to different people. So you are thinking of the word. You know, we're talking about the same word annoy, and you're thinking about it in these, like, minor, oh, I notice that something's out of place, and that's minorly annoying. Whereas I'm thinking of it as, like, a very active, oh, my God, I'm so sick of this person. Why are they doing this? Why am I here? Kind of thing.

Right. Yeah. And what was challenging for me was that obviously you were upset by This I felt, like, defensive. Like, I wanted to explain what it was that I meant, and I wanted that explanation to cancel out the feelings that you had about it. And so it was a confrontational thing for a while because, you know, because I felt like. Well, I feel like I've explained my side of it. It should be totally understandable now. So she shouldn't be mad at me. You know, what I didn't really realize at that time is that, you know, when you say something like, someone's going to have feelings about it. And I was for a very long time not able to really validate her feelings around that. And I just kind of felt like she is annoying me by still being mad at me about this. So, you know, since then, she has continued to annoy me every single day. Now I'm just.

Can you bet your ass? I brought up all the time like, oh, have I annoyed you yet today? Oh, is this my annoying thing of the day? It took us a while to move through that.

I haven't took a couple years. Yeah, I would say, to get out.

Of that gray zone. All right, let's go into other people's examples. So for this first one, I just want to give a quick content warning that this first one just mentions sexual assault. And literally, that's as far as it goes. Just the words. But if you're not feeling up to hearing that right now, then just hit. Skip ahead a couple of minutes on the recording. Okay, so this person says, when I told my partner about past sexual assault I've experienced, he started crying and saying, why do the women in my life not realize how traumatic it is for me to hear these stories? I stopped and said, are you actually turning my assault into something about you?

Whoa. Wow.

What was that noise?

It was a wow.

What.

Wow? I don't know.

Very inappropriate to be laughing this way, like, right after discussing one about sexual assault.

But let me say what I was trying to say. I was trying to say, whoa. I don't know. This is. This is actually tough one. I think this is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge red flag.

Yes.

Massive red flag. The only possible thing that I can think of here is that this person also has some kind of trauma around sexual assault, perhaps, and that there's something else behind this, like how traumatic it is for this person to hear those stories. That's like, the only possible thing that maybe there is. There is some other trauma. I'm not trying to compare traumas, but, like, if there truly is a trauma that this person has suffered around hearing Stories similar to their own or something like that. And this was just a really, really, really, really, really poor way of expressing that. This is a massive red flag.

Yeah, for me, this just screams red flag. I do think it is hard to hear about things that your loved ones have been through, traumas that they've been through. Of course it affects us to hear about these kinds of stories, but to lead with that. Yeah, that, that, you know, that really is giving the message that his trauma of hearing the story is so much stronger than her trauma. Sharing the story and experiencing the trauma in the first place, which is just fucked up. And to then to even loop in, like, the women in my life, like he's impersonalizing it. It's not even just about like, hey, this is really hard for me to hear because I love you and I hate that you've gone through something like this. It's just the wording is so we. Everything just feels really weird to me about it. So again, like, I want to validate. Of course, if somebody that you love is telling you about a trauma they've experienced, you're allowed to have a reaction to that. It makes sense to have feelings about that. I would have feelings if you told me about experiencing a past trauma, but I would not lead with those feelings. I probably wouldn't even mention those feelings in the first conversation. That first conversation would be all about you. Thank you so much for telling me this. I'm so sorry that you've experienced this. How can I be a supportive partner to you? Not making you feel bad for. Tell me.

Yeah, don't make it about yourself. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with your partner and a trauma that they've been through. But furthermore, the message that this person is expressing, that implicit message is if something bad happens to you, I don't want to know about, doesn't leave room for trauma to happen in life later on in your relationship. And I hate to break it to you, but life is traumatic and shit happens in life. And this just feels like the partner is saying, I can't handle tough stuff. Not only that, I don't want to know about it. I don't want to hear about it, I don't want to see it. This person is kind of living in like a la la land, so to speak.

And also I think the impression that he's leaving her with is making her feel guilty for having told him in the first place. Why don't you realize how traumatic this is for me? You shouldn't have told me that in and of itself is an unbelievably fucked up thing to tell a sexual abuse survivor for so many reasons. You know, survivors taught to, like, not tell anybody, to keep it a secret. Other people don't want to know this. You know, there's so many dynamics that come up. And so to tell somebody about your trauma takes a tremendous amount of bravery and courage. And for him to just shoot her down, be like, how could you not realize? No, I mean, I hate it.

Unless this person immediately afterward was like, whoa, oh, my God, that. I am so sorry. This was a really fucked up way to respond to you. Wow. I have some work that I need to do on how I handle hearing about traumatic experiences that you've had, because it's really important for me to be there for you and to be a good partner to you. And I'm going to start going to therapy and talk through what the hell just happened.

Yeah.

Unless that happened immediately afterwards, I would say run away.

Yeah, we're a no go on this one.

All right, the next one is, my husband told me he wasn't attracted to me during the latter half of pregnancy and postpartum. I'm three years out now. I can't get that comment out of my head. Wow.

I'm just going to make this sound after each one that we read.

Guys, don't say this.

Don't say it. I have a really, really big.

Even if that is what you are feeling inside, don't say it. Yeah, it doesn't help anybody. It doesn't even help yourself.

I could imagine her telling him, hey, that comment really upset me. And him being like, I'm just being honest. Like, this feels like a classic example of a. Like, I'm just being honest. There's a big difference between honesty and cruelty.

Yeah, you're just being cruel.

Yeah. Yes, honesty is important. Yes, we encourage you to be honest with your partner. But there are plenty of things that you don't have to be honest about, and this is just such a great example of that. Like, do not tell your partner that you're not attracted to them. And especially during pregnancy where she is growing your child, she is sacrificing her body to create new life. The two of you have created this new life together, and she's the only one who can do that. It's not like we've made this decision about, okay, who's going to carry the baby? Oh, okay, I'll do it. Okay, sure, fine. Like, she has to do that. Right. And it's Your joint child together. And she's having to deal with all of these impacts. Like, yes, on the one hand, being pregnant and growing new life is a beautiful thing. And there are also a lot of terrible things that go along with it too, like morning sickness and losing your hair and gaining a lot of weight and not being able to move and having issues sleeping and acid. Like, all these things. And so for him to fixate on the way that her body looks and not being a tr. I Like my. I'm trying so hard to just not break into screams right now because I'm so mad at this. It's fucked up. It's so fucked up to say this to her. Her body doesn't just exist for you to be turned on by, like, she's doing something enormous and miraculous and like. Like, sorry if it looks a little different. Like, I'm so sorry to disturb you, buddy. Yeah, but.

But this one is. This is a challenge because. So. So what do you say? Run away. This is a really tough one because, you know, I think that there are.

Oh, to her.

Yeah. Like, you know, this is.

You're saying to him, your wife's pregnant. Run away.

No, no, no. What. What I'm trying to say is, like, this one really. It's a really shitty comment to make. Yeah, but. But what do you do afterwards? I think you need to go to couples therapy and you need to talk about this. This guy needs to understand that that's a fucked up thing to say and that he needs to understand the difference between honesty and cruelty. And if this is so much of an issue for him and he's just straight up not attracted to you, like, maybe he needs to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

Yeah, but.

But it's. It's not. Yeah. It's not okay to just be like, hey, I'm not attracted to you, with the assumption that that means that your partner's just gonna go out and, like, what did. I don't even know what this guy expected his partner to do.

That's a good question. Like, what does he expect? Like, was she not supposed to gain any weight? Was her body not supposed to look different? She was just supposed to have some, like, miraculous conception where she stayed, like, exactly the same and never changed. Like, what the fuck were you expecting, dude?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess the only thing I can think of is that he's like, now she's gonna go hit the gym until she's super hot, or she's.

Gonna Go get a second half of her pregnancy. And it sounds like he said it twice because she says the latter half of pregnancy and postpartum. So this sounds like a repeat offense. Which raises more red flags for me if it was like, we all say dumb shit sometimes and we all say really hurtful things without meaning to. Like, we've all been there, right? Where you're like, oh, my God, I can't even believe that came out of my mouth. How did I say that? So if this was like a one time thing, something else was going on, like, it's very hurtful and they're probably gonna need time and maybe therapy to process it. But the fact that it sounds like it's multiple times is really upsetting me too.

Yeah. So I mean that, that's why I think you gotta go to couples therapy. This is not. This is not a one time conversation. This is like something you gotta really process a lot of aspects of this. What was going on in the moment when you said that? What do we do now? How do we rebuild trust that, like, if you change your mind about whether you're attracted or just like, yeah, what do we do? Where do we go from here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely think a lot of therapy for this couple. Couple therapy. He'll probably need to do some individual therapy.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, he needs to figure out, like, what is it that. That he wants and are there genuine needs or desires that he wants to express to her that are more specific than, yo, I'm not attracted to you. Go do something about it.

Yeah. I mean, the one thing, if I'm really, really digging deep to try to throw this guy a bone is like, what he was trying to say instead of attracted is like feeling disconnected to you. Because I think that for some people, they don't think about it in terms of connection. They think about it as like, oh, I'm not feeling attracted to my partner anymore. There's not that spark. I'm not feeling drawn to them or important to them. Maybe he was feeling like, you know, you've got so much going on with the pregnancy. I'm feeling left out of it in a little, in some sort of way. Especially postpartum. We hear about this a lot with dads kind of feeling like, where do I fit into this? Like, she's bonding with this new baby and it's this, you know, huge change in our lives and like, the baby is so reliant on her and I'm not being relied on in that same sort of way. So again, this is, like, really digging deep.

Oh, yes. Or, yeah.

Or it can be like, yeah, maybe it was more about the connection for him rather than, like, straight up physical attraction.

Yeah. Or it could be. And again, I'm really digging deep again. But, you know, I'm just trying to imagine a scenario where maybe she is being really down on her body. Her confidence is really suffering. There's sort of more an emotional aspect to that attraction for him where he's like. He's trying to kind of express, like, oh, I'm bummed out by, like, how down on yourself you are. And that's not feeling attractive to me. And again, this just gets back to. He could have expressed that in a much different way. There's a way better way to address that topic than just kind of doubling down and being like, I'm not attracted to you. And I'm not even going to clarify what that means.

Yeah. All right, next up, we have a submission from a male member of our audience. All right, what are we at now? Like, 10% of our audience? I think it's even less.

Yeah. Get your male partners to follow us. Get your male friends to follow us.

Your cousins, your dad, your brother. We need some more men in our Instagram audience. All right, this is what this guy said. My partner told me that the man she was with before me had a bigger dick than I do. She said that she didn't like it because it caused her a lot of pain. But I can't get over the fact that she's been with someone, someone bigger. This is such a common one. We hear about this one all the time. And I think that a lot of men have the experience of feeling self conscious about their size if they hear that their partner previously was with someone well endowed. A lot of guys really ruminate over that, like, comparison, getting stressed out. And I think a lot of men have a very hard time recognizing that bigger is not. Not always better.

And in this case, it is very explicitly not better.

Not at all.

She literally said that it caused her a lot of pain, which means she didn't enjoy herself. She didn't get very much pleasure. It was bad sex for her.

This would be another example of, like, the just being honest thing. Like, if she was rubbing it in his face about, like, oh, the last guy I was with was like, so big and it was so great. And I love. That'd be like, girl, like, you don't need to tell him that.

Or it's like, oh, it was so big, but you're okay. Oh, God. Yeah. So, like, hey, that would not be cool. That's just making us feel bad about. Or, you know, making it really easy for us to feel bad about our body. But in this case, yeah, she could have worded it slightly differently.

Well, we don't know exactly how she worded it. All that we have is that she said she didn't like this bigger penis. Cause it caused her a lot of pain. So she didn't even necessarily say, like, oh, it was such a beautiful dick. I loved it. It was so great. Oh, but it kind of caused me a little bit of pain. Like, all that we're hearing is that she said, I didn't like it. It caused me pain.

Yeah. Actually, I mean, he wrote it caused her a lot of pain.

Yeah.

So I guess here's another question for you, dude. Do you want to cause her a lot of pain? Do you want. Do you want a bigger dick that she doesn't like? Would you rather have a dick so big that you feel good about it and nobody else does?

Ooh, yeah. We have a YouTube video about this, about, does size really matter? We will link to it if you want to learn more about this. Because, again, this is, like, a very common anxiety that comes up for men. I would guess probably every man has felt anxious about his size at some point in his life or another. Right?

Yeah.

So we'll link to that if you want to dive more into this. But I think this is an example of him really needing to just take a look at what was actually said. Yeah, she's talking about something unpleasant that she did not like. Not saying anything hurtful to him.

Yeah. To the guy writing in. If you're finding yourself really unable to let go of this idea that the person that you're with may have had larger penises than yours. If you're just really fixated on that, no shame. There's no shame in that. But, like, you may have had a trauma in the past where somebody maybe made fun of your size, or maybe you've gotten a really unrealistic view of penis sizes from porn or something. But this is a great indication. You might want to go see a therapist to just kind of talk through, like, what is up with you and your fixation on penis size. I think at this point in time, you're having regular sex with someone that probably is good because she's telling you that she was with someone bigger and it wasn't good. And, you know, it sounds like she's trying to make a positive comparison for you. Hey, your penis Is great. It doesn't cause me pain. It hopefully gives me a lot of pleasure. Yeah, I've had bigger, and it sucked.

Okay, I want to put you on the spot a little bit here, though. You know, I have been in the same situation. I have been with somebody who is very large, and it did cause me pain. But what does that feel like for you? Just like that pure, emotional, guttural reaction of knowing that I've been with somebody who's bigger than you.

I mean, you're not with them now.

Oh, zing. I mean, it doesn't.

It doesn't bother me. I know you've been with other people. I've been with other people. You've been with other people. That's just.

So hard in talking about people that we've been with that most people do not share. We get a lot of comments from people on Instagram saying, like, how could you possibly talk about that openly? Like, I would just die of jealousy.

I'll be honest. When we first. First shared numbers, there was a bit of jealousy. There was a bit of jealousy, and I worked through that. For me, the thing that I keep coming back to is, who are they with now? And I say, who are they with? Cause I'm talking about, like, you know, I've had this with previous partners as well, where, you know, like, I probably dealt with my jealousy a lot with girlfriends I've had in the past. I knew that they'd been with other people, and I would just keep coming back to, well, who are they with now? Like, who are they fucking tonight? It me.

I wish you guys could see the look he has on his face. He looks very pleased with himself.

So I think that's a good thing to remind yourself of to the guys out there, like, who are they having sex with now?

Yeah.

If that dick size was so important, who would they be with? They'd still be with that person that's causing them a lot of pain. But they're not. No, they are not. So, yeah. Yeah.

Bigger's not always better, guys.

Bigger is not always better.

It absolutely is the truth.

Try to separate as well. Like, as a guy, like, sure. I can totally empathize with that feeling of, like, yeah, Might be fun to have a really big dick for myself just for the pleasure of, like, the pleasure of whipping it out and seeing a big honker. But a honker.

No, you did not just call it a honker.

That big old dick. But.

Wow, we got a DM to. I'm crying. We got a DM today from a Woman. We had a woman say like my boyfriend calls it his peepee.

And he asked, don't ever do this, guys. Don't. Just don't ever take this. Take those words out of your vocabulary, please.

You imagine being like just whipping out your big old honker. I mean, look at this big old pee pee.

Oh yeah, yeah. So you know, there would be a novelty. There would be a novelty to being like, oh yeah, look at this big pee pee. I gotta two hand this thing.

Two handed pee pee. But what would you do if you just had like a massive dick? Tomorrow you wake up and it's just like double the size.

I would be very worried, I would be very concerned about my ability to continue having sex. Sex with you or anybody for that matter.

Or anybody. Why? Are you worried about having sex with other people?

No, I mean, what I'm trying to say is I would be worried about my prospect for having sex with anybody ever.

What are you thinking about other. You are in trouble, mister. Why are you thinking about having sex with other people ever?

Well, I'm thinking if my penis was magically twice the size tomorrow, like would you, you stay with me? What would happen? Be like this. This isn't what I signed up for.

This pee pee is too big. I'm out of here. You think I would leave you because your penis was too big?

I mean, what would we do? It would be huge.

A crack in your voice.

I don't. What would we do? We'd never have sex again.

We'd have like five onuts stacked on top of each other.

I'm just being real. Like my prospects would really diminish.

I'm joking.

What would we do? I also just like might pass out from the amount of blood required to fill that thing up. That pee pee up.

Wow.

Okay, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, let me roll it back. What I was trying to say when we went on this huge digression on my double penis size. Well, please, please, please, to anybody listening, please don't like wish for that to happen to me because I don't want to wake up tomorrow with that. However, what I'm trying to say is, guys, I think that it's important to differentiate like your own personal desire of like, oh, that might be fun. How would that feel for my confidence to be like, oh, I got a huge cock. Versus in your experience with women, what do women actually like? Like, are you a. Are you able to have good pleasurable sex Sex with women or like with your partner? Are you having enjoyable sex with them? If yes, Ding, ding, ding. You got a great penis, and, like, you don't need any. Like, let's not rock the boat with your ability to have great sex with someone. So I think it's important to make that distinction of, like, yeah, you know what? Whatever. To scratch that weird manly itch of mine. It would feel good to have a big dick, but, like, I don't need that for my partner. She's literally telling me she doesn't want that. Yeah.

All right, let's move on before I actually die.

Yeah, man. We kind of really went down a rabbit hole on that one.

The episode's just gonna all be downhill from here.

All right, so here's another one. No penises involved in this one.

Oh, no. No pee pees.

Only tangentially, right?

I'm gonna gather myself and be a professional here.

All right. Pull it together, lady. All right, so he told me he wished we never had our child.

Oh, God.

So I said tangentially, obviously, a penis was. Was involved in creating that child. He's been a tough kid, and it's been stressful for us.

Okay, this is. Now I'm.

This is a tough one.

Back to earth.

This is a tough one. I can see both sides of this one. I do think, though, that this is still an example of how there are more productive ways to share a feeling. But to say it like, this is not cool.

Yeah. No. So I think what you're getting at is, I think it's important for couples, and especially for parents to be able to be, like, honest with each other about some of the just even existential challenges of being in relationships. And obviously, we're not parents ourselves, But I can absolutely imagine when you make the decision to have a child, even if you're ecstatically happy 99.9% of the time, like, it's still a very challenging job. And I think we don't talk about how challenging it is openly enough. So people really feel shame and guilt when they're struggling and they're not ecstatically happy 99.9% of the time. And so I do think that there's something to be said about being able to have these really, really hard and heartbreaking conversations with each other where you say, sometimes I think about what our life would look like if we didn't have kids, or, like, I am really struggling. This is so hard. I didn't realize it was going to be so hard. I didn't realize it was gonna be, you know, it was gonna challenge me.

So much, or even there is a Part of me that sometimes wishes we hadn't had this child. There's still more skillful ways to say it, but even just acknowledging that this is not me 100% of the time, like, I'm just straight up, like, oh, my God, I've made a horrible mistake and I gotta get out of here. But sometimes there's. There's a small part of me. I really love our kid. He's tough. It's been stressful for us. I really love our kid. And every now and then, there are times where I really miss what my life was like before we had this child.

Yeah, I guess. Okay, a couple of things. I love the phrasing of a part of me. I think we all have different parts of ourselves, and all of these different parts of ourselves have different reactions to the things in our lives. Being able to speak to. Like, there's a part of me that feels. It makes it feel less scary for us to acknowledge it and makes it feel less scary for other people to hear it. So I love that phrasing. My other thought is, for me, this one really comes down to the delivery. Like, was this a moment of really extreme stress and frustration or sadness or, you know, whatever it was, and it was just something that came, like, blurting out of him versus if it's, like, calm and he just comes to you and is like, I really wish that we had not had our child. Yeah.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I'm 100% certain that I made a horrible mistake. That is different.

Yeah. That feels a lot scarier than, like, I'm sure probably every parent has been in a really tough moment and, like, on the verge of a breakdown and just being like, oh, my God, I wish I didn't have this kid. Like, so that's understandable, I guess, also, what his intent was like, again, was it a moment of frustration, of just like, I'm losing my mind and I don't even know what I'm saying right now versus, I mean, what does he think is gonna happen? You give the kid back or something? Like, you know, was there some sort of motivation that he had around saying this?

Who are you giving the kid back to? Go, God, will you take him back?

I don't know, man.

It doesn't work that way.

We're getting into some dark places today. Some dark jokes today. Bear with us. I hope this is not somebody's very first time listening to the podcast, but. So, yeah, the delivery, the intent, those things matter. But, yeah, where do they go from Here. Because the bottom line is there are no take backs. He's this child's father for the rest of their life. There is no going back from that. So I guess if I was. I don't remember the gender of the person who submitted this. So I'll just say if I was this person, I would go back to the partner and just say, hey, I heard that comment. I wanted to loop back around to you and just see what came up for you and why you said that. And so depending on what the partner says, like, you know, if they're serious about it or something, then yeah, you guys got to go to therapy, like asap. Up. Family therapy, some individual therapy. My guess, my hope is that the partner's just gonna. He's gonna say like, I really had a moment and I'm sorry I said that. It just kind of came blurting out of me and I don't mean it.

Yeah, I could totally see a scenario here where the person who sent us this issue hasn't followed up with them. They heard their partner say this and now they're freaking out. They don't know if the partner was meaning. There's a small part of me that feels like this sometimes versus I've thought and thought and thought about this and I've made a mistake. And what happens when we don't check in with our partners about what they're meaning? Our imaginations run wild and oftentimes we start to assume the worst. And that is a totally normal and natural thing to do. Which is why it's so important to have a conversation with your partner. Especially if they say something that is. Is unclear or something where they don't really take responsibility for their feelings about something and instead just state a fact. It's so important to clarify, like that's how we get better at communication is looping back around and calling out those things of. It sounds like what you said was really general and broad and maybe a bit vague, and I'm not sure where to take that. So can you tell me a little bit more about what was going on for you when you said that?

Yeah. All right, let's get into the next one. I'm a stay at home mom. He told me during a fight that if I want his respect to go get a job.

Oh, there's a part of me that really just wants to say red flag. However, let's try to throw this guy a bone.

Okay. It was during a fight.

Yes.

So this might be just a classic example of we are all, on occasion, assholes during a fight and we say things that we don't mean. I will really throw him a bone here by saying maybe this was a fight over responsibilities. So maybe because this is such a classic fight that comes up between a stay at home parent and a working parent, is the stay at home parent feels unseen for all the stuff that they do around the house, all the mental load and labor, and they feel like they, you know, aren't being respected by the partner who's getting the traditional job. Because in our society, we've been taught to believe that your worth is determined by the amount of money that you can make and how much of a provider you can be for your family.

Not even necessarily amount of money. It's just like, oh, you're working 40 hours a week or a car that is worth more regardless of money than the person staying at home.

Yeah. We also have a video, a YouTube video about stay at home parenting and mental load and all that. We'll link to that too in the show.

Notes.

Notes. So my guess again, going back to this is like, maybe they were fighting about responsibilities. She was saying, like, I do so much stuff, you know, you don't even see how much stuff I do. Or I want more help around the house. And maybe he was getting defensive because he feels like he works a lot. And maybe he's not.

Yeah, he's not getting validated.

Yeah, he's not getting. So maybe it's a thing of both of them not feeling validated or seen by the other for how hard they're each working. So maybe that was the context. I guess this one would, for me, would definitely loop back around to what happened after this. Like, did he come around and apologize and say, I'm so sorry, that was a really, really awful thing I said to you. I should not have said that. Versus, like, is this something that he's continuing to reiterate and maybe even reiterating during calm moments?

Yeah, this sounds like, you know, if you were to just give me this one line, oh, this is. This is what happened in my last fight with my partner, I'll be like, well, that sounds a bit misogynistic and patriarchal. And I'm curious, is this a trend with this person? Does he very frequently say stuff like this that belittles what you do that is kind of focused on, like, men working more valuable than women doing anything? If that is more of a trend, and that is an issue for you, I assume it is an issue for you because you've sent us this question that and so if that's a serious issue for you, I mean, then that's a question of, like, is this someone long term that I am willing to continue being with when he sees me as less than because I don't work, less than because I'm a woman, less than because of whatever.

Yeah.

But if this is something that is out of character or where this person is, their partner is saying, hey, you know, like, I'm. I'm seeing the ways in which, like, I overvalue work or like the way I was raised taught me some skewed ideas of how the world works. And I'm really working on dismantling that. And this person is open to working on that and working through this stuff because so many of us are on this same journey. I've really struggled personally with, like, when Vanessa went back to grad school and I was working full time and I was supporting both of us financially, like, I had a lot of thoughts about stuff like this that were not very good either, and I had to work through that. Such. Such a common thing. Nobody is perfect here. But the question is, are you open to seeing that you're being a little shitty?

Are you open to seeing that you're being shitty? Yeah. That's like the tagline for this episode. Yeah.

I mean, like, are. Are you open to seeing that you're kind of.

That you're.

That you're furthering some patriarchal and misogynistic ideas or are you just like, no, this is, this is how the world works. And I see it in this very black and white way. And, and then, and then to the person sending this in, you gotta ask yourself, is this something I can do long term?

Yeah. Before we move on from this one, I just wanna quickly point out that we have a mental load workbook. So I think one of the big misunderstandings that can happen in relationships when one person is a stay at home parent and the other person is working outside of the home, is there. There are a lot of ideas that like, oh, the stay at home parent is just like, they just get to stay at home and hang out and do nothing. And like the childcare stuff, that's not that hard.

Oh, yeah. Like, they're sitting on, like, oh, well, I' work. They're just sitting on the couch watching tv. It's only when I come home that they start doing all their jobs.

And that is not true. Again, we will link to that YouTube video that we mentioned. Studies have shown that stay at home parents actually work way, way more hours a week than Somebody with a traditional 9 to 5 job. But anyways, we have this mental load workbook. It's really inexpensive and it is a great way to just get everything out in the open in your relationship, get really clear on all the different responsibilities that need to happen for your relationship, your family, your household, and to make a specific plan for dividing them up in a way that's going to feel good for your relationship.

All right, our next one is partner outright told me they don't think mental illness is real, that it is just an excuse. I've had depression and anxiety for our entire 25 years of marriage and before that, too.

All right, well, first of all, this is one of the rare cases where we can just definitively say, you're wrong, wrong, it's real. Mental illness is real. There's not just an excuse.

Yeah. There's an entire scientific practice called psychology, devoted psychology and psychiatry devoted to the study and treatment of mental illness.

And this is also just a very unkind and uncompassionate statement. If you have never experienced mental illness in your life, you are incredibly lucky. But that doesn't mean that it's not real. It doesn't mean that it's an excuse. Believe me, there are millions of people who experience mental illness who would love for it to just be an excuse. That they could just wake up one day and decide, all right, you know what, I'm gonna stop being a little shit and making excuses for everything in my life and actually just do stuff? Sadly, no, that is not how it works. So this one would definitely be a loop back around kind of conversation. Was this something that was said in the heat of the moment, being a jerk, there was some fight that they were having something going on like that? Or was this a calm, collected statement that maybe has been repeated that would be, you know, definitely make a big difference one way or the other.

And also, yeah, like, a real clarification of, like, I'm concerned about what you said because I have suffered with mental illness for the entire 25 years, 25 years of our marriage and before that. So. So, you know, is this something where you were frustrated or that you have some ideas about this from that you grew up with, that you're still working through? Because if you're not, like, what have you been judging me the past 25 years? Like, why are you with me? Yeah, if you feel like I've been making excuses for the last 25 years and where, like, what room does that leave for us? Yeah, where, where do we go from here? I almost Feel like you got to put that on your partner. Where do we go from here? What are you doing? What are you doing with me?

All right, let's move on to the next one. I was 34 weeks pregnant and had kidney stones for a week. My husband wanted a blow job, but I was in excruciating pain. He said, you could have just sucked it up and did. Made me hate the word and the action for years, and I still hate it. He's also refused to help me with chores if I didn't give him one first. Due to that and other issues in our marriage, we almost ended up divorced last year.

Oh. I was. I was reading this, and I thought for a moment that it said, we divorced last year. And I was about to be like, good, good job. Yeah, good job. Not that we ever. You know, I'm not wanting to celebrate divorce in any way.

I think we should do a special cut of this episode where it's just my nonverbal reactions to the worst question. It's just like, the question. And then.

Yeah, I mean, also like, hey, buddy, do you ever want to get a blowjob again? How is pressuring your partner when they're pregnant and have kidney stones to give you a blowjob? How is that going to help you ever get one again? Again?

Okay, if. Yeah, let's get back into extreme throwing a bone territory here. You know, we see people initiate sex in very, very unskillful ways.

A lot of jokey ways.

Yeah, jokey ways. The boob honk we've talked about a lot before, because initiating sex is really vulnerable. And especially if you haven't been having a lot of sex in your relationship, your sex drives are really a mismatch. Maybe you've been turned down a lot and you're feeling sensitive about rejection. So. So a lot of us initiate sex in really unskillful ways. It's like we're not setting ourselves up for success at all. But we can't get ourselves to be more vulnerable or truly intimate with it because we feel so afraid of rejection. So maybe this is this case of, like, you know, over a long period of time, this guy has just built up a difficulty with initiating. But, like, this really upsets me that she was in excruciating pain and he's still demanding a blowjob. And, like, not only that, but he said later, like, it sounds like they had a conversation about this later. It wasn't just an in the moment, like, hey, I want a blowjob. And she's like, Dude, I'm in excruciating pain. And he's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. Like, wrong timing. I'll come back later. It sounds like they had another conversation where they talked about it, and he said, you could have just sucked it up and did it. And that. That is fucked up. That is so fucked up of him to say suck it up. I mean, literally, he's suck it up and suck it up, even though you're in excruciating pain. Like, that's so. I cannot imagine saying that. Like, okay, my brain's exploding. Let me try to put myself in this man's shoes and imagine that you are in extreme excruciating pain, and you are telling me that you're in excruciating pain. I cannot imagine a level of horniness, and believe me, I've been pretty horny sometimes. I cannot imagine a level of horniness where I would tell you, just suck it up and fuck me or go down on me or whatever. Like, so cruel. That's so unfeeling.

That's just dehumanizing.

Dehumanizing. Yes, that's dehumanizing. It's completely dehumanizing. I cannot imagine being in that situation. Yeah, I'm, like, mad. I'm mad that I even went to the. Like, let's really try really hard to have some compassion and throw this guy a bone. Like, no, that's up. You're super up, sir. Do not be such an to your wife.

Here's what I think about this. What probably will happen if you have a conversation with him. Because at this point now, it sounds like you're saying it's been, I don't know, at least a year or more years. And you've talked about this before. It's an ongoing issue that he's always asking for blowjobs in exchange for helping out with chores. If you were to kind of just bring up when you ask for blowjobs constantly in exchange for doing, like, regular household chores that we need to do, that doesn't feel good to me. And you, you know, kind of start to bring this stuff up, I bet you what he will likely say is, oh, I'm just joking. It's just a joke. Like, oh, oh, yo, you want to give me, like, oh, suck. Like, oh, you want to just suck my dick? And then I'll do the dishes with you. He'll be like, oh, well, I thought. I thought that was a joke. Like, we've joked about that forever. So yeah, that's super gaslighty. I bet you that that's what he will say. I think a lot of guys go in on sort of sexual humor early on, and maybe no one pushes back the first couple of times. Maybe even there's a couple laughs, and then they keep doing it, and they keep doing it, and they keep doing it, and then the laughs stop. It doesn't feel good anymore. It feels really pressure. Y. You just keep doing it. I think that's what he will likely say. Probably you guys need to go to couples therapy and really talk through how. How this is, like, coercive and dehumanizing and really upsetting to you. And he really needs to understand how that's fucked up and develop a concrete plan for how he can change his perspective on what he thinks he deserves.

Yeah. I mean, this couple needs to go to therapy, and he needs to go to individual therapy. There are just some really glaring red flags to me here. Like, it would be one thing if it's like, you know, oh, he's always joking about, like, hey, would you give me a blowjob? Or, like, trying to make these silly jokes or about, like, oh, I'll do the dishes if you give me a blowjob. That would be one thing where I would want to go down that direction of, like, let's talk about more skillful initiation and being more vulnerable and actually initiating. But the things that are really jumping out at me as I keep reading this over again is, like, he refused to help me with chores. It's not a.

Like, it's obviously not really a joke.

Yeah, he's refusing to help. And again, the. Like, you could have just sucked it up and did it. Ugh, No. I don't know. This might be one of the worst.

Ones for me at best. At best therapy.

Yeah. So please, please get this man into therapy. All right, we've got our last one.

I asked him whether he loves me as much as I love him. He said, probably not. This reminds me a bit of our one that we talked about at the beginning. I really want to hope that, like, he's not trying to be.

I can totally see you saying this.

This sounds like probably thought this was a harmless thing, maybe even a joke. And I can totally understand how once it's been said now the person receiving this probably hears, I don't love you. You love me, and I don't really love you. Yeah, but this is where it just. It's. With language and comparisons, things get so tricky because we don't know the the amount of the comparison, the extent of it, how relative one thing is to another.

This one's funny because we literally only have these two sentences, so we have no clue what the context is. Like, what was his tone? What was his delivery? What was going on in that moment? But my intuitive reaction was that it was a very similar situation to you and me. Maybe the person who asked was kind of fishing for they're being a little cute, like, oh, do you love me as much as I love you? I love you so much. There's no way you could love me as much as I love you. You. And that this person just like, didn't really think about it and they're like, yeah, probably not. Like, you're. You're so being so over the top and lovey dovey and you're so cute. Like, yeah, I probably don't love you as much as you love me.

But however. However they did say probably not, which does mean they could possibly love you more. Like way more. So you're saying there's a chance.

So we could be totally wrong about this one. Like this. It could have been a totally deadpan delivery of like, yeah, I don't really love you as much. Who knows? My intuitive reaction is that this is a harmless. Just an example of a classic Xander Marin foot and mouth disease.

Yep. So I think that to the person who sent us this, I think you could loop back and just. Just say, hey, I just want to share with you when we had that interaction, something I've continued to think about. This is what I heard when you said that, you know, you could even take responsibility for it. It's been a while. I don't remember exactly what words were used, but this is what I heard. And when I heard you say that, it made me think this. And that makes me feel that.

Yeah.

You know, it made me think, oh, I wonder if he really doesn't love me very much. And that made me feel. Me feel really sad and, and lonely and upset and just share that with them and give them a chance to respond and, you know, hopefully they don't try to convince you why you're wrong. They can hopefully validate that. Yeah, you know, I. I can understand how hearing that wouldn't feel very good.

Yeah.

And maybe you could talk about ways that you can each show your love for each other and maybe try to avoid comparisons like that in the future. It's, you know, it's kind of like the penis size comp.

Just don't ask these questions.

Yeah. Like, if you're A guy like you're worried about your penis size, I can guarantee you asking your partner if they've been with anyone with a bigger penis, not a good question to ask. And similarly, love is a really hard thing to quantify. It's a really hard thing to quantify. I mean, like it's not as good question to ask. Do I love you more? Do you love me more? Because who the fuck knows?

So bottom line of this episode is do not be a Vanessa and ask dumb questions that you don't actually want answers to and that there are no good answers to. And don't be a Xander and put your big old foot in your little mouth.

Probably not, but there's a chance. I love you so much more.

All right, well that is all for today. We're really curious to know, do you like these advice column style episodes versus our episodes where we have like a specific topic and we're like, okay, here are our top five tips. So come over to Instagram, we're at Vanessa Marin therapy and let us know. Do you like these ones where we share, hear people's stories and like we give our feedback and our reactions to it. So let us know. We will also put in the show notes for this episode. A couple of different resources that we've mentioned. We had two different YouTube videos. One was about penis size, one about stay at home parents. Also the mental load workbook that we mentioned that is such a great resource for any couple because every couple has mental load in their relationship and this is just such an easy and efficient and, and such a useful thing to do in your relationship. We seriously recommend it for every couple. So we will put links to all of that in the show description.

All right, well that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week when we talk more about our decision to be child free.

Sam.