"But when you turn off your emotions to the people you love, all it does is create distance. Especially us, as men. We tend to turn off all emotion, even when we don’t need to. That used to be me, but it all changed after I found myself on Ground Zero as a firefighter during 9/11.⁠

♥️⁠

The NYC fire department lost 343 firefighters. Being there on that day was like being on another planet. I saw so many people I knew just... vanish. But it was the months afterwards that were incredibly stressful.⁠

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We firefighters don’t get a lot of help with learning to talk about stressful events. We learn to separate our work from our home and that’s about it. The problem was that my wife was stressed out too. She felt like she couldn’t talk to me because she didn’t want to make me feel worse. Then, I couldn’t talk to her because I didn’t want to bring work home. What do you think started happening to my marriage?⁠

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There was no oxygen to give life to my marriage, so the distance crept in. So much of what I teach now is what I learned to do back then. It's called Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT). I never thought I’d be traveling around the world talking about emotions. It’s all about flexibility. If we’re okay getting help to turn it off, we should all be okay getting help to turn it back on.” — George Faller, MS, LMFT

 

You can reach George Faller at:

www.georgefaller.com

www.successandvulnerability.com - for therapists

New York Center for EFT

 

George recommended:

Magnificent Sex by Peggy Kleinplatz

Sacred Stress by George Faller

Created for Connection by Sue Johnson

Stay in conversation with us on IG: @dearyoungmarriedcouple or on our website: www.dearyoungmarriedcouple.com

 

Join us for the next Monthly Live Date Night where we dig into some of these topics with you LIVE for 90 minutes this month!

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