The Repair Your Relationship Podcast

I found myself offering a metaphor in a Couples Intensive recently that felt so clarifying I’ve been thinking about it ever since. In Hakomi therapy, it’s called a “barrier to nourishment.” Love can be right there, and still the system can’t receive it. Not because the love isn’t real, but because the body doesn’t know how to metabolize it.

When someone has a barrier to nourishment, handing them the whole platter doesn’t help. We have to start with tiny bites: small, safe, frequent moments of connection that help the body learn, “Maybe this is okay. Maybe I can take this in.”

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

When couples ask how to deal with conflicting priorities in a relationship, they often want a concrete answer. Should they have the baby, take the job, move, stay, spend, save, travel, or wait? Yet the quality of the solution depends on the quality of the conversation that comes before it.

In this final part of the series, Cheryl and Ajax move toward a solution that's both realistic and mutually satisfactory: taking one concern at a time, letting go of hidden agendas, and caring for the protective parts that get activated along the way. Conflicting priorities don't have to become a contest where one partner wins and the other loses. They can become an invitation to uncover the fears, hopes, and needs beneath each position.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

When couples are dealing with conflicting priorities in a relationship, understanding the deeper need is only the beginning. The next challenge is staying open while your partner describes a concern that may threaten something deeply important to you. This is where many conversations break down, even when both people genuinely want to communicate well.

In the last episode, Cheryl and Ajax identified their unsolved problem as difficulty deciding whether to have another child. They also discovered that Cheryl’s longing is connected to her childhood loneliness, while Ajax’s hesitation is connected to painful experiences with his siblings. In this second part, we focus on how they can listen without becoming defensive, overwhelmed, or pressured to surrender their own position.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

When couples search for help with conflicting priorities in a relationship, they’re often hoping to find the right compromise. They may be arguing about having another child, managing money, moving, work, parenting, sex, or how much time to spend together. Yet the practical disagreement is usually only one part of the problem.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

There’s a particular kind of despair that can show up in long-term relationships. It’s not always loud at first. Sometimes it arrives as anger, sometimes as resentment, sometimes as hopelessness, and sometimes as despair – the flat, heavy feeling of exhaustion and, “I can’t keep doing this.”

Underneath it, there is often a much younger pain. The pain of not being seen. The pain of not being held. The pain of asking for what we need and feeling, once again, that no one is really coming.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

Not every answer can meet the ask. Still the answer could reveal willingness, care, and a path forward. Other times the answer can reveal avoidance, entitlement, or an unwillingness to share power.

No matter what, the answer is information. And for anyone who grew up with confusion around money, information itself can be profoundly stabilizing. Clarity may hurt, but confusion keeps us trapped.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

One of the most healing things we can learn to say to our children and to our partner, is, “I hear this is important to you and I’m glad you asked.”

It doesn’t mean the answer has to be yes. It means the request is welcome and the person is not wrong for asking.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

There are few things more emotionally charged in a love relationship than money. Money is never just money. It’s power, control, safety, freedom, protection, choice, and care all tangled together in one tender subject.

This is why couples can talk about any money subject and suddenly find themselves in a much deeper emotional and vulnerable conversation. On the surface, they may be talking about numbers. Underneath, they’re really asking, “Am I safe with you?”

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

There’s a tender and complicated truth in relationship work: sometimes the very thing that protects one person is the thing that wounds the other. One partner’s distance may make perfect sense when we understand their history, nervous system, shame, fear, trauma, addiction, or old attachment injuries. Their avoidance is protection.

And still, for their partner, it may hurt too much.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.

The “No” matters in therapy and it also matters in families, partnerships, parenting, and repair work. When a partner turns away, we may see rejection. When a child refuses, we may see defiance. When a teen shuts down, we may see disrespect.

When someone says, “I don’t want to talk about it,” we may hear, “I don’t care.” But sometimes the no isn’t the enemy. Sometimes the no is the beginning of safety. Sometimes the no is the first honest communication a person has been able to offer.

The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of Asheville Family Counseling.