Why Does My Partner

As we reach the end of our season 7 deep dive into communication, it’s no surprise that so many of the same themes have kept showing up in our conversations, and that so often, what they’re about is owning our unmet needs. So it feels right that we should land here, with an episode that unpacks just that, and once again invites us to let go of the strategies we think we need to get what we want, and to get more in touch with the real needs we may be trying to express.

Thanks as always, dear listeners, for sticking with us for yet another season! We’ll be back soon with another miniseries, but in the meantime, we’d love for you to stay in touch! Write in, send us your questions, leave a review, and join us for a workshop!

And as always, love each other the best you can.

Quotes:

when we only have one way to meet a need, that is a recipe for fear

My needs are okay, even though they will not always be met.

“The pain sucks, but the fact that the pain is here is okay. It can be welcomed.”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

How is it that two people could remember an event so differently, and both be so sure that their version is right? Why is it so hard to take in when someone suggests that our memory of something isn’t true? How can it be that two people can both be right about a memory, and at the same time both be wrong? On today’s episode of WDMP, we’ve got a few answers for you, plus a suggestion for how you can start to guide yourself out of this stuck place and into greater intimacy in your relationship.

Quotes:

“The truth is, no one is actually totally right, and everyone is probably a little bit right.”

“Embrace the nature of the differences in the way we see reality. To try to get that not to happen…is a recipe for pain.”

“We can’t rely on memory as fact.”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

One cool thing about neurodiversity is that if you get three friends and podcast co-hosts together to talk about a listener question, a lot of the time they’re going to have three very, very different relationships to the question…and not one of them is more valid or valuable than the other!

That’s exactly what’s happening on today’s episode of Why Does My Partner, as we dig into how couples communicate around making plans, scheduling, and navigating social engagements. Like so many of the topics we talk about, there’s no right way to go about it, but what’s important is that there’s an explicit, shared understanding of how it’s going to be in your relationship.

Feeling lost on how to get to that place of understanding? Then this is the episode for you!

Quotes:

“if we’re talking about something that has a little bit more of a tenderness around it…we have to have some kind of temperature check inside of our relationship.”

"How do you do with making direct requests? What work do you need to do between you and you in order to feel supported enough, stable enough in yourself to go ahead and make that ask?”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

What happens inside of our brains when we face potential conflict? A whole lot is what. One thing that we don’t always realize is that we have subcortical systems that start going into hyperdrive, make meaning out of what’s happening and hopefully keep ourselves safe. That meaning making is automatic and unconscious, and draws on what we’ve learned in our pasts, both implicitly and explicitly, about how we feel safety and belonging. That means that if your past has taught you that conflict can get you hurt, rejected, or shut down, or maybe hasn’t even taught you that there is anything else you could do, of course you’re going to avoid it!

The thing is, there really are other ways to approach conflict, and some of those ways could even bring you into closer connection with yourself and your loved ones. If that sounds impossible to you, we’ve got a ton of resources to support you. For a start, give this episode a listen, and try out some of what we’re talking about. We think you might end up changing your mind.

Quotes:

“being able to be inside of discomfort is something that not everyone has a nervous system that knows how to do…yet.”

“I'm not running the risk of betraying me if I'm checking in with me first.”

when, when we take in information from the world, we're taking that information inside our bodies

“what's the cost to me as an individual if I don't bring my voice into this conversation? What's the cost to our connection? Where does this lead us? What's the potential benefit of bringing this in?”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

“Why does my partner criticize my parenting?” If you’re in a partnership, even without children, there’s a good chance some version of this has come up for you. Whether it’s parenting, pet care, finances, sex, you name it, both you and your partner are carrying a bunch of (often unconscious) assumptions about how something should be done. Coming out of conflict means moving from those implicit beliefs to explicit communication, but how do you do that without blame, power struggles, and hurt feelings? Well, that’s what this whole season on communication is all about!

Quotes:

"What are old needs, longings, meanings that are being met when you want to parent “your way?”

“[What’s] hard is where we get stuck inside of ourselves. The hard is not how we navigate it together. That actually undoes aloneness”

When you’re having a communication issue, can you do a YOU-turn and ask yourself, what kind of communication are you trying to achieve?”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

We love it when our listeners come to us with their YOU-turn already built into the question, not just because it means that what we do is helping someone, but because it means the door is already open for curiosity, vulnerability, and discovery. Today’s question does just that. Join us for a discussion of the vulnerability of taking in advice from another person, feeling really deeply known by your partner, psychological boundaries, and how to come out of defensiveness and into repair.

Plus, we’ve got a really great episode of Modern Family to recommend you.

Quotes:

“Does your partner know about your desire to be known more deeply?”

“We all carry different learnings in our psychological floor, in the way we learn to be in the world.”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

Humans have a deep need for closeness, to feel known and that those around us care and want to know us deeply. And that can feel really, really vulnerable. In this episode we answer a question all about tangling with different ways of showing and asking for deeper knowing in a relationship. In turn, we offer some questions you may want to ask yourself, and then a few more for you and your partner to open up together. .

In today’s episode we mention Gina Senarighi’s fantastic book, One Question a Day To Stay Close and Curious, a Couple’s Journal for a Lifetime of Love . To hear more from Gina, check out this interview with Rebecca from back in 2021 on the Connectfulness Podcast.

Quotes:

"It could be that what questions are meaning to your partner is different than what they mean to you.”

“Does your partner know about your desire to be known more deeply?”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

The internet (and books, magazines, and a whole lot of couples’ therapy offices) are full of scripts to follow to help partners navigate conflict. But what if your partner wants to use a script that’s just not working for you? Here at WDMP what we try to provide is a lot more like a map than a script. A map doesn’t tell you exactly how to go, it shows you some of the possibilities you have in front of you. It offers opportunities, invites curiosity. It helps you ask “where am I now, where am I heading, and what might be there for me along the way?” Check out today’s episode for more, including a sneak peek at the map we’ll be providing folks at our next Integrating Mind + Heart workshop!

Quotes:

“even if you follow a script, it doesn’t mean it’s going to go well every time”

“In order to communicate well, we need to be tracking our brain state.”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

When we start beating ourselves up in front of our partners when they have an issue with our behavior, what is it that we’re actually doing? Can we talk about that for a minute? Actually, we already did, and it’s this week’s of the podcast! Hear us chat about shame pits and grandiosity, listening and remorse, self protection and vulnerability, and…throwing babies? All this and more on the Why Does My Partner Podcast!

Quotes:

We can't talk about hard things when we're not in integrated brain states.

There’s difficulty moving into remorse.

You can pick up your own baby.

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our

upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events

As couples’ therapists, the most common questions we get are about communication. But what does it take to make that work in a relationship? That’s such a big question, that we’re dedicating this entire season to talking about communication!

First off, how do you listen when your partner brings up something sensitive? Y’all, listening is really vulnerable. It means putting yourself aside for a moment to be there for the other person and acknowledge that you may have caused them pain. When you’re in that space it’s so easy to get defensive or go into shame and then, you guessed it… you’re not listening anymore!

Never fear, in this episode we’re sharing some key skills for you to try out right away, whether you’re the listener or the talker. So have a listen, subscribe, and as always, take care of each other the best you can.

Quotes:       

“As a culture, we do a pretty decent job at saying ‘here’s how to speak up for yourself’…and a pretty icky job at saying ‘here’s how to listen.’”

“Listen with the possibility of believing your partner.”

"We struggle to listen to when we struggle to sit with grief"

"Remorse can come very naturally if you let it.”

Jules’ book is out now! Get Setting Boundaries that Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered wherever books are sold.

Share your questions with us at whydoesmypartner.com/contact

Dive in deeper with us at our upcoming workshops.

Learn more at whydoesmypartner.com/events