Hard Conversations, Therapy and Laughter

Today marks Emily and I's third year of dating. This has easily been my best romantic relationship. There are many reasons why. Appreciation, play, honesty, trust, interests, a willingness to work, and many more. We’ve privately shared some of what we do to maintain and grow our relationship and right now I’d like to publicly share some. I know Emily would sooner include some different things in her short list; maybe we’ll get her to write or record something about that some day.

Real Talk

We have a relationship check-in that we've named Real Talk. It consists of several questions that work as scaffolding for a conversation about our relationship as it is right now. While consistently rewarding, each talk can take 3 hours. Depending on what we end up talking about that can be a long time doing a lot of work with a lot of vulnerability. Knowing that, we often schedule after-care where we touch, relax, share things we’re looking forward to, and so on.

The action of sitting and honestly talking about our relationship and how we contribute to it positively and negatively goes a long way towards maintaining our well being. Here are three questions that often take us 1.5 hours to talk through.

What have I done recently that you've appreciated?

We always start with appreciations. Even when time is short. And we never overlook the small things. - I appreciate that you made the bed with me this morning. - I appreciate that you started the laundry. - I appreciate you for finishing and folding it. - I appreciate that you picked me up from Jiu Jitsu. - I appreciate that you spent time with my family last weekend.

What have you made up about me or us recently? What stories are you holding?

This question is a new addition following a conversation we had about stories we made up concerning our sex life. We found that if one of us holds a story then the other often makes up a story in kind. It’s best to flush these out as soon as possible. Hear what the story is. Repeat it back to make sure you understand it. Ask if you can address it. Then talk if that’s appropriate. - A story I’ve been telling myself is that you don’t value my time as much as you value your own. - A story I’ve been telling myself is that I always have to be the one who initiates sex. - A story I’ve been telling myself is that I don’t know how to seduce you.

Do you have any lingering concerns or hesitations about something that I do or our relationship?

This is often where we spend most of our time. Sometimes the entire talk is just this question. It was especially impactful early in our relationship. Do not underestimate this one. I know it’s similar to the stories question and sometimes a different vantage point is all it takes to hit something significant. - I’m concerned that you’re just going to get up and leave some day. I’ll no longer be exciting or interesting to you and you’ll be gone. - I’m concerned about the way you talk about money and value and how it often ties back to your parents. - I’m concerned that you really seem like you want to have kids and I don’t know if I do.

Every example above is real and came up from one of us in Real Talk at one time or another. In Real Talk we get what we put in. If we both show up then we get the benefits. If we go through the motions, don't investigate what's true, don't speak our truth, or don't regularly remind ourselves of our love for the other and why we are here then it's not worth doing. We've tried different cadences and currently are practicing once a week. Our overall happiness in our relationship and in our lives is higher when we do Real Talk regularly. Plus, this makes the sessions shorter because we’re already more caught up on each others external and internal lives.

I couldn't recommend it enough. Also, fun alternative, you can do Real Talk with anyone. Your parents, your kids, your best friend, your housemates. Don’t tell me these people haven’t done something you’ve appreciated, you haven’t made a story up about them, or that you have no lingering concerns with them. I’ll repeat, Real Talk only works when you both show up. If you’re doing it to try and “fix” the other then you’ll only do harm.

Therapy

Another thing we do is attend couples therapy. We decided to go without having an agenda for what we’d talk about beyond, “help us see what we cannot.” We got the idea for preemptive therapy from our friend, Erik Newton. He observed that, without exception, every successful relationship he has seen includes some form of therapy. We figured we can either do the work before things get hard or after; we chose before.

For greater context, Erik hosts a fantastic relationship podcast called Together. While the episodes are normally interviews I’d recommend you do yourself a favor and listen to this episode, The Divorce Lawyer’s Guide To Marriage Part 1 where Erik reads a blog post he wrote. His voice is awesome and it’s only 13:26m long.

The first major thing we really took away from therapy was what we ended up calling, "our pattern". We spend a lot of time together and have become very sensitive to each other. We can tell when something is ever-so-slightly off. In therapy we learned that our pattern takes the form of a death spiral where one of us triggers the other which triggers the other which triggers the other, etc. This only became clear because we had an unbiased, trained observer who asked us questions, stayed out of the muck of our pattern, facilitated the conversation we were trying to have, and showed us the love that underlies our misunderstandings and defensiveness.

We spent weeks breaking down the pattern in therapy. Our therapist, Greg, would ask how our week had gone and would specifically look for where we experienced any degree of conflict. Any rift whatsoever. Then we’d bring the conflict back up and talk through it from each of our perspectives. While one of us would dig through the layers of hurt that were smuggled into the conflict the other would watch and listen. Before long Greg would ask the one listening how they feel seeing the conversation develop. Every single time the listener would answer that they feel closer to the speaker, that they can relate to what they are saying and that they want them to share more.

That has built safety in tender places one brick at a time.

Eventually, we broke out of the pattern almost entirely. It creeps in when we're tired and/or hungry, and it's mostly gone. Greg showed us that the path to breaking out of the spiral is to say, "we're in our pattern right now" when one of us gets our head above water and can see what is happening. Then we break, assess and treat our bodily needs, take whatever time is needed, and come back. We reestablish touch if that’s possible, affirm our care for each other, try to state clearly what we're feeling, and try to state clearly what we’re wanting in the first place.

We’ve learned a lot more than just this. I've become a therapy evangelist. Especially couples therapy. Go.

Humor and Memes

Emily and I are inside joke making machines. I don’t mean referencing them, I mean the actual making of the joke context. If the joke sticks around and becomes a meme then we have that joy to call on at any time. If it doesn’t then we can make fun of ourselves for trying. It’s a win-win. The more jokes and memes that we have, the more they can stack to greater levels of enjoyment.

The king, queen really, of all our memes is Leslie, our stuffed baby goat. We got Leslie after the umpteenth time Emily asked me if we could get a baby goat and getting a stuffed one was part of the humor.

Because Leslie is stuffed, she is hard to move in an animal-like way. So now Leslie slides along to get places without using her legs. Did you know that Leslie is a slug-goat? Watching baby goats jump off of things is the best. Did you know that Leslie doesn’t experience gravity and can move through it freely? She only stays down with us because she’s kind and doesn’t want us to feel bad about our limitations. Leslie is a space-slug-goat. What’s that? We can’t find Leslie? She’s not lost, she’s a higher order being and has just stepped into the 4th dimension. When we find her she’s just come back to our three dimensions to visit. Leslie is a 4th-dimensional-space-slug-goat.

There’s more and I’ll stop before you start actually vomiting.

The point is that humor, joy and laughter are all important. Often times, it’s not that hard to get to them. Our relationship can’t only be hard conversations and therapy. Play, joking, laughter, etc. are important in their own right and they balance out the work we do.

Find things that you both think are funny and never stop making new ways to laugh about them. Keep the jokes coming. Keep them fresh. And really make sure that you both enjoy them.

One of my favorite things to see while out in the world is an old couple (the grayer and older the better) walking down the street holding hands. While I don’t have many extra-long life goals being one of those cute old couples is definitely one of them. I’m beyond grateful to be with someone who wants that too and shows up to do the work necessary to get there while having the sense of humor to make it all so sweet.

Check back in 2600 blog posts to see if we’ve made it.

October 14th, 2019