This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 013 / Building Healthy Partnerships With Lynne Sheridan

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Nicole welcomes guest Lynne Sheridan -Transformational Trainer, Coach, Marriage & Family Therapist (because let’s be honest...we could all use a little of this right now) and Author, to help us better understand why we may be struggling in our partnerships, especially during these times of social distancing. We always have a choice in our thoughts, in our actions, and in our feelings towards our partners. Now is the time to cut each other some slack, to concede and reach towards our partners to better support one another during this difficult time. While we didn’t choose being in solitude, we CAN choose solidarity! This is Woman’s Work To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

During this time of social distancing, we're probably all feeling too little connection with our friends, our family members, our co-workers, and our community. But we might be feeling a little bit too much connection with our partners, if you know what I mean. How are your partnerships holding up during COVID-19? Are you reaching new levels of intimacy? Or are you getting annoyed by the little things like socks never making their way into the hamper? Or how loud your partner is

chewing all of a sudden? Like where did that come from? Or maybe you can't think of anybody else you'd rather social distance with and are feeling especially grateful right now. Or maybe you publicly threatened to chuck them out of a window. or maybe that was just me. Wherever you're at today, we are going to talk about partnerships, and especially partnerships at this unique time in our lives. I've invited Lynn Sheridan, transformational trainer and coach, licensed marriage and family therapist, and author of The Birds and the Bees of Joyful Monogamy, Nine Secrets to Hot Partnering, to join us today. And I am so excited.

And as always kind of happens when I have guest speakers on, I feel like I get this really cool opportunity to be coached myself. So thank you, Lynn, so much for joining us. Thank you, Lynn, so much for joining us. Thank you so much. So excited to be here and to be with you after not seeing you for such a long time and working with you so long ago. And I'm very grateful. Yeah. So I should have said this.

Lynn is business partners and best friends with my coach, Lisa Kalman, who we've featured a couple of times now on the podcast. So I am thrilled to spend a little time with Lynn and hear her perspective. So let's start with this. If you can give me even just one step to feeling hot right now, like I don't know if I've ever felt less hot than during this time of social distancing. You know, I don't even know if I'm showering as much as I should be at this point, but if you can give us a tip or two to feeling connected and feeling hot in our partnership, I think you will have proven your ability to transform lives right now.

I can so appreciate that. So that's such a long answer. I think we all have an idea in our head that everybody else is humping like bunnies. They're happy as can be. And we compare our relationship with other people because we don't talk about stuff out loud. Instead of most people are not. On average, people have sex about once a week, married people. And if you have kids under the age of four or five, oh man, forget about it for a little bit. So I think that it goes to reminding ourselves we have a choice in every moment with our partner. We have a choice about our attitude. We have a choice about our thoughts about our partner. We could be thinking about their snoring and how much it annoys us and how we didn't sleep at all last night.

Or we can be thinking thoughts like, wow, I'm so grateful that he wanted to walk the dogs with me this morning. So we can choose our thoughts. We also choose our actions, whether or not we reach towards our partner, we reach away in moments and we choose our feelings. That's a tough one for people because we sometimes want to think that we automatically feel whatever way we do instead of taking a deep breath in or reminding, okay, my partner is under a lot of stress. They're in anxiety, a situation right now

that is unusual for all of us. And they may not be responding at their best because all of us, we go to our lowest level of operating when we're under stress. And that isn't a pretty picture for most of us. And so it's how do I cut this person some slack, take a breath, not get bothered by the little things like my husband this week. I'm a neat freak and I love making the bed. And of course, we have a thousand decorative pillows, which men love reputting the pillows on the bed. And he turned to me and he said, we don't need to make the bed. And I went, okay, breathe in because I would feel better with the bed made. And does this really matter? No, I can let him have this and not make a deal out of it. And everything's going to go a lot more smoothly.

So where can we concede and reach towards our partner and remind ourself of that choice? I often say to myself in my head, is this the hill I want to die on? And that's kind of my reminder. Is this a big deal? And I think as you were saying that, I've had a lot of those moments. I'm sure Jay has too, by the way. I am not the easiest person either to live with. So, you know, just that, can this give right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we all have our coping strategies. And so most of us as humanity, the drift of humanity, we're in survival. We're not really living. So our coping strategies get set up when we're little, as you know, zero to eight years old.

And then we go to our ways of protecting. And some of us go to avoiding pain at all costs. Some of us go to staying safe. Some of us go to control as a way to feel safe. Some of us go to needing approval, needing affirmation. and knowing that whatever our coping strategy, it's up right now, and our partners is up right now. So how do I go, okay, this isn't my partner in this moment, they're getting reactive, because something else is going on. And then I call it taking one for the team. So it isn't me against my partner. One of us needs to be conscious in that moment to not get on the dance floor and do the same dance that we always do. One of us can save and then take a breath in, whatever, reach towards them, give them a hug, do what John Gottman calls a repair attempt, make a funny face, say, I'm being a boob. Let's just let this go.

Things like that are going to go a long way right now. So how do we begin to have a conversation? I think probably we already have some insights into each other's coping fallbacks, right? But how do we begin to have a conversation about, I'm guessing most of us have different coping fallbacks than our spouses, how to better support each other or be there for each other. So I think I gave you this example, my coping is control. And I know in my head that I can't both control something or someone and trust them at the same time. And trust in our relationship is so important to me. So I can kind of catch myself better in good moments than when under stress, as you said. But, you know, Jay is a

little bit more avoid pain or avoid, you know. So how do we begin to have dialogue about how to best support each other. Yeah, that's a good one. I have in my book, in a chapter, a communication template that is a lifesaver. I do couples retreats. And I, at this point, have four different levels. I'm going to be doing an online one soon where we're working the chapters of the book. But the communication template

is to get deeper in our communication because this is, okay, this is a fact that blows people's mind. Most couples communicate seven minutes a week, seven minutes on anything that is not related to their partnership, like who's going to feed the kids, who's going to pick up the dry cleaning, seven minutes on deeper conversation. That's crazy. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. So all the research is that the majority of what we argue about has nothing to do with what we're arguing about. It is not the content. So reminding myself in any moment of what is occurring, and you know from transformation that this is it. It has nothing

to do whatever we think we're arguing about in the moment. It isn't that they didn't unload the dishwasher or whatever we think the argument is. Like you're saying, it usually is something far deeper like trust, or I don't feel valuable to you, or I don't feel like you're hearing me. So in communicating in an argument or an upset, or when there's tension or the coping strategies are flaring, we've got to bypass the content. And that means getting deeper. So the acronym is IPAVER, I-P-A-A-V-E-R. And the I is I feel blank when you blank. And so that could be I feel disregarded or burdened when you leave your socks on the floor. It's a specific pointing to something.

So I feel dismissed when you turned and looked at your phone. When I brought up, I wanted to talk to you. It's a specific thing. It isn't, I feel mad when you're a jerk. Right. That's not going to cut it. And then the person that is in the other position is really doing the heavy lifting. So then their job is the P, paraphrasing and clarifying.

So they say, okay, so I'm hearing you say that you feel disregarded when I leave my socks on the floor. Can you, this is the trickiest part, asking a question to clarify. Can you give me other times or examples that I do that? Or how does that make you feel? Or if you're really at a loss for a good open question, you can just say, can you tell me more about that? And then the partner makes adjustments. That's the A. They say, well, I just feel like I end up doing the lion's share of the work around the house. And when your socks are on the floor, I feel like I'm the one that automatically has to do it. And you're not thinking that I have something else to do. And then the person needs to, again,

paraphrase and clarify. And a key in paraphrasing and clarifying is we've got to use the same emotional words that they use. So you can say disregarded, but you wouldn't say pissed. So I hear you got pissed when you saw the socks on the floor, because if they weren't pissed, they're going to be pissed now because you got their emotions wrong. So it's paraphrasing and you go back and forth with that until there's a genuine, yeah, that's it. I just feel really unsupported, a release emotionally. And there's an acknowledgement of, yep, they definitely feel heard. That's the second A. And then you go to the V, which is validating and the E, empathizing. So the partner would say something like, I can really understand why you got upset,

why you felt disregarded. It feels like I've been missing a lot of things around the house and you feel like it's all on you. And then empathizing. I know I hate when I feel like everything's on me and no one's supporting me. I get really upset and I push people away. So that's the last thing I would want with you. And then the person can make a request if they choose. I'm requesting you attempt to do a sweep at the end of the day with your eyes. And if there's anything on the ground, just throw it in the laundry bin. But it's not about the socks. It is getting underneath the socks. And that takes patience. But it's amazing when you start to do it with care and empathy. What I love in working with couples, they'll be shocked because people will start crying and say, yeah, that's it. And they really see that this is the core wound we're working with. It's not about the content. And is it fair to say for a lot of us, these wounds or these, you know, buttons they're pushing or, or what's coming up for us is maybe something we brought our into the relationship,

or we had, um, as sort of touchy parts for ourselves before we even got into this relationship? Totally. It's Imago. So Harville Hendricks describes our partner and the person that we pick is I-M-A-G-O, Imago. And the Imago partner is someone who is uniquely unqualified to give us the love that we want and need. They're not just unqualified. They're unqualified in all the ways that we need them to be qualified, which is crazy. But all of us made it through our childhood. With whatever went on, we can have the most perfect childhood. But still, when things occur, the child interprets it and makes beliefs about themselves. It's like Baskin Robbins. We're all ice cream, but we have a slightly different flavor to the ice cream. The generic version of the ice cream is I'm not enough.

So when we're not acting in our best and when we're not feeling our best, it's some flavor of I'm not enough. It can be I'm not good enough. I'm not powerful. I'm not capable. That got set up zero to eight years old. So when we look for our partner, we consciously want all the things that our family was great at or what our parents didn't provide or caretakers didn't provide. And we go looking for that, but more unconsciously, indelibly imprinted in our brain is the negative aspects of our family and our response. So we go attracting that. And we also attract our lost self. So there was the self we were before we were socialized. For example,

I was pretty internal. I was pretty melancholy. I was a very internal little girl, lots of inside reading, museums in my early childhood, not a lot of outside extrovert. And then when I was eight years old, I moved in with my dad and my stepmom. And it was a radically different household where a lot of type A personalities. And so it wasn't okay for me to be that quiet and that internal. So I became incredibly outward and extroverted. And that little quiet girl got shoved to the side. So my husband holds a balance of the positive, the negative from both my caretakers and all my caretakers, and then the lost self. So we hired the person to push those buttons. That's crazy. So can we break this? You know, because you see it play out

sometimes where, you know, the young girl who saw her mom be domestically abused or beaten by her father ends up marrying somebody who's abusive or, you know, alcoholic ends up or a child of an alcoholic ends up marrying an alcoholic. And I know we all want to break patterns. Um, and I think I speak, I mean, honestly, if JJ married somebody just like Jay, I'd be thrilled, um, for her. Uh, but I'm sure there are other patterns and I'm not so sure how I'd feel if she married somebody just like me. So I guess my question is, is this something we can become conscious about? Is it a breakable pattern? Can we do something?

Yeah. God, yes. And I really wish. Because Hollywood gives us this idea that we're going to find this perfect soulmate and then we're going to come home from work and throw the dishes off the table and make love on the table. And no one's going to care about the china being broken on the floor or, you know, this is unrealistic, you know, that my partner is going to be in sync with me and we're going to have this match made in heaven. And it isn't like that. And so a lot of people, when they start doing work on their relationship and coming to the retreats, people say, oh my God, how do people even get married without doing this work? Because it is an unrealistic expectation. And then we look at the divorce rate and it's explained because we had no idea that

that was coming. And when it came, the person thought, this is not the person. This is not my right person. It has to be wrong. So a couple of things I want to, I'm so glad you brought up domestic violence and things like addiction, because right now I do know that there are people in a domestic violence situation that are listening to this and in addiction. And I want to first acknowledge those people for listening to this podcast and let them know a few things. In domestic violence, it's not something that people can say from the outside looking in, oh, just leave. Why haven't you left by now? Well, we know the statistics are that if a person tries to leave, by the seventh time that they try to leave,

they're dead. So this is not something to be undertaken casually. And it's not something to be embarrassed about either, including if you don't have immigration in this nation, your immigration status is protected. If you get help and are in a domestic violence situation, you can reach out through a domestic violence center and your immigration status will not be questioned, nor it will be challenged in any way. And it takes planning to leave. It takes setting things up. But I want people to know if you are in that situation, you are unbelievably strong that you have gotten through it as much as you have. And it doesn't involve any shame. Sometimes people have a belief about domestic violence that is people from a lower socioeconomic or lower education. And this is just not true. I've worked with people who have doctorates, who are doctors, who've been in abusive situations. And I've worked with people who have mansions and it crossed the cost, crossed all the lines.

So if you are, definitely reach out for support and get support to plan your exit in a strategic way that is not going to compromise you. And if you do need to leave and you feel like you're threatened, have somebody that you can go to and leave with just the clothes on your back. Go to them and know that you can figure it out once you get there. It should be somebody who's safe that the person will not find you. But don't look back. Don't go back for your keys.

Don't go back for a purse, any of that. And if you are in addiction, same thing. If you are with somebody by now, you know and you have learned to dance with their moods and know when their rages are coming on and to get you and the kids away and figure out a way to placate and then get support. Go to Al-Anon, get support and get resources. For the rest of us that are just in stresses of being with a partner, that puts it in perspective. We get to be grateful that we're not in those situations and remind ourselves. Yeah, I no longer care about socks. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm so appreciative. I know. And then how do we start working on our relationship in the Imago? And what I know from working with couples is it takes work to do the opposite of everything that we were trained to survive. So for example, there's a pursuer and a

distancer in most relationships and the pursuer just wants to talk about it. So they're the one in an argument that is like, well, we shouldn't go to bed angry and can't we just talk about it? And why are you leaving right now? They're the ones that want to get to the end of it and are feeling uneasy with tabling it. And then there's a distancer who often needs space. They're like, gosh, I just give me some time. I need an hour or you're pissing me off. I need breathing space. And it feels agonizing to do the opposite of whatever we're trained to do. So for the distancer, which is me and my relationship, which is ironic, most people wouldn't think that is me. It takes everything for me to get back in,

to stay in the room when my husband, who is so sweet and so gentle and kind, but when he hits his limit about once a year, he just explodes. And for me to not leave the room and stay and reach towards him and hug him, it's like walking into a fire, a burning building. It is the last thing I want to do. I want to take a breather. I want space. I don't want to do. I want to take a breather. I want space. I don't want to stay in. And that just gives him the evidence the moment I walk away that he's not worth my sticking it out. And so I got to remind myself what I'm doing when I walk away, sit in and then reach towards him.

And for him, it's work for him to give me space for him to say, okay, take a half hour, take an hour. That's agony because he feels nothing but stirred up and insecure during that hour. So it's heroic. It's heroic when you start working on this as a couple and doing it. And over and over, it's not going to be alleviated in a year. And this is horrifying to even say, but I'm the voice of realism here. This may be a 15, 20 years. We're 18 years in and we have one upset a year about, and we're, we've gotten very good and we're still not over it. And it's still work and it's beautiful work. I think it's the graduate school of transformation. It's where we really get to grow ourselves. So would it make sense to have some of these conversations before the next big blowout, right? So to talk about the

pursuer and the distancer and who's what and what we need, typically need, or what some of these, what my flavor of not good enough might be and what his flavor or her flavor, whoever you're partnered with, their flavor might, would it make sense to have some of this conversation, like not during an argument, prior to, to sort of understand each other and, and I don't know, maybe be a little bit more supportive and helpful when the emotions and feelings and stuff starts kicking up? Yep. Definitely. Well, uh, my website, Lynn E. Sheridancom, has a meditation that goes along with an exercise in the book. And there are worksheets to do that you can do that is really clarifying what is your imago, what is that core wound, if you don't know know it what were all the negative aspects of your

caretakers what were the positive aspects and putting together your imago in a way so that it's really clear that you see that this person is reflecting back and then talking about it talking about that core wound and talking about the way in which we protect it. It's helpful and it still doesn't take care of it because I can know it intellectually. And there's a process in one of my retreats that we do that people say, gosh, I knew it intellectually, but to really hold this person and to, I, I tear up, I'm tearing up even thinking of it. It's so beautiful

because people finally get it, not in their head, but in their heart. Oh my God. Oh my God. I really get what this person is going through. And then that, that stays with you so that when it comes up in an argument, you go, oh, God, I see what's happening here, but not just from your head, from your heart. One of my biggest, well, so many, but one of my takeaways in the work that I did with you and Lisa, the transformational work 15 years ago, was how important experiential learning is versus, you know, just reading something in a book or reading an article or even listening. And, and so thank you for that resource. I think that'd be really helpful again, to have that discussion,

but your workshops, it sounds like is a great way for people to get maybe some of those more experiential moments in a safe space. Absolutely. I'm laughing because I, you know, there are some of us, and I know you can relate to this as well, that like to think, well, I know this already. I walked into my trainings 27 years ago thinking, I already know this. I've already read a lot of books and I've done therapy work. And coming from the framework of We can know something with our minds, but when it comes in a moment, when we see ourselves in action, it's humbling because sometimes there are moments, and I know you know this, of like, oh my God, I can't believe I just did this. I can't believe I just said that. Where did that come from? And that's the beauty of doing experiential work, that we get

to see ourselves in technicolor. And it's in a gut level way, like riding a bicycle. When you learn how to ride a bike, it never leaves you. Just like you, years later, we have a visceral reaction to some things. If I say like responsibility or you matter or distinctions of the training, it's, it's not just the head, it's a visceral response. Yeah, definitely. So my last question is kind of a big question. Um, talk to us a little bit about gender and gender stereotypes and gender roles in partnership. And before you answer, my big scary mission that I probably have no hope of actually achieving in my lifetime, somebody told me once, I have a big mission that you can't even think you would accomplish in your lifetime, so this is mine, is to eliminate gender expectations so that we can all be who we were put here to be and show up authentically in our lives and in our

relationships. And so, you know, Jay and I early on would talk about equal partnership. I think it's evolved in my mind and it just healthy partnership and that we can be ourselves, our full and whole human selves in our relationship and feel safe with each other. Can you talk about how gender may or may not impact or play a role in healthy partnerships? Oh my gosh. I love your vision and I'm on board completely. Yeah, this is another big one. We all have masculine and feminine within us. And we come in a package that societally then wants to label and put expectations that go with whatever package we are perceived as. And there are a lot of times, like in my marriage, we have the masculine and feminine. And when I say the masculine, I don't mean manly or like a brawny ad. And feminine,

I don't mean girly and any of that. By masculine, I have a Jungian background and the masculine in the archetype of the masculine would be things attaining towards spirit, towards intellect, towards accomplishment, goal oriented behavior, doing this time, things like this, things that are very driven. Spirit, if we think architecture, we think Gothic architecture, like Chicago, towerings, sky rises, going towards the heavens. That's more masculine. Masculine is more of spirit. And feminine is more of soul. So feminine, you think earth, out of time, smelling, sensate, all the senses, a yurt. And so we think of cities. Cities even have masculine and feminine. If we think of New York, it's masculine. And if we think of Florence, Italy, it's feminine. So everything has masculine and feminine in its nature. And in my marriage, for example, I hold the masculine. I hold much more

masculine. I'm very, as we talked about with my family, type A personality, driven, accomplishing, maximizing, fitting things in. There isn't enough hours in the day for me. I have three careers, all of that. My husband, he's an artist. He is holding much more feminine. He's out of time. He has a koi pond out back. He is stop and smell the roses, be in the moment. Let's dance and have a dance break with each other. This is much more of the feminine. So the goal in a relationship, Carl Jung said, that is we want to balance ourselves. And you know this from the training work. In the training work, it is how do we balance? If I have a lot of power, how do I open up my vulnerability and my sensitivity? If I'm very vulnerable and sensitive, how do I open up my power? Or if I have a lot of passion, how do I become trustworthy?

If I'm very trustworthy, how do I open up my passion? Same on the masculine and feminine. So if I'm doing my job with my husband, I'm igniting him. I'm lighting a fire at times. I'm having him be more motivated, more accomplishment driven, more outward. And if he's doing his job, he's having me breathe. He's taking moments to say, okay, just stop. Just be in the moment right now. How do we take a massage break? So we're doing a balance with each other. And then how do we see a person as those balances, not putting them or assigning them a role based on whatever package, because we will find that there will be, you know, gender doesn't quite fit the masculine and feminine, and we are often off track when we relate to it that way. And then how do we learn to balance? I love that so much.

I feel like I wish we could talk for another hour on that. But so many good and powerful takeaways. And thank you for spending a little bit of time for our listeners that might be in abusive or addictive environments, especially I think right now with everything going on. You said it differently, but at the beginning you said we're kind of all not reverting, but we're going to our basis or our basic selves, right? And so that might be kicking up in some households. I really do echo what Lynn said. If you're in that scenario, reach out, get that strategic plan, get the help that you

need, and we will all be praying for you and thinking of you and sending all the love and strength we can your way. For those of us who aren't in those situations, I know I experienced a lot of gratitude in our time together and a good reminder that there is so much to be grateful for. So Lynn, thank you for your wisdom and your words. Reminder, if you want to learn more about Lynn and her work, you can check her out on lynnenesheridan.com or buy her book on Amazon. Again, the title of that is The Birds and Bees of Joyful Monogamy. If you want to learn more about the Couples Thriving Workshops, you can check that out on inspirecoachingworkshops.com. So

inspirecoachingworkshops.com. I know she mentioned this, but there's going to be some more low cost or free or virtual options with everything going on right now. Cause she typically does a couple's retreat. Lynn, anything to add before I close this out? I'm just so grateful for you. I'm grateful for you reaching people and for everybody that's out there. Let's remind ourselves we may be in solitude, but we are in solidarity. And this is a time of renewal as well. So great for you growing yourself and listening to Nicole's broadcast. Thank you so much.

Yay. So we all have an opportunity to build balanced partnerships, to bring our full selves, all of our masculine, all of our feminine energy, and really be the best version of ourselves for this other person who loves and accepts us. I think holding onto that during this time when we're in such close proximity with each other can be really helpful. I know it'll be helpful for me. Choosing how we think about our partner in these moments is so important. I know I'm going to work on that. And I think we all deserve a date night, don't you? Yes, so much there. Yeah. All right, ladies, let's build healthy partnerships

because this is most certainly part of woman's work.