Michele Christensen 0:05
Hey there, Welcome to Sex. Love.Power. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I'm an intimacy mentor for leaders. And this podcast is an ongoing conversation about eroticism, long term, committed relationship and the depths of love, devotion and longing, all through the lenses of brain science, social justice, and ongoing spiritual evolution. This is a two way discussion with my community, which you can join for free at society.lisenbury.com. As intense, passionate people who can be highly sensitive, and who want a LOT in all areas of our lives, I want us to have a place where we can have the real discussions we need to have, about sex and power and love.
Michele Christensen 0:41
I'm recording this podcast in advance to go live two days after the US election. I know a lot of people have had a lot of feelings about this election, and a lot has been said about it. What I want to give you today is a way to look at your relationship in times of upset and change, whether they're global changes like this one or more personal changes, like the death of pet or a parent or you're weathering a difficult season in the life of your child or you're having job stress or a financial setback.
Michele Christensen 1:06
This episode is to help you see what happens for couples during these times and to invite you to find your way TOGETHER in ways that deepen your connection rather than tearing you apart. We're going to talk about what happens, what we can do about it and what we actually need.
Michele Christensen 1:20
So what happens in difficult times? While we can feel really lousy, we're struggling or in pain, we're upset or hungry, and that can leave us forgetting our relationship skills. We're not on our best behavior, I think of Mr. Rogers, you know, we're not doing what Mr. Rogers taught us to do. Communicating really well, being as kind as we can to one another, we aren't at our best. And as a result, we can hurt one another. I think of being in a marriage as being like, it's like we're naked in a phone booth with Edward Scissorhands, kind of hands. You know, there's sharp knives and everybody's naked. and we're really cramped in here. We're so close, that the sharp parts of each of us are just always in peril of hurting the other, especially when we're intense sensitive people like I know I am and a lot of my listeners are. So you may wind up feeling hurt by your partner simply because you started out so raw in the first place. And you may end up hurting THEM simply because you're so raw, and therefore aren't on your best behavior. So we want to have just a mountain of grace for ourselves and each other inside this.
Michele Christensen 2:24
And then at another level of danger, we can forget that what we're upset about is what we're upset about and we can start to make it about our partner, It so often happens that because our partner's there at the end of the day when we're most depleted, and because our partner IS our safe place in truth, we bring our mess to them. I think kindergarteners are a great metaphor for this. When I had a kindergartner, I remember her teacher telling me, the same wonderful teacher was both my kids kindergarten teacher, and she said, "it's totally fine that they fall apart at the end of the day. They're learning a lot, they're stretching a lot in kindergarten, and when they come home, they're safe. And that's why they have meltdowns there. It would worry me far more if they melted down at school and couldn't fall apart at home."
Michele Christensen 3:09
So we fall apart at home. We fall apart with our person, our partner. And that's wonderful that we have that and it's a little unfortunate. Because unlike with a kindergartner where it's clear who's the parent who's the child, in an intimate partnership, I want YOU to be reliable for me so I can fall apart and YOU want ME to be reliable for YOU so you can fall apart. So where's the grownup? Who's the container and who's the contained? It's not always clear. And for us to get the containment we really need, we do have to take turns in the hardest of times, even if those turns, we're taking our MICRO turns, I get a minute and then you get a minute that I get a minute, then you get a minute.If we can become that facile and fluid and switching back and forth. "I'm going to listen and contain you and you're going to have the big feelings. And I'm having big feelings too. And so in a minute, can you hear me contain my big feelings?" If we can flow like that together, then we can both get the safety and containment that we need.
Michele Christensen 4:01
So let's talk about that. We've been over what happens. Now what do we actually NEED in these difficult times? We need to feel seen and heard. We need to feel like we make sense. We need room to unfurl our emotions and our thoughts and our worries, our fears. We don't need to indulge in those. We don't need to run away with them. We don't need to go off into flights of fancy or future trips.
Michele Christensen 4:23
But if we can quite intentionally think of, like emptying a basket. You know, if you were decluttering, you went around the living room and you gathered all the things that belong in other rooms and put them in one basket, then you could go and go through other rooms where those things belong. Go into the bathroom and take these things back there and oh, my jewelry case, I need to take these things there. This goes in my daughter's room. You could empty your basket. That's what we need to do. When we're raw and jangled at the ends of these days, we need to empty our basket. And I try to do that with people other than my partner first so that he's not getting that first layer at the end of the day when we're in the kitchen together, he's just gotten home from a long day at work and a commute. And I've had a long day of work and helping our kids with school. And we're both kind of wrung out. I want to be in a place where I've already gotten some hearing and seeing from myself and from other people. So a journal is a great way to see and hear yourself. Meditation time is a great way that you can think of is using and hearing yourself or the divine seeing and hearing you and talking with trusted friends. Training other people to listen to you and just hear you is a really powerful investment in your intimate relationship, because it gives you what I call the portfolio effect. A way to get your needs met, that doesn't rely on a sole source provider, that is your partner. It lets you get nourished from different places. And just as that friend is then turning to you for that kind of support, rather than their spouse, we build this web of support for all of our relationships by having numerous, deep, trusting, intimate connections. So we need to feel seen and heard and we looked a little bit about how you can get that.
Michele Christensen 5:58
We need to feel like we make sense to our partner. So there is a way that even after we've kind of gotten things up and out and emptied our basket, we need to be current with them and have them see us. So that's where stress reducing conversations, or the "what do you want me to know?" question can be really valuable. This is your chance to give your partner an update that might be pretty succinct. If you've already gotten seen and heard elsewhere, you can say, "I'm feeling really nervous about this thing and I'm sitting with that nervousness, I'm just creating a space for that to be my companion." You've created a piece around it, you're not needing help with that right now, but you're letting your partner know about it.
Michele Christensen 6:40
The next thing we often need is to be contained and to get help regulating ourselves. So this is a completely different situation. You are not just reporting in. You're saying, "my basket is overflowing, and I need help." So this is something that in my relationship, I used to not know that I needed this. And it was tremendously painful to be falling apart and to not have any way to kind of KNOW that my nervous system was so dysregulated that I couldn't pull myself back together. I didn't know how to help Kurt help me and he didn't know what to do. So when I learned what I need right now is regulation, and his body can help me do that, it was a huge breakthrough for us.
Michele Christensen 7:16
So in other episodes, we've talked about self regulation and what I'm referring to here is co-regulation. We mentioned under the self regulation toolkit, some of the ways that your partner can help you. For instance, laying on top of you, being a human weighted bag to help your system calm down is one way that your partner can regulate you. Or spooning, lying behind you, putting their arms around you and holding you tight as you kind of get to curl up in a fetal position is a wonderful way to contain you. If a partner can ground themselves and imagine being like a stainless steel bowl, huge bowl, just holding everything that you throw into it. Not taking anything personally not thinking they need to solve anything, just containing it all letting you get it out.
Michele Christensen 8:00
It sometimes it reminds me of barfing, "just hold the bowl and hold my hair back while I throw up", because it's a little bit like that. What we DON'T need is to go off. We don't need to have room to throw up ON our partner or AT them to make things about them that aren't about them. We don't need our partners to take the blame. We don't need the problem to be fixed or answers to be provided. Here's the subtle part. A lot of times when we're feeling anxious, for instance, about something really big, like national politics, or the environment, or the future of the world economy, that kind of free floating anxiety, that generalized terror that can come up when there's things that are that far beyond our control. Our mind doesn't LIKE that level of ambiguity. So it wants to hang our anxiety on a tidier hook. Something closer to home. Hmm, what's really close? What's right here? What could I hang my anxiety on that would be tidy? Oh, "YOU"! We can look over and there's our partner ! "Hello, YOUR my problem!" That can be far more convenient.
Michele Christensen 9:05
Remember, the brain uses so much of the energy of our bodies that it doesn't want to be such an energy hog. It tries to conserve energy by taking shortcuts. This is why there are so many fallacies in our logic. One of the biggest things we do is take big problems we don't know what to do about, shunt all the anxiety from those, put it on over on something closer to hand like our partner and say," I have a problem with the way you load the dishwasher", because that feels simpler to our brain.
Michele Christensen 9:32
So remember, when you're thinking about what you actually need in these times of high anxiety, you don't need the things you might think you need. You need these basic things to feel seen and heard, to be contained. You don't need it fixed. You don't need answers and you don't need to blame your partner.
Michele Christensen 9:49
There's one other thing that we often do need and I think we've all seen this at times and it's sort of an old adage like," Sleep on it. You'll feel better in the morning." We often need rest but the real thing that we need is time. We need time to calm down. When we're at our most agitated or feeling scared, or tired, or raw, or hopeless or helpless, we just need someone to be with us or to be with ourselves and know that someone will be there when it's all over to give it time for it to change. Because every feeling is a wave. They rise up, they swell, they might feel like they're going to blot out the sun and take over everything for all eternity, but they don't. As they swell, they crest and they subside. That's how waves work. They rise up, they swell, they crest and they subside.
Michele Christensen 10:37
I used to live in such terror of my emotions, I really thought that deeply feeling them would swallow me whole. That I would not come out the other side. If I started to cry, I would never stop. If I started to feel my fear, it would absolutely devour me. And what I've learned is that feelings are kind of like meals. You've got a gut full of something? It's just a matter of time until you've metabolized it. You NEED the time to metabolize it. And you might need to not do a whole lot else for a little bit to give yourself room to metabolize it. So be it. When you've given yourself the time, it's going to look different and you will know better what to do.
Michele Christensen 11:12
So not making decisions, not making accusations, not making demands during that time when we're most aroused inside an emotional response is a really good idea. Because what you actually will need to have be different, if you need to move to a different country because of what's going on right now, if you need to change jobs, if you need to have a different spouse if you need massive changes, those needs will remain apparent weeks from now. Don't make any decisions when your lid is flipped, when you're in a state of huge upset and don't say a lot of things that might cause damage. Settle down and give yourself the time and ask your partner to help you have time to calm down.
Michele Christensen 11:51
So what can we do for one another? How can we draw closer together during these challenging times? I mentioned at the beginning, we need a ton of grace. What we can do is extend grace to ourselves and to one another, "I get that you're having a hard time. That's why you're being such an asshat right now." I'm kidding. But really, if your partner has been misbehaving. And you can see that they're really feeling it about something that has nothing to do with you, you get huge Bodhisattva points for extending the grace to go, "oh, that wasn't about me. They didn't mean that."
Michele Christensen 12:26
It doesn't make you a doormat to give them that grace, I used to think it did but it doesn't. You can ask for grace. And that doesn't make you a bull in a china shop. You're not saying, "Put up with me no matter how badly I behave all the time." But you can say," I'm sorry, I'm not myself today. I'm going to do my best to bite my tongue and not take this out on you. But I'm sorry, if I don't have my best to give. Sorry, if I'm not as kind or resilient or thoughtful as I'd like to be and as you deserve."
Michele Christensen 12:51
We can also be humble. I think we need to not presume that we're doing great and other people aren't doing well. We need to not assume that we are supposed to be doing great. That we're supposed to keep it together no matter what. We're all living through a pandemic right now. We're living through some unprecedented political situations. And we are living inside an ecological disaster that is irreversible to some extent now, and that we don't really know how to survive. So it would make sense for any reasonable person to be struggling on certain levels, some days more than others. So have the humility to just struggle and let yourself do that. Above all, we need to turn toward one another. One metaphor for this that Kurt and I found years ago when we were both still really working on just healing. We were both kind of wounded, traumatized people trying to grow up together.
Michele Christensen 13:44
Sometimes we were so snarly with each other we just saw it's like, we're like two wounded dogs, picture junkyard dogs who crawled underneath the same rusted out old pickup truck to lick our wounds, you know, I crawl in there thinking I'm going to find a place that's safe so I don't have to get in another dog fight right now so I can just lick these wounds I've got. I kind of back in there and wiggle in and realized oh, my backbones up against this other dog. And ah, man, jeez, oh. And then I realize, Oh, yeah, he's not my next fight. He's kindred. We're under this same track together. And we're just going to lick our wounds here. So we can just companion each other. Even when we don't have a lot to give each other we can just say, "I know you're hurting, and I'm hurting too. I see you, I get you. I wish I had more to give you. We're gonna make it."
Michele Christensen 14:30
Those are not the glory days. It doesn't feel like you're on a mountaintop. It's kind of a dark valley. But truly, I believe that these are some of our finest moments, when we struggle together. And it's not pretty, but we find the dignity and the beauty inside it. And then finally, maybe always remember that, as tempting as it can be to hang our anxiety on the hook of that handy nearby partner and think that they're the problem, they are not! Remembering that our partner is not the enemy. They're not the cause of our hurt. They're not the cause of our fear. They're not the cause of our anxiety or exhaustion. They're just a handy target.
Michele Christensen 15:05
They might be letting us down, we might want things from them that they can't give. That no reasonable person COULD give, but that our fantasy partner would give. It's something Kurt and I used to joke about when our kids were really little, when we were having trouble with managing all of it, the full catastrophe of a toddler and each other, and work and everything. When we would get bickery with each other, we would look at each other over our kids heads and kind of one of us had wink and go, "We are not the enemy. THEY are the enemy." Whisper it, "They ARE the enemy." And it was so fun and transgressive to be like, yeah, "our kids are the problem." And it just reminded us that joke reminded us that there's not really an enemy. We're struggling. And this is what life is, is struggle. And that doesn't mean we're doing it wrong. And we can stay gentle and kind and hopefully even find a sense of humor through it.
Michele Christensen 15:57
So that's what I've learned and I'm still learning and I still need to hear all of this, about how to stick together and hang together through difficult days. So I hope this episode brings you some comfort and gave you some actionable ideas for walking through hard times in your life in a way that brings you real partnership with your beloved. And I really hope this is just the beginning of our conversation about this topic. I want to hear more about your experiences and your successes in this area. I wanna hear your inside jokes.
Michele Christensen 16:25
The secret society of turned on women over at society.lisenbury.com is a great place to ask your questions and tell your stories and get more prompts to explore emotional connection and intimacy in this crazy world.
Michele Christensen 16:38
Come join the conversation at society.lisenbury.com. And you can also leave us a voicemail at 206-659-9865. That link and that phone number are in the show notes at Lisenbury.com/episode/012.
Michele Christensen 16:54
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Michele Christensen 17:04
If you've enjoyed this episode or others, it would be wonderful and I would be so grateful if you would leave a review, particularly in Apple podcasts. Because those are a huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please, go leave a review right now with a few words about what the show gives you. I would so appreciate it.
Michele Christensen 17:24
That's our show for this week. I'm so grateful that I get to be here with you to convene this conversation and support you in being at your best even when you're not. In cultivating a way of being in a relationship that are magnificent, even when there's mud on our faces. I'm thrilled at the privilege of living this miraculous, messy life and getting to companion you through it as well. So grateful we're engaged in this conversation. I hope this episode has helped you in some way. And I hope I get to see you back here same time next week. Until then May the light within you illuminate the world around you.