For years, I thought I was good at apologizing.
I would say, "I'm sorry, but..." and the "but" would erase everything that came before.
To me, apologizing and defending myself were the same thing, and they'd often come out in the same breath.
What I wasn't able to do was to pause and think how those words landed on Melissa.
I was too focused on my side of the apology.
And when you said, "I'm sorry, but..." you thought I was hearing the "I'm sorry," when in actuality, I was hearing "justifications" for your actions.
And that took us years to figure out.
So today, we are talking about the unhealthy patterns that can wear down a marriage over the long term.
And which of those are patterns that you can just work through together as a couple and get better on, and which are actually red flags that are of a much larger concern?
Welcome to Penned in Ink, a podcast where we discuss marriage and the power of long-lasting love.
[music] All right, we're back at it again, recording another podcast on what continues to be a sweltering hot blistering July in North Carolina.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing swell.
So we're talking unhealthy patterns today.
I don't think we have any unhealthy patterns.
All of our patterns have been worked through and are super healthy now.
You are so right.
I think we're done for today.
All right, easy episode.
Now, for those of you joining us for the first time, I'm Michael, and I'm here with my wife, Melissa.
We've been married over 30 years.
And on this podcast, we try to show you what a healthy long-term marriage looks like.
And contrary to the smart-ass little joke ago, a bit ago, we all have unhealthy patterns.
And today, we're going to discuss some of those and go through some of the ones that we think we've fixed and some maybe we're still working on.
Yeah.
Is that about right?
Yes, it's always a work in progress.
Okay.
On this podcast, we share stories from our 30-plus years together.
And they're colored a little bit by Melissa's professional background, which is?
I'm a licensed clinical mental health counselor in private practice.
But this is not professional advice.
We're just talking about sometimes I'll take some themes from my work, but this is not professional advice.
Yep.
You paused on that.
Did you forget you're a counselor?
Get a little hiccup in your comment there.
Well, I want to be honest, when I say the whole title, I don't know.
It feels a little stodgy.
It's a little pretentious.
I agree.
It is, right?
But that's, there's a difference between myself and like a marriage counselor and myself and like a social worker.
And so I guess to really justify your, not justify, clarify.
That's the word we're looking for.
That is why I go so lengthy into it.
There we go.
All right.
So if you've listened to all of our previous episodes, we apologize for the redundancy on Melissa's credentials, but it's important to know that this is us just sharing our experiences.
Now with that, if you are watching and you're enjoying this, remember you always can hit that subscribe and follow to really help us build this audience.
And we would greatly appreciate it.
It costs you nothing.
It helps us out greatly.
Now with that little plug out of the way, we are talking about unhealthy patterns versus red flags.
Let's start with unhealthy patterns.
What is an unhealthy pattern?
Things in your relationships that recur, recur, recur.
And that probably interfere with the health of your relationship.
And they're typically things that once you've identified them, you can work through them together.
Great.
And that's countered with a red flag, which is what?
Bigger.
Often we hear this word a lot, but more toxic.
Something that's very damaging and less likely to be able to work through on your own.
Probably will need more help than just the two of you sitting together working.
Unhealthy patterns are often things that two very healthy people can actually work through together.
So having unhealthy patterns in your relationship doesn't mean you're unhealthy.
It's just the way you interact with each other isn't the healthiest.
And often if you're maybe like me, you maybe grew up where you didn't see the healthiest of marriages.
You might not even recognize the patterns because you've not seen healthy versus unhealthy or you've seen unhealthy unhealthy unhealthy.
And you bring those into your relationship not even realizing there's a better way.
Yeah, people often normalize because that's what they've seen.
They thought, oh, this is how everybody does it.
And they eventually will question that is what I have found.
And as context for this, they're super hard to see when you're in the middle of them.
So very much, right?
You're you're entrenched in what's going on and you're kind of blind to maybe what's causing the issues.
I don't know what's healthy and I'm living hard into it.
It is super hard to distinguish in many areas of our life unhealthy patterns when you're head down in the middle of it.
So our hope for today is to sort of illustrate a handful of unhealthy patterns that may be showing up in your relationship.
But the reality was they were showing up in ours.
So we're going to share them from our perspective.
You might have other unhealthy patterns and well, we probably do too that we're just not bringing up.
But today we're going to discuss a handful of these.
So we've set the groundwork for unhealthy patterns versus red flags.
And let's start by sharing our first story.
It is a very concrete example of a unhealthy pattern in our relationship.
We'll call this our ink moment in our ink moment.
We share a very concrete story from our past is on today's topic with the intent of laying the foundation for future discussions.
So our unhealthy pattern that we're going to first talk about here is this pattern of going quiet going silent.
Do you want to share the story?
Yeah, this harkens back.
Whoa, quite a while ago to we got married young.
I had the girls about five six years into our marriage and and we had always decided on two kids.
So context, I always say this we have twin daughters 26 years old.
So unless this is a long time ago, it might have been longer than some of your life.
So go ahead.
Very true.
And we had always planned on just two children.
I had a hard pregnancy.
It was hard.
Having twins is a unique experience.
I knew nothing else.
And even though we had decided on just the two in my head, as they got a little bit older, two, three years old, I was like, it'd be kind of nice to have one.
So share the one story.
One day you were sitting folding maternity clothes, right?
Let's give the real story.
You set the background.
Melissa wanted more kids.
The real story is I was folding maternity clothes that I found in a closet.
We were purging that week.
We do that a lot.
And we were purging and I found them and I had washed.
So I was going to give them to Goodwill.
And I had washed them and was folding them.
And as I was folding them, I noticed I was a little bit sad.
And so I reflected on that.
And the sadness was, I think I kind of wanted another child.
But that was not something that we ever discussed having more than two.
I don't think ever.
It was not.
Move on.
Come on.
You're all up in your fields.
Move on with the story.
You did get all up in my fields.
And I brought it up to you.
And I quickly slapped it down and said, "No." Very rude and probably aggressively.
Now, what did I say?
You said, "I thought we had decided on to...
Where's this coming from?" Because I hadn't shared it.
And you said, "I really thought we were done." And so I went into my quiet face.
I said, "Okay." So we will get into this.
Melissa, and now this is with a lot of reflection and a lot of retrospection.
And we'll discuss this in a little bit.
But Melissa has a tendency to go quiet and avoid conflict.
Continue.
Exactly.
And this silence lasted a while.
days, weeks, probably months, probably through the summer months.
I think I brought it up a couple of times.
We talked about it in a cursory way.
But for the most part, I just kind of hoped, I think, that you would just randomly change your mind without discussion without because it's a difficult topic.
I wanted something that you did not.
And that was unusual for us.
Let's pause there for a second.
So you're sitting here having this internal dialogue and maybe not having a honest conversation with me about how you would like to have another kid.
In my perspective, I don't think the moment of you saying, "Hey, I'd like to have another kid," was this big life moment.
I thought it was you up in your feels throwing maternity clothes away.
And you and I had always talked about having two, and I was pretty settled with that.
So I think in the first days and maybe weeks of you thinking on this, I didn't even realize there was an issue going because I thought it was a throwaway conversation.
We're like, "Yeah, I don't really want more kids.
We're good.
Let's move on." Yes, because I did not communicate that.
You perceived it one way.
I perceived it another way.
My perception in the early days was, "I don't even know.
We had an issue." Continue.
You did not.
Issue number one with going silent on your partner.
They might not have a clue that you've gone silent.
Continue.
Yes.
And as we'll discuss later, this isn't the only time I've done this.
And- Thus the unhealthy patterns.
Go on.
Right?
And that's why we're illustrating this upfront.
So eventually, we did have, I finally stopped going silent because we were just bounced around.
It was a roller coaster of emotions for me, probably less so for you.
But it was- There was a part where it became obvious, "Okay, wait, Melissa's holding on to this longer than I thought.
I thought we'd had a throwaway conversation.
You are obviously having a symphony of conversations in your mind." So I realized there was something going on, but it wasn't my conversation necessarily to drill in on because you're going.
Yeah.
I had to bring it up because it was just eating at me.
We did have one final discussion.
You said something that was very impactful and- What did you share?
I like to look good at times.
You looked good.
You turned to me and said, "We decided on two.
I'm seeing that that is not a decision that you're happy with right now, even though I'm fine with the way our family is." I was more than fine.
I was very comfortable and happy with our family.
It wasn't fine, but go on.
Okay.
Comfortable with where we are.
You said, "If this is going to be something that you look back on and truly regret, I am willing to have another child." And I was able to take from that.
And I said, "Okay, I need to think." And I took from that.
I spent a couple of days.
It was in silence because I was working through it on my own.
A different kind of silence.
A reflection period where it's like, "Hey, let me sit with this for a while." Now, you shared on an earlier episode really the internal dialogue that was going on during those intervening days.
Maybe I'll put a link in there because it's a really good story.
You've done the emotional share on what you went through.
Even in that sitting in an intentional silence, I didn't realize how deep you were going into the thought on there because again, communication wasn't great on it.
But the point for this part is eventually we had the conversation.
The resolution of it is much less actually relevant for this conversation than the fact that we finally had the hard conversation.
And I say conversation, it was multiple conversations.
We finally had a series of multiple conversations.
We stopped the stone walling.
But that was a pattern that was very well established.
So you want the...
I mean, I already said we had two kids.
So we know the resolution of the story.
It was, I went, "You know what?
I am also happy with having the two kids." The experience of having a singleton, if that would happen, because there was always a chance we'd have another set of twins, wasn't worth not upsetting you.
But I realized it wasn't that important to me.
It was more the idea that was important to me, not the actual thing.
So when you said you would do that for me and I was like, "Wow, that sacrifice.
I don't think he needs to do that.
We're good." So to put a button on that particular story, the emotional roller coaster of that was actually a much larger story than we just shared.
I'll put a link to the previous episode.
You did a fantastic share on there, where I was like, "Oh, shit.
I didn't realize that." And I don't know that you were really doing that for me or not doing that for me or whatever.
It's a much more complicated decision.
But for the context of this, this illustrates a pattern of sort of shutting down and not fully communicating.
And this is a pattern we'll go into that repeated quite a while in our relationship.
And that was actually one of those moments that sort of started us down the path of like, "Oh, crap.
We actually might need to fix this particular pattern.
This is not a healthy pattern." Correct.
I think that's our ink moment.
That was a very detailed exploration of snowballing.
But I do want to throw in there, if anybody wants to know, I have not regretted it to this day.
No, she wakes up every day pissed.
I do not.
Not once.
The girl started kindergarten a couple years later.
Your life got easier.
And I had some free time and I was able to return to work.
And I was like, "Ooh, two kids.
This is great." And I haven't.
Nope, not once.
If I look back and gone, I wish we would have had a third.
Awesome.
That is a concrete example of a pattern that we have in our relationship that you may or may not have in yours.
Let's dig into a few others that we have that maybe I'll start with one that's mine that, I don't know, maybe you do this one.
This is the concept of the little microaggressions that show contempt or I don't know what the exact right word is, but it's the...
Disrespect?
Yeah, probably disrespect.
It's the tone.
It's the sigh.
It's the eye rolls.
It's those little disrespects that if you allow those to slip into your marriage can sort of, I don't know, come over time.
So harken back to a 20-year-old version of me.
And yes, I'm a 50-year-old version of me now, but we've been married over 30 years.
So most of them I knew each other as teenagers and as young adults.
And I was much less aware of being an ass, probably in my 20s, of just sort of being dismissive or whatever.
And I was much less tolerant of things that seemed nonsensical or seemed wrong or just like, of course it's obvious.
So I probably, no, no, no, probably no, still soften it.
I was much more the type of guy who would not really scoff out loud or eye roll or sigh, but there were definitely moments where in my interactions I would be dismissive or I would be a little curt in those.
Is that a fair assessment?
Very much so.
Very much so.
Were you ever guilty of this or is it really just me?
Of course I would.
No, she wanted to say never me.
No, of course I was, right?
We're two different people.
We have different perspectives on things.
We have different ideas about things.
We were raised differently.
So of course there are some things that I probably, mine probably weren't outward, but in my head I was probably like, gosh.
Yeah, so this is one of those patterns that can really sort of undermine the respect in your relationship.
And I'm not sure when we started pivoting out of that, and it might just been an age and a maturity thing.
It probably was getting called to the mat, haunted a few times, where I would have done those sort of things, and you would get snippy with me or get back at me, and I'd realize, okay, well, shit, that was probably my fault.
Now, early on, I probably didn't apologize for those, but over time I think we found a balance of like, okay, don't do that, that's disrespectful.
And I think a lot of it for me was just maturing, just becoming less hotheaded and less arrogant probably, being humbled a little bit more.
Yeah, and learning from mistakes maybe.
Maybe, I don't know, we'll see.
So another one, we've done a pretty deep dive in a personal story on stonewalling, but let's give that another beat.
Let's talk a little bit more about what stonewalling looks like, and since you're the one who's, this is you, why don't you give us a little?
It's essentially shutting down, choosing or refusing to talk about the issues.
Well, so stonewalling, there's two different ways.
Going quiet is how it comes out, right?
You've gone quiet on something, but there's a healthy going quiet and there's an unhealthy going quiet.
So talk to me about the difference between stonewalling and taking a beat to process something.
Very different things.
They might outwardly present as the same things as going quiet, but I do two different things.
The stonewalling is shutting down, I just don't wanna talk about it.
The other type, the healthier thing, is sometimes I need a minute to process.
I need to think about what's been said and kind of get my feelings and my thoughts straight on the thing.
That's a different type of quiet and that's not considered stonewalling.
Yeah, and so we have a, we've grown relationally in ours to know the difference between stonewalling, which is something we wanna avoid.
If there's a conversation you are just missing and don't want to have, then you have to create the comfort and safety and emotional connection with your partner that you can have those conversations.
So stonewalling is something you wanna work through and avoid.
Taking a beat and realizing that, hey, your partner might process things different, might need a beat.
Now, the traditional, I don't know, traditional is probably not the right word, but relationally, the way this often happens, men tend to be quiet, they go quiet and they need a time to reflect, whereas women tend to lean in and want to have the discussion or have the argument.
Ours is a little flipped on that.
I'm a little quicker and ready to just address things in the moment, whereas you need a beat.
So it might not be the traditional gender perspective on there, but that's a healthy relational conflict resolution skill.
Stonewalling is not a good skill.
No, no, it's definitely not, because you're not addressing the issue.
So it's just gonna stay there.
Yep, so stonewalling is another one you might have in your relationship that we definitely have had and worked through.
And as this revisit the open, the non-apology, apology, I am good at this one, and I've been great at this one for a very long time.
And the problem is, this gets into the, when you're in it, you don't understand it.
I really honestly thought, and it's very hard for me to still to apologize without throwing the button in there because I want to explain why I did what I did.
And that's not relevant to an apology a lot of the time.
So for me, it's separating the apology, which is actually for the hurt that was caused or the miscommunication or caused from the, hey, how did I get to the point where I needed to apologize?
I had to learn that I could probably do both those things.
I just couldn't do them together.
I needed to separate the apology from the discussion of how did we get to a point where I either offended you or hurt your feelings or negated whatever you were feeling.
And I also had to realize, and this took me a very long time, that I don't have to understand why you were hurt by something to know that I hurt you.
And there's still a lot of times where I'm like, how the hell did that cause that reaction?
It's irrelevant.
I caused the reaction.
So let's apologize and repair the damage from the action.
And then we can revisit.
Yeah.
Anything else to add on that?
I know this is a point of contention in our relationship.
I got slapped pretty hard about the butt apology for a while, because I was not very good at it.
Oh, you were so much better.
I don't remember what the subject was, but you just did it like a week ago, a week or two ago.
Oh, we'll share that later.
We got a story on that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've learned how to apologize.
Yeah, there are some people that can't though.
And that's hard.
Well, and I think here's the deal.
We don't have, and this is another whole subject that we're not gonna cover today, but we don't have a lot of outward conflict in our relationship.
So I don't have to apologize very often because we've built a lot of skills that avoid the situations where you cause the damage and need to do that.
Doesn't mean that you're never gonna do it, which our story in a little bit will illustrate that.
I mean, it doesn't matter how good you are in your relationship, you're gonna have to apologize at times because you're gonna do shit that just causes issues, or I'm gonna do it.
I don't think I'm ever gonna be in a position where I don't have to apologize some.
So the non-apology apology is probably something that's in your relationship.
And let's hit on one more.
And this is the concept that I sort of just started leaking into, which is how quickly can you come back from your arguments?
It's this concept of repair.
And I actually had not heard the term repair.
So tell me what repair is.
I say I hadn't heard it until a couple of years ago.
I've heard it recently because it's actually a very, it's a very trending way to talk about relationships and recovery.
What is repair?
Well, repair is more than just, okay, we're done with this.
This being an argument or discussion or a conflict.
This discussion, that's where I was about to say.
When you paused and like, I already paused, you were gonna go on to something else there without a definition.
(laughing) Repairing is actually really looking at the meat of the matter and coming to a place where you're like, we feel, yes, this happened because just assume that it's going to happen.
You're going to have things where you say each other off or something goes wrong.
There is going to be some type of argument or rupture, but repairing is not just the apologizing, but the working on changing yourself for the future and discussing those things and not just saying, okay, we're done.
We came to a resolution, whatever it is, one person, one, one person lost, but coming back from it together and discussing it.
Okay, so the key there is a couple things come to mind.
Repair is the forward looking bit, but it's also the transition from, I'm in a state of argument to back into a state where we can work on things and how quickly you can move from that disagreement state to that co-working state or that building state is a sign of a healthy relationship.
Those that last over time can repair quickly.
It doesn't mean we don't do damage.
It doesn't mean we don't need to apologize.
It doesn't mean we don't do all these things.
It means we don't live in that chaos.
We bring it back to a state where we can keep working.
Yeah, and that doesn't take weeks or months.
Right, so if you have a pattern in your relationship where you stay in the hurt, you stay in the argument, you stay in the conflict, it's very hard to build and fix those things.
So a bad pattern, unhealthy pattern is staying in the hurt state and not repairing to a healthier state where you can work on that.
Absolutely.
That we're saying.
That one sounded a little clinical and everything, but I think the idea there is that healthy marriage is healthy relationships, try to get to a state where they can work on things and they do it quicker than unhealthy ones.
Correct.
Now, everything that we sort of talked there leans toward the unhealthy patterns, right?
But I think we're gonna share one more unhealthy pattern.
And this is one where I think we, we're still trying to figure out what this pattern is in our relationship because I think we have different perspectives on it.
So we're gonna call this our perspectives segment.
This is from her perspective, from his perspective.
Typically, this is where we put a gender lens on the topic.
And over the last couple of episodes, we've moved it a little bit from a gender topic to a my perspective, your perspective, which tends to align a little bit more with the male perspective and female perspective.
So this is the topic of what's the difference between teasing and a joke and a dig that landed in a way that was intended or not, unintended?
So I have a very, I have a biting sense of humor, very sarcastic.
My dad and my family, my home environment was very sarcastic.
So we used sarcasm and humor, and my daughters use sarcasm and humor, much more gently now than we did probably in our, when they were pre-teen teens, I think we were very, very much more sarcastic in our humor.
I think it's probably softened over the years and there's a whole bunch of reasons why.
And we've talked about some of those reasons in other episodes.
But this concept of I made a joke that maybe crossed the line and landed different from you versus how you heard it.
So tell me what's your perspective on this?
Because I was just joking.
It's apparently not a defense.
Yeah, yeah, that line is really hard for a lot of people.
It has a lot to do with timing, the tone of your voice.
Like that phrase, oh, too soon?
Yeah, sometimes it is too soon for sarcasm, for a joke about something that maybe is really fresh.
Or it's too personal and it's too true, because sometimes in my mind, the funniest jokes, they have a seed of truth in them.
And if that truth hits a little too hard to a point of something you're sensitive about or embarrassed about or defensive of what I think is just a jab, it's not necessarily even too soon.
It's just in an area that's too sensitive.
Is that another way of saying it?
And I was thinking that the longer your relationship is, there's all that history behind it.
Yeah, but it doesn't negate the fact that what I said was funny.
You just didn't take it as being funny.
Another time or place or context would have laughed my ass off, but at certain times it's not.
See, I think funny is funny whenever funny is there.
And you know what?
As part of the general, you know what?
We can say it doesn't happen, but our emotions cycle throughout the month.
No.
Exactly.
And what you might say at this point in that month might go over just fine.
Another point that month, it might be, how dare you?
So again, a joke is funny regardless of what is delivered.
It's just how is it received is maybe not funny.
So here's a question for you.
If I didn't mean it disrespectfully, but it made her feel disrespected, whose reality wins?
Was my joke funny or was her feelings of disrespect appropriate?
I'm going with, is that rhetorical?
Because I can be quiet if you want it to be rhetorical.
I bet it is rhetorical, but let's discuss.
Tell us in the comments.
Tell me.
I think the person feeling the feeling, not just disrespect.
Of course you feel that.
It could be anything.
Regardless of whether you meant it, that is how they perceived it.
And that's valid too.
Oh my gosh.
So not only are we having a relational discussion here, we're having a philosophical disagreement.
Because your offense is your response to my words.
That's your issue.
That's not my issue.
My intent behind the words matters to me.
How they landed with you is how they landed with you.
Those are two different things.
I shouldn't have to apologize for everything that offends somebody.
Because offense is a personal response to words.
Now, in a relationship, you have to find the right balance of those things.
And again, this is why it's a male perspective and a female perspective, or in our case, a Michael perspective and a Melissa perspective on this.
And I hope you're seeing that.
There's a couple of things here that I want to point out.
Yes, we do disagree on this.
And that's OK.
Second, since we are in a very healthy relationship, I understand when those words land inappropriately.
And I do actually apologize correctly, and not quite in a meaningful way.
Because yes, for you and me, I realize that when I say something that hits wrong, hits unintentionally, yeah, that wasn't my intent.
And I fix that.
The general statement of how you respond to what I say for other people, that's where the contentious point is.
But in our relationship, I try to fix it when I mess it up.
Yeah, it is a good point.
Because I am telling my clients quite often, you are not responsible for however people feel.
But sometimes maybe you are.
If you have an inkling before you said the thing, in a historical context or anything else.
In a relationship, you absolutely are.
Yes.
Cool.
I think that was actually a pretty good little banter there.
Banter.
I'm evaluating my own podcast so you know what you are.
All right.
Now, we have really spent a good bit of time on the unhealthy behavior side of this.
And you might be saying, "Hey, you're going to tell me about red flags and weather." So let's spend a beat on red flags because this is absolutely something you really need to be aware of.
Give me some characteristics of we've talked about patterns.
What makes it move from a pattern to a red flag?
One of them is, we talked about a pattern is you're working together on that.
There are times in a relationship where one person is not even trying.
Yeah.
That is a huge red flag because as I tell my clients, you can work on your communication.
You can work on your responses.
You can work on you and how you act in a relationship.
You cannot work on the relationship all by yourself.
Right.
There are two people in this relationship.
So a big red flag is if one partner doesn't think there's anything wrong or they don't care and they're not trying to work on things.
Yeah.
A foundation for any differentiation between an unhealthy pattern and a bad behavior is do you have two committed, honest people working together?
If you don't, that's a good sign that it's a red flag.
Okay.
Give me some actions areas because we've talked about relational areas, but there are types of actions that are relational that are almost always going to be clear red flags.
Yeah.
If one person has control over the other, where they're going, what they're doing or financially.
You know, yeah, you can't have a credit card on our account.
That's a big red flag if there's control.
Okay, so control issues.
Yes.
Physical control, access to information control, like control issues, yeah, who knows?
One of the things that I think is most blaring is if you are afraid to speak your mind or to be able to share when something's bothering you with the other person.
Not necessarily physically afraid, but you're worried.
The phrase I hear a lot is walking on eggshells.
If I say that, they're gonna respond this.
Yeah.
So even though it's a major issue, I can't say that because I know what the response is gonna be.
Yep, so fear and control is a huge differentiator.
You should have the comfort and security in your relationship that you can openly communicate.
And if you don't have that, that's a signal that maybe you have a red flag in your relationship.
And we did a whole episode that talks about building predictability and comfort into your relationship and the importance of that.
And a lot of it focused on just that.
How do you build a relationship where you are free to come to somebody?
If you don't have a partner who's willing to work on those things, back to the first point, you can be working on it, and you are not in a position where you feel comfortable because of the repercussions, the emotional repercussions, maybe the physical repercussions, red flag.
The main thing about the flags is you usually can't.
I didn't like the word fix.
So I was struggling here for-- Help, work on.
You cannot resolve.
Work on and resolve a lot of the red flags, just the two of you.
I've seen it too many times.
It's not gonna work.
You need outside help.
That could be a minister, it can be a counselor.
It can't be done on its own pretty much with red flags.
Yep, so to put a close on the red flag discussion, red flag issues are much bigger than a podcast.
Listening to podcasts such as this or any other podcast is great for dealing with unhealthy patterns or working on your relationship.
But if you are feeling like you are seeing red flags in your relationship, you need to see people whose job it is to help you resolve those issues.
Let's pivot back to unhealthy behaviors and how you do the work to make those into healthy behaviors.
And we'll give you two really clear examples from our relationship to sort of help illustrate this.
Now, Melissa, you've been very nice in sharing your stonewalling versus needing a pause, et cetera.
And one of the things that we, when we recognized this pattern, and it took us a while beyond the having kids discussion to realize, oh, wait a minute, there's a pattern here in maturing in our relationship enough that Melissa, we quite retrospectively, came to the realization, oh, wait, wait, this is unhealthy.
I have to start dealing with this.
And one of the things is we were talking through this that became really apparent to us is that we needed to pivot our, the way we were disagreeing with each other and realizing that a lot of times we're disagreeing with each other, but that's actually not the issue.
It's a third issue sitting in there that we're actually trying to solve.
And so changing it from you versus I in these discussions to, hey, we're teammates, we're together, we're trying to solve whatever this problem is, or we're trying to make whatever the decision is, the reframing of it from you and I arguing or disagreeing to, no, no, we're a team, it's us versus the problem, it's us versus the issue, really was a game changer in that.
That sound right?
Yeah.
Give me your perspective on that, because you're the one who had to overcome that problem.
Well, I was thinking a lot of people think about, you know, winning and losing, and if you're a team, that's not it.
No, we're working together.
And I think a lot of people go from, you know, I'm gonna have the last word.
I'm gonna be able to finish this.
I'm gonna get my way.
So is it a fair statement to say that when we started framing it as us versus the problem, it made it easier for you to have those discussions, because you knew I wasn't gonna come at you or the issue, we were gonna very concretely look at the issue?
Definitely.
Yeah, without a doubt, once we were both on the same page, I think we had to get there, which will be our next segment, but.
So from the perspective of the person who doesn't Stonewall, who is willing to have the conversations, took me a little bit to realize that, hey, if I just reframe when you come to me with things, instead of, hey, I disagree with you, listen, I disagree with this, or we gotta fix this issue, just by me being willing to reframe it, create an environment where you are able to stop the Stonewalling, right?
So-- Yes, more comfortable with-- Yeah, so you had the responsibility of speaking up, I had the responsibility of creating a framework that you could actually speak up in.
Absolutely.
I shouldn't have to do that for you, but in relation to do that for people.
You do that for people.
Yeah, now what did you do for me when it comes to the non-apology apology?
Slapped you around a bit.
Yeah, pretty much.
And we're not talking physically, don't get all over there.
No, no, no, I pointed it out.
Multiple times.
In very clear, clear manner.
Right, was I respectful?
No.
Why would you be respectful about it?
(both laughing) Because that's what you do in a healthy relationship.
We got there, we got there.
Yeah, so we also made it very clear that the but was never acceptable in an apology.
And after probably lots of kicking and screaming and disagreeing, I've come to realize, yep, that's right.
So let's give an example recently of how I'm getting better at doing this.
And again, I don't ever get to a state where I don't have to apologize.
So just a few weeks ago, we were doing a podcast episode planning, and some episode planings are great, and we're just kicking right along.
And other times we get into cycles that just don't really work very well.
And I don't even remember what the topic was because that's not the point of this story.
But you had said something or gone down some path, and here I'm trying to justify why I did whatever I did.
But I said something that was rude, and it was way harsher than it was in my mind.
But as soon as the words came out, I was like, oh shit, that was not how I should have said that.
And again, no foul language, none of that sort of stuff.
It's more that contempt and just disrespectful way of speaking.
And immediately in the moment, I'm like, whoa, hey, sorry.
That was not what I intended to say in that manner.
I did not intend that to be harsh.
I heard it as soon as I said it.
And I apologize for it in the moment.
What I didn't do was try to say in that moment, what I really meant or to justify why I came out wrong.
I just basically said, oh shit, that landed hard.
That should not have landed that way.
It was delivered hard.
So I understood how it landed.
Fair enough?
Yes, that definitely.
So that power to separate and to actually just grow as an individual and realize, oop, sometimes I just need to apologize.
And the healthy way is to revisit that.
The justification or the explanation or the second attempt to say it better comes later.
It doesn't come into the heat of the moment.
And eventually we got to your smile and say it.
Oh, because I just wanted to point out in this example, the non-apology, the butt comes in many forms.
Oh yeah, it's not just the one word.
However, or I was just, or in my defense.
It's not a grammar lesson.
It is absolutely, I'm sorry that came out harder than I wanted or whatever the I'm sorry is, full stop.
Right, if the justification comes right after the apology.
Yeah, people use a lot of words for it.
But I didn't say butt, eh, you did.
Yeah, I have a good vocabulary.
I could have probably said it in many other ways, but yes.
That's a good clarifying point.
For those of you out there that, well, I didn't say butt.
Yeah, you sorta did.
Well, let's bring this all home with maybe the healthiest thing you can do in your relationship that we have done in a very key area of our relationship.
And we'll share this during our Pen to Paper segment.
Our Pen to Paper segment, we try to give you a practical challenge or reflection to help you build your own long lasting marriage story.
Here is something we have done very clearly in our relationship that we hope you put into yours.
So, Melissa, what is the thing that we did?
Name your pattern out loud.
Come to Jesus.
You do not share it.
It's going to keep repeating.
So the first step would be identifying, well, what is the pattern?
Once I realized I was stonewalling...
You have to share it, but not in the moment because it's not going to be heard.
This is another time, I don't know, you're going for a walk or you're talking, during a calm moment in your life, share that with your partner.
Yeah, when you're in a repaired state, just use our language from earlier.
There you go.
You're not in the mix, you're not in the conflict, but you are in a good area, you're repaired, bring up the topic and say, you know what?
I stonewall.
Yeah.
Find it for your husband who doesn't know what the hell stonewalling is.
Or it can look different for different people.
I mean, the concept's gonna be the same across the board, but people do it differently.
Yeah, so this is our example.
So now, let's flip that.
You name the pattern of stonewalling.
I have a pattern that's developed over the last, probably 10 years, that I did not have earlier on, which is I also go quiet.
But I go quiet for an entirely different reason than you do.
Yours is stonewalling.
Mine is more a time to realize why or am I even really upset about something?
So I used to be much, my emotions came much closer to the surface.
If I was upset about something or I was annoyed by something, it came out really, really clearly.
Maybe even to that contemporary, where the eye rolls or the whatever's would come out.
In the last 15 years or so, I've become a lot more mature in how I deal with a lot of things.
And I've also realized that many things that I used to just get mad about or argue about or be upset about don't even matter.
Like they don't matter at all.
And I think age, wisdom, maturity, whatever you wanna do, I've realized in myself that there are times where I'm getting agitated and I honestly don't even think it's about what's going on right here.
And it might not even be related to you.
It might be I'm annoyed by a work thing or I'm annoyed by something else, but it's coming out and I'm like, I'm just a little annoyed by what the heck's going on right now.
And I need a moment to process.
And this maybe goes back to the men sometimes in a moment to process.
So maybe I do fall into this, not to figure out how I'm gonna approach the subject, but just to figure out if I wanna approach the subject at all.
Like this might not even be an issue.
And if I lean in now and get into it, then I'm gonna make it something that it probably wasn't.
So for me, I throw away a lot of potential conflict by just having a moment to be quiet and realize, man, I actually don't give a crap about that.
That is not a hill to die on.
I don't care about that.
Or honestly, why was I even bothered by that?
That wouldn't bother me on a Tuesday, but today it bothered me.
And so I go quiet for a very different reason.
So in our Pen to Paper here, naming that out loud, I've told Melissa that like, hey, when I go quiet, you just gotta give me a minute because I'm good odds are I'm just trying to figure out if I'm even upset about this or not.
Good to know.
I told you that.
Don't ask why you're hearing that for the first time.
We're not doing the pen to paper in the moment.
So this is something that we have done.
Any time.
Anything else to add on the Pen to Paper?
No.
Okay.
So that's your Pen to Paper segment.
Try to name your pattern out loud with your partner in a time of calm and reflection.
Yes.
Don't do it in the heat of the moment.
That is the key.
Yep.
All right.
Let's bring it home.
Share a few closing thoughts and then get out of this thing.
So we clearly all have unhealthy patterns in our relationship.
And the challenge is to be able to recognize those patterns while you're inside them.
Easier said than done.
For me, the non-apology apology is a great example of a blind spot I had in my interactions with Melissa for many years.
And she pointed it out to me.
And as we've spoken about quite a bit today, I had stonewalling, shutting down because I was uncomfortable with conflict.
And I would just rather not talk about it.
When you step back and look at your relationship, which patterns do you recognize in yourself?
Let us know in the comments.
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