Latest / Behind Every Great Man / What If You Don't Recognize Yourself Anymore?
Transcript
- Jessica Zubchevich: Behind every great man is a great, confident, exceptional woman. Hi, and welcome to Behind Every Great Man. I am Jessica, your host. Behind every great man is a great woman who knows returning to herself is one of the most important things she can do for herself and her marriage. So before there was a marriage, before there were children, there was the woman. There was you, there was me. And we built this life. We had our own needs, our own wants, our own desires, our own thoughts, our own career, our own education, and we worked hard for what we had and we built a life. And then wifehood came in and motherhood came in and life started to change drastically, but not all at one time. I look at it as like a slow boil, a slow progression, a slow change that the woman and everything that you were, you are started pushing slowly to the back burner and made room for the obligations, the routine, the schedule, the mental load. The needs, the wants, the desires of others, the emotional weight of your family holding the home, holding the expectations. And she had to make room for all of this. So she couldn't help but put her own needs, her own wants, her own desires to the backburner. We start pulling from ourselves because this is what is being asked of us. This is what these roles and all of their Complexity is asking of us. And we answered and we showed up, not truly knowing all that this role was going to be asking of us. Not truly knowing the amount of weight that would be placed on our shoulders. Did you know what it was gonna cost? I sure didn't. I knew it was gonna be a lot, but I had no idea the amount of weight. And responsibility that's gonna be placed on our shoulders in motherhood, in marriage. It's a lot. And no one's standing next to us saying, Hey, don't lose yourself. Make sure that you don't lose yourself in this. This is what women do. It is our nature to fully immerse ourselves and others and our loved ones and their needs. It's part of what we do best. But in that, we can lose ourselves. So when I have my stepkids come into town and their partners come into town and we have a full house around the holidays, over the summer, whatever it is, I fully immerse myself in being there for my family, for them. What they are going to need, the preparation, setting up the rooms, stocking everything. Does every room have toilet paper? Do they have fresh towels, fresh linens? Activities. What's everyone gonna do? What does everyone want to do? Do I need to get tickets for things? Will one person like this activity, but three of them won't? Or what can we do that is gonna be fun for a three year old and a 30 year old? The remembering, the anticipating, the preparation, and I fully immerse myself in this. And when I do that, I feel lost in it in a sense. It's me, but it's not fully me. And I want to try to really explain this. The parts of me that are in the house present are the parts of me that my family needs and wants. Our loving side, nurturing, compassionate, empathetic, the kind, thoughtful part of me. She's nice. That's the word. She's nice. And nice Is great. Nice is good. It's nice. And nice, honestly, for me, is boring. It's vanilla. It's very general. It feels very generic. It's not fire. It's not radiance. It's not sensual. It's not spontaneous. It's not edgy. That's fun to Jessica. ⁓ Of course, I'm not gonna be bringing these parts of me in during our family gatherings. It's just not the time. It's this fire inside that is pushed away. That fire isn't present when I'm in mom mode. Esther Perrell speaks into this beautifully, simple and perfect. Quote: The mom does not become sexy. The woman does. You have to retrieve the woman from the mother. And she may need to separate to do that. That is the reintroduction that I speak of. When I am fully immersed in family time, and my husband wants to connect with me, wants to be intimate with me, and he will make a gesture or a touch or a comment. I will literally look at him like he has five heads. I will look at him like he's speaking to me in a foreign language. I am so disconnected from myself. I feel so far away from myself that I don't know what he's saying. I can't connect with it. And it's nothing that he's doing. It's not that I don't want to. It is just I feel so far gone from it. Can you relate to what I'm talking about? There's such a disconnection from myself. And in those moments, my husband would get so frustrated. He would get so hurt not understanding the disconnection. Like he did nothing wrong. Nothing happened. We didn't get in an argument or something. But I would be distant from him. And this has taken us Years to understand, to get what the heck is going on. I've had to really do deep dives in therapy together by myself to understand what was going on. And I've learned that there is a reintroduction that needs to happen first with myself and then. With my husband. But our desire doesn't go away. It's not that it's gone. It's just far off. It's this faint light in the distance. And we have to work to get it back. It's not just desire for my husband. It's desire for myself, for life, for anything that's just mine. When I need to come back to myself, Keith knows. So if family leaves on Sunday, on Monday. I'm gonna take time just for myself. I'd love to go to lunch with girlfriends and I'll do that. And there's a time for that. But before all of that, I need time just by myself. Going to a cafe to get a cup of coffee, sitting having a glass of wine, just me in my thoughts. And that time is used as a reintroduction. And Keith knows it when I'm like, I'm gonna go and get some coffee. He knows what I'm doing. So I sit, I don't listen to anything, I don't read anything, I get reacquainted with myself. Simple. Hi, Jessica, how are you? How are you doing? I'll acknowledge myself for whatever I just did with my family, how it went, how I showed up. You made it beautiful. That was a great time with family. Not perfect. Not everything went according to plan, but you showed up and you did your best. And I see that. So I'll acknowledge myself for the things that were seen and the things that were unseen, the things that I did behind the scenes that nobody saw, the planning, the prepping, the remembering, the showing up for people, all the things that happen behind the scenes. I acknowledge myself for that. Once I do that, I put it to the side. And I just ask, How are you? How are you doing? How are you? Really? How are you doing? And I answer that honestly. However, that shows up, I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I feel disconnected. I feel lost. I feel drained. And then I am gentle with myself and I find my way back into my own skin and I look around and And I get reacquainted. Another way that I do this, we have a gym in our garage, and I go in there and I put on just very soft music, something like instrumental, and I slowly and gently stretch. I move my body, I touch my skin, not in a sexual way, just feeling my own touch. And that is another way that I get. Reacquainted with myself. It's a coming home. It's a returning and a welcoming back. Once I do that, then there's a reacquainting that I do a reintroduction with my husband. Say that Monday night, he knows then that I'm not gonna want to be sexual. Maybe the next day, I need to get reacquainted with him. I need to feel his tenderness. I need to be held by him. I just want to cuddle. I just want to make some dinner and chill and just relax in his arms and feel his closeness. And I want to talk. I'll ask questions about what he thought about this time, the same thing, how it went. And then I direct it to him. How are you doing? How are you feeling? And we get reacquainted. So there's a coming home to myself in my own skin, in my own body. I'll feel it. And then I get reacquainted with my husband. How are you doing? And then once I feel like I'm back, I start coming into myself, into my body again, things that I want, things I'm desiring. I can be intimate with my husband and feel good about it, feel complete, feel whole. But he used to get very frustrated and hurt. He would feel rejected by me. And I didn't know how to explain it. That that's not where I'm at. And I'm not trying to do this. It is just when we are consumed with motherhood and what it asks of us. We get disconnected from ourselves and we have to return. And now he knows when he sees me in full mom mode, he knows that I'm just not there. But he trusts that I will return and I will do my work to return. And he waits patiently for my return because he also knows. The beauty that I create in our home, the presence that I give to our loved ones for the children, how much I give myself to those situations and their needs and wanting to make it so special for everybody. It takes all of me. It takes all of us. It takes all of our energy and our presence to show up fully for them. And he knows that. And then he also knows when I return. It's like, ⁓ there she is. There's my wife. Hi. Esther Perra also has a quote on this. The person I once was but lost is the person you once knew. And I think about it in the context of marriage, how he can feel his wife is disappearing. And not know how to reach her. But she's not gone. She's just buried under everything the moment asked of her. Let's take some time for our weekly pause. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, please take this time for you. If you can, close your eyes. Let's all take a deep inhale together through your nose. Exhale it out through your mouth. Another deep inhale through your nose. Exhale it out through your mouth. One more soothing breath in. And let it go. Take a moment to feel your beating heart. This is you, sister. The real you. Underneath all of the roles and the responsibilities, and the giving, and the showing up. She's right here. I want you to ask her one question. What do you need right now? Not what your husband needs or your children, not the schedule. What do you need to and let her answer. It could be something small, just five minutes of quiet or a walk by myself. The answer come without judgment. Whatever she said, sister, that matters. the smallest thing this is the start of coming back to her. Let's all take one last deep inhale together. Exhale it out and open your eyes. Sister, she's not gone. She just needs to find her way back. But she's waiting for you. And so is your husband. Behind every great man is a great woman who knows returning to herself is one of the most important things she can do for herself and her marriage. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this week's podcast episode. You can find more episodes of Behind Every Great Man on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if this spoke to you, please share it with your girlfriends and subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next week.