Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When You're Successful At Everything Except Relationships

Transcript

When You're Successful At Everything Except Relationships · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom Show.
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  Today we're going to talk about a common issue.
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  I work with a lot of successful people, and they tell me that
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  they're successful at everything except for interpersonal
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  relationships, particularly the intimate relationship with their
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  spouse so they can have friends and colleagues that things you
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  know go well with. But in romantic relationships,
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  and possibly also relationships with their kids, things tend to
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  go poorly. And this is pretty common for
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  adult children of dysfunctional families.
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  And I will discuss hi, how, why, etcetera, right after I tell you
• 0:44
  to subscribe. My most recent subscribe Oh, who
• 0:47
  cares? The one coming up is about being
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  a romantic, which is not asexual, but is that same thing
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  for the romance sphere. And I will discuss what a
• 0:57
  romantic is and why. It explains some of the
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  difficulties you may have had in your relationship for for the
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  people that it applies to. Obviously that means when you
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  don't experience romantic attraction as asexuals, when you
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  don't experience sexual attraction.
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  So you know, but it's it's a recent term.
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  So I want to, it's not a recent thing, but it's a recent term
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  and so I'm going to discuss that.
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  So now moving on to the successful at everything but
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  relationships. So there are a lot of people
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  that are super, super smart and successful and motivated and all
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  of these things do really well for them at work and the higher
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  up the ladder they climb, they get to a place where they have
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  increased autonomy and they can kind of do what they want.
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  Of course they work very hard, but they work very hard within,
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  you know, their own milieu that they have created.
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  So particularly more CEO entrepreneurial types or
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  corporate types that get to really the head of where
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  there's, you know, at the top of a lot of different people.
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  They have a lot of people under them.
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  They can really do a lot of what they want and they can really
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  set the frame. Now I talk about this in my CEO
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  podcast. You should go back to that if
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  that. If this resonates with you.
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  If you are CEO, I have other ones about lawyers and doctors
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  and these are all very successful people.
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  The more that you can set your own frame, your own schedule,
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  your own meetings, your own travel, your own ideas, you
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  know, shape how the direction of whatever happens to you at work,
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  the more autonomy you have. This can be very, very good for
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  people who are adult children of dysfunctional families because
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  they never really had a lot of autonomy at home.
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  And now because the parents were, let's say, depressed or
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  drinking or or, you know, difficult in some way,
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  narcissistic, borderline, whatever.
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  And so adult children of dysfunctional families, the more
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  autonomy they get later on, the better it goes.
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  Because in some ways, this can compensate for having always
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  felt that your parents, your dysfunctional parents, were
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  calling the shots. And when you get out of there,
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  then of course you know a boss calls the shots, or you know
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  whatever. And eventually, though, you get
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  to a place where you call the shots.
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  And then if you're a very smart person, you can succeed almost
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  limitlessly, right? Because you can do everything
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  you want to do Now, in which areas does this not work?
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  Well, you might think it doesn't work with any people then
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  because you can never exactly call the shots with other
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  people, but you can't pick who your friends are, and your
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  friends don't really change that much.
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  So a lot of people that need a lot of autonomy, they have
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  fairly, you know, flexible friends.
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  They can call the shots, They say where they're going to eat.
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  They say when they're going to meet up, and then that's what
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  happens. Or they just see these people
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  like kind of certain times certain frameworks like, oh, we
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  meet up to run together, we're in a running group or you know,
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  we we do happy hour, you know, like once a month or so.
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  And so it's a very, you know, a time restrained, kind of very
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  specific thing. And sure, you could, you could
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  do that or you could even let the person pick where you're
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  going to meet or when you're going to run or whatever because
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  it's very, very limited. You know the amount that you
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  have to be flexible is very limited, but within a marriage
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  it's not. The other person picks it like
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  half of what you do. So there are two ways that these
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  sorts of people that really require a lot of autonomy deal
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  with this. The first ways, they may pick
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  somebody very deferential and that's usually somebody with
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  pretty low self esteem and so that person goes along with
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  everything that they want them to do at first.
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  But then I frequently see these people in couples counseling
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  after the lower self esteem, deferential spouse of the
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  autonomous successful person no longer wants to go along and
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  with everything that they want anymore.
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  They're sick of that role. They have developed more
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  confidence, or they've just had children and they feel like
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  their decisions are important and should be taken into account
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  and their preferences, etcetera. The other possibility is that
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  these sort of people just marry somebody similar to themselves,
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  who is also very successful and hardheaded, but they're in the
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  honeymoon stage when they meet, so everything seems fun and
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  exciting. They're two very, you know,
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  intense, interesting people and they're both successful and
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  they're in the honeymoon stage, so they're basically drunk on
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  new love. And then the honeymoon stage
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  fades and it turns into a constant battleground where the
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  people are very competitive with one another and all of their
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  individual issues from childhood come out.
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  And the marriage is the playground for those issues.
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  And they are constantly trying to assert dominance over the
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  other because they feel that they are on some level,
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  subconsciously, they are trapped back at home where they had zero
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  ability to make any sort of decisions or to get their needs
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  met. So one specific way that I see
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  this manifest is when a guy feels like he can't have sex
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  with his wife anywhere near the amount that he wants to, and he
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  feels restrained and he feels constricted and he feels that he
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  can do everything he wants everywhere else and he cannot
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  get his sexual needs met at home.
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  And so then he will come in and he will say she is the only
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  person that I have a problem with.
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  Everybody else thinks I'm fine or gets along with me or right,
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  and she tells me that I don't and that's why we're not having
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  sex. And so this person is very, very
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  frustrated. They feel that they cannot win.
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  They feel it. It is not them, and it is their
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  partner, because their partner is the one who has problems with
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  them. Everybody else defers to them at
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  work, etc. Thinks that they're so smart,
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  thinks that they're a genius, but yet this they cannot get
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  their needs met because they are not nice enough or or responsive
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  enough or romantic enough or whatever it is that the wife
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  wants. Another way that this manifests
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  is when the wife, I'll just do the wife, but it could be the
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  husband too, could be so I'll do the woman so that I don't get
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  any e-mail about the gender whatever.
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  So hard charging woman, you know and the type that I talk about
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  with the Lean in wife and the underachieving husband.
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  I have a post like that. So she's very successful, gets
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  along with everybody at work. Everybody puts her on a
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  pedestal. What a, you know, successful
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  woman, so smart. So on top of her game and then
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  at home, you know, this is the only person that she doesn't get
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  along with his hip. Well, it's frequently because
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  she's really, really condescending to her.
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  You know, she got a guy who would go along with everything
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  she wanted to do, but then she's he, you know, she's very, very
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  condescending and about, honestly, his competence or his
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  intelligence or anything. So it was two sides of the same
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  coin, right? She wanted somebody that would
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  defer to her, but then she doesn't necessarily want the guy
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  who defers to her. And so just so you can see, this
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  is not a gender issue, It happens a lot with men as well.
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  They want a woman who defers to them, but then they become bored
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  and disinterested and condescending toward this woman
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  because she never has any opinions or ideas or anything,
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  not really taking into account that they would be kind of
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  terrible with any ideas. And in fact she has sometimes
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  had some ideas as the guy has in the previous example.
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  These are really just the same example the the condescended to
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  partner usually has had some ideas, but they get shot down so
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  quickly that the you know, the successful person doesn't even
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  really remember that they were spoken because you know, they
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  have a million reasons why nothing that isn't their way
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  would would be good, right? So or would be bad rather.
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  So there are many reasons that people can be very very
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  successful with others, but then very bad in their marriage.
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  And they tend to blame this on the other person being
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  obstructive, putting up lots of hoops that they have to jump
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  through and or just being boring slash stupid.
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  Although they're usually too smart to say boring or stupid.
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  Instead they say things like passive or doesn't really know
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  what she wants or something like that.
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  Not realizing that this is really the only kind of person
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  with whom they ever would have been compatible at the early
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  stages were of of their, you know, career and just who they
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  are as a person was not going to be somebody that is drawn to an
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  equal player. You know, they wanted somebody
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  who would let them win. Or in the other case, very
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  quickly things became contentious because they married
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  based on this super high level of passion and attraction to a
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  similar person, but then they were unable to make things work
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  because they are too similar and neither one of them learns to
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  compromise. So how do these couples usually
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  work out in couples counseling? What usually happens is that the
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  very successful person starts to stops blaming everything on the
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  spouse. Sure, like the spouse has their
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  own problems etcetera, but usually that person can't do it
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  hasn't been even. So the very successful person
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  can always be like, I get along with everybody and I'm super
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  successful in every single domain and I'm highly competent.
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  And I got this award, by the way, and I'm on these boards and
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  I do this and I do that. And the other, and if you're
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  thinking, is this person narcissistic, sometimes they do
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  have those traits, all of them, some of them, whatever, you
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  know, and it has usually been a false self that they erected
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  this persona, protected them as a child when they were
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  disappointed consistently by a caregiver.
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  So they basically became their own superhero that they could
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  always count on themselves to be successful and to do the right
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  thing and to impress other people.
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  So yes, sometimes this person does have narcissistic traits.
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  And who are they drawn to? Narcissists are frequently drawn
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  to people with borderline personality, as I've talked
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  about before the podcast. Just search the term narcissist
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  on Spotify and you'll see it. The narcissist, borderline
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  dynamic. You know, narcissist and Dr.
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  Psych Mom, there's a lot of stuff on narcissist that's on
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  Spotify. But the the point being that
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  sometimes it's people with borderline personality traits.
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  Sometimes it's like very, very codependent and secure people,
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  you know, and those often people have borderline traits and
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  sometimes, as with my first example, it's just fellow people
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  with narcissistic traits. And then that becomes a super
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  huge power struggle. So in couples counseling, these
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  people learn to stop blaming every single thing on their
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  spouse and to say, you know what, just cuz I'm successful at
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  work does not mean that I'm somehow a better human being.
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  The ways that I like to operate i.e. with fairly full autonomy
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  despite being in a stressful occupation or having a lot on my
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  plate, those things do not work for two people empathizing with
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  one another and working together.
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  In fact, there is nobody that I need to rely on to meet my basic
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  needs at all except for my spouse.
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  So in that regard, of course I only have problems with my
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  spouse. Because when my spouse doesn't
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  meet my needs and isn't perfect in giving me sex or giving me
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  adoration or whatever, then they are retraumatizing me in the
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  ways because my needs weren't my needs were not fully met as a
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  child. So my spouse is really the only
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  one who can retraumatize me and that's why the spouse is also
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  the only one who can repair into.
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  You and I discussed that in posts and podcasts as well.
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  So working with these couples can be fulfilling because they
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  do learn. Obviously this person's very
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  successful person, so frequently they can learn very quickly.
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  You know, CEO types love to be coached.
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  It's like their favorite thing. I've said this before, they love
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  feedback, especially if they feel that the feedback is on
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  target. So they can learn that they have
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  been blaming too much on their spouse and that their spouse's
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  personality cannot even logically be the entire issue of
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  why things are going wrong in the relationship.
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  And that the skill set required to be successful at work and the
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  skill set required to be successful in a relationship
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  such as compromise, flexibility and empathy are not anywhere the
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  same. You know, being a hard charger
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  at home is terrible, Nobody wants to be married to that
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  person, but you could be very successful with a hard charging
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  personality style in the workplace.
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  So anyway, I hope that you guys found this little little podcast
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  to be interesting. The the point of the matter is
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  that there is nobody, no marriage is just no.
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  Marital problems are just due to one person being somehow bad,
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  stupid, wrong, boring, passive, whatever or an asshole.
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  So on the other hand, by the way, the person, the other
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  person, the spouse of the high achieving person, they have been
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  saying, my God, it's impossible to live with this person.
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  Nobody could live with this person.
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  They are the problem. They're not the problem either.
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  So two people in this dynamic, often a very dramatic and
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  volatile dynamic. 2. People need to learn to take
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  ownership of their own issues, their own codependencies, the
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  reasons that they picked one another, and how they could make
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  their relationship work utilizing skills that have
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  previously allowed them to be successful in other
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  interpersonal relationships, but that they just do not think to
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  mobilize or are too triggered or dysregulated to mobilize in the
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  conflict, in the in the marriage itself.
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  All right, well, if this spoke to you that it's something to
• 14:32
  introspect deeply about and possibly could be your reason to
• 14:35
  get into couples counseling. If you are in a dynamic like
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  this, and I hope you guys all have a great day, you should all
• 14:41
  join my Facebook group, the Blue Subscribe button on the Doctor
• 14:44
  Psych Mom Facebook page if you want to have more interaction
• 14:47
  with me. Only 499 a month and I'll talk
• 14:50
  to y'all soon. Ah, you did subscribe, so thanks
• 14:53
  for subscribing. Oh, no, no, no.
• 14:54
  This isn't a subscriber. So stupid.
• 14:57
  The next one is a subscriber. The a romantic one, and you're
• 15:00
  gonna really like it. So you should subscribe right
• 15:03
  now and I'll talk to everybody soon.
• 15:05
  Have a great day.