Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Home Renovations: Creative Outlet Or Waste Of Money?

Transcript

Home Renovations: Creative Outlet Or Waste Of Money? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi, everybody, and welcome to the doctor psych mom, show
• 0:09
  today. I am going to talk about home,
• 0:11
  renovations and how this destroys many marriages, and a
• 0:16
  different way to kind of think about this.
• 0:17
  So that maybe you're not in the same boat, but before I do that,
• 0:22
  I have course want to tell you all to subscribe, like, I always
• 0:25
  do because it is so important that you hear all those 75
• 0:31
  episodes. I think.
• 0:32
  By now that you have not heard yet, if you have not subscribed,
• 0:35
  A lots on female arousal, female sexuality.
• 0:38
  And the most recent one was mr. And mrs.
• 0:42
  Divorced and spirit, the couple who is just not feeling it and
• 0:44
  leaving living in a Loveless marriage.
• 0:46
  So, you should that's part of my couples you meet in counseling
• 0:50
  series, and you will want to hear that if you haven't.
• 0:53
  So, anyway, the home renovation topic, I have many clients who
• 0:58
  are in the throes of home renovations over the years, of
• 1:02
  course, many, many of them. And it's like really interesting
• 1:06
  to me. I grew up in an apartment.
• 1:07
  I don't think anything has changed for the duration that I
• 1:10
  was there, nor has it probably been since so that is obviously
• 1:14
  a real crazy scenario. That is unusual to never have
• 1:18
  anything changed at all because my parents were too anxious to
• 1:22
  do so, but what it does do is it gives me a different kind of
• 1:27
  perspective on this, which is like that.
• 1:31
  I mean, it's kind of like a lot of stuff when you grow up as an
• 1:34
  adult child of a disc. So family in whatever sort of
• 1:38
  dysfunction, it was makes you feel like an anthropologist or a
• 1:41
  Martian and some ways. When You observe more normative
• 1:44
  human rituals and anybody that I'm talking to that grew up in a
• 1:48
  dysfunctional, family will know what I'm talking about and
• 1:50
  that's why there are books like the adult child's guide to
• 1:54
  what's normal because like, you don't fucking know, you know, at
• 1:57
  all. And so it can of course, there's
• 2:02
  many downsides to being on the periphery of Of human Norms.
• 2:06
  But the one positive is that it can give you like an outside,
• 2:10
  the box perspective. So this is always been just like
• 2:13
  crazy to be it out like that. People are paying money like on
• 2:18
  purpose, putting themselves under stress, you know, like on
• 2:22
  purpose because they are choosing to do it as.
• 2:26
  So, these all these home shows, I mean, I could barely get
• 2:29
  through one of these hope shows. Because to be, it's like, as
• 2:32
  though, like, somebody was like, so, you know what I'm going to
• 2:34
  do. I'll go like, cut off my arm and
• 2:37
  I have to it's like my dream is so only have one arm.
• 2:41
  So the rest of the show is going to be about the six months that
• 2:45
  I have to learn to cope as an amputee is going to be really
• 2:48
  really hard. But it always has been my dream
• 2:50
  to have one arm. It's like what the fuck?
• 2:53
  So it's like so interesting because it's so self-inflicted
• 2:59
  and it's also taught it. Also speaks to one of my
• 3:02
  favorite topics. Besides, you know, the female
• 3:06
  orgasm which is the hedonic treadmill, which is like the
• 3:10
  minute that people make some fucking money is like they just
• 3:14
  go and spend it and get right back on the treadmill.
• 3:18
  So like now instead of complaining about which you
• 3:21
  know, ten dollar meal, you're going to go to people are
• 3:24
  complaining about which you know, hundred fifty dollar meal,
• 3:27
  they're going to go to and it's like the same complaint and the
• 3:30
  same frustration, the same irritation.
• 3:33
  So it's like my eyes will not work like You know, at all if
• 3:37
  you're just going to kind of use your money to stay in the same
• 3:41
  frustrating patterns or to inflict, new frustrating
• 3:44
  patterns upon yourself. Such as for example, the
• 3:47
  inability to use one's kitchen for like a month because it's
• 3:51
  being renovated. And then the excuse me that is
• 3:54
  can be your dream kitchen but like, you know, you just like
• 3:58
  maybe don't have to have a dream kitchen.
• 4:00
  Like, that's also an option. So it is really super
• 4:04
  interesting to me. And it is always an end and it's
• 4:08
  great if people love doing it, like the people that really love
• 4:11
  doing it and they're always so exciting.
• 4:13
  Like these Renovations are awesome like my house.
• 4:15
  This basically my house, basically, my art project,
• 4:18
  people don't obviously articulated like this but the
• 4:21
  feeling of certain people is, my house is like, my art project, I
• 4:25
  am creative, this is my template, this is my easel is
• 4:29
  my, what's the word I'm looking for somebody, you in the back
• 4:33
  canvas. The house is my canvas and I am
• 4:38
  expressing my individual self. This is wonderful.
• 4:42
  We're going to get takeout for a month.
• 4:43
  I don't give a shit because honestly like this thing is
• 4:47
  going to be so fulfilling for me.
• 4:49
  Cool. Like for like the ten percent of
• 4:52
  people I talk to that like really are into it.
• 4:56
  Cool. But like 90% of people the way
• 4:59
  that they talk about it is like this situation that is like like
• 5:03
  a disease has fallen up. A plague has fallen upon their
• 5:06
  house. It's like they talked about in
• 5:08
  hushed tones like somebody's died, we've started renovating
• 5:11
  the kitchen. It's like you choose that, you
• 5:15
  know, you chose to write evade the fucking kitchen.
• 5:18
  So 8, you gotta kind of there's so many variables at play, for
• 5:23
  why? This is such a stressful time in
• 5:25
  people's marriages because usually maybe not to the same
• 5:29
  degree as me. And for what it's worth, I by
• 5:32
  the way, have renovated a previous It's home that I lived
• 5:36
  in because of course, as I said, I grew up in an apartment.
• 5:38
  I didn't really it's Renovations are just like something from TV
• 5:42
  for me. So I was like, I'm going to add
• 5:43
  a sunroom. They did I added the sunroom?
• 5:46
  It was all good. I don't think I could have
• 5:50
  thought of a way to fight with my previous husband over the
• 5:52
  sunroom, because it was only a positive thing that we were
• 5:56
  doing. There was like zero stress
• 5:58
  because to me, this was super big privilege.
• 6:00
  Oh my God, we're living in a house.
• 6:02
  Finally, it was my childhood dream was to have a staircase.
• 6:05
  It and now on top of the staircase, imagine also we're
• 6:09
  going to have the sunroom. So in that case was like who's
• 6:12
  consider all positive? So to me then of course, when I
• 6:16
  hear people talking in these, you know, Undertaker tones about
• 6:20
  the stress of the renovation. It's always extremely
• 6:23
  interesting to me sociologically and given the hedonic treadmill
• 6:27
  stuff but then also as a couples therapist and individual
• 6:31
  therapist, it's interesting to me what it does to the
• 6:33
  relationship because there's always One, that is not quite as
• 6:36
  much of a Martian as me, but errors more on that side of like
• 6:40
  wait, hold on. We can put twenty thousand
• 6:42
  dollars into a kitchen. That's going to give us maybe
• 6:45
  ten thousand dollars of equity. And also, you're already telling
• 6:49
  me you're going to be super stressed out about it.
• 6:52
  Why would we make this decision? So there's always that person
• 6:55
  will call him the man because he's usually the man Advent,
• 6:58
  there's a person who says, but it's my dream kitchen and I will
• 7:03
  not sleep for Three months because my dream kitchen.
• 7:07
  So this, this, this scenario by the way is like, sex is like a
• 7:14
  microcosm of other issues in the marriage.
• 7:16
  So, here's the most common one that I see the most common one
• 7:19
  that I see is the woman who wants to do.
• 7:21
  The renovations is frustrated with some other aspect of her
• 7:24
  life, her career, or something. We're just midlife and feeling
• 7:28
  like my couple that I always talk about the annoyingly,
• 7:32
  satisfied husband, and the wife who wants more, Or so she wants
• 7:36
  more out of her life. She wants to do a creative
• 7:39
  project. However she also is kind of
• 7:42
  frustrated with other bigger things in her life which aren't
• 7:47
  going to be solved by the renovations, but she's hoping
• 7:50
  that it gives her this dopamine. Burst that makes everything
• 7:53
  better. She doesn't think about it like
• 7:54
  that. But that's the draw is that the
• 7:56
  dopamine burst of creativity that she get, will somehow
• 8:00
  eradicate the encroaching feelings of ennui, and General
• 8:03
  Life dissatisfaction. And my All the satisfaction that
• 8:06
  she feels, you know, guess what it doesn't work, it works very
• 8:10
  temporarily. And then when they divorce, you
• 8:12
  know, they could put the house on the market with the ten
• 8:14
  thousand dollars more of equity because of the 20,000 dollar
• 8:16
  kitchen or what have you. Some people may get a room a get
• 8:20
  a better return on investment but not generally.
• 8:24
  So the point being here that usually the situations when
• 8:31
  Renovations are all good. And it's just a wonderful Boon
• 8:34
  to their life. I Don't hear about them, but I
• 8:36
  frequently hear about them in couples counseling when there is
• 8:39
  much more going on. So the woman is create is a
• 8:42
  creative or a sensitive person that feels thwarted and
• 8:46
  obstructed in the marriage in her life in general.
• 8:48
  And sees this as like a way to give herself some sort of
• 8:52
  pleasure or release and she is a more sensitive person.
• 8:56
  Usually these are the people who like to look at the design for
• 8:59
  the kitchen, everything, there were more creative people, and
• 9:02
  that goes Conchords frequently with being highly.
• 9:05
  Person. And the husband is usually a
• 9:07
  numbers. Kind of guy who's like, wait
• 9:09
  what is it? What are we going to do?
• 9:10
  Like, I don't understand how this house is going to happen.
• 9:12
  Why are we doing this to ourselves, Etc?
• 9:15
  We could be putting this money in investment.
• 9:17
  We could be doing this. We can be doing that.
• 9:20
  So anyway, what usually happens is the woman feels that the
• 9:23
  man's not listening. He doesn't want her to realize
• 9:26
  her her dream here. He doesn't give a shit about the
• 9:29
  kitchen. He doesn't understand who she
• 9:31
  is. As a person, he doesn't
• 9:32
  understand how she wants to make this house.
• 9:34
  Look, He doesn't understand the vision and overall, she's very
• 9:37
  dissatisfied with him. Now, she would have been
• 9:40
  dissatisfied with him, no matter how he showed up about the
• 9:42
  kitchen because it's deeper than the kitchen.
• 9:44
  However, on a positive note, if you are in this Dynamic, then as
• 9:49
  the man, you got to try to understand what this means to
• 9:52
  her. And then you're going to get on
• 9:53
  board better because I have seen very infrequently.
• 9:57
  It's some couples come together over this with coaching and help
• 10:01
  from me or whoever I only see my own sessions, of course.
• 10:05
  But there are other therapists in the world I've heard and and,
• 10:10
  and the man transforms how he thinks about the project and
• 10:13
  understands this is like basically, she's now running a
• 10:15
  little business of like interior design, except she has one
• 10:19
  client. And it's you, your family.
• 10:22
  And this is like her. She's trying to feel better
• 10:24
  about things, she's in midlife, she doesn't know which direction
• 10:27
  to go and here. We're going to make the house
• 10:29
  better. This is something to make me
• 10:31
  feel good. This is my canvas, this is
• 10:34
  whatever. If a man can understand that
• 10:36
  stuff and he can learn how to empathize and to be cheerful and
• 10:40
  excited about it. I had a podcast about being more
• 10:43
  positive as a man and not coming out.
• 10:45
  So you know, - and stuff all the time.
• 10:49
  And if the example I used was the kitchen renovation because
• 10:51
  about this is the relevant example.
• 10:53
  So a man who can understand that will have a lot happier of wife
• 10:58
  and perhaps his excitement that he can learn to to feel
• 11:02
  genuinely when he sees her excited about this, Project when
• 11:05
  he realizes, it's not just about the kitchen.
• 11:08
  It's about her feeling fulfilled and excited and and happier,
• 11:14
  even temporarily Etc. Then he can usually understand.
• 11:16
  Well what I spent twenty thousand dollars if she told me
• 11:19
  she wanted to start some kind of business, I guess I'm would of
• 11:21
  course you know give her the seed money for that.
• 11:23
  Well basically that's what it is or twenty thousand dollars to go
• 11:26
  back to school or whatever the case may be.
• 11:29
  So assuming that they have the twenty thousand dollars which
• 11:31
  they do, if they're going to use it for the kitchen.
• 11:34
  So, Could the woman do though, to understand her husband's
• 11:37
  perspective and not just see him as a buzzkill.
• 11:39
  Well, she can maybe understand more about how this seems this
• 11:43
  to somebody who does not care, what the kitchen looks like.
• 11:47
  This seems like your lighting your money on fire, maybe with
• 11:51
  the exception of the equity Etc that you're going to build.
• 11:53
  Okay. Great.
• 11:55
  But, but right now, usually there are things that can also
• 12:00
  be done with the money. You know.
• 12:02
  And also the biggest one is the And sees the stress that it's
• 12:07
  going to cause you and you may be under estimating how stressed
• 12:11
  out you seen by this. Because on your side you may be
• 12:14
  thinking, okay, I'm very very stressed out but also I'm going
• 12:16
  to get my dream kitchen so it's worth it.
• 12:18
  Kind of like the you're very stressed out as a new mother but
• 12:22
  you have your baby and that gives you Joy.
• 12:24
  He see if you have focused more primarily on the stress part of
• 12:29
  it, you may be having a branding problem, you know?
• 12:32
  And so you may need to think, what am I really?
• 12:35
  We talking about day today about the renovations, am I telling
• 12:39
  him how excited I am every day, or every day when he comes home?
• 12:42
  Is there a story about the contractors, a piece of shit and
• 12:45
  he didn't get here on time. And so everything is behind and
• 12:48
  we're going to need more money and they didn't have this thing
• 12:50
  that I wanted. And we are not going to be able
• 12:51
  to eat anything but take out for three weeks, if it's for you, it
• 12:56
  may be understood that this is all worth it in the long run,
• 13:00
  but many women do not convey it like that.
• 13:02
  They convey it like this is And insoluble crisis, I started it.
• 13:08
  And I thought it would be so quick and easy.
• 13:11
  But yet somehow I am trapped in this in this excrement, and I
• 13:15
  can't get out and then they get upset when the man is like,
• 13:18
  well, let's just quit while we're ahead.
• 13:20
  Then have him finish up where he's out.
• 13:22
  We don't need to add in this or that or the other or when the
• 13:25
  man is if he's a different kind of man gets actively angry and
• 13:29
  says I told you not to do this. Now, all you're doing is
• 13:32
  complaining so then what might If you do, you might think is
• 13:36
  all I'm doing complaining. Because, if all I'm doing is
• 13:38
  complaining, then maybe he's got a point, right?
• 13:40
  Maybe to me, I'm expecting him to understand my creative
• 13:45
  process and all of these deep things that I want to accomplish
• 13:49
  creativity-wise and how I actually do feel fulfilled by
• 13:52
  this, you know, on a deep level. But what I'm actually conveying
• 13:56
  is an endless stream of complaints and now you can also
• 13:59
  use this episode to think about other ways that you may have a
• 14:02
  branding problem because if in your Rearmost.
• 14:05
  What you do is come home and complain about your job and then
• 14:09
  your spouse tells you to quit your job which so many men do?
• 14:11
  They think they're being very helpful?
• 14:13
  The wife has a job, you should complain about the job.
• 14:15
  So he says, all right, you know what, we can make it work with
• 14:18
  the job and then she says, well you don't like you don't listen
• 14:20
  to me, you're not supportive, but how not because you
• 14:24
  literally to him. It seems like you hate your job.
• 14:28
  He is then trying. It's like, as though there was
• 14:30
  like a large spider attacking you and you're like, ah, a
• 14:34
  spider And then he was like, oh man, that looks really hard, you
• 14:37
  know, you would want him to get the spider off of you.
• 14:39
  So that's what he's trying to do with the spider, being your job
• 14:42
  or the spider being the kitchen renovation guy or whoever.
• 14:46
  Hopefully the kitchen renovation guys into on top of you, that
• 14:49
  would be a different podcast. But anyway, I digress.
• 14:54
  The point here, being, if all you do is look at the downside
• 14:59
  of whatever project, whether it's your career, whether it's
• 15:02
  parenting, whether it's the kitchen renovation, if what you
• 15:05
  Actually do is complain all the time, which is a totally normal
• 15:08
  way for women to communicate with each other to bond.
• 15:11
  By the way, is misery loves company is, oh my god.
• 15:14
  Do you hear about this? Oh my God.
• 15:15
  You know how bad that is? Here's something even worse.
• 15:17
  That happened to me. Oh my God, you feel fat.
• 15:19
  Look at me, I'm so fat. Oh, your kid as acting bad.
• 15:22
  Listen to what my kid did. He blew up like my shed?
• 15:26
  You know, like whatever. So women do Bond like that but
• 15:29
  men don't really Bond like that. So if you are a woman that is
• 15:33
  constantly complaining about what Whatever it may be and
• 15:36
  thinking that this is like a way to bond and he should just be
• 15:40
  like oh my God that's so crazy that so whatever that's just not
• 15:44
  how man's brain operates so if you want to be a heterosexual
• 15:46
  woman then kind of you gotta understand man just as I
• 15:50
  constantly say to men if you want to be a heterosexual man
• 15:53
  you gotta understand that women don't walk around, you know like
• 15:55
  ready to go 24/7 like a porn actress.
• 15:58
  And so many other things that I tried to tell men how to think
• 16:02
  about and the greater service of helping them.
• 16:05
  You're white. So to recap the kitchen
• 16:08
  renovations is overall can be a philosophical divide between
• 16:12
  people, some that don't even understand that at all.
• 16:15
  Some that think that it is almost a necessary thing to
• 16:18
  inflict, oneself to inflict upon oneself every five to ten years.
• 16:23
  By the way, it's very interesting to go back to your
• 16:25
  family of origin and see how home projects were talked about.
• 16:28
  Because if you grew up in a house where there was
• 16:31
  Renovations done constantly, you think this is an obvious thing.
• 16:35
  And two things to that a you may decide.
• 16:38
  All right. Good.
• 16:39
  It's a positive thing. I like it.
• 16:41
  I get to be creative or you may be like, am I only doing this?
• 16:44
  Because like I was raised to think that this is something you
• 16:47
  got to do to your house all the time and or if I am, if my
• 16:51
  parents are still around and and come to my house, do they
• 16:54
  actually make comments about my house?
• 16:56
  Because they were always renovating their house.
• 16:58
  So now they make comments about my house and then I go and hire
• 17:01
  a contractor if that's happening.
• 17:03
  Then you also want to think about You don't want to do
• 17:05
  things in this life. This goes obviously far beyond
• 17:08
  this topic but you don't to do things in this life on automatic
• 17:12
  pilot because you were trained that way if they aren't actually
• 17:16
  fulfilling to you, there's some people who are like wait hold
• 17:18
  on. So so I might be doing a kitchen
• 17:21
  renovation because my mother did a kitchen renovation every you
• 17:25
  know so often and it was just this like basically the super
• 17:30
  expensive time-consuming thing that I grew up thinking it's
• 17:33
  just some shit that I have to do.
• 17:34
  Do as a homeowner and that's just like, what we do, we just
• 17:37
  renovate the kitchen all the time and then the bathroom, and
• 17:39
  then this, and then that would, then we redecorate that we move
• 17:41
  the furniture, my mother never seen any happier, having done
• 17:44
  any of it. So maybe I could take that money
• 17:46
  and spend it on vacations instead or maybe I could invest
• 17:49
  it or maybe I could whatever the case may be.
• 17:52
  So there are some people who think back to how they were
• 17:55
  raised and they're like, wait, am I just literally replicating
• 17:58
  what I was raised with without any more deep thought and or
• 18:02
  there's people who are like, oh yeah, I was raised.
• 18:04
  Dad and I liked it. And so then I do it or there's
• 18:07
  people who are like I was raised in real shithole you know.
• 18:10
  And I want to make my house a lot nicer than that.
• 18:12
  And so that is part of it and I'll tell you if you explain it
• 18:14
  like that to your partner you know like I was raised in a
• 18:17
  house, I was actually falling down and nobody ever did any
• 18:20
  repairs. And to me this is like really
• 18:22
  important that we keep up with our stuff in that.
• 18:25
  We have this home that we could be proud of its well, taken care
• 18:28
  of. That's the sort of thing that
• 18:30
  came that a man your partner will understand a lot better
• 18:33
  than you just being like, Well, of course, we have to renovate
• 18:36
  the kitchen. Look at this kitchen, he's
• 18:37
  looking at it. This is not that bad, you know,
• 18:40
  like it's fine. Has your refrigerator has a
• 18:41
  stove, but if you can go deeper and explain your deeper reasons,
• 18:46
  including the ones that I previously covered, you know,
• 18:49
  this is a creative outlet for me.
• 18:51
  I I do get a lot of joy out of it.
• 18:53
  I understand. I complain about it a lot, but
• 18:55
  in reality, I may not be sharing my deeper feelings about it,
• 18:58
  which are positive that you may get a lot different of a
• 19:01
  reaction and as a man listening to this perhaps you understand
• 19:04
  more. Of what this means and or could
• 19:07
  mean for your wife, when she gets to do this stuff.
• 19:10
  Now, there may be situations where the man is spearheading a
• 19:12
  whole bunch of home, renovations.
• 19:13
  And the woman hates them, but I've never yet met those people,
• 19:16
  but in that case, just fucking flip, the genders in this
• 19:20
  podcast and then, you're good to go.
• 19:21
  All right. So hopefully, this was useful to
• 19:25
  you guys and I will talk to you soon.
• 19:26
  Bye, bye.