Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / In Your Marriage, Do What You're Good At And/Or What Your Partner Truly Values

Transcript

In Your Marriage, Do What You're Good At And/Or What Your Partner Truly Values · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:07
  Hello, and welcome to the dr. Psych mom show.
• 0:11
  Today, we are going to be talking about what people should
• 0:16
  do in marriages so that they don't feel like one person is
• 0:21
  doing more than the other person.
• 0:24
  So this is not going to be something about dividing chores
• 0:28
  although that could be relevant as well.
• 0:31
  What it means is a more holistic view of what each person's
• 0:35
  strengths are. As A partner and what they
• 0:38
  really bring to the table big picture.
• 0:42
  I have a post about that, your parenting should be geared to
• 0:46
  your strengths. So for example, if you hate
• 0:49
  playing make-believe pretend you don't have to but if you're good
• 0:53
  at crafts or at showing them what, it's like to be a
• 0:57
  confident friendly person in the world that entertains and hosts
• 1:01
  or you model physical fitness and enjoying being outside and
• 1:06
  doing physical things, whatever it is, you should work to your
• 1:09
  strengths. You shouldn't be trying to fix
• 1:11
  what you can't. Which are already bad at.
• 1:13
  It's just going to be depressing, long-term.
• 1:15
  Sure. You could get that a little bit
• 1:16
  up to snuff but really focus on looking at how great you are and
• 1:21
  building upon the things that you're already pretty great at
• 1:24
  now, with marriage. It's really no different here.
• 1:28
  People are trying to be everything to their partner, or
• 1:31
  to have their partner. Be everything to them.
• 1:33
  And meanwhile, they are not going deep in the areas that
• 1:37
  they are actually already pretty good at.
• 1:40
  And, or that the partner values, the most Most.
• 1:42
  So, for example, I say to women all the time.
• 1:46
  Yeah, you do all these acts of service for your husband that
• 1:49
  doesn't care. Now acts of service as a love
• 1:51
  language by the way. So we can go back to Love
• 1:53
  Languages to understand what those are.
• 1:55
  But I have a lot of posts on love languages on Doctor, psych
• 1:58
  bomb.com, there's five love languages, Act of service,
• 2:02
  quality time words of affirmation physical affection
• 2:05
  and gifts. So anyhow women who like to do
• 2:08
  acts of service say oh I'm making so many dinners.
• 2:11
  I buy all of The socks, I get all the children's forms, ready
• 2:14
  for school, and I'm like, would he like you to do all those
• 2:17
  hours of work? Or would he himself?
• 2:19
  Probably do all of that happily. If you had more sex with him,
• 2:23
  well, guess what? The man says, yes, I would do
• 2:27
  all of that stuff. Maybe not up to her standard,
• 2:30
  which refers back to my over functioning podcast, but he
• 2:34
  would do it all happily. If she were just to understand
• 2:36
  his love language more, which is physical, affection, and focus
• 2:39
  more on that. So, there's basically two ways,
• 2:42
  Ways for you to focus on your your strengths.
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  One is your actual strengths. Like what you choose to do but
• 2:48
  the other one which makes you an even better partner is to focus
• 2:51
  on what the other person wants you to do.
• 2:54
  The most, and put all of your energy in there.
• 2:58
  When we could save themselves, women with higher libido
• 3:01
  husbands, which is not always the case, that's two-thirds of
• 3:03
  the time only. But women with higher libido,
• 3:06
  husband's could say themselves hours and hours of doing crap
• 3:09
  that, you know, there are finite, don't really care
• 3:11
  sometimes. Present for a half hour day of
• 3:14
  physical affection and have a much happier marriage.
• 3:17
  Similarly, men who are making a lot of money and say, oh she
• 3:22
  really likes me to be a good provider.
• 3:24
  Well, does she really are what she like you to be around more
• 3:27
  and would she rather you to focus on quality time with her?
• 3:31
  And if you did that you might as well take a job that didn't kill
• 3:35
  you and you could earn a lot less.
• 3:41
  So, what this requires is taking a big picture outside the box
• 3:46
  approach to looking at your relationship, it means that you
• 3:50
  might have to be a little bit politically incorrect because
• 3:55
  political correctness is not going to make you feel like a
• 3:58
  loving team. So while everything might be
• 4:01
  nice, if people were exactly twins in every domain and
• 4:06
  therefore had exactly the same strengths and weaknesses and
• 4:09
  could split Everything right down the middle.
• 4:12
  Although, actually that sounds terrible.
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  Sounds like if you had a weakness, then both of you would
• 4:16
  have the same weakness who would be the strong partner in that.
• 4:19
  But anyway, although people act like it might be nice for
• 4:22
  everybody to be exactly identical.
• 4:25
  The truth is no two people in a union are completely identical
• 4:29
  and if you remember back to when you first got together, you
• 4:33
  probably thought that this was great that you could be the yin
• 4:37
  to each other's Yang Etc. So Example, it may not be again,
• 4:43
  politically correct to say you as the female like to roughhouse
• 4:48
  less with your son and your husband likes to do it more yet.
• 4:53
  This is usually the case when it's not, it's not I mean
• 4:57
  sometimes the genders are flipped so you're going to tell
• 4:59
  me that your relationship is the opposite fine.
• 5:02
  But if it is the case that he likes to roughhouse with your
• 5:05
  son more and you like to read to him more, then why?
• 5:10
  Are we thinking about that your partner's?
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  Roughhousing only takes 10 minutes, but you re for 20
• 5:15
  minutes, this is a Surefire way to feel like crap about your
• 5:20
  relationship. This marital scorekeeping is
• 5:23
  very toxic. So and also would you really
• 5:26
  like, if nobody like to roughhouse with your son and
• 5:28
  both of you, like to read to him?
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  That would be very, wouldn't be as good as you think.
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  You will get pretty competitive about the reading and your son
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  would have nobody to roughhouse with if he enjoys doing Which I
• 5:40
  am assuming he does in this situation.
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  So, how about we think about, let's say here, I'll do me, what
• 5:48
  are my strengths as a partner? Well, I enjoy physical touch,
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  which is good for when you have a partner that likes physical
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  touch. That's a positive I like to
• 5:58
  cook. That's a positive.
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  I do all the cooking, I like to work.
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  So I'm making some money. I like to read to the kids.
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  There's one I like too what? Don't I like to do?
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  I don't like to do forms organizational stuff.
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  I don't like to do. I don't like to clean.
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  I do. I do.
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  I saw my husband does more, what does he like to do?
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  What is he good at? He's good at the organizational
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  stuff. He's good at cleaning, he's good
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  at physical fitness, going outside with the children
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  modeling, what? It's like to be.
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  Somebody who takes a run every day.
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  I don't do that. He can cook, but he doesn't want
• 6:38
  to, as much as I want to. So that's That I do.
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  He's real smart, he's funny. He'll play games that I don't
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  play. He'll play some games for a long
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  time. He played six hours of Monopoly.
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  The other day with my children, I don't do that.
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  He also likes physical touch so which is my love language,
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  that's a positive but we like very different things.
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  Now if I could focus on you don't cook any of the meals now.
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  He would then go start to cook the meals and then I might
• 7:06
  actually miss cooking the meals. For example, he might Focus that
• 7:10
  I Don't clean. If I started to clean, it
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  probably would not be up to his standard or to do the laundry,
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  which he has exacting standards on.
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  So, anyhow the point is, if you get caught in, I do more of
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  this, you do more of that without thinking, what's
• 7:26
  actually valued by the other person and what you're actually
• 7:29
  good at. So you could be like awesome at
• 7:31
  it, instead of just being mediocre, then you get caught in
• 7:34
  this. Tallying, the scorekeeping that
• 7:37
  really a it's real toxic for the relationship but because When
• 7:40
  your kids act like this, don't you hate it.
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  I hate it. I hate obviously.
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  When the children are like, I put away eight of those shirts
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  and so you got to put away exactly eight of the shirts,
• 7:53
  your room. And I put away half of Monopoly
• 7:56
  to. Now, you got to put away half of
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  Navi. I mean you just want to scream,
• 8:01
  you know. And you want to say, what does
• 8:03
  it matter? We're all working together.
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  We're all a team. You don't exactly have to do it.
• 8:07
  Exactly the right way. What's the point of this?
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  The point is to be Be a good teammate.
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  Meanwhile, if you're modeling this toxic nitpicky,
• 8:14
  scorekeeping where nobody's actual strengths are recognized
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  and nothing that matters to the other partners recognized as
• 8:22
  much as keeping the balance sheet.
• 8:24
  Correct. Then, what are you modeling for
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  your kids? Of course, they're going to act
• 8:27
  the same, it's not their fault. So not only do we want to work
• 8:32
  to our strengths. But okay, so let's say in this
• 8:36
  situation, there's also something that matters very much
• 8:39
  to your partner that you Very good.
• 8:41
  So look. So what if your partner really
• 8:43
  likes going out dancing? And you are a man that does not
• 8:48
  like to go out dancing, but all the time she talks about going
• 8:52
  out. Going out going out.
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  I really want to go out, she's a big extrovert, right?
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  She wants to go out dancing. She wants to go out drinking.
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  She wants to have fun. You really don't like this.
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  So should you be a jerk and say you know what my strength is
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  cleaning the garage. So I'm going to do that while
• 9:05
  you go out with your friends. No.
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  Because this one really really matters to her.
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  It matters to her more than probably many other things if
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  she had to write down all the things that matter to her one of
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  them might be having an active social life where we go out
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  dancing and drinking at least every other week.
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  So then that's what you do for your wife, right?
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  And you can take other hours out of your day in other places to
• 9:29
  rest up and prep yourself. Mentally for going out and being
• 9:32
  a fake, extrovert, for one night, of course, I talk
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  constantly about how physical affection and intimacy is Very
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  similar if your husband or wife really value sex and you are so
• 9:46
  tired from doing all these other things that they don't value
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  that, maybe you are really good at, you know, but they still
• 9:51
  don't value it. And you're so tired from doing
• 9:54
  all that, that you can't have sex.
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  Well, what's the point? They don't want you to be doing
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  all of that stuff they want you to be having sex.
• 10:00
  So, what my point is, is again to take a big picture of you
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  work to your strengths and relationship and to What your
• 10:10
  partner really values. All of the things that you don't
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  really like doing and you're not really good at and your partner
• 10:15
  doesn't value. See if you can Outsource them or
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  see if your husband or wife will take them over for you.
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  If you are a woman who is too tired to be physically intimate,
• 10:26
  because you're doing so much cleaning.
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  Stop, cleaning, stop cleaning, tell him that straight out.
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  I don't have the time or the desire to have sex because I'm
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  cleaning all the time. So either you can clean and I'm
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  going to try to be flexible about what my Anders are with
• 10:40
  that or we can hire somebody to clean.
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  If you're saying that you are doing that, for the sake of the
• 10:47
  relationship, and because you finally understand that, he
• 10:50
  really would rather physical intimacy than a clean house, but
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  he's willing to say, all right, fine, we'll spend the money on
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  it. Cool.
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  Or I'll do it. I think most guys are at least
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  the ones that I work with in couples counseling, which are a
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  fair amount. Similarly, if you're somebody
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  who hates doing looking up Summer Camps or something for
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  the children and you feel flooded with resentment and you
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  don't want to smile or laugh or have fun with your partner
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  because you from February to March or looking up summer camps
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  and you don't like it and it's not a strength.
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  Then say to your partner, I'm not doing summer camps.
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  You gotta do summer camps. If you do some accounts, I'm
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  going to be a happier person. Overall, I'm going to smile.
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  I'm going to laugh. We are going to touch.
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  I'm going to be in a better. Mood problem is most people act
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  like a martyr about these things.
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  And then like 10 years later like the literally, I mean, I'm
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  a couple's counselor, it happens like ten years later.
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  Somebody will be. Like you remember when for 15
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  years I did all the summer camp enrollment who does that help
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  this terrible? Teen years.
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  You're doing some sure you don't want to do the person had no
• 11:58
  idea how much you didn't want to do it from your little pointed
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  passive-aggressive jobs about it.
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  They really thought that you were just in a bad mood.
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  How are they supposed to know? Because from the perspective of
• 12:07
  that person if you really hated it that much you probably
• 12:09
  wouldn't have done it. So then and that's what people
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  think about people doing stuff that they don't want to do.
• 12:16
  Usually people think if they really didn't want to do it that
• 12:19
  much, they'd stop doing it which you know, is true to a large
• 12:24
  degree. Because you're not asking the
• 12:28
  other person to do it because maybe you think that they can't
• 12:30
  do it well enough or maybe you kind of secretly like being the
• 12:33
  one who picks out the summer camps or whatever.
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  So, to summarize here, you want to have a model of parenting
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  parenting by talk about that so much but it's not parenting.
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  In this case marriage, you want to have a model of marriage
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  where each person is actually doing stuff.
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  That is valuable and makes them feel good.
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  Valuable to the other partner into the relationship as a whole
• 12:58
  and makes them feel good. Because it's not something that
• 13:00
  they're bad at and don't want to do now.
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  Of course, you're going to come into some trouble.
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  Where the thing that you really don't want to do is the thing
• 13:07
  that your partner most values. But in that case it's not Zero
• 13:11
  Sum, you can start doing some more of the dreaded task whether
• 13:15
  that's going out dancing or whether that's being more
• 13:18
  physically affectionate or whether that is cleaning more or
• 13:22
  helping with summer camp or whatever and see, See how happy
• 13:26
  they become if they become happier than you stop resenting.
• 13:30
  It so much. It's magic because you really
• 13:32
  see the true change in your partner when their special thing
• 13:37
  that they love so much gets addressed instead of completely
• 13:41
  invalidated It's also very important to be honest about
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  what you are doing for you and what you are doing for the
• 13:50
  family or for your partner. So, this requires a lot of
• 13:54
  in-depth introspection. So, let's say that you like to
• 13:58
  have the house decorated a certain way, admit that, this is
• 14:02
  for you, your husband doesn't care how the house is decorated.
• 14:06
  The kids probably don't care how the house is decorated, as long
• 14:09
  as the house looks pretty normal, then nobody really cares
• 14:13
  except probably you. So it's kind of bad form and not
• 14:20
  very honest to say to your husband.
• 14:21
  Well, I'm so busy from doing everything that needs to be done
• 14:24
  including decorating the house. That you know I'm not up for
• 14:28
  anything that you want us to do and somehow implying that this
• 14:32
  is not just selfish, that's just as selfish as if he tries to go,
• 14:37
  you know, snowboarding for the weekend and he leaves you with
• 14:42
  the kids. He tried to come back and say,
• 14:44
  well, I really needed to do that for the family know, we didn't,
• 14:47
  he wanted to do that for himself which is fine as long as it's
• 14:51
  not treated. As though, it is in a category
• 14:54
  that it isn't. People do this all the time.
• 14:57
  If they have control issues. So, if they have control issues,
• 15:00
  they'll say oh I need to do the cooking, the cleaning the, the
• 15:05
  car maintenance, the lon, whatever a certain way, a
• 15:10
  certain frequency, which is pretty high compared to other.
• 15:13
  Other people doing the same thing and I need to do it and
• 15:16
  that's something that I'm doing for the family.
• 15:18
  Well it may just be because you have kind of OCD either real or
• 15:23
  colloquial about this certain topic or you were just a control
• 15:26
  freak or an over function. ER over functioning is a topic
• 15:30
  that I talk about a lot. So the point is is if you are
• 15:34
  honest with yourself you need to put things into various buckets.
• 15:37
  There's the things you do for yourself, to make you happy,
• 15:41
  things that you may do for your children.
• 15:42
  And That you do for your spouse. And if the things that you are
• 15:46
  seeing you're doing, for your spouse, are things that they
• 15:49
  don't really care about and would prefer other things then,
• 15:53
  that's not very smart. That's not a very good use of
• 15:57
  your time and it's not going to make your partner feel loved.
• 16:01
  Also, if everything that you end up doing, is something that you
• 16:04
  are not that good at. Well, then of course, you are
• 16:06
  going to end up hating everything.
• 16:08
  So if you have the job of bed time with the children, Aaron
• 16:13
  and you are the least patient person in the world.
• 16:15
  That's a bad job for you. Whereas maybe something more fun
• 16:18
  like bath time or exercise time or playing with them outside or
• 16:24
  whatever is much better for you to do with the children, people
• 16:27
  have to work to their strengths and when they're doing something
• 16:30
  for somebody else, make sure they actually want you to be
• 16:32
  doing it. There are a lot of good
• 16:35
  conversations that you could be having with your spouse out of
• 16:38
  all the things that I do quote for you, which are the ones that
• 16:41
  you value the most and Really try to get your ego out of it.
• 16:46
  Because if you're somebody who burst into tears at the
• 16:49
  slightest insult, which many of us highly sensitive people are
• 16:53
  then, you know, you don't really know if what your spouse is
• 16:55
  saying is accurate. Or if they're always trying to
• 16:57
  spare your feelings, you could see their motivation for the
• 17:00
  latter, right? So, say out of these things that
• 17:03
  I do. I cook dinner, we have sex.
• 17:06
  I plan trips. I take care of the kids school
• 17:10
  stuff out of those things, which are Important to you.
• 17:14
  And they they are answer may be different than what you think.
• 17:18
  Similarly, if you are doing a lot of things that you hate to
• 17:22
  do and your spouse has said, listen why don't we Outsource
• 17:25
  them? Hey maybe you could be open to
• 17:27
  that. Maybe if you're somebody that
• 17:29
  really hates cooking and your spouse agrees to get a either, I
• 17:34
  mean you don't have to agree for you to stop cooking but he could
• 17:38
  agree to get some kind of a meal service or to do.
• 17:43
  Cooking in the way that you want or to order in or what Have you
• 17:47
  listened to it? Don't over function.
• 17:49
  Don't martyr yourself doing something that you hate doing.
• 17:52
  So, anyhow to recap my point is that you should not be expending
• 17:58
  your effort at stuff that's going to make you feel bad with
• 18:00
  no with no benefit to your partner, right?
• 18:06
  Do the things that you love divide, the things in the house,
• 18:09
  Ops that everybody gets to do things that they actually enjoy
• 18:12
  on are good. Dad and or things that are super
• 18:16
  important to the other person, which will, if you think about
• 18:20
  it differently, make you feel very good.
• 18:23
  They will make you feel like your best self and that you are
• 18:26
  really trying here for the sake of the marriage.
• 18:28
  And when you see how happy your spouse is, then you may enjoy
• 18:33
  doing these things intrinsically.
• 18:35
  Just as you do, when you do some annoying crap for your children
• 18:38
  and they really enjoy it. Then you start to enjoy it.
• 18:41
  This refers back To my podcast on how people treat their kids
• 18:45
  better than their spouse. Well, that is no exception in
• 18:48
  the amount of stuff that people will do for their kids is
• 18:51
  transcends exponentially. The amount of stuff that they
• 18:54
  will do for their spouse. You would never tell your son.
• 18:59
  Oh, look, I tried so hard to paint your room.
• 19:02
  This color that you hate. Aren't you happy that I painted
• 19:05
  your room? This color that you hate?
• 19:07
  No, you would ask your son. What is the color you would like
• 19:10
  me to paint your room or if you just chose a color?
• 19:12
  And He really hated it. You would not probably feel too
• 19:17
  good about that. You certainly wouldn't say to
• 19:18
  him, well, with all the shit that I do around the house and
• 19:21
  the fact that you don't help me with anything, you should be
• 19:23
  glad that I painted your room in this crazy color.
• 19:26
  But yet people say that to their spouse all the time, here's this
• 19:29
  shit that you don't like to eat. You should be happy that I
• 19:31
  cooked. It who does all the cooking
• 19:33
  around here. Now that is a marriage that
• 19:35
  sounds like it is not tremendously intimate or healthy
• 19:38
  and people talk to their spouse like that implicitly or
• 19:41
  explicitly constantly. So if you enjoyed this podcast
• 19:46
  or you found it useful, share it with your partner.
• 19:50
  Again, you should be sharing these things, any sort of
• 19:53
  podcast book article TV show. I'm not doing one of those yet
• 19:58
  but who knows? I'm only 40.
• 20:00
  Maybe in the second half of my life, but anyhow, you should be
• 20:03
  sharing all of these sorts of media with your partner to
• 20:08
  provoke conversations that could.
• 20:10
  If you're if you really focus, they could Pretty much
• 20:14
  approximate, what you might get out of couples counseling, you
• 20:17
  know? And they're all free.
• 20:19
  So this is really what you ought to be doing.
• 20:21
  If you feel at all, that your marriage could use some work,
• 20:23
  meaning translation, if you're married because you should be
• 20:27
  working on your marriage, no matter how happy you are.
• 20:29
  You should always be kind of focusing on keeping it that way.
• 20:32
  And of course, if it's not that happy focus on getting it there.
• 20:35
  So anyway, use all of these tools at your disposal, to
• 20:38
  provoke conversations where your to genuinely, try to learn more
• 20:42
  about one another in, New and different ways and start
• 20:45
  interesting conversations. Okay?
• 20:49
  Well, that's a wrap and I will speak to you guys later.
• 20:53
  Bye bye.