Love You Loving Me

Some of us claim to love our spouse but often what we really love is them loving us; we love them doing the things we want them to do for us so we can think good things about ourselves. If you're not sure exactly what I mean by this or if you aren't sure if you do this, this episode is for you.

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jamelyn@jamelynstpehan.com

Transcript

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I'm jamielynn Stephan and this is what to want to episode number 74. Love you loving me. Welcome to want to want it a podcast for women of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints who are ready to ignite not only their sexual desire, but all of their desires to create a more fulfilling life and marriage. I'm jamielynn Stephan. I'm a certified life coach, a wife, and a mother of seven children. I'm excited to share my personal journey to desire with you and teach you how to desire more as well Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. How is your summer going? Maybe I should actually ask how your winter is going to my listeners in the Southern hemisphere, because I know there are a few of you. Up here in the north. Uh, we are definitely enjoying the longer warmer days, you know, the outdoor activities when the weather cooperates, I suppose that down south you're kind of snuggling in and enjoying being home a little more and shorter cooler days. So. I hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. So I want to talk today about the difference between loving someone. And loving them, loving you. Now, I've heard this a few times, especially from Jennifer Finlayson Fife. I just love what a straight shooter she can be. But I also love that she is so good at being able to put words to things that we don't even realize we're doing. But as soon as she said this, I was like, yes, this is me. So I heard her on a call when she was coaching a husband and a wife. And they were discussing their sexual relationship and she stopped the husband and asked. Do you love your wife? Or do you just love her loving you? And after a little bit of silence, she went on to say something kind of along the lines of like, do you want to have sex with her? Or do you want her to have sex with you so that you can feel good about yourself? Like, do you want to bring your sexuality to the relationship to really love her? Well, Or kind of under the facade of love or the name of love. Are you pressuring her to take care of what you consider your sexual needs? Now as you can imagine, I was super fascinated by this discussion because I think this man. I really felt like he loved his wife. In fact, I actually believe he probably does love his wife, but I think like so many of us who claim to love our spouse. What we really love more is them loving us. We love them, making us feel good about ourselves and because we love it so much. We will pressure our spouse to show up in a way that validates us. We essentially use them and their love for us to make us feel good about ourselves. So when we first fall in love so much about what is intoxicating about this experience is the feeling of being loved and desired. Of course, it feels great to love and desire the other person as well. But we also get a high from being loved. We literally love being loved. And in those early days of love, we get a lot of validation about ourselves, right? We're super desirable and sexy and funny, and the most fun person they've ever been with. And we're clever. And you know, all of the things we get to believe about ourselves when somebody loves us like this. We can hardly do anything wrong. And even if we do, and there has to be for some forgiveness making up feels amazing. It's just very euphoric. And most of us are young at this time. Right. Late teens, early, mid twenties. And we haven't really had the opportunity to grow up emotionally and be totally confident in ourselves and in our own opinions about ourselves. And that's normal. We aren't really great at self validation at that age. And so to have someone do all the heavy lifting for us feels really amazing. Somebody who comes in and validates where we can't validate ourselves. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with how we fall in love and how it feels. And even how much we love being loved. I don't actually think there's anything wrong with loving being loved. I think the problem comes when we stop actually accepting and loving the person we're married to just for their sake. And we mostly just love that. They love us and make us feel good about ourselves. So here's why this is a problem for your marriage. If, instead of just loving your spouse, you're more caught up in how you love them. Loving you. Okay. A good marriage needs to components, it needs love, and it needs honesty. And for a marriage, to be honest, it can't be reinforcing all the time. Now, when I say honest, I don't mean cruel. You don't have to be mean to your spouse in the name of honesty. And I just actually hate when I see people do that. It's like, well, you wanted me to be honest. And then they're super cruel. You can be honest and kind, even if what you have to say is hard and you know that there's a risk that it's actually going to be hard for your spouse to receive it. You can courageously say your part. In a kind way. This is so essential to the growth of the individuals in a marriage and for the growth of the marriage itself. If you cannot address things that are not working in your marriage because your spouse is putting pressure on you to make them feel good about themselves. And to always reinforce the reality that they want to believe, right. The reality that there's nothing wrong with them. That marriage can't change. It just can't. And if you kind of hate how your marriage feels, but you are unwilling first, to be honest with yourself. And second to listen to the honest concerns of your spouse, nothing will change. And that's one thing I really want to point out. I know we all have blind spots, things we don't see about ourselves, but oftentimes we are really in a place where we know, but we won't know. Right. We know that if we took an honest look within ourselves and asked ourselves the hard questions, right? Those questions of how am I the problem here, or what am I doing to create this? Or what changes do I need to make to improve this relationship? If we really were willing to look within and know what we are afraid to know. We would find out that we probably have some big changes that need to be made, and that can be scary. So when I say a good marriage needs a love and honesty that has to come from you as well. You can love yourself better. By being honest with yourself. Being able to self confront and really see what you may not want to be seeing takes courage. It is not self-validating, but it is relationship changing. And if you want to be really brave start, actually listening to the feedback your spouse is giving you. Is there something they say often that you kind of brush off because you're pretty positive. They're wrong about you? Can you look openly at what they're saying and really see if they're right about you. Or even braver. Can you ask them what they see in you that maybe you are not seeing. This may sound scary or uncomfortable, but when you are in your marriage with love and honesty. Then you trust the relationship more. So here's what I mean. If you aren't loving your spouse, but just loving when your spouse loves you. Right. Just loving when they tell you all the things that you want to believe are true about you. In your heart of hearts, you know that your spouse isn't really choosing to validate you out of love, or at least out of love alone. You know that they're choosing to reinforce you because you pressure them to. You know that you haven't really given them a choice. You've pushed them to make you feel good about you and you know that inside of yourself. So, you know, that they actually haven't been giving that validation out of love, but because you've demanded it And that will never feel very satisfying for you. In fact, it's going to feel very unstable because you know that at any time, this little facade, you both play out could come tumbling down. So that's why a marriage that has two people who number one. Choose to love the other person completely as they are. And number two can be honest and can be open to hearing the honesty of their spouse is not only going to be a stronger marriage. It is going to feel safer and more stable because it isn't. Built on the lies we tell to make sure our self-esteem stays intact. Now, this can look different for each spouse. You may have one spouse that pressures the other to make them feel desirable and appreciated. And then you've got the other spouse that willingly does this because they want to feel accepted and worthy of their spouse. So here's kind of a classic example of what I see in my clients. When we're talking about their sexual relationships. Now I'm going to use a more stereotypical example that please apply this how you want in your life, Because this dynamic plays out in other areas, not just in the bedroom. So like the example I gave before you have a husband who wants to have sex with his wife, sometimes from a place of, I want you to have sex with me so I can feel like I'm sexy and desirable and that you appreciate all that I do. And so that I can kind of quote, unquote, get my needs met. Now, if the wife doesn't comply with this idea of using sex to prop up his self esteem, He gets upset and pouts and tells her there's something wrong with her for not wanting sex more. And all of those kinds of things start to happen. Now if the wife feels a strong need to be enough for her husband to feel like she's acceptable to him and lovable his reaction to her saying no to sex is going to be devastating to her. So she's going to spiral into thoughts like I'm broken. I'm never good enough. It's too hard on me to know that he's upset with me and so on. So if this dynamic and cycle exists for this couple, then the other person holds all the control over how they feel about themselves. And so they have a high chance of falling into this pattern of doing things in their marriage. So that the other person will quote unquote love them, but really it's just so that the other person will make them feel good about themselves. So the husband comes back to his wife for sex because when they have sex, he can believe he's desirable and appreciated. And his wife says yes, because then he isn't mad at her or mean. Now he feels good about himself and she feels good about herself and it's all good. Right? Except that it's actually not good. They actually resent each other. He resents her because he knows in his heart that she didn't really choose him, that he put pressure on her. And that's why she chose it. Wasn't really her free will to choose him. And she resents him because she feels like she has no choice in this relationship. And freedom is key to a fulfilling sex life. So this super long example is just a way for me to say that even if you aren't the spouse that puts the pressure on for the other spouse to do things, to make you feel good about yourself. Or to reinforce your idea of how things should be. You can also be looking for validation in other ways, just this acceptance and that I'm enough. Right? And so you comply to the negative cycle. Now I want to say a little bit about this pressure that I've talked about. When we are less focused on truly loving our spouse and more focused on loving how they love us. We will pressure our spouse to do the things that help us feel good about ourselves. That help us feel loved. That pressure that you put onto your spouse is going to make them feel like they actually don't have a choice. Now, even though. We know they have a choice, right? We know we always have a choice. You don't have a gun to our head most of the time. Right? But when you have the spouse who feels like. I want to be sure that my husband or my wife, isn't going to walk out of this marriage on me. And they're pressuring me to boost their self-esteem all the time and make them feel good about them and show up in a certain way so that they're happy. Then you're going to feel this pressure. You're going to actually feel like you don't really have a choice that you have to comply to what they want. So for some of my clients, it looks like this. Okay. It's easy for me to deal with my negative feelings about him than to know that he's upset with me. So I'm going to do this for him. He'll get off my case. He's not going to be upset with me, and then I can deal with my own resentment on my own, but at least I know I'm safe in this marriage. They feel kind of trapped by this pressure. And pressure to take responsibility for the feelings of others, especially your spouse. Feels more like a trap in a marriage and increases your resentment towards them. And it kills desire, especially sexual desire. When it comes to sex, freedom is essential for desire to thrive. You have to believe that you truly get to choose who you share your sexuality with when you share it and how, if you want to have a higher sexual desire. So that in itself should be evidence enough for us to stop being so caught up in this idea of show me how lovable and amazing I am and get more into how can I love you better. We have to stop feeling like we are entitled to reinforcement or even entitled to someone else's love. No one actually owes us love. If we want to be desired by someone, we can't act in ways that aren't desirable and acting entitled and pressuring is not desirable. We have to behave in ways that make us more desirable. Even for the women out there who refuse to allow themselves to actually love themselves. Now I've been this person. And so I was always pressuring my husband to make me feel good about me because I wouldn't allow myself to feel good about me. I was making it his job. And guess what? That is not sexy. That is not desirable. No man wants to feel like it's his job to caretake his wife's low self esteem all the time. And from what I've seen, I think when couples are focused on really loving their spouse, the other stuff falls into place and it just feels so much better. If you focus on loving your spouse for their sake, just because they're worthy of being loved. And you want to show that love. You know, the love that they returned to you. Isn't about trying to manage your emotions. It's about them truly loving you in return. And that is going to feel way more stable and much more comfortable. So I want you to take an honest look at your marriage and see if this dynamic is playing out in your marriage. Most of you are going to see it because it's what we know. It's not that it's like so wrong. It's just immature. It's just underdeveloped. I see this in my marriage still. Mostly because we just, haven't had the awareness to know that we need to grow up a little more and we're working on it. And I can tell you, it is so much more intimate and loving and kind and collaborative when we're focused on loving one another and not always showing up. Pressuring each other to make sure we feel good about ourselves. So look at your marriage with some curiosity. Are either of you or are both of you showing up in ways that say to the other. I don't love you so much, but I love you. Loving me. If so you are both contributing to this dynamic. So look at this, how are you both playing into and keeping this dynamic going because you can't change your spouse. So you are going to have to start by looking at yourself and doing the work to stop your side of the cycle. And this is going to take courage. It's going to feel very invalidating, but I promise it will change everything. I don't pretend that this is easy work, but it is completely possible. I know some of you want to make the changes, but you don't feel like, you know where to start or how to start, or you maybe aren't even ready for the initial fallout that may occur. If this is you, I have got you. I am currently filling my September calendar for one-on-one clients to start coaching with me and my 12 week program. If you want one of those spots, go to the show notes or go to my website. Jamilin stephan.com or look me up on Instagram. Jamilin Stephan coaching and sign up for a free 25 minute session with me. On this call, you're going to have the chance to meet with me, share with me where you're at. Experience a little bit of coaching and then decide if my coaching program is a good fit for you. There is no pressure to sign up and I promise you will leave the call with something to get you started. So if you are even just a little curious about coaching, come and meet with me So you can try it out. I love to help women with their marriages, with their sexual relationships and especially with their relationships with themselves. I want to help you find yourself again. So you can take that woman into your marriage and create something new, always really desired, but maybe thought was not possible. So come and meet with me. I'd love to help you. I've done a lot of leg work of my own so that you can take a shortcut to the results that you really want. now before I go, I want you to know that there may be someone out there who really needs to hear this podcast or other ones that I've produced. I know I'm not for everyone, but I also know that there are a lot of people, mostly women, because that's who I speak to often. I do appreciate the men who listen, thank you so much. I've heard from some of you and some of you have referred your wives to me. So thank you for listening, but I know that there are people out there who have never heard any of what I teach and they need it. If you are willing, please share this with them. Let's help as many people as possible increase their happiness and their relationships. In their most important relationships with themselves and their spouse, I want to help other women out there who feel like they have lost themselves over the years and don't feel like they have any desire anymore, or even know where to start to find themselves again. This is important. No woman needs to feel like she's on the back burner of her own life forever. So if you're willing to help other people by sharing this, I would so appreciate it. You can also leave a review on the podcast as well, and this will help people find it easier. So if you have a quick minute to leave a little review, I would appreciate it because it helps me get my message to people who are searching for my kind of help. Anyways. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening today. If you are courageous enough, ask yourself. Do I love my spouse or do I just love them? Loving me. Be honest with yourself. Have a great week. Bye. Thanks for listening today. If you like what you hear on the podcast, and you'd like to learn more, feel free to head over to my website. Jamilin Stephan coaching.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook at Jamileh. step in coaching.