We all claim we want to know what our spouse desires until we find out what it is. Then we wish we didn't know because it feels like an expectation we have to take care of. On this episode I emphasize the importance of acknowledging personal choice and responding to desires from a place of love rather than pressure so you can know your spouse's desires without feeling controlled by them.
https://jamelynstephan.com
https://jamelynstephan.com/meet-with-me/
https://www.instagram.com/jamelyn_stephan_coaching/
jamelyn@jamelynstpehan.com
We all claim we want to know what our spouse desires until we find out what it is. Then we wish we didn't know because it feels like an expectation we have to take care of. On this episode I emphasize the importance of acknowledging personal choice and responding to desires from a place of love rather than pressure so you can know your spouse's desires without feeling controlled by them.
https://jamelynstephan.com
https://jamelynstephan.com/meet-with-me/
https://www.instagram.com/jamelyn_stephan_coaching/
jamelyn@jamelynstpehan.com
I'm jamielynn Stephan and this is what to want at episode number 112. Don't tell me what you desire. 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 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. Welcome to April. I am potentially making a mistake recording this podcast while there is a little boy's birthday party. Well, not a little boy anymore. A teenage boy's birthday party. Happening outside the door. So I'm sorry for the background noise that you may hear, but I felt like this is a great opportunity for me to sneak away and take care of this. So today I want to kind of explore why sometimes we really don't want to know what someone else desires. Now, this can be anyone that we're in a relationship with, but I really want to mostly focus on those people that we're married to. Right? Because we do talk about wanting to know people. And yet, sometimes we don't want to know because here's the dilemma that we find ourselves in. We love our spouse. We want to maybe even love them better than we do. And we want to feel like we are in more positive connection with them. We want more intimacy, but we understand that to have more genuine intimacy with somebody, we have to be able to see them as they really are know them as they truly are. And we also have to be willing to be seen and known as we are. We can't be pretending or lying about ourselves. And I'm not just talking about lying about what you spent at the store today. I'm talking about the line that we sometimes do just to keep the validation coming from our spouse. Right. Oh, yeah, I'll, I'll do that for you, but I really don't want to, and it actually makes me super mad that I'm going to have to do this for you, but I really don't want you to be angry with me. So I'm going to be agreeable because then you're going to feel good about me. And then I get to feel good about me. And that's just not very honest. It's not intimate. So we kind of find yourselves in this dilemma of, I really want to feel more connected to you in all the best ways. I want us to really have an intimate marriage, but. I also don't really want to show you what is true and honest about me, because you might not like it. And I don't know if I want to really see what's true and honest about you because if I really let you show me what is true and honest for you, what you really desire? It might put pressure on me that I don't really want to feel. And that's really what I want to address today. I want to address the pressure we can feel when our spouse or someone else close to us tells us what they really desire or want. So here's an example that I see a lot. You have a woman who says that she wants to know her husband better feel more connected to him, know his dreams and his desires. Right. But at the same time, she really doesn't want to know because if her husband says to her, Hey, like I want to have more sex and we're having. This same woman who wants to feel like she knows her husband knows his mind wishes. She didn't really know this part of his mind. And the reason is because instead of seeing it, as I know him, this is me knowing him. She sees it as an expectation that she is now responsible to take care of. And maybe he does feel that way. Maybe he does feel like she should take care of that. And maybe he refuses to kind of see his side in this dynamic that they play out. So maybe she's right. That there is kind of an expectation there, but what happens is she will start to try to manage. What he shares with her to keep herself kind of quote, unquote safe from the pressure of expectations. Instead of opening up to really knowing his mind and then managing herself. When she feels the pressure of the expectations. And remember, it's her thoughts that fill her with that feeling of pressure. Like I have to take care of his desire. Right. It's not the fact that he desires something that fills her with pressure. Hey, his desire is a circumstance for her. It's it's just neutral because if he says to her, I want to have more sex that would go in her circumstance line of her model. Right. It's neutral. She could have tons of different thoughts about it. She could think I'm so desirable to my husband, or he just can't get enough of me. Or I love that he wants me or he's so selfish or now I have to take care of his desires. You know, it's my job to make his dreams come true. Or even just that's what a good wife does. All of those thoughts are going to feel different in her body. But all of those thoughts are available to her in that moment. The trouble is at too often. We take the dreams and desires of others and make them something we now have to take care of or make happen. And it feels like so much pressure. It feels like we have to put our own desires aside, forget about what we want to make them happy. And of course, in a healthy relationship, there's always going to be those kinds of healthy sacrifices, right? Meaning you will often be offered the opportunity to give up something you like or want, or even desire for something even better because it creates something better. So it is good to be willing to give up what you want in this collaborative way. That brings something better into your relationship. But that's not what I'm talking. About here. I'm talking about making costly accommodations in ways that make you feel used or bitter or resentful because you give up what you want. Or even who you are in the name of satisfying the desires of someone else. Here's an example that can happen with your children. I had a grandmother reached out to me because she kind of felt really used and overwhelmed by the expectations of her adult children. So they would all come to her house for Sunday dinner, something like that, and what her kids really wanted more than anything was just to rest from being a parent. They just wanted a break. Now this grandma loved her grandchildren. She loved her children and she wanted to fulfill all the desires of everybody to get a break. But she was like, this feels like it's out of hand because not only am I responsible for entertaining these grandchildren and sometimes a lot of them, I'm also responsible for disciplining them, for feeding them, for cleaning up after them. And my adult kids are just all sitting around laughing and chatting and eating and I don't get to connect with them at all. And I'm worn out by the time they leave. Now, obviously there's a boundary issue here, but it just highlights what can happen to us as parents. When we understand the desires of our children, we can feel like a good mother or a good father. Father is now responsible to take care of those desires and make those dreams come true. Now from the message that I got from her, I think she does want to support her kids, but she doesn't want to feel used by them. So I'm sure that she kind of wishes that she didn't really know that they were coming to her house expecting a break, because then she wouldn't feel this pressure to provide that. I hear of adult children who struggled, balancing what they feel like, kind of are these competing desires from their parents and their in-laws, right? Like my mom wants us here for Thanksgiving dinner, but your mom wants us here on this day for Thanksgiving dinner as well. And, you know, whatever it kind of is, it just feels like every invitation is a huge expectation. And the pressure feels terrible as this couple tries to balance out, taking care of each parent's desire. In the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints. We have, um, I don't know if it's called a program. I guess you could call it that called ministering and everyone is assigned a woman or a family that they are. To visit with and check in on and become friendly with. And I know this sounds foreign to a lot of people. And even in the church, there are people who hate this idea of assigned friends. But the hope of it. I think the goal of it is that if everyone in the church had a few people that they were watching out for, then everybody would always be taken care of and no one would ever fall through the cracks and it would really create this community of caring. But how many of us, whether in this situation or something similar to this, feel so much pressure in these relationships or assignments. It's like, I'm responsible to ask you what you need or want, like I should ask you, but then I don't really want to ask you because that I responsible to take care of whatever you share with me. And so to avoid feeling overwhelmed, but any requests, we just avoid these people. Or maybe we have a friend we think is particularly needy. And so we avoid them because we can't hear what they want without feeling like now I'm responsible for this information. I have to take care of this. So, how do we learn how to handle knowing our spouse's desires or our carrots or our children's or friends, or even our bosses without feeling like we are being controlled by that knowledge now, because that's really where our power lies. Even though in our hearts, sometimes it feels like we'd rather not know. We have to acknowledge that. Not knowing will keep us from having intimate relationships with people. And this is especially important in a marriage. So even though sometimes we feel like, Hey, could you just keep speaking in code or just dropping hints? Because that's way easier for me to ignore and pretend I don't understand. Then when you flat out, tell me what you want. Even though sometimes we would rather that people would just keep quiet or drop hints. We can't control that. And it's not really fair for us to require that of the people around us. And truly, even those of us who don't really want to know. We can't stand the hint dropping and it just feels like, just tell me what you really think. Tell me what you really want. This hint dropping is driving me crazy. But then once we know the desires of the other person, suddenly we feel like, oh crap. Now I have no choice, but to make this a reality, and it leaves us feeling quite helpless and feeling like we're victims to this other person's wants and desires. I hope I'm not totally talking in circles here. Maybe this is making sense. And that brings up a little side point. I want to make. When we don't want our spouse to say anything to us, that we feel like pressures us and it's going to end up controlling us. We will often pressure them or try to control them to not speak about what they want. And we do this sometimes quite frankly. Right? Well, it'd be like, just don't tell me, I don't want to know, but more often we do it very subtly. if your spouse approaches you about something you just don't want to know, because it feels like pressure. Do you freak out before they even get to kind of enter into a conversation with you? Do you essentially tell them through your actions that you can't handle what they're about to share or you can't handle hearing about their desires? Because when we do that, even if we aren't screaming and yelling, even if we just shut down, we are training them that it's not safe for them to share what they really want. We teach them really that they shouldn't. And so they stopped sharing because we've made it kind of dangerous to do that. And maybe that works great for us because we don't feel the pressure that comes from knowing their desire. But in the end does not give us the intimate relationship we want. Does this make sense? And I hope it makes a little bit of sense, at least, because I think it's so important to be able to look honestly at ourselves. And try to see the ways that we punish our spouse for telling us what is true for them or for sharing what they desire. So back to the question I posed before. How do we learn how to handle knowing our spouse's desires or our parents or our children's our friends, our bosses, without feeling like we're being controlled by that knowledge. Now I don't have all the answers here and I'm not even going to try and answer all of it here, but I do think if you spend any time thinking about this, you're going to come up with some answers that really suit you. But I think the first thing that we can all do is just be more honest with ourselves. Be more willing to tell ourselves the truth. No one can make us do or be something we don't want to do or B. Now I know that there are some extreme examples that I wish were more rare than they probably are, where there is abuse and deep manipulation. And these are a lot harder to navigate when you are dealing with serious mental illness. But in general, the reason we feel controlled when we know what our spouse desires or anyone else that we're in a relationship is because we've told ourselves that we have to take care of that desire. We have lied to ourselves and told ourselves that it's now our job, to be sure that everyone else gets what they want. And that's just not true. The more honest narrative is probably to say. I know in my logical mind that it is not my job to make everyone else happy or to be the one to give my husband or my children or my mother, everything they desire. But when they tell me what they want. I feel a lot of pressure to take care of it. I recognize that it's what I'm used to doing. I recognize that I have the same expectation of other people at times, and I can see that this is a dynamic that I am used to. But even though it is something I have felt like I have no control over in the past. I know that really isn't true. I've always had a choice. I have a choice right now. And if I decide to try and meet that desire, I have to own that I'm choosing that. Even if my spouse or my mom is putting a lot of pressure on for me to fulfill this desire, I choose. Now that may seem really long-winded and maybe you don't have to talk that much to yourself, but I am just trying to demonstrate what it would look like to take a more honest position. About this desire pressure, dynamic that you find yourself in. This has actually been super helpful for me and not just in these types of situations, but when I require myself to acknowledge that I had a choice all along. And I made the choice I was most comfortable with. And then I have to own the fact that often that means that I made the choice. I felt pressured to make, not the one I wanted to make. And doing that, making myself own it all, even though I can still feel frustrated and super disappointed with myself, then I stopped looking around at everyone else and blaming them for making me do what I didn't want to do. And I actually just recently had to go to some people that are close to me and say, Hey. I see how I kind of invented a story in my mind about other people and their expectations of me. And then I acted in a way that was out of alignment of what I really wanted out of alignment with my priorities. And now, unfortunately, You are feeling the effects of the choices that I made. And I'm so sorry. And honestly, I felt so vulnerable during that. And I had to prepare myself to take whatever came along with owning that, going and saying this and not knowing what negative feedback I might receive. But at the same time, I just knew that was the right thing to do. So I dove into the discomfort, which is so interesting because as I say this right, I was so worried about the discomfort of letting other people down. And in the end, I still had a lot of discomfort because I let myself down and it impacted other people that I hadn't really considered. So, I guess this is just the lesson to remember. I can keep feeling like the desires of others, control me and let them control me and live with the negative emotions. I feel about that and maybe keep hoping that they'll just stop telling me all these things and I can live a less intimate life. Or I can choose the discomfort that comes when I decide that I am not responsible for meeting everybody else's desires because that is going to be uncomfortable to not do what I'm used to doing. But if I can be in that situation with them in a way that they can share their desires and I can still hold onto myself and not feel controlled by it, there may be discomfort, but in the end, I think it will give me more of what I want. And I'm not suggesting that instead of allowing yourself to be controlled by the desires of others, you know, swing far the other way and never do anything to fulfill the desires of others. What I'm suggesting is to do things for a different reason. So instead of just creating a bunch of pressure in your mind and telling yourself, oh, I have to do what they want me to do. It's reminding yourself that you can't be everything for everyone that it's okay for them to maybe even find another way to address that desire. Right. So maybe when your adult kids come home, it's like, Hey, you find a way to give each other a rest here, whatever it is, but they find a way to take care of themselves. And then you look with love in your heart and ask yourself, what can I do? What can I do from this place of love? Like maybe right now. I can't have sex with my husband every day and feel loving feelings for him. I'm just not there yet, but I can choose to go all in on the sex. I agree to because I do love him and I want to show him how much I love him in a lot of ways, including in our bedroom. So he may not get the quantity of sex he desires, but he can get more of the caliber of sex he wants. Or maybe it's, you know what, when my adult kids come home, I cannot be the sole caregiver. I. I wish I could. I know that's what they want. but I can't be the sole caregiver and feel loving feelings towards my kids. But I can plan one special activity that I'm going to do alone with my grandkids for 30 minutes. Or I'm going to tell my kids, listen, I am providing the entire meal today. The prep. All of it. That's on me. You don't have to worry about cooking, just come and eat. But that's it. You guys have to help with cleanup and you're in charge of your kids, right? So it was kind of figuring out what you can do from a place of love. Now it may not be easy. It still may require something of you, but it will feel completely different. When you make it your choice, when you remind yourself, that's always been your choice and you don't have to do anything. And now you just get to do. What love feels like. So another thing that can help you to be able to kind of handle the desires of others without feeling controlled by them. Is to develop a better relationship with yourself. Because the better, you know, yourself. The more you learn to love and accept yourself the more self-confidence you're going to develop. Loving yourself helps you love others better. I promise it is true. But it also helps you have a healthier relationship with yourself and that makes it easier to have a healthier relationship with others. Too often, especially when we struggle with our own feelings of self-worth, we are quick to kind of fold into the people around us and do what they want to be, who they want us to be. And just kind of seek for a lot of validation. When we get more confident we can handle more invalidation and then we feel less pressure to do what others want us to do. We get better at holding onto who we are and what we want in the face of someone else's desires that may be an opposition to that, or maybe requiring more. Does that make sense? It means you can tell me what you want. And I don't automatically start trying to figure out how I can take care of that. So is that you're not going to be mad at me. It's I can hear what you desire and take it in and think about it and get to a place of love and decide if there is anything I want to do and what that might be. Maybe you don't relate to this topic completely, but I know there are many of you out there who struggled to know the minds of those you love without feeling like it is controlling you without feeling like now you have to take care of it. And if that is true and you're like, I have been, you really don't want to know any more because it's so much pressure. It keeps you feeling like you are such a big disappointment. It makes you feel like you don't have choices, but I want you to consider that none of that's true. And I want you to open yourself up to the idea of knowing the people around you, Especially your spouse and what they desire and then get yourself into practicing, holding onto yourself, knowing what they want. You have to practice reminding yourself that you still have a choice, remind yourself that you want to respond from love and not from pressure because it's not good for anybody. It's not good for them. It's not good for you. And remind yourself that intimacy is going to really require knowing someone. So if you want that, you're going to have to start opening up to hearing all of it and knowing like, what do you desire? What do you want? And how can we work together to maybe help achieve that without taking it as now? It's my job. This takes practice you guys, but it totally is possible. I hope that you will start to look. At where you are putting up walls, pushing away, because you're worried that what you're going to find out is going to control you and remind yourself it doesn't have the power to control you. You have choices. You can do this, everyone. Good luck. See you next 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.