Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
116. How to Connect When it Hurts
"Most people want to reconnect with their spouse—but they don’t know how to hit the mark when emotions are high. They either get defensive, spiral into shame, or shut down. Today, I want to help you learn how to truly connect when it matters most—especially when there’s pain involved."
In this episode, Jason and Lauren Vallotton break down what happens when emotional disconnection builds over time and how to move toward reconnection with empathy, responsibility, and compassion.
This episode explores:
- Why disconnection happens: How unmet needs and unresolved pain quietly widen the emotional gap between partners.
- The shame spiral: Why shame convinces people they are the problem, and how shifting to personal ownership can restore emotional safety.
- Empathy, sympathy, and compassion: A practical breakdown of each—and why compassion is the key to repair.
- A step-by-step guide to reconnection:
- Get curious, not defensive
- Listen without fixing
- Validate and empathize
- Take ownership
- Offer a sincere apology
Final encouragements:
- For those who’ve been hurt: Give space for ownership—don’t force it, but don’t shrink back either.
- For those who missed it: Perfection isn’t required, but presence is.
This episode offers practical steps and real-life insight for any couple looking to reconnect—especially when it matters most.
Patreon
If you've enjoyed this podcast, would you consider financially supporting the show? Every donation, big and small, helps the Vallottons continue to prioritize making this content for you. Click this link to support! Thank you!
For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
We're the.
Speaker 2:Valetins, and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:We're glad to be here with you on this fine Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2:We sure are.
Speaker 1:We're going to have to do an intentional job this morning, babe, at bringing some energy.
Speaker 2:Why do I look tired? Well, you didn't. Why do I look tired? Well, you didn't sleep well last night and I slept in a chair all night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true, some days are like that, you guys yeah, edie called me in at uh 12 o'clock last night into her room, and so sometimes y'all I sit down in her recliner chair in her room and I fall asleep, and then I just sleep in there all night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, five hours in a recliner chair is not optimal sleep.
Speaker 1:No it's not amazing, but here we are. We just had Easter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That was so fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a great day. Hopefully you guys had a good Easter. That was so fun. Yeah, we had a great day. Hopefully you guys had a good Easter. We spent time with our kids and our family and had, I think, three Easter egg hunts in total the entire weekend for our little kids. I had to throw away gobs of candy so that my son my three-year-old son was caught digging candy out of the trash to eat it after I had thrown it away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't blame him. Anyways, it's out of the house to eat it after I had thrown it away, so I can't blame him.
Speaker 2:Anyways, it's out of the house. Now Trash day happened. It's gone, but he is risen.
Speaker 1:He is risen indeed, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, babe. Well, let's dive into today's topic. You want to intro it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do. This is a topic that I'm finding is more and more a necessity and basically I've been doing lots and lots and lots of marriage counseling and one of the areas that I see causing tons of friction, or you could say one possible growth area in a lot of marriages is when there's been lots of pain and hurt and couples are trying to work through that. What happens when shame is introduced and how do we get empathy and compassion into the relationship and get shame out of the relationship? So we're going to talk about this dynamic, because maybe I'll start in with a story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, and then we can talk about it.
Speaker 1:I've been counseling a lot of couples and this is something that I keep seeing over and over and over again. Where it could be, the guy or the girl has caused a lot of harm in the relationship over the years. And then, when you come in to repair that, I'm finding that a lot of individuals don't know how to sit in the pain of what they've done and they don't really know how to deeply emotionally connect, and there's lots of reasons for that. But oftentimes what I see happening I was counseling a couple recently and great couple, great, great couple, great man, great woman. They're both individually great people. There's been a lot of pain in the relationship over the years, a lot of emotional disconnection, and they're both working towards healing that pain. They know that they need to. It's out in the open. It's not like this, this hidden thing, and yet when they try, they end up sometimes more disconnected than when they started.
Speaker 1:And so this last week I was sitting and I was listening to them explain what they're going through and I realized, oh, she doesn't actually know how to sit inside of his pain and really listen to his pain, Like she doesn't. She doesn't, she knows how to go wow, I'm really sorry. Or wow, that would be a bummer. Or, oftentimes, let me just fix it, Going straight to how can I fix it, and it leaves this massive disconnect and then this massive amount of mistrust. And so while I was listening to them and watching them, I realized, oh, I don't think that you know how to hit the target for him.
Speaker 1:And therefore it's creating just this unmet, unpartnered with pain for a long period of time. And so, anyways, I started to unpack this for them. I stopped in the counseling appointment and was like, hey, do you actually know, do you feel equipped, when he shares his pain, do you feel equipped to hit the target, like to actually know how to partner with him? Because she said something that really tripped me off to it. She was like I don't think that I understand how to make him feel hurt, like I don't actually know how to get in there with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, you know all the principles, you know that you have to repair this, but you actually don't know the tools of repair.
Speaker 1:And if you go all the way back like, this is a tool set, this is a skill set Learning how to emotionally connect, because that's actually the breakdown Learning how to emotionally connect with your partner when you've made a mess and to really create that bond before you even go, I'm sorry, before you even go, I'm sorry is so massive Because an apology without the sincerity, without the felt connection or the shared connection, like some people would call it attunement I attune to where you're at.
Speaker 1:And if you think about it like, like in a, in an orchestra, everybody's playing, but you have one cello that's out of tune, yeah, and so you come in and you're playing a. Everyone else is playing whatever the C or an E or a D, and you're over there playing a nothing, you're playing a screech. That's what it's like if you don't know how to emotionally connect to your partner, you're literally out of tune with what's happening and it creates this incredible, painful experience. And if we think about it in terms of music, I don't know about you, babe, but I have sat in worship before and the guy behind me is singing so out of tune. It's hard, it's like a painful experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've all been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what a lot of couples experiences like in connection while trying to clean up a mess, and so there's a couple of things that I think, for starters, would be helpful to go through. The first one is what's actually happening when I think for them? I'll just give this and maybe it will be helpful. What I saw happening was, as soon as he would bring up what was going on inside of him, he would start down like I've just felt so disconnected for all these years. I've had a lot of pain. She feels shame, and as soon as she feels shame, she begins to shut down emotionally and then withdraw, and that withdrawal becomes a punishment, it becomes a protection, and if you go all the way back into her childhood, you can see that play out over and over and over again of that Um, some type of when, uh, some type of I'm not good enough, I don't do it right, and then shame comes.
Speaker 1:And then the emotionally shutting down and then the distance that punishes until whatever she either blows up eventually or they forget about the conflict and then they move towards one another a little bit, but there's never deep connection. And here's why is shame shuts us down from empathy and compassion. You can't have shame and empathy and compassion all at the same time, because shame thinks about yourself. Shame is this incredible self it says I am something wrong. I not just I did something wrong, but I am something wrong. And then that turns into that anger that it's so self focused that as soon as shame is present in the relationship, all you're thinking about is how do I get rid of my shame? If I could get you to quit talking, if I could get you to. Sometimes it looks like defensiveness. We get back into the four horsemen that we've talked about so much. Shame gets back into eye rolling or it gets back into the contentment or-.
Speaker 1:Contempt. Sorry, it gets into all that. Well, if you, if you allow shame to take its course, then you end up again worse, in a worse spot than when you started. What we really have to do is shame comes up and you go oh yeah, I do. I feel a lot of shame, or even guilt. I feel a lot of guilt over the years of disconnection. Wow, I want to run away because I feel so powerless in the relationship. Does this make sense? Yeah, it's like I feel so powerless to know how to fix it and yet I feel so guilty. So that powerless and guilt for a lot of people equals that shame thing. I am something wrong. I don't know how to do this. Okay, so ultimately, what we have to do is teach people how to address the shame so that you can get into empathy and compassion.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. How do people recognize when shame is there? Because I've talked to a lot of people who don't actually know that that's what's happening for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They just know that this doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the signs of shame would be. It would be the stonewalling it would be. I am emotionally shutting down.
Speaker 2:So pause. When you're in a conversation with your spouse and they are telling you things like I have felt disconnected for years. This process is painful for me. We're not gaining ground and that is hard. I'm losing hope. Mm-hmm, the way that you know you're in a shame response is when you want to shut down and walk away from the conversation. It's when you realize that you start to get very defensive towards your spouse when they're sharing this truth. You start thinking about yourself and you start analyzing whether they are right or wrong about what they're saying, instead of actually being present to hear them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to blame.
Speaker 2:I want to blame them for how I'm feeling and so, then, how I'm acting, which is causing them to feel a certain way.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about them instead of me way Um, okay, talk about them instead of me. And ultimately we're saying shame is the voice inside that would tell you you are, something is wrong with you that is causing this dynamic to be perpetual and painful. That's a hard connection for people to make, because in the middle of a conflict, you're not usually aware of that line, like you're not saying to yourself, even on on a subconscious level. You're not saying to yourself something's wrong with me, something's wrong with me because your brain is wired so much to self-protect that, instead of telling yourself consciously something's wrong with me, shame is sneakier than that. It's not consciously something's wrong with me.
Speaker 2:Shame is sneakier than that. It's not telling you something's wrong with you. It's telling you something's wrong with them. They're the problem. It's basically shame tries to get you to rewrite the story because you feel powerless to take ownership. Ultimately, you don't know what to do, and so shame is trying to help you out by saying deflect, deflect, deflect. So it looks like defensiveness, but at the bottom of it all, at the bottom of it all we're saying, usually shame is present and you feel like something's wrong Because you don't feel like you're able to win in these scenarios.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and ultimately it's this very powerless feeling, yeah, powerless. So when you get back into this.
Speaker 2:You don't know what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really powerless feeling. That would be the key. To go like, oh, something's happening here inside of me. I want to run away, I want to blame, I want to shut down, I want to punish. I feel all those things sometimes. And the key is to really recognize like, oh, this is what I'm feeling, right now. I want to punish her, can I?
Speaker 2:interject a parallel story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do it.
Speaker 2:So Jason's talking about this couple that he has been pastoring and walking with in their marriage journey for a while. But this is what it looks like in real time, Like okay for me, Ready. So we were in the middle of our morning routine and Jay was kind of helping the kids with something and in the background, as he was down the hall, I heard him say out loud wow, look at all these lights that are on. And I'm in the kitchen and I'm instantly flooded with anger. And I link it back to a comment he had made the day prior when he told me that he had a goal of making sure that in the house, lights were turned off more often, Like when we leave rooms. I'd like to teach the kids to turn off the lights. So I had already been stewing on the fact that Jay wanted something to be done in the house differently than he was currently experiencing it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to my whole life. The opposite, though you want something done in the house. The one time that jay has a request.
Speaker 2:He's not allowed to have requests. It's only I can have requests in the house. So, anyways, you know, two twice in two days I have heard him articulate some version of his desire for lights to be turned off more frequently. And I'm just flooded with anger. And I try really quick, right you? You have a high emotion and in a split second time you're trying to actually calculate out, like, why do I feel the way that? Why am I feeling so strongly about this right now? So this, I'm not going to go into the depths of that, although we could at some point but what I will say is what I was feeling in the moment was angry. What I was feeling in the moment is like explaining to him why I can't actually guarantee that we're going to turn the lights off more often than we do and how. Actually it is a goal of mine to conserve energy, but that I'm already doing my best and that I think that the kids are, you know, too young to have to think about that, on top of all the other things I'm trying to teach them, like how to wipe their own butts when they go poop. You know what I'm saying. So I'm thinking of all of that. It would be easy to miss that.
Speaker 2:The reality is that I was feeling shame, right? So this is the sneaky shame. Sneaky shame tries to get you to deflect, blame your partner. Get angry, be defensive, protect yourself. Rewrite the narrative. Get angry, be defensive, protect yourself. Rewrite the narrative. Villainize the communicator, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But actually I'm feeling shame because deep down, underneath all of that silly, silly stuff, I'm afraid that I'm not enough or that I'm not being enough.
Speaker 1:And I can tell that that's real for me because you're crying right now literally crying right now.
Speaker 2:But that's what happens to us is that we don't understand the message that shame is trying to tell us, and so we miss the opportunities to actually genuinely connect or validate somebody else's need or have you know, have a, you know, a willingness to actually mold and grow and change, because we're so terrified that what shame is telling us is true, which is that actually I don't have what it takes to do a great job in this space the ultimate message is that we believe, is that there's punishment coming right.
Speaker 2:So that's the ultimate message under if you dug down deep enough is I'd have to keep digging because that doesn't feel real for me, but maybe, maybe it is.
Speaker 1:There's disconnection, there's judgment.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's some type of punishment coming. That's why all the armor and the self-protection, if that makes sense Totally. There's punishment inside of it. That's true. And so a big piece of what that does, ultimately what that does. And so a big piece of what that does, ultimately, what that does is it creates so much pain inside of every time they bring up the things that aren't going right. This ends up spiraling over and over and over again. They never solve it.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And in order to solve this, we have to get back into empathy Not just sympathy, but empathy. And I think this is a really big piece, Because as soon as I heard her starting to say we're back to your coaching appointment. Yeah, I don't know how to sit in it with him. I don't think I actually know how to make him feel hurt.
Speaker 2:Believe that I hear what he's saying.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, oh, you never learned this skill set. And so I started to go through and say she's trying to just solve it. She's logically trying to solve it Like OK, well, just do this and this, or just do that and that. Or maybe, like you did to me, like okay, well, just do this and this, or just do that and that. Or maybe, like you did to me, like the kids aren't old enough well yeah, we're doing our best.
Speaker 1:We actually do care about yeah, conserving yeah uh and and flood, flood the other person with information. You can actually go oh, let me hear how that was for you. So I just want to help. I want to really help people understand the difference between sympathy, empathy and compassion. Great, because she sympathizes with him, but she doesn't empathize with him, and there certainly isn't compassion in it. And so sympathy is acknowledging someone's pain, but from a distance.
Speaker 1:And you guys are going to, as I'm talking through this, you're going to go oh my gosh, this is what happens in my relationship, especially if your conflicts don't go well. So, wow, I'm sorry you're going through that. That's sympathy If anyone's ever done that to you, after you've poured out your heart to them, crying in tears, and they go. Wow, I'm sorry that you're feeling that. Do you just want to poke them in the eye? Yeah, well, yeah.
Speaker 2:If somebody has done something to hurt you and you try to confront them about it and their response is I'm sorry, you feel that way. Yep.
Speaker 1:You want to be like wow, I hate you yeah.
Speaker 3:That must be tough, yeah that must be tough is a sympathy.
Speaker 1:Wow, that must be tough. Yeah, man, I'd hate to go through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's like somewhat acknowledging the pain, but it's not drawing close and it's taking zero action or responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:Okay, what's?
Speaker 1:empathy, and and but.
Speaker 2:Here's what I want to say sympathy is also a protection oh yeah it's a protector of your shame totally it's a way to not take ownership it's a way to not take ownership or enter in, but to pretend like I am totally. It's like uh, passive aggressiveness yes okay, compassion I mean but sympathy in and of itself is not wrong. It's just that if your goal is intimate connection, you cannot stop at sympathy.
Speaker 1:You can't.
Speaker 2:You can have sympathy for, like a stranger on the street, but even then it's not going to really help them very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's simply just going like, wow, that would really suck, what a bummer. Okay, compassion takes empathy. Sorry, let's go empathy. Empathy is feeling what someone else feels. It's emotional. Here we go. Attunement, that's that word, right. Sympathy is not emotional attunement. Empathy is emotional attunement. You connect with the pain by allowing yourself to experience it with them. So here's the question what would it feel like if this was me? What would it feel like if she had done to me what I did to her?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then you start thinking from that perspective, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When in my life have I felt like this Right? Connect to it empathy says I feel your sadness your anger your disappointment, babe. I'm so in this with you um it really feels the pain yeah it really connects with the emotion and it comes in close.
Speaker 2:It doesn't try to keep space, it doesn't necessarily always take a bunch of action or a bunch of ownership, but it does draw close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that drawing close is so necessary to actually again starting to heal this pain. Because you can't heal pain that you've caused in a relationship unless you're actually attuned to it, right Connected to it, because there has to be an owner and if there's no attunement, there's no ownership. Mm-hmm. Okay, compassion is the ultimate, though. Mm-hmm. Because compassion takes empathy one step further. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's feeling what they feel and being moved to help. Compassion is just an amazing tool, no matter who you are. You see, in the Bible all the time it says and Jesus moved with compassion, stopped. He was on his way, he wasn't going to do anything, he was busy, but he moved through compassion, felt what they felt and did something. Compassion always takes action and so again it goes. They feel the pain, they draw close and they take action. So inside of a conflict, I gave some steps to this couple, like hey, when he's sharing his heart, I want you to start thinking through how that would feel if it was you. Where in your life has this happened to you and what would you want?
Speaker 2:Yeah, You're actually inviting. You were inviting them to get really curious about what was happening in the dynamic.
Speaker 1:And to take the armor off. So compassion sounds like this too. Wow, it's so painful to hear. I'm afraid I am. I'm afraid that I can't do what you want me to do. I'm afraid that I'm going to be overwhelmed. Oh, you can already start talking about yourself.
Speaker 2:I think that when it comes to actually attuning to them, I would say you would want to spend a lot of time validating what they're feeling before you share how you're feeling.
Speaker 1:I think that there is a place when you're trying to understand. You're not trying to shift it back to you, You're trying to go. This is so hard for me to even wrap my mind around because I feel so scared even hearing this. You're like yeah, that's how painful it's been for me and you go. I totally understand. I get it Like this is a really painful place for you. I'm still trying to explore your pain. I am working through, I'm putting myself in your shoes.
Speaker 2:I think you're just being really present.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being super present and super honest. Okay, it is from this place, from this place, it's from the place of empathy and compassion that you address and heal these longstanding, long-term challenges. And without this, what couples try to do is they try to use sympathy on a massive bullet hole, wound Sympathy is a band-aid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly a massive bullet hole. One sympathy is abandoned. Yeah, exactly, empathy and compassion are bloody hands and a suture. They are like getting in the mess. I created this mess. Wow, I'm afraid to go in that mess. Yeah, totally, but you mean so much to me I am coming in there and I would never want you to be left here. And so I think for a lot of couples, for a lot of people, what happened is when you take ownership. When you were young, you got punished. When you, if you had to block yourself from feeling empathy and from feeling compassion, that emotion was shut down because you couldn't survive in your childhood feeling that.
Speaker 1:For a lot of people, Not everyone but for a lot of people and also just how people are wired. But ultimately, I really want to encourage people to practice taking off the armor, practice using empathy, practice using compassion, listen to really understand. But the key to me is putting yourself in their shoes.
Speaker 2:I think another thing worth mentioning is that our human nature makes accessing empathy and compassion challenging. It does, and so I would say you need the help of the Holy Spirit to really nail this process, Like the fruit of the Spirit will help you access empathy and compassion in a way that truly is not easy to do otherwise, Like you're wired to self-protect, which is why I mean, like Jason's saying, practice this, practice it, practice it, practice it, because it really doesn't come naturally when you're wired to protect yourself. So I do. The only reason I say that is to say like this is an Olympic level emotional health tool to practice and you need the Lord's help to actually empower you to do this, because left to yourself, it is scary and it is hard to do when we have patterns and patterns and patterns and cycles and cycles of painful interactions that have convinced us that we actually shouldn't utilize empathy and compassion.
Speaker 1:Right, so yeah main it's not easy in order to like actually walk this all out. I think it's getting curious. It's asking the question help me understand what this has been like for you. It's being present. It's not defending right, it's actively listening, so not jumping to fix it, but really listening, and then bring in validation, so empathy and compassion. They also validate Right. They're going wow, I could see how that would feel man, that would be really lonely, it would be really painful. So when you're validating, use the emotion wheel, like actually use the core emotions in order to help the other person.
Speaker 1:Know that you know how that feels. Wow, that would feel so scary. There would be a lot of fear in that. You must have felt feels. Wow, that would feel so scary. There'd be a lot of fear in that you must have felt X, y and Z and then taking some real ownership. Right, I wasn't there when you needed me.
Speaker 1:That's on me or man. You have felt alone for all these years and you've tried to communicate it to me and I've armored up by again taking ownership but also being able to repeat back to them what they've experienced. It really lets them know that you're attuned and then offering a sincere apology I hate that I've hurt you or I see it so much clearer now. It makes a lot of sense. I want to own it. I want to be different.
Speaker 2:I want to help you. That's really good.
Speaker 1:So, if you know that this is where you've been, you're in this spot in your marriage and you have, instead of really doing a great job, to own something you've armored up and you're offering sympathy, telling them that that should be enough for them. What do you want from me? I'm telling you that would be a bummer. I'm telling you it would. Yep, you're giving them sympathy. You're not giving them empathy or compassion, being able to actually go back and say, hey, I've protected myself, I have been self-protecting inside of conflict and it's led to more conflict. That's my fault. I want you to feel cared for and loved and known from me and then being able to practice, when you get into a conflict, to use that empathy to use that compassion.
Speaker 1:Alright, y'all guys, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully this helps you a bunch. That empathy, use that compassion. It's good, really good. All right, y'all guys, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully this helps you a bunch in your conflicts and to crush it. We, uh, we will see you next week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dates, mates and babies. Have a great week everybody.
Speaker 1:See y'all, bye.