Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Ah, welcome back, y'all. Welcome, welcome back. I am betting after last week's episode. Y'all have been excitedly, perhaps anxiously, awaiting this second episode this week, this part two, continuing our discussion around staying in your marriage and some of the areas that I want you to be making the shifts in. And I just have to say, I'm fresh out the shower. I am recording this on Sunday. It is gorgeous weather here in Texas at the moment. Um, after I finish recording this episode, Joe and I are gonna go sunbathe out by the pool and just have a relaxing rest of the day. So yum, yum, yum, yum. But I'm really excited to get to drop in and be with all of you first. And um, this is a fun little extra that I'm ending up throwing in at the beginning of this episode that I'm so grateful that I actually recorded, you know, part one and part two separately from each other because in between the recording of these parts, Quinn was messaging this me this week and she was talking about digging in a little deeper to her astrology and using a chat GPT to do that. And y'all know how much I love exploring different chats. So I went and found one this morning and I started looking up my stuff. And then I, on top of that, like got Joe's phone and started doing it through the same GPT on his phone and kind of asking it the same questions. And y'all, I loved it. It was so fascinating. It led to like a couple, probably two, three hours of us just talking and discussing all these, you know, things that we were seeing that were really like matching in some areas where we're like, oh, I don't feel like I've developed that part of myself yet. So my takeaway, though, from all of this is I did a lot of astrology around partners and relationships. And I was like, holy shit, this could be a really helpful resource for those of you wanting to check in with like, what am I wanting or needing or what is best for me in a relationship? And I just have to say, y'all, whether you like necessarily believe in astrology, regardless, I've really come to like my love for astrology through just how insanely accurate it is for my life. I'm gonna have to do like maybe a vibe session around this in an episode in the future with Quinn. Um, because literally like all of my astrology now matches me entirely, where five years ago it totally wouldn't have, but now like everything was hitting hard. But whether you believe in it or not, I have found in exploring my astrology, it's just like just hearing what it has to say about me, it's been really helpful in expanding my brain around thinking about myself differently. So that was the other piece where I was like, even if you're not like, oh, astrology is real, you go and you read about it and you think about yourself in different ways because there may be areas where you're like, oh, I've never thought that I like that, or oh, that kind of makes sense. So highly, highly recommend it, y'all. I'm gonna have Alex actually link the Chat GBT that I was playing with this morning in the show notes. And I am going to also have her drop in the show notes the series of eight questions I used this morning with chat to get all of this gorgeous information that Joe and I were playing in this morning. And those questions like ranged from, you know, tell me more about my career and my vocational insights to let's discuss my relationship patterns and soulmate indicators, and even dropped into an area where chat recommended, like, do you want to hear more about your part of fortune and black moon Lilith sections? And I was like, um, yes, I don't even know what the fuck this is, but I want to hear more about it. Um, and ultimately landed in like, yes, can you explain and explore my tantric blueprint through my astrology? Y'all, it's so good. I know I can just, I can feel so many of you, because I get a lot of feedback from y'all on my Chat GPT tarot spreads that I've helped all of you create through that PDF. For those of you that don't have it yet, you can text email me all one word to 33777 to get that sent to you. So highly recommend that, especially when like the biggest takeaway I was feeling doing it this morning was just more of that piece of like, who is this episode for? And as I read more about what my astrology says about the relationship that's best for me, I realized like that's what I'm talking about is the relationship I'm in, the relationship I have, the level of the soul connection, the level of being seen, the level of mutuality, the level of trust. And I don't know, y'all. That may not be the case for some of you in your astrology. So that's why it's so important to know yourself, know what your best relationship looks like. Um, and remember that this episode, like I said in the last one, is specifically for those of us looking for the type of relationship I often talk about and a spouse, especially in my episode where I'm mentioning, you know, what I believe a great marriage really looks like. Okay, so with that incredible, like super sexy and fun resource dropped here at the beginning of this episode. Yeah, I highly recommend you go play with. Let's drop back into my amazing shift list. And in the last episode, we did my very first one, remember, which is building a foundation in nonviolent communication. Now we are gonna head into my second thing on the list, which is that I believe personal work has to be a priority. And that two halves do not a whole make when it comes to a marriage. So I don't know about y'all, but I definitely grew up thinking that like the way a marriage works is it's, you know, a half and a half, and then together those two halves make one. They make a whole, and that your partner's gonna complete you and they're gonna be your other, your other half, maybe your better half, right? No. Hail two de fuck. No, I am so not for this anymore. I really hope to like kind of erase and and at least change this idea that somehow your partner comes in and and creates wholeness in you. Where what I have started to see is I really believe where marriages thrive most is when we have two relatively whole individuals. They've at least got some of that secure attachment and wholeness within themselves. That then when we're coming together, we are able to move towards more wholeness, move towards more healing, but we are not dropping into a marriage as a like half of a person being like, yeah, this is gonna be great. Like this person's gonna complete me. Okay. So self-foundation and working towards self-wholeness, I believe, is essential for staying in this kind of a marriage and working towards the kind of a marriage that you want that we're talking about in these episodes. And I want to emphasize that, you know, grounded emotionally adult conscious selves do not just magically emerge once we get married or reach adulthood. Like, don't you think you all felt that as a kid? You're like, one day I'm gonna be an adult and I'm just gonna like get it and I'm gonna know how to do it, and like I'm gonna be an adult. No, that is not the case. I think many of us have come to realize that once you become an adult, it's not a threshold that you cross and now you've arrived. So, this point, point two, is really speaking to the essential need for individual work and especially around nervous system regulation and unhealed trauma, which now you can see why point two ties so fully into point one. And the core of both of those pieces are having nervous systems that can regulate down. And how do we help our nervous systems get to that point? I have found the process for me and for many of my clients comes through examining and working through our unhealed trauma. So, this is where some of the big core things that I'm passionate about and have talked about the podcast come into play. This is where complex PTSD resides, the work around that. This is where understanding our attachment styles and our attachment wounds comes into play. This is where learning about our childhood parts, nurturing our inner child, understanding our childhood coping patterns and how they unconsciously shape our adult dynamics, all of those parts are so key here. And y'all, if we don't understand these pieces about ourselves, like now that I see more fully how much those of us that like are in marriages, have not studied any of this, don't understand any of this, and are trying to like make our marriage work, y'all. The best example I have is that that is like running through a pitch dark house. Okay, that's like the marriage with knives. Like it is not a safe thing to do. And it goes back to me really pushing back against the narrative so many of us are raised with of like, just get married, just have kids, it's all gonna work out. Like, no, those steps, those choices, let's get married, let's have kids, do not actually be a safe home with the lights turned on and nobody running around with knives. Bank. So I really want to frame this piece of us doing our own internal work, building our internal individual foundations as safety work. Okay. This is not just self-help. And it makes me think so much of on my podcast with Mayam and Jonathan and how Jonathan was like, Men don't like, when you tell them they need to do this deep internal work, like why? They don't get it. And I'm like, because this is safety work. This is so that you can be safe with yourself and safe around others. Because when you don't know your trauma, you don't know your attachment style, you don't know your childhood coping mechanisms, you are the one running around through the house in the dark with the knives, often inadvertently and unintentionally stabbing the people you love. And without doing this healing, you can't understand actually what is yours, what is theirs, or what is real. And that's why in those instances, everyone is just getting stabbed and fucked up in marriages like this, including you, including your partner, and including your kids. So takeaway, big point is the container of a marriage does not magically make two traumatized individuals better together or induce healing just because you got married. There is deeper work to be done. Some of the tools that I want to recommend in this space, in our number two part of the list, is somatic therapy. I've really heard actually at a client posting yesterday about how much brain spotting. She was in the community posting about how much brain spotting is helping her. I've noticed EFT tapping has been really amazing for me lately. Breath work, this is journaling, this is doing parts work, this is getting educated about your trauma. And a lot of the education that I have espoused and that I want to remind everybody about on this podcast are gonna come from the book Attached, the book Complex PTSD. I'm gonna have Alex list all of these in the show notes, the book Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and No Bad Parts. I think those four books are like must-have reads for both partners in a marriage that is struggling, in a marriage where you're like, hey, we both want to stay, but what the fuck is going on here? How do we fix it? We gotta have grounding and information in those four areas just to start with. I'm sure there's a ton of other resources that start with those four. Now let's go on to the third item on my list, which is mutual thriving over martyrdom. I want to challenge the idea that relationships must involve one partner shrinking for the other to survive. And, you know, and I think we see this on both sides of the table with us going into a marriage and thinking, I have got to make sacrifices. I've got to give up things for my partner to thrive or for the marriage to thrive. I do think this can go both ways. I think with men, this often comes in the whole like, I've just got to like pour myself into my career and not have any feelings. And then for us as women, it's often I need to give up myself for the children. And sometimes in dynamics, it is more of a like one person having to be the one that kind of sacrifices, moves into martyrdom for others to thrive, whether that's your children or whether that's your spouse. And here's what I want to say: even though I am mentioning that I think this happens on both sides, I do want to warn that because we live in most of us, most of you listening to the podcast, especially those of us here in the US, we live in patriarchal cultures where there are strict gender roles typically inherently built into that culture and power inequalities that just exist when you live in a patriarchal culture, that often where the martyrdom tends to be is in the woman's side of the equation. And to drive home that point, I asked ChatGPT, I was like, can you tell me like a little bit more about patriarchy? Like, describe it to me. So Chat said, patriarchy is a social system where men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. It is characterized by the dominance of men in various aspects of society, including the family, politics, economics, and culture. And the system often leads to gender inequality and the subordination of women. I needed this point to like land here because I think often women's martyrdom in marriage is often swept under the rug, or it's like, oh, that's not a real thing anymore. That's not really happening. And what I see is like, no, that is still absolutely happening. And I really do believe that's because in a system like patriarchy, where men hold the primary power and predominate in all these different roles, women often fall into a space of martyrdom to support that. Just because it's the soup we've all been raised in, we know nothing else. It's like a fish in water. Now, I was talking with Quinn about this before we did this episode, and she said, since marriage is not made for women, and I just want to like pause here on that statement because it we will have to unpack even just the first half of this sentence, right? This idea that marriage is not made for women, I was like, oh my God, wait, what? Which, you know, that's even in my brain, this shows you guys how much I am soaking in the patriarchal definitions of marriage and thinking, like, no, marriage like supports both people. When Quinn and I multiple times on this podcast have shown that like for women, marriage often reduces their life expectancy by five years, right? So Quinn is coming from the space where she's like, since marriage is not made for women, asking for equality within marriage often sounds like oppression to men. Whoa, right? And I want to unpack this some. So for men, because at least men living in a patriarchal culture, they often have to give up their privilege, the privileges that they may not even recognize that they have been given by being a man in a patriarchal culture. They often have to give up some of that privilege for the relationship to become more equal and more based on mutuality. And as I was thinking about all of this again and re-umpacking this whole idea, I was like, oh, I literally did a video about this on my Instagram like way back when discussing this. And I've even, I know I've hinted on this and talked about this in the podcast, that this is what often makes it so difficult for men to get it. Why to do this work? Because they're like, things seem pretty good. I'm kind of getting what I want. Yeah. I'm just like going back to what Jonathan said on the podcast with Maya, where he's like, I mean, dudes are like, she cries occasionally, but like we're pretty good. And like we sit on the couch and we watch TV and it's like awesome. Okay. So inherent with this piece of moving from martyrdom of one individual into mutual thriving of both has to be an acknowledgement of for many of us the cultural overlay of patriarchy that we live in, and that many men don't see their privilege or understand it because it's just the world they live in. And yet, us as women, that is the very thing that they are going to kind of have to step back from for it to become more equal. And that for some men, that can feel like oppression. Now, here's what I want to say. This is like the little like beacon of hope is there are, I want to emphasize this, there are men out there. I have seen them who were raised in this system that are seeing the wrongs of it and genuinely care enough to try to change this, who are like, you know what? I do want, I do want this marriage, similar to that community member of mine that I shared about in the first episode with her partner, right? This is what you're looking for. Okay. For those of you being like, okay, I'm leaning towards saying, like, is this really worth it? This is what you're looking for in your partner. If you want a relationship that's going to be what I'm talking about, moving into mutuality. Now, to do this, okay. So now we've like, we've acknowledged the difficulty of the culture we live in, how it trains men. If you actually have a partner that is like, fuck, this really has fucked up both of us. I want it to be more equal. Let's find something new together. You have to together reframe self-care and individuation as essential nutrients for the relationship's health. And this is like in so many ways missing from what many of us were taught when we think of a marriage. Like the previous standard, I feel, has been that the marriage becomes the most important thing and the kids are what matter most. Like we're married and we gotta support the kids the most. And if you actually go look at that boots on the ground, y'all, if we really honestly acknowledge this, that ends up being like driving a car and never putting gas in it. This is why so many of you are like, we're just like in our lanes going, and all the focus is on the kids. And you're wondering like, why are we burnt out? Why am I not happy? Why is there no like spark or juice in my life? Because you have to have self care and that individuation. That's the foundation. And then from there, we can start building into like, yes, the marriage also is a key piece. Yes, now we can also give to the kids. It goes back to that theory I have around like filling your cup first, and then the overflow goes to everybody else. And for that to be possible, right? It is going to take both partners working together to accommodate this change. Okay. If there's going to be space for both people to have self-care and individuation, I do want to say that in most cases, the biggest changes will typically be for the male partner who may have been benefiting. And I'm talking about this in like what most of you are coming to me with, which is like stereotypical, gendered, traditional marriage dynamics. The husband is the one who may have been benefiting from a lot of unacknowledged and unseen male privilege already within the relationship. And so if you, this was kind of the case in my marriage, I was the one that was like really burnt out, really stuck in martyrdom, really lost myself, did not have self-care, had no individuation. I was just a mom and a wife. And what I needed was support in okay, we need to radically rethink how we've structured this marriage and this life so that you, as the Brita in the marriage, not just the wife and mother, get to have a sense of yourself as well. So this is a big piece, y'all, moving from the martyrdom into mutual thriving. And some of the questions I want you all to ask yourselves that can kind of help you to drop a little bit more into understanding, like, okay, what do I need for self-care and individuation? Is what helps me feel most like myself. I mean, how many of you have asked yourself that in the years since getting married? Right? It's like so many of us live and care about our individuation until we get married. And then it just goes out the window. And we believe we can pour all of ourselves into a marriage and kids without anything left for ourselves, and that that's going to be sustainable. It's just not. So you ask, what helps me feel most like myself? And then you look across the table and you say, How do I support my partner in doing the same? And with that caveat that for a lot of you, it may not necessarily be right now, how do I support my partner in doing the same? Because if you were in my situation of what my marriage was like, I was giving everything to support my partner, being able to do all the things he wanted to do, being able to go out and thrive in his career and be successful without asking, what do I also need to feel most like myself? Okay, point four is want matches and non-negotiables. I want to start this one by addressing the I think it's a pretty like sobering truth and reality that we all want to pretend is not real, but it's the it's the reality that compatibility, y'all, is not static. Okay. What matched for you 15, 20 years, even 10 years ago, just may not match today. And this harkens back to the episode I did where I talk about the 50-year marriage myth, uh, which is this idea that you could marry someone 50 years ago and somehow 50 years later, it's still gonna be a match. Like I just I really break it down in that episode. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, go listen to it. If you have in the past, you may want to listen to it for a refresher. And the concept that I love the most, like the tool that I think helps the most with checking in on this compatibility, is a tool that comes from Brooke Castillo and the school that I certified with, the Life Coach School. And I'm gonna link this podcast episode um in the show notes. But she came up with this brilliant idea of want matches and taking the time to identify your own wants and then your partner identifying theirs, and then you just checking in, like taking those two lists and being like, how many of our wants are actually matches? You know, my memory's being jogged right now. I'm like, oh, I literally read a comment this morning in my community from a community member who was talking about this exact same thing. She talked about how when she and her husband first met, they were super into all the outdoorsy stuff, hiking, skiing, just like that was their jam. And now, over the years of their marriage, she is still deeply into that, super passionate about it. It's one of the things that she enjoys the most out of life. And he is no longer, and it is a real source of sadness and disconnect in their marriage because here she is wanting to go out and connect with her romantic partner in these ways. And he just does not have a desire around that anymore. And why I like so much the way Brooke frames it is us just starting to be more honest, I guess, about like, okay, it's a little silly. It's a little silly and childish, honestly. Like it feels like, you know, like a Disney movie to believe that the person you met when you were, in my case, newly turned 19, is gonna 15, 12, 15 years later, still be the person that you met back then. And maybe like, oh, we're just gonna love the same things. Like, growth happens. People grow up, people change. Humans are not static. Therefore, compatibility isn't static. So ultimately, you can go listen to that podcast episode to get the like deep, thorough version of it. But I do want to just offer some reflective questions now that will give you a kind of overview of what that work is like. So, first question is what did I want back then? And what do I want now? This exercise, even if you're not doing it with your partner, is very, very illuminating. Um, and for those of you that have been on 90 minutes with me, you'll know this is kind of where I take you at the very, very beginning is like, who were you back then? What were you going through? Who were you wanting to be with? What were you thinking life was about back then when you met your partner? And then what do you want now? Next question is where are we aligned or misaligned? And final question is what are my true non-negotiables versus inherited expectations? And I believe she talks about that in the episode about non-negotiables and how these are the things that let me put it this way. I realized towards the end of my marriage that for me, living a good life, a non-negotiable for me, is to have like deep soul connected, seeing, emotional, physical, sexual relationship with my chosen partner. That is a non-negotiable. I don't want to go through life without that. And so in my marriage, even though there were other things that were important to me, that ultimately was a non-negotiable and that was missing. Therefore, it was not a fit for me to stay. Versus the inherited expectations, which inherited expectations for me would have been like, you don't get divorced. Like marriage is sacred. And no matter what, you need to stay to make it work for the children. Those were all expectations I had, or you know, expectations that my husband's gonna be the one that provides for me. I am going to be a stay-at-home mom. Those are not actually my non-negotiables. Also, I want to finish off this section by sharing this just gem of a little line. I sometimes call them when Joe gives them. I call them Joeisms. So Joe and I were talking about this episode ahead of time, you know, and I was asking him, like, what do you think it takes to stay in your marriage and to, you know, really change it in the ways it needs to? And he said, you have to understand that compromise is dinner, not compromising your core. And I was like, oh, that's so good, right? And I dive into that more thoroughly in the episode where I talk about what I believe a great marriage looks like, and that this whole idea that, you know, no, guys, we are not compromising on our core non-negotiables, on the things that are like the most important to us. Compromise is okay, where are we gonna go to dinner? You know, and you want Mexican and I want Italian. Okay, cool. We can do Mexican tonight. That's compromise. Fifth item on the list is burn the rule book. Questioning the shoulds. The majority of us are technically adults, I believe, in age only. And we are still living internally as if we are children. And when it comes to the rule book of your life, many of us, like children, even though we are adults in age, are still living as if our parents and our religion are standing over us, telling us what to do and how we should live and what we should look like, dress like, who we should be, without ever stopping and like from an adult space, questioning if we actually like those rules, if we actually like the life that living by those rules is creating, if we actually want to keep molding ourselves through those shoulds that came from people outside of us. So I want to break down with y'all some of the most common rules, shoulds, assumptions that I see that keep people stuck. So one of the ones that's been coming up a lot lately on the 90 minutes that I've noticed is when y'all move somewhere and then you guys just stay where it is, wherever you've moved, thinking like, okay, well, we moved here and now like the kids are in school, or um, we moved for this other reason. So like we have to stay. Even though wherever you've moved or wherever you live now is like killing you slowly inside. So the most beautiful example I saw of this recently was a client who got on a 90-minute, and as we're talking, she explains that like when they were first married, they lived in California and they had a huge friend group and they could go out into the city and they just were connected to like all of this life city center area. And then, as we often do, they got this idea in their head that like where they wanted to be was out in the country and they end up moving to Montana. And in their case, they didn't have any kids. It's just the two of them out in the middle of Montana. And getting out there, the wife actually realizes like, holy shit, this is not the fit for me. Like, this is not helping my mental health. I actually think of this two a lot for me, y'all. I kind of did a similar thing. You know, me and my ex-husband, we lived in Oakland, we'd done the city life for so long, and we thought, like, where we need to be is the country. And actually moving out to the country, I think, is what allowed me to realize, like, because I was so isolated out here without my friends and without my support group. And, you know, when I couldn't just go be with girlfriends that loved me unconditionally, and I was left a lot with just my marriage, I realized, oh my God, this is not enough for me. And ultimately ended in like our marriage ending in divorce. So be aware, y'all. Sometimes the place you had in your mind that's like the place you need to be is not actually the place. And remember, y'all are adults. You can change jobs, you can move. If you're able to speak up and be like, look, this is not a fit for us. We need to find something else. Um, I think often, sometimes too, we're so, once again, like, well, we'll just sacrifice it so that the kids have what they need. You can find places where everybody's needs get met in the ways that they need to be. But that cannot happen until you are being honest about like this situation is drowning my mental health right now. Now, another common deception is like, this is just how parenting has to be. And I think of the example of people who are like, our weekends are just absolutely crammed with children's sports and running every which way. Like we have them involved in like three different activities. And, you know, we're just always, always, always running the kids. And I have always been someone who is like, no, fuck that. I am not going to lose my mental health in the process of trying to run my kids to every single activity. Like my kids get to have one activity. Some of them don't even want one, that one activity, and that is just fine with me. So, questioning the assumption that being a good parent means having your kids involved in every single thing and spending all of your evenings at dance practice or baseball practice, if that is coming at the expense of your connection with yourself or the connection that you, if you're listening to this podcast, want, which is a deep connected relationship with your partner, it's time to reevaluate. Um, another one I've seen is the assumption like I need to be doing it all. I can't want more help. I definitely had this in my marriage. Like, I thought we couldn't spend money. I for many years did not have like someone that came and helped clean any kind of home repairs. I was like doing them myself. And so fascinating too for those of us, like many of us will spend money on things that are not going to actually move the needle for us in supporting that load and taking some of that load. But we will go spend all of it on like a new TV. Okay. So this is a like noticing that assumption that I need to be doing it all and reprioritizing where you're spending that money, right? Maybe a house cleaner coming in to help with the cleaning is a better spend than buying a new TV. Another assumption is, and this one I want to call out loud and clear. I've seen this come through in a couple 90 minutes as well, where in your marriage, you reach a point where, like, maybe both of you had your own careers at the beginning, but then you start having children and the paycheck that you're making happens to be less than your partner, and it costs all of the child care. And so there's this moment, this assumption that comes up where it's like, well, you going to work is basically just like you working to pay for childcare. So you should just go home and be with the kids all the time. Without anybody pausing and going, wait a second, is you being at home 24-7 with the kids actually a really good fit for your mental health? Like, yes, I understand we're coming out kind of in a wash here when it comes to childcare. But, and Quinn made this amazing point while we were discussing this before this episode, where she was like, Yeah, but if she's working, she's still, you know, potentially contributing to a 401k, she's still building her resume, she's still building her career, versus you come home and stay with your kids, all of a sudden that gets wiped out. And when you re-enter the workforce, you don't have any of that. So obviously, whether you decide to go home with your kids or not is a deeply personal choice. But I want to expose this assumption that gets brought up so often of, and especially, I've seen it most often in a patriarchal world where women are often making less than their spouse. It is just assumed, well, because you're making less and it's really only paying for the amount we're paying in childcare, you should just go home without asking, is that actually what you want? Does that actually work with your mental health? So I want you guys to start questioning if you are wanting to stay in your marriage, right? Questioning and challenging what has been handed down to you as the good life, where you should live, what it should look like, versus what is actually true for both of you? Because you are both the main characters of this life, this marriage that you are in. And I really want you to question whose rule book are you following and why? And is that rule book actually creating a life you want? Because if you are both willing to do the work to burn your individual rulebooks, right? I'm gonna talk about individual rule books a little bit in this next section in the list. If you're willing to burn your individual ones and your marriage rulebook, now we've got freedom. Now we've got a blank slate. Now we can start writing something new. All right, my sixth area for you to work on on this shift list is when it seems like, okay, you're both good people. We've got some great dynamics here. Um I really think of this. This is like a woman who got on with me with the 90 minute. And as we dove more into her story, she kept being like, Look, my husband's just like, he's a really good guy. We both have some trauma in the past, though. He's willing to work on it, he's going to therapy. And ultimately, in her instance, she was like, and I don't want to go out into the workforce. I do want to still, you know, have a partner who's going to be the main provider. So there was a lot of like what she is wanting is still very much in this marriage. And if she leaves, there's a pretty big risk. There's going to be some big areas she's not going to be happy with. But what is missing is sexual chemistry and passion. Okay. Now, in her specific instance, if you are listening, my love, you know, from our 90, you had some different things that we were going to work on there, which is why I love my 90s, because I can tailor them out specifically to you. But I want to zoom out a little bit into the more broad context of those of you that may be in a marriage where you're like, look, we run a household really well. There's a lot of things here that I don't want to change that will change if we were to get divorced. But where is the spark? Where is the intimacy? It is either faded, forced, or absent at the moment. And before I dive in to the work that I think is behind this for a couple that wants to stay, I want to be very clear that the following advice is not for anyone that is in the realm of or recovering from sexual coercion in the marriage. Okay. I am right now in the works with Quinn discussing, we are going to be doing an episode all about sexual coercion because I think it is such an important and very vital topic that needs to be addressed when we are considering divorce. So just know the things I'm going to suggest down below, these are not for those of you that have actually experienced, and for those of you like, wait, what is sexual coercion? That is when you are being, you know, guilted into having sex when you have a partner who does not respect your no. So yeah, we will discuss that in a future episode. Okay, so coming back though, there can be a lot of confusion when you are like, okay, a lot of the logistics in the marriage work really well. This is what I want, but there just doesn't seem to be connection or fire or passion. Like there's just this numbness, and we've kind of fallen into our own ruts. So this is some of my most like favorite work, y'all, that I have done. Granted, I definitely did this work post divorce, which is diving into and figuring out what your internalized messages about sexuality are and what what kind of a sexual creature are you and also your partner. Now, like I said, a big piece of where that starts is diving into what was I taught about sex? This is why we have like our monthly intimacy chats in the community, because so many of us just got really fucked up around sex growing up. We did. Like nobody talked about it in healthy ways, especially if you are a woman. Nobody talks about it through the lens of your desire, you actually, at least in my case, you enjoying it, you wanting it, like none of that was addressed. So you get to go on this journey of asking and figuring out like, what do I believe about sex? What do I believe about my desire? What do I believe about my partner's desire? And really starting to expose and dig into those pieces. Because if you don't understand those, you cannot start exploring how to change it and what could be different. Now, one of my favorite books, it's a very science-y read. Yeah, that's like such a terrible word for this. But just know that reading it is a little bit like in-depth and also like so fascinating, though, is the book The Erotic Mind by Jack Morin. This was really the book, this and ultimately kind of existential kink as well, are some of the books that I used the most when starting to understand more about myself and how my trauma has shaped some of my kink and my eroticism, especially in the erotic mind. I love how Jack Moran just like blows out of the water our normal ideas around what turns us on. And that actually we are often shaped by emotion and shame and taboo. Like, y'all, this book is incredible. And in reading it, I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe how many of us are in marriages, like not understanding any of this about ourselves. Once again, we are just running around in houses with the lights turned off with knives, like trying to find some sense of connection and pleasure. And then you go into the realm of intimacy, and everything is just like extra, extra sensitive and like scary and shame-filled there. So this book is amazing for exploring a little bit more and understanding yourself through a much deeper erotic lens around sexuality. And then I specifically love for women that, and I actually would recommend both of these books, right? Especially if you have a partner that does not understand female sexuality, which it is the standard, that is the norm rather than the exception, because of our damn patriarchal culture, the emphasis on males, pleasure, and sexuality. The other book I would recommend is Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. And this book just, especially if you are one of my listeners, that just feels like your sexuality, sexual pleasure is like a black box. It's confusing, you don't understand a lot about your body. I mean, I think back to where I was at five years ago, and holy shit, is it a whole different world now, five years later, with the amount of interest and energy and time I have invested in really understanding and coming to learn and know myself and my body. This book is great for helping you with understanding like how does context and stress and safety shape your desire and so many other pieces. So these are must-haves. Now, I do want to say that if your marriage is already feeling strained, okay, you may find that there just needs to be more work in those other areas that I've listed on this list before this area gets to be worked on. And I want to emphasize this because one of the biggest mistakes I see is husbands pushing for this area first when we don't have any growth or work in any of the previous five areas that I've listed. I just this, and that kind of also goes a little bit more into that realm of sexual coercion when you have a partner who is just like, when do we get to have sex? When do we get to start touching each other again? And you are still back in like, I don't feel safe communicating with you. And are you doing your personal work? Hit the brakes here and direct into those other areas first. Also, though, if that is the case and you're like, I don't really want to explore this with my partner right now, this is not the place that feels exciting. That does not mean you cannot start with your own self-exploration. And honestly, regardless, that is where I would start. Especially you are what if you're one of the girlies with like the black box, I don't really know what's in here. I found so, you know, so many of us just have these very broken relationships with our own bodies, with our desire, with what turns us on. There is so much sexual shame in there that when you bring all of that and into the room with your partner, that from the beginning is just a tough scenario to get through. So going to self-exploration, not from a like, I'm broken, I have all this shame, what's wrong with me? But instead from this gorgeous, like curious place and coming to it from like exploring and being open over the stress of performance and really asking and giving yourself space to ask, like, what kind of touch turns me on? What kind of fantasies turn me on? What feels genuinely authentically good in my body? How slow can I go? Y'all, for me, I have realized like I need to go so slow. If I don't go really slow with myself, with my partner, I often tend to just kind of disassociate out of my body. And then I'm there and I'm technically, I'm putting this in air quotes, willing, but I'm not fully present and actually like in the experience with myself or with my partner. It's crazy that I can even do it sometimes with myself as like a little bit of an escape hatch from my body. So the go-to on this area is self-exploration first, especially if this feels way too sensitive to start doing with a partner. And if you are in the space of staying with a partner, go to those other areas first. Now, the seventh area on my list and the final one is this idea of a renewable marriage contract. So I cannot for the life of me remember where I heard this idea or this concept. But I remember when I heard it, I was like, oh, this is so fascinating. I love this idea. And the idea was treating a marriage like a lease that you renegotiate at the end of each year rather than assuming that it is just like forever fixed, good to go. And I thought at the time I was like, this is so brilliant because so often when we get married, it becomes this like sweet, but that's in the bag, and we stop investing in building that reality together, and we stop investing in ourselves or investing in each other. When y'all, that is a complete and utter illusion because what is real is that that marriage is never guaranteed. Never. That's what that's what divorce is. You can leave. I think we need better structure around acknowledging and holding space for this relationship, this choice to be in a marriage is an ongoing work in progress that is always experiencing flux, experiencing needing to check in and be aware of each other and the compatibility. So it doesn't mean we need to always be on this edge of like, are we still in this? But I loved the idea of like a yearly or seasonal check-in where it's like, okay, what is working? What do we need some more renewal or focus around? What version of ourselves are we in now? What's on the horizon? What do we feel like each of us is moving towards or needing more of or less of? And that this could potentially help keep the relationship more alive and dynamic and truly chosen going forward. Because I can tell you guys, there is nothing more sexy. It is such an incredible feeling when you are in a relationship because you're choosing it, because you're like, yeah, this is where I want to be. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. Like, I want to be in this with you and to receive that back from your partner. I've gotten to a point too where honestly, like as much as I adore my partner Joe, if we ever reached a point where he was like, this is not a fit for me, and I really just want to pursue something else, or I've met someone, yes, I would be sad, but I would absolutely want him to choose that. I don't want to be in a relationship. I don't think I've ever really wanted it, but I'll say I don't want to anymore ever be in a relationship with someone who is just staying with me out of obligation. I want to feel chosen in my relationships. That is super important to me. It's kind of a non-negotiable. And so the way Joe and I kind of do it is there is this feeling of like we are always acknowledging that this is an ongoing work and process. And yes, we are committed to each other. And it does feel like we are like, yeah, we want to build this amazing life like long-term together, this long vision. But it has never slipped into that, like, let's kick back on our heels. This is just gonna be what it is now because we're quote, you know, married. So I think this one requires a big expansion in our ideas about what marriage is. But I think it really has a huge potential for helping both people stay engaged and dynamic and choosing back in instead of letting things just slide. Now, I want to finish up this episode with a secret tool that I don't think anybody really talks about in this way. And it came out of me getting that email from Maya mentioning being on the podcast with Christine Taylor and going and researching more about um her and Ben Stiller's separation. And it made me want to reframe for a lot of us that I think separation can actually be a space that can be very healing and it doesn't always have to be harmful. In the way that I see so many partners that, you know, if you're the one that is having the partner come to you and say, look, things are not going well, and I'm considering divorce, those partners usually like lose their shit and like clamp down on the relationship or like, no, you can't leave. Instead of what I would love for us to move into more of, which is normalizing, that sometimes if a relationship has gotten rough and rocky enough, space can be the very thing that most people need. And I learned more about this most by reading up on Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller and kind of some of their just through a few of their phrases, like what they were focusing on when they separated, and how in their instance that distance seemed to bring clarity and renewed intention. Okay. And I think that happened because, you know, Christine specifically described their separation as being a period where each of them experienced, quote, growth spurts and discovering who they were as individuals. So it sounds like they went into that separation, like, hey, we need to take some space to like figure out again like who we are. What do we want? And key point too, Ben Stiller is listed as having spoken about how it helped him appreciate and feel grateful for what they had. And y'all, I think this is a key point because the way patriarchy has kind of trained men to believe that their wife will always be there, that once you get married, she is locked in and she's just gonna be grateful for whatever. Like, what do you want from me, woman? I go to work and I come home. Like, that's enough. Oof, y'all. The gift in a separation in this way is that it can jolt the system for a man. It can be a loud wake-up call that is especially needed when the privilege they have grown up with is this thought that, like, I can give scraps and that's enough. I don't have to be emotionally connected. I don't have to be sensually connected into her pleasure, and that should be enough. So I would really love to just throw this out there as a reframe that separation can be used as a tool for growth and doesn't always have to mean a precursor to divorce. And if you are going to do it this way, I highly recommend setting the container in the way that it sounds like Christine and Ben did, where they were like, this is gonna be a space where we're gonna step apart, we're gonna have our own growth spurts, we're gonna try to discover more about who we are as individuals. I actually am thinking of a woman that I spoke to on a 90-minute recently, where she was trying to negotiate this same situation where I was so excited and like, whoa, this would be incredible if the two of you can do this, which was where she needed space. She wanted space to explore more sexually because she had not been able to. And y'all, this is just once again a huge piece we are not addressing or talking about that is so real for so many women, which is especially, and I'll just use it from my framework. Kind of, it was very my my story mirrors hers a lot. Raised very in like strict purity culture, um, did not have sex before we got married. And then within the marriage, the sex and the intimacy just like is not um in her case, it is not enough. It is not working for her, it is not feeling good. In my case, I didn't know enough about my sexuality to know how much it was not even close to what my body is capable of, what my soul and my mind are capable of when it comes to eroticism and sexuality. And so you're trapped in this marriage where you haven't gotten to explore or learn anything about yourself. She felt like the process of coming to explore and understand and experience her sexuality was stolen from her. And I completely agree with this. I think it is really fucked up to tell people to not have sex until they get married. And then you get married to someone who that's your only partner the rest of your life, especially because, you know, in my instance, and the same can go for, you know, this can also be flipped around to like my husband and his experience. We both were virgins who had never done anything, come come out of very strong, shameful, sex, negative cultures. And then we enter this marriage and we have to explore and figure all that out with each other with no real framework or support around that. It's just like, yeah, y'all, you can feel I'm like, okay, I need to stop going down this rabbit hole and do this on another episode. But this is a big deal. And it was for her in this marriage. And it was not like I don't love you or I don't want to be with you, but I have things I want to experience that I want to understand about myself, that I want to understand about my sexuality and the world that were taken from me because I was told this would be enough. And I'm waking up to that it's not. And her advocating for something similar to this of like, let's separate for a year, let's explore things and let's see at the end of that what we can create from it. And I was totally on board with this, y'all. I was so on board with this. And I, and you know, ultimately, I don't know what ended up happening with them because we only met on a 90-minute, but I have to say I deeply admire and honor couples that are doing this work. And although this might sound like, oh my God, that's really out there. No, y'all, this is very big, kind of behind closed doors mainstream work that is happening right now. Um, and although I have not read a lot of Esther Perel's work, I have clients mention it to me often. She makes me think of this kind of work, this kind of work that acknowledges that the structures and the rules that we have inherited, the ideas of like, oh, this is what makes you a good person. You shouldn't have sex until you get married, and then you should get married and just be totally content with it, are not actual, real realities for a lot of us in our marriages. And this is the hard work behind the scenes that some couples end up doing that I believe is absolutely crucial. Because in her instance, for her individuation, for part of her process and understanding herself, she wants and needs this exploration. And wouldn't it be amazing to have partners that can hold space, that can find their way through that together? Oof, y'all. It's just, I'm like, oof, it gives me chills thinking about people finding their way through the messy of relationships and situations like that that were not necessarily picked by either one of those people, but are like where they find themselves now. Now, before I close out the episode, I do want to just hit on a few quick blind spots before we end. First, this only works. Okay, doing this work in these various areas of this list, I do believe this only works when there is fundamental safety in the relationship and both people are willing. Second, if one person is chronically dismissive, manipulative, or unsafe, these tools are not going to save the relationship. That harkens back to me at the very beginning of part one saying if you are in a relationship with an emotionally immature individual or a person who has narcissistic wounding or could be diagnosed NPD, this work is not going to save the relationship. Third, and I really want to emphasize this one I want to say that for some of you, the economic realities and parenting burdens in your life may make this work hard. Like let's just say it out loud and clear. Not all of us have the income to be able to separate for a year and go figure ourselves out apart from each other, right? That that's not something that I could have done in my marriage, being separated. I mean, perhaps, perhaps I could have. Um, but even then, like we just didn't have the mental constructs to even consider something like that. We were just so deep and entrenched in that Mormon conditioning. So I want to be very clear. Economic realities may make separating in that way for long term very difficult. And that is okay. That does not mean you are failing. This is not a standard that you have to live up to. It just is what it is. And also parenting burdens, okay. And many of you may not have the same access to space and therapy or privacy. So hold this, those of you that are considering staying, hold it gently and remember to always measure it against your own realities. What are the facts of your own experience? Also, I want to say unequivocally here: if you are the only one doing the work, that is not the staying I'm talking about in this episode. Okay. That in my view, if you are the only one doing the work and you're still believing that you are building something, that's not staying. That's just surviving. And I would offer that if if this episode has kind of made you realize that, then you've got the whole rest of my podcast to support you and lead you through some of that work to really admit to yourself that maybe staying is not the fit for you. Also, a lot of what I was acknowledging in this episode is through a more cis hetero lens because I was talking about so much of like the patriarchy and the way male privilege functions. But I want any of you listening that are in whatever type of partnership you are to really apply it still to yourselves. Because even though I talk about it through male privilege, you can still have dynamics in the relationship where One person is functioning better because the other person is having to move into a space of martyrdom. So reflect on what is and resonate with what is, and leave the parts that don't apply to you to the side. Now, I want to close with y'all and come back to the heart of this episode, which is saying that I do believe in some really amazing ways that staying can be a sacred and really transformative choice. You can stay and still grow. You can stay and reclaim yourself. But what I want you to know is that what makes that possible most is knowing what your priorities are and if your partner is on the same page with doing the work to create that new container and to evolve the marriage with you. I really hope that this list becomes a resource of starting points, right? You can pick like any of these areas to start jump starting the work with your partner to really see how open your partner is to reinvesting and renegotiating and creating something new with you. And if you are, after listening to these two episodes, if you are like, okay, wait a second, B, like if you are wondering if the way your spouse is showing up, if the work that they are all of a sudden doing is genuine and falls into this category that I just described, or like some of my girlies get in your heads where you're like, wait, or is this maybe more of like a response where I mentioned in the covert narcissism episodes, right? Where you have a partner who all of a sudden does like a 180 and seems to be doing all the things, but something still feels off or like it's missing. What do I want y'all to do? I want you to get on a 90-minute session with me and we will break it down together. Do not keep spinning in the confusion of trying to figure it out on your own, y'all. Okay. If you are someone who's like, after listening to like these four episodes of covert narcissism and staying, and you're like, I don't know which one he is, we will break it down together. And as I've emphasized before, it really is a whole different reality on those calls because I get to actually hear about your actual real lived life experiences. It's not just here's this broad picture. It's me zeroing in with you on your specific stuff. Also, I want to give another plug again for the community because as you guys know, we are moving into our second month of our summer camp, the NBC camp for nonviolent communication. This camp is amazing. This is where we are all, you know. I mean, it's one thing to talk about on the podcast, like doing this work with your partner, but it's really magic to work on nonviolent communication and to be reading the book and then coming to the campfire calls with a bunch of other women going through the same stuff. Like that's magic in its own right. So if you've been interested in the community, you can text stay or go community all one word to 33777. That will take you right to the community where you'll get to sign up. You get to do a 20-minute interview with Alex. I watch all of the interviews, which is such a gift for me, because I get to learn more about you before you come into the community. So you can really look forward to that, knowing like I will get to hear your story. Also, I haven't talked about this in a while on the podcast, but I really want to drop this here that if you are one of the women listening to the podcast who is really feeling like you are at a moment in your life where it's time to make the changes. It's time to really go all in on making the big shifts. I want to invite you into what I would really consider like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to do that work and go through something as massive as making this decision around considering divorce with someone like me by your side and going deep with you the whole time, right? And I say that's like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because I think after I did that episode with Quinn post the My Embiolic Breakdown podcast. And there was that comment of that woman who was like, it's, you know, it's been 20 years since my divorce and she's still recovering from it. I think that just drove home for me and gave me a lot of respect for the work that I do in my one-on-ones. And how much not only are we making this decision around whether you're going to stay or go together, but we are really building the foundation for everything to come after. And I think that is a really amazing and one-of-a-kind once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and gift to give yourself if it feels like you are ready for that. So if that is the case, I want you to go check out my deep dive container. That is my one-on-one coaching offering. You can find it on my website. There's some gorgeous, gorgeous copy that I take you through on that, just explaining what that work is and who it's for. I really am starting to like, I think I'm growing up in many ways and understanding the scope of time better. You know, it's been five years since my divorce. And I look at like, holy shit, all that I have built, all that I have changed, how much I have changed in those five years. And then I go, whoa, most of us have the next 30 to 50 years of our lives left. Y'all, that is, you know, that is like me living the last five years of my life like six times over if I live another 30 years. And I'm probably gonna live 50. And just like the scope of that, of like what is possible when you have the tools that I have built in my life, the trajectory of your life just changes entirely in massive grand scale. So I just want to say, like without hesitation, that if you look at those 30 to 50 years and you are going, fuck no, and you want a radically different life, a life that inspires you, you know, a life that you wake up to each day feeling grateful to be alive. Y'all, that is the work that I do with my one-on-one clients. And I think it was Maya in the podcast where she and I were talking, or maybe it was her talking with Christine, where she made that point where she was like, you don't just talk about like the considering divorce choice. It really is so much bigger in scope. And it is, y'all. You can hear it in the podcast. Underneath all of this, I am talking about how do you live a really deep, soulful, good life. And when I do my deep dive, like that is ultimately the work that we are doing underneath all of it. Like we're doing it through the gorgeous lens of considering divorce. But ultimately, it is the deep work of coming to yourself, knowing yourself, and having the tools that then make your life going forward something radically different. So if that's been calling to you, go check it out on my website, stayargocoaching.com. For the rest, y'all, make sure, rate and subscribe the podcast, please. Every time you do, it helps me reach even more women. And specifically with this episode, y'all, if you know a friend who would love to try those astrology questions at the beginning, shoot this episode over to them because they'll be in our show notes. Or maybe you've got a friend that is trying to build a conscious relationship in their marriage right now. You know, maybe they're not to the point of considering divorce, but they are like, uh wouldn't that be great, right? If they could have these areas to be working on now before they're even to the point of considering divorce, send this episode over to them as well. Remember to follow me over on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. And I will see all of y'all next week, my loves. Bye.