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. Hello, hello. Welcome back, y'all. I hope everybody's been having a dynamic week, right? Dynamic highs, lows, all the in-betweens, humanness. Oof. Okay. So before we drop into this beautiful episode, which I'm really excited to explore with all of you, I want to take some time at the beginning to do a little fun sneak peek behind the scenes into what I have been up to around the stairgo world right now. So first things first, just a quick like patting myself, hurrah on the back moment. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast, but when I first started my coaching business, I took the time to learn how to build my own website. I mean, so many incredible things that I fucking learned how to do to have my business, uh, but that's a big one of them. And my assistant Alex and I have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work the last month. And one of those things was me updating various things on the website and even creating up some new landing pages that I am kind of obsessed and in love with. So more will be coming. But the two that just dropped this week are a new one for the 90-minute intensive, which I have renamed the Get Unstuck and Empowered session. And for any of you that have already done 90 minutes with me, I was like, yep, that's what we do. We get unstuck on that call, and then we build all this empowered momentum to get you moving forward. So I kind of love it. One of my favorite things about my business is getting to brand and use color and fonts to make things feel a certain way. So I just have to say, if you have been considering a 90 minute and have not gone over to my website yet to kind of dive in and see what it's about, go do it. I added a lot more copy. There's a lot more details to all of it that I'm really proud of and I'm excited for. So that's going to be linked in the show notes. Also, you'll notice so under the work with me tab, there'll be the get unstuck and empowered session. And then there is also my one-on-one coaching, which I have also completely rebranded and named the deep dive. And if y'all thought you loved when you go see the 90-minute session, if you love that copy, holy shit is my deep dive just phenomenal. I had so much fun creating this. So for any of you that have been considering one-on-one coaching, that is where all of the details are, like the deep in nitty gritty, what we're doing, what it costs, how long we're working together, just really gorgeous as well. That'll be linked in the show notes. Go over, check them out. Yeah. And then just send me gorgeous vibes, y'all. This was a lot of work on the back end of my business. Whenever I do website editing, it is like, I have to go back and like relearn all of it. And I only do it, you know, once a year usually. So kind of a big, exciting deal. I'm also soon going to be adding a page for the community to the website, which I'm so excited for because the community has a completely different color scheme and brand and feel. Also, I'm excited in the podcast section of the website. I have been collecting from those of you that have sent me DMs or emails all of your beautiful little messages about the podcast. And I'm going to be adding those to the podcast page. So you may end up finding yourself somewhere in one of my reviews or in a comment. And um that just feels really special. So keep an eye out for that as well. Now, the other big sneak peek is that this next month we are going to be doing the podcast a little bit differently over here. My assistant Alex is going to Europe for two and a half weeks, y'all. Like, what the fuck? I want to live vicariously through her. Her sister is over there right now. She's gonna go stay with her. And I am just such a hell yeah for her on this. That is like, in many ways, having Alex as my assistant, I'm like getting to live my 20s through her now. So she's headed to Europe and she does the majority of my podcast editing. In fact, she does all of it. I don't even know why I'm saying majority. She does it all, y'all. She is the gorgeous engine and power behind everything we're putting out. So, because of that, we decided we wanted to get ahead of the podcast, let her edit those this week before she leaves. And on the other side of all of this is the big announcement that we are starting to release all of the podcast episodes on YouTube with video. So, guys, this is a big moment for me. I have wanted to release the podcast with video onto YouTube for a while now. We just, you know, there were just so many different things that we were doing, and we finally reached a point. Alex has been working hard over the last month editing and getting everything ready. Once again, it has like a different branding kind of feel for that platform. So she has been busy doing all of that. And in fact, this week she started dropping our past episodes. We're kind of going to be dropping them to a day just to kind of start catching up. So you can now go. I believe it starts kind of like around episode nine, where there's actual videos with the audio, but you can now go and watch the episodes and actually see me talking. I love the ones where I have guests because you'll actually be able to see them, our dialogue back and forth. It's really fun too. There are some of the episodes where you'll see Jake or sometimes Coco in the back running around. So to celebrate the drop of the podcast landing on YouTube to make space for Alex to just go to Europe and fucking taste all of the European flavors over there. If y'all listened to my last episode, you know what I'm talking about. We have decided to record the next four episodes ahead of time. So as I'm right now recording this, I'm actually recording this on Thursday, April 10th. You guys won't hear it until Tuesday. That's the magic of podcasting. And I actually have four episode outlines already written and ready to be recorded. And I'm going to be recording all of them this weekend. And then Alex is going to edit those and be able to get those up over the next month. And I'm hoping that these episodes will be more impactful and kind of short form. I will caveat and say today's is not going to be that case. I dove into this one and I was just like, oh my God, we need this and this and this and this. So today's will just be what it is. But hopefully the next three will be a little bit shorter. And with that shortness in mind, right? It's going to be a little different. Hopefully that provides some space for all of you to, if you're missing the long form that I normally have on the podcast, to go dip back in to previous episodes over on the YouTube channel. This is a month for you, the month coming ahead to brush up on episodes you may have loved in the past that are still, you know, I always think when you listen to them the second time, you're going to hear something different because you're a different person. Also, Alex is going to be with these four episodes that I'm going to do now. She's going to be linking at the bottom of these other episodes that relate. So as I was building out each of these four episodes that are coming over the next month, I also was like, okay, I'm talking about this. What are the other episodes that will relate? So you'll be able to in the show notes just click over and pop over to YouTube to watch other episodes that will link up with the episodes I'm going to be dropping for you. Also, so the other exciting thing about this is it's been a lot of work, ahead of time kind of work, to have all of these ready and recorded. But the exciting thing is once they're all recorded, I will now have a month where I am not needing to be recording a podcast episode every week. So another fun thing that I thought I would do this month to kind of switch things up is I am going to be hanging out more on social media. I'm going to be posting on Insta again. I'm going to be playing over there. And shocker of all shockers, I will actually be reading my DMs. Like, what? So this next month is really an opportunity to get to kind of connect in with me more personally, depending on how it goes. If I'm finding that there's a lot of you over there and there's just a lot of interest, I may even do a couple of lives because I think it'd be really neat to be with you all. I mean, there's so many of you that listen to the podcast that I've never gotten to meet or really like see your names or hear questions from you. So it'd be cool to do a couple lives where you guys get to ask questions and I get to answer just kind of in a more free-flowing format. So that's something that might be on the table, just depending on how it goes when I get over and into that space again. But I'm really excited to hopefully get to connect with more of you in a more intimate way, personal way over on Instagram. And then, of course, you know, all of you getting to connect with me more visually over on YouTube. You are definitely going to get to watch my hair change over the podcast. As Alex has started pulling these old episodes and stuff up, I'm like, oh my God, I love my hair. My hair was so short. It was so blonde. So I think I may have to, you know, spice things up this next year with the hair again. So yay, that is my sneak peek for you all. That is a fun little shakeup with the podcast this next month from our normally scheduled programming. And with all of that said, we are now ready to drop in to one hell of an episode that I have for you all today. So, as you can tell from the title, we are going to be talking about what I think is actually required for a great marriage. And notice I'm not saying a so-so marriage, a semi-good marriage, a fine marriage. I am in this episode talking about what I really believe is a great marriage. And for me personally, this is the first like big caveat I want to give, is that this is my personal definition. Okay. And as we get into it, you will see plenty of other people, religions out there are not going to define a great marriage in the way that I define it. Because I think so many of us were taught that a great marriage is one where you sacrifice, you compromise, there's, you know, unbending loyalty and staying no matter what, because you made a promise. But as you listen to all of those, what I realized as I was thinking about this is none of those actually give you what I feel is the heart of what's actually required for a marriage to be truly healthy and life-giving. So if you listening to the podcast have, you know, heard the way I speak about my current partner Joe, if you've heard the way I speak about the life I want for myself, how I want to move and be in the world, then I will just, you know, I'll just say I'm just gonna guess, you will probably resonate with my definition of what a great marriage is. So I think this episode will resonate for you, but just know it's okay. There's gonna be a lot of people out there that would be like, nope, what she's saying doesn't mesh. That's okay. This is this is my opinion. This is what I've taken from my four plus years of coaching women considering divorce, my own experiences. I'm like, these are the goods. This is what makes it great. So I want to start by grounding us into this theory that I have. Okay. And my theory is this the foundation of a great marriage is two partners who are one operating in emotional adulthood, and two have secure attachment in themselves and can thus be a secure base for each other. Let that sink in. In fact, if you can even like pause your episode and go look at the show notes and read that, if you're someone like me, a little neurospicy and you need to see it in words, look at that chunk. Okay. Because this is what the episode's gonna be about, and we're gonna dive into both of these parts. Before we do the deep dive into the parts, though, I want to explore this word I said at the be at the end, right? Being a secure base for each other. And I actually want to dive into one of my favorite books that I um, you know, has really formed, I'd say, a lot of the basis, that secure attachment piece for me when thinking about this. So the book is attached, I've talked about it before, by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller. Alex is gonna link it in the show notes. But in this book, they talk about the importance of having a secure base. And I want to explain what that is. Okay, so those of you that took any child development classes, I actually studied this a lot in college. One of the most important tests that's been studied in the field of attachment theory is this thing called the strange situation test. And to briefly outline it for you, the way they do it is they bring a mother and a child into a room, and the child ends up playing with the toys, getting acclimated to the room, and they're watching how the mother and child are interacting. And then they have the mother leave the room and they watch what happens when the child realizes that their mother is gone. And typically what you'll see is the child starts to get upset, starts crying, calls out for their mother, maybe goes to the door hoping their mother will come back. The assistant that's there may even try to like re-engage the child, and typically the child won't. They'll keep crying and being distressed until the mother then returns to the room after a little while, and you'll see the child like rush over to the mother, raise her arms, like wanting to connect. The mother sues the child, and after a certain period of time, the child's interest in the toys returns and they resume playing again. Okay. So it says, Mary Ainsworth was fascinated by the way in which children's exploratory drive, their ability to play and learn, could be aroused or stifled by their mother's presence or departure. She found that having an attachment figure in the room was enough to allow a child to go out into a previously unknown environment and explore with confidence, right? This is that moment of they show up in a room the child's never been in before, but because it's with its mother, it's like, okay, I'm gonna play with these toys. This presence is known as a secure base. It is the knowledge that you are backed by someone who is supportive and whom you can rely on with 100% certainty and turn to in times of need. A secure base is a prerequisite for a child's ability to explore, develop, and learn. And there's a whole, if you guys like ChatGPT, this, it will take you down a gorgeous rabbit hole around, you know, parents that don't have secure connections with their, with their children. Like that's, you know, we talk about our attachment wounds and our childhood trauma. It's in this research, this test, that a lot of this gets shown. But now I want to take you into what they say about a secure base for grown-ups. As adults, we don't play with toys anymore, but we do have to go out into the world and deal with novel situations and difficult challenges. We want to be highly functional at work, at ease and inspired in our hobbies and compassionate enough to care for our children and partners. If we feel secure, like the infant in the strange situation test when her mother is present, the world is at our feet. We can take risks, be creative, and pursue our dreams. And if we lack that sense of security, if we are unsure whether the person closest to us, our romantic partner, truly believes in us and supports us and will be there for us in times of need, we'll find it much harder to maintain focus and engage in life. As in the strange situation test, when our partners are thoroughly dependable and make us feel safe, and especially if they know how to reassure us during the hard times, we can turn our attention to all the other aspects of life that make our existence meaningful. Y'all. I mean, so many of you, right? It's like, why is this such a big deal? Why does this matter so much? Like, I don't think you've had the framework to understand the importance of this relationship. Not having a secure base can literally mess you up in all these other areas of your life. And as I'm sure some of you are thinking in this moment, you're like, shit, right? Because if you didn't have a secure base in childhood and you don't have one in your marriage now, right? Wow, what a difficult way to go through the world. Let me put it that way. Okay. So we are going to dive into this more deeply, but I wanted you to start with understanding a secure base, thinking of your marriage as being a place that you want to have a partner that feels like a secure base for you. I also, though, want to start out with explaining just from the get-go what I think a great marriage is not. Okay, I want to clarify some of the things that I think we've been told great marriages are and that I don't think they are. So this is like me just doing a quick bust of these outdated myths that many of you may have heard or that you probably don't even realize are programmed into you. So a lot of people think that great marriages are ones where you stay no matter what. Like you get through anything and everything together, no matter how bad it gets, you guys stick with it. And that that somehow equals success. I hope through this podcast so far, you guys have realized along with me that I do not believe that. I do not believe staying no matter what equals success. That, you know, the cost of your mental health, the cost of your connection to yourself, the cost of your ability to have a life. That you love, in my world, it's not worth it. And in fact, um, you know, when we're talking about referencing other episodes, an episode that will really tap you into this idea if you want to go deeper is my episode, episode four, where I really debunk the 50-year marriage myth and this whole, wow, somebody's been married for 50 years. That's so amazing. That staying married equals success instead of actually digging into what did the marriage look like, how did the people within it thrive or not thrive. Another myth is that avoiding conflict in your marriage equals peace, equals a good marriage. We, you know, oh, we don't fight often, we don't have that many disagreements. No, no, y'all. This does not equal a great marriage. What this usually equals is a lot of people pleasing, a lot of lying, a lot of not being authentic or honest, a lot of pretending. And often I think that contrary to, you know, avoiding conflict equals peace. No, avoiding conflict usually just means you sacrificing your peace, especially if you tend to be the more codependent partner in the relationship. To keep the peace, you often have to sacrifice your peace, your wants, your desires, the things that matter to you to keep the peace in the marriage. So avoiding conflict does not equal a great marriage. Final, just little myth. There, I'm sure there's tons of others, but I just wanted to hit these big three. Final myth is sacrificing your needs equals love. And I broke this down heavily in episode 16, where I really tried to take you guys through the ins and ins and outs of how I don't believe real love means sacrificing yourself for someone else. At the heart of what I think real love or, you know, this great marriage is, is two people thriving individually and coming together and being more in the togetherness. This is not, I sacrifice myself to stay with you and somehow it's magically better because now there's a half of me and a whole of you. Like, no, no, no, no. So just know, kind of baseline level, most marriages, I believe, are held together by fear, codependency, or patterned loyalty. I'm gonna say, like, clearly, I don't believe the majority of marriages are held together by genuine partnership. They are often held together by these other myths, or what we're gonna talk about down below: patterns of enmeshment, patterns of codependency, patterns of emotional childhood. So coming back to my theory, okay, now we're gonna start diving into these pieces. So I said the foundation of a great marriage is two partners who are one operating in emotional adulthood. So let's take that first piece, operating in emotional adulthood. So the first time I heard about emotional adulthood was in my coach training with Brooke Castillo, and I was fascinated by the concept. And you guys have probably heard me talk about it quite a few times on the podcast. I know I say emotional adulthood often, but I don't know if I've ever really like kind of dived deep into it and explained it for all of you. So let's do that now. Emotional adulthood is when you take responsibility for your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions without blaming others. Okay. That sounds really simple, right? Like, okay, just take responsibility for your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. Don't blame others, not hard at all. But seriously, everybody, this takes a lot of inner resourcing, right? Being responsible for just being responsible for your thoughts. Okay. We most of us are thinking tens of thousands of thoughts a day. And the way those thoughts create cascades of feelings and the things that we do from those, it sounds simple, but the application of it requires a lot of what we're what I teach you on the podcast, right? Building your awareness, being able to see your thoughts, being able to be with your feelings, not having your feelings come up and then escaping them by projecting onto others or attacking others, or all of that is included when I'm talking about emotional adulthood. Now, the contrast to that is emotional childhood. And when we are in emotional childhood, we rely on others, we rely on external things to fix us, to fulfill us, or to rescue us. It is a very external focused state. And that's why these words are so awesome. Like emotional childhood, right? As a child, we depend on our external reality, especially when we're very, very young, to take care of us. Parents have to feed us, parents have to comfort us. All we can really do is cry and hope that somebody else comes and helps us. We are so vulnerable and dependent. Emotional adulthood is about stepping out of that dependency, claiming safety and security for yourself and building that within yourself without needing to absolutely get it, like having to have it from other people. Now, and I'm gonna talk about this a little bit later. It doesn't mean though, that we are completely independent of others. Okay. I'm gonna dive into that later. But just know this is a like co-created experience of being able to take responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and actions without blaming others while still interacting and having that secure base with another person. Okay. Now, the majority of the adults that you know, in, you know, if we're all being honest, potentially including ourselves, right? Emotional adulthood, childhood, like we can kind of, it's like a scale. We kind of range through it. I've had periods of my life where I was definitely way more in emotional childhood all the time. I would say now, with a lot of the self-work I've done, the trauma processing, the being with my feelings, I'm in emotional adulthood the majority of the time. But the really crazy thing is, out in the world out there, the majority of the adults you know are not in emotional adulthood. The majority of the people walking around in adult bodies are actually emotional children in adult bodies. And that's really important to realize because when we're out interacting with them, what we're seeing visually is what we register as an adult. But if you check in with what I just defined as what makes someone an emotional adult, you're gonna realize holy shit, I am out here with a lot of people in emotional childhood. A lot of people running around in adult bodies that are still in emotional childhood. And that stems from the reality that we have a lot of traumatized people out there that have not had the resources or not been willing to do the work to go and heal those wounds. And the book I'm gonna direct y'all to, if you're like, oh my God, this is so fascinating. I want to understand more of this piece, is the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I just talked about this on the podcast. I have been diving into it. And holy shit, does she break down why we've got all these traumatized people out there? We have in America a style of parenting that has been very previously very emotionally unattached, very like you need to be able to take care of yourself in childhood. And that actually has created a lack of secure basis for so many of us. So if we have not seen those childhood patterns, started to realize them, started to start healing those wounds, what we do is we get into these cycles in adulthood where we are repeating similar trauma to the lack of connection, secure base we had in childhood. So I want to use an example that I have. Um, I have a current client right now who is in a cycle that is just like this with her affair partner. So her affair partner comes from a very, very traumatic childhood. Um, if I recall, I believe like he's experienced abandonment, potentially like living in an orphanage at one point. Like desperately, this partner of herds, he desperately wants her to be his safety and security. And we have seen this over and over in this pattern between the two of them of him, you know, needing her to be responsible for his thoughts and his feelings and his actions, projecting them onto her, demanding that she do things to make him feel better. And as she has been stepping more into her emotional adulthood of saying, you know, right now where I'm at, this is all I can do. It has really flared up for him this pain and trauma around him never having that safety and security that he wanted when he was a child. And it's been really painful for her too, because she, kind of like the opposite side of that coin, her codependent side wants to give that to him, but she is not resourced and in enough emotional adulthood and secure attachment with herself to be able to do that. And so what happens is it's like her empathic side sees him drowning, struggling, right? And she loves this person so much, she wants to help him. So it's like she swims out to help him. This is their relationship at the moment. And because he's in so much distress from drowning, he ends up drowning her in her attempt to save him. This is like very well documented that when somebody is drowning in their distress, they can end up unintentionally drowning you as well. And that's what we've been able to see is over and over his protest behaviors. You know, that's something else in the attachment book that they talk about that when your anxious attachment or your avoidant attachment gets triggered, you move into these protest behaviors. And that's like that flailing about in the water. She is unable, though, because she herself has her own triggers, her own stuff coming up to be able to stay grounded in that moment. And then the two of them just dance around and around and around into this cycle. So going back to the theory I have, the foundation of a great marriage has to begin with two adults able to be in emotional adulthood. Okay. We have to start with you being able, with both of you really being able to be responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions and being able to resource yourself, having the tools, the support. Otherwise, you will just end up chasing each other's tails around and around and around, triggering each other's trauma. Now, I want to share with you guys, I actually think I described this chasing of the tails, the triggering of the trauma really beautifully recently. I posted this was kind of exciting. Those who are friends with me, um, you know, personally on Facebook got to see this post. But I recently posted to Facebook. In fact, I might have talked about this on the podcast already. So if I already have, then sorry, y'all are getting a rerun. But I posted to Facebook about Joe and I being in a relationship. Finally, you know, put up a relationship status. It was a big deal for me. I actually had to do quite a bit of coaching around it. But in that post, I explained what I have experienced in previous relationships and kind of what I would what I would hold up as what the majority of us experience in our marriages or our relationships that we just think is normal, but that I want to on this episode call out as actually being really unhealthy. So I'm just gonna read that piece to you. I said, prior to meeting Joe, there was always imbalance in my partnerships and feeling like I was never fully seen or understood. I had to make myself smaller or bigger to keep the connection. And I definitely had to caretake many of my male partners' egos and suffered when they refused to do their personal work and instead projected or took their pain out on me. Along with that, I also had no knowledge of my disorganized attachment style and CPTSD from my childhood that inevitably led to my own projections on them and reactionary childhood coping mechanisms of over-caretaking and rescuing them and the relationship while abandoning myself. Looking back now, I see that my relationships were like a minefield of triggers, codependency, and massive nervous system dysregulation that led me and my partners to endlessly trade and cycle through our roles of villain, savior, and victim. Yes, there were a lot of quote, good times, but the overall result was a huge toll on my personal energy and resources. And I think this is what many of us have experienced and expect from relationships. Ah, y'all, right? I hope in reading that some of you are feeling very, very seen in this moment, very like, oh my God, yes, this has been my relationships. This is what it looks like. And going back to what I said in the beginning with the secure base, right? That's that toll when you are trying to do big things in the world, like show up for your children, show up for work, but you don't have a secure base. And actually, the base you have is one that's filled with all these triggers and codependency and over-caretaking and rescuing, it no wonder we can't get ahead in our lives when that is the base we're operating from. So if we're not in emotional adulthood, okay, if if we're finding that we're in the emotional childhood piece, right? What does that look like? And although I'm not going to like what I'm going to take you guys, where I'm taking you guys, is into codependence and narcissistic enmeshment. Okay. Because this is like what I see as the two sides of the coin of emotional childhood. Like this is what we do. These are the roles that we play when we are not in emotional adulthood. And I'm laughing because I'm like, holy shit, these words could, you know, I'm going to have to do an episode in the future where I dive deep into both of these. Um, actually, as I was looking back over the up the podcast, I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I haven't done that many on narcissism yet. And I think it's just because it's such a big topic that I just know it's gonna have like a lot of breadth and depth to it. So just know all my, because there's so many of you experiencing the narcissism and the codependence piece, there will be a big episode coming on this in the future. But for right now, this is what we're doing. When we are not an emotional adulthood, we default to codependent behaviors or narcissistic enmeshment. So let's break those down just in some short, concise ways. Codependence, the way I think of this is the phrase: I can't be okay unless you're okay. Hmm, feel that one in your body. Maybe notice if this is your go-to. This is rooted in over-responsibility and self-abandonment. Okay. We want to caretake everybody else first. We want to be the savior. We often end up being the martyr. Okay. This is marked by caretaking. This is people pleasing. And that feeling of your self-worth being tied to what other people think or feel about you. And especially if you have narcissistic wounding in your childhood from one of your parents, this can be a big part of what you experience and how you move through the world. Just, you know, I think when I was back in high, high levels of codependence. I mean, y'all, I came from Mormonism, I came from a heavily patriarchal, misogynistic religious culture. And then I had a narcissistic mother. I often viewed myself like from an outside angle. Like I was not embodied in my experience because I was so caught up in what does everybody else need from me? What are they thinking about me? What are they feeling about me? And how can I control that? And what do I need to do to be liked? Now, the opposite side of the coin on that is the narcissistic enmeshment energy or the emotional manipulation that you often see with this. And the phrase I've got for you on this one, y'all, is I can't be okay unless you do what I want. And that's why I'm calling it, you know, I'm not I'm not really speaking, I'm speaking specifically of the enmeshment piece of this, right? Because I'm talking about how does emotional childhood show up for narcissists. It shows up by them getting really enmeshed in this idea of I can't be okay unless you give me what I need or what I want, and then emotionally manipulating in order to get it. So this angle, when we're in this energy, it looks more controlling. And it often centers the other person's need for power and validation or emotional regulation through the external control. Okay. So thinking of that client that I mentioned earlier, in their dynamic, he tends to take more of the narcissistic side of the coin. She has more of the codependent. So he's coming towards her with this energy of I am freaking out. I don't have safety and security in me. I need you to do that for me. I need you to leave your marriage. I need you to set up this new schedule. I need you to move, move, move, change, change, change so that I can finally feel safe. Often these individuals, you know, they are, they really can't tolerate, like they have a low threshold for being able to tolerate rejection, okay, being told no, um, autonomy, which is like, hey, I'm my own person, you're your own person, I need to be doing my stuff, you need to be doing yours. She's tried that over and over, telling him, like, dude, I'm going through my own stuff right now. I need to be able to work on me. He cannot tolerate that. Or unmet expectations. So a good example would be it's his um, his birthday's coming up. He recently said to her, like, I need you basically to like move out and set up the schedule with your husband and your kids because it's my birthday. And I just love that because I think it's the most powerful example of like they have these ideas in their head of what they need, expectations. And when you don't meet them, holy shit. Okay, get ready for the fire. Because when those things happen, when they're rejected, when they feel like you're not meeting their expectations, they can show up with massive amounts of. Guilt tripping, emotional meltdowns when the boundaries get set, right? It's like a child having a tantrum. You'll often see love withdrawal or rage when the unmet needs aren't immediately satisfied. Okay. And this is like usually that big shitstorm kind of feeling that if you're on the more codependent side, that's where you kind of fall back. You're like, okay, you start judging yourself, hating on yourself, thinking you need to do better and recommitting. Now, here's the thing too. Both of these, when I say they're they're two sides of the coin, neither one. I don't see like, oh my God, narcissists are these horrible people and codependents are just the victims. No, these are both equal and opposite sides of those coins that are unhealthy in both ways. And I I want to emphasize this because I think sometimes we can get caught up in thinking, I think socially it can be more approved for women when we people please and we self-abnegate and we abandon ourselves to caretake and rescue others. But y'all, this is just as unhealthy as the patterns on the opposite side. Okay. So now we can see these are these roles that a lot of us, if we are not in emotional adulthood, we fall into these roles and we rotate and trade through them with each other. And we call it a marriage. We think this is what a marriage is, okay. But I want to take you guys back to that secure base idea for the moment. Here's what I want you guys to know. Okay. This is the danger in believing that what is actually emotional childhood, okay, and narcissistic and codependent flip-flopping with each other, just believing that is a marriage, has big repercussions. Because here's the quote, okay. When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Not only is our emotional well-being sacrificed when we are in a remote romantic partnership with someone who doesn't provide a secure base, but so is our physical health. It seems then that our partners powerfully affect our ability to thrive in the world. There is no way around that. Not only do they influence how we feel about ourselves, but also the degree to which we believe in ourselves and whether we will attempt to achieve our hopes and dreams. Having a partner who fulfills our intrinsic attachment needs and feels comfortable acting as a secure base and safe haven can help us remain emotionally and physically healthier and live longer. Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralizing and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stiny our health. Whoa. I hope in this moment those of you that have been really, really suffering in your marriages are feeling sane. Because what I've been thinking about over these last two weeks is how much we at least I think here in America shove under the rug and do not appropriately address the amount of pain that is experienced in dysfunctional marriages. It's kind of become the standard. It's just what we think a marriage is. And for most of us, it's what we saw in our parents' marriages. So we don't know anything else, and we stay not understanding that the dynamics, the unhealthy, painful dynamics of a dysfunctional marriage can literally fuck you over. I mean, it it's said right there. It can literally prevent you from believing in yourself, from achieving the things you want in your life. This is not just me saying this. Like I think you all, you know, you may have heard me saying it and you might be like, well, that's just Britta, you know, Brita just really believes in that. But no, the science actually shows that when your secure base isn't secure, your longevity, your amount, your healthiness, the length you live are all affected. Which I'm like, I'm having those echoes of Quinn on that one episode where she was like, women live shorter when they're married. Their life expectancy actually actually goes down if they're married. So sit for a second with giving yourself the gift of saying, this is a really big fucking deal. If you are feeling upset and frustrated and hurt and confused and all of that, like back and forth in the marriage, this is not a small thing. And it's not gonna be fixed by just, oh, hang in there, you made a commitment. Okay. So we've got the first piece kind of locked in, right? Which is my theory that for this to be a great marriage, we've got to have emotional adulthood in the two partners involved. The second piece, though, is the secure attachment. Okay. And on this part, I'm not gonna dive all the way down into attachment styles because guess what? I already did. So you'll see linked in the show notes, episode 12. That's where I did my deep dive down into the anxious, the avoidant, and the secure attachment styles. You know, this book attached, I would say, is where I got a huge foundation. Like that was the game changer for me. When I learned about attachment styles, when I learned I had an anxious attachment style, which I've now understood is disorganized, actually, which means I go to both. I can do anxious or avoidant. I am multi-talented, depending on what my partner is presenting. But once I started learning that about myself, I really did. I stopped fucking around with the people I was dating. I would say I was dating a lot of avoidant partners until I learned that. And then I was like, no, I'm not dating avoidant partners anymore. And actually, that's when I went and dated my first anxious attachment partner, a partner who was more anxious and codependent than me. And I learned a lot through that one. Um, and ultimately on the other side of that, I came out realizing with the the added piece of like, oh, not only do I have disorganized attachment, I have CBTSD with a feeling of like, okay, I am no longer going to fuck around with my base. Okay. I'd gotten to a point where it was like, I can have a secure base on my own, and that feels really good. And I noticed when I was single and self-partnered, my life was thriving. I was feeling good. I was, you know, creating things. And I wasn't willing anymore to sacrifice that just to be in a partnership if it wasn't gonna be with a secure attachment partner. And lo and behold, that was when I met Joe, when I made that commitment where I was like, you know what? I don't want to be in a partnership unless it's great. And for it to be great, I need a partner who is securely attached to himself. And now I understand, right? These other pieces I've built this in since, also a partner that can be in emotional adulthood, that can take responsibility for his thoughts, his feelings, and his actions and not project them onto me. So if you want to deep dive into secure attachment, go listen to that other episode. But that is the second piece is secure attachment. And I want to dive now into what secure attachment and the secure base that I'm talking about looks like, what it actually feels like when you have really ultimately all of these pieces coming in together. You have the secure attachment, it's it's got the element of the emotional adulthood as well, and all of that is combining into what we started out the episode calling a secure base. So when you are in a marriage, in a partnership that is what I would consider great, but you feel safe to be yourself. Yeah, you do. Um I am letting that sit and hang right here because boy, is that the reality. And I know for many of you, you've maybe never experienced that. Truly feeling safe to be yourself. But that is the case when you are in what I consider to be a great marriage. You can disagree and still feel connected to them. Whoa, right? I love so much that I'm doing this episode now at this point in my life, because y'all, before I met Joe, and you guys know this from listening to the podcast, this was a dream that I had for a long time. I hoped that this would be something that I would experience in my life, but I had no proof that this was actually real, that this could actually happen. So I feel so proud that I hung in there through my journey to reach this point where I can now list these for you and I can be like, yes, this is real. I've experienced it. This is what a great partnership slash marriage, whatever you want to call it, looks like. Next piece, you can spend time apart without fear. Without fear that you're gonna be punished, right? I experienced that a lot with partners that I had that were insecure, or fear that, you know, they're gonna be doing other things. That is such a huge piece that is not a part of my partnership. Like fear just is not in it. I would say we worked through some of that, my our first year together, just that's my disorganized attachment piece. But because Joe was so securely attached to himself and such an emotional adult, I was able to really up-level and move into that with him. And they talk about that in the attached book, that secure partners actually create this like protective, oh, what do they call it? It's so beautiful. It's like it adds to you. It like kind of becomes this cocoon that when you're with a partner that is more securely attached than you, they kind of cocoon you and you up-level with their secureness, their nervous system being regulated, them being in emotional adulthood, them being securely attached, actually kind of trains yours to be that way as well. And that has definitely been the case for me with Joe. And, you know, that's why the gift I gave myself, I would say, you know, our partnership, even last year, I wouldn't say it was like the level of great that I'm talking about here, where you have two partners who are both in emotional adulthood. Two partners that are both securely attached. What we had though last year was me pretty good, like doing a lot of my own work there, like more emotional, more securely attached in an emotional adulthood than I'd ever been in my life, for sure. And Joe, I think in many ways, because of the work he's done, the age he is, um, at a level that was something that could cocoon me. And together we have risen into just even greater levels of both of those. Um, another aspect of this secure base is you're not afraid of your partner's feelings, and they're not afraid of yours. Right. I have grown so much in my ability to hold space for Joe's feelings, right? That's that codependent. The codependent part in me would normally like, uh, feelings, I've got to fix them, I've got to make them better, I've got to change them. And instead being able to hear them, to be with them and to not have to, you know, fix or change. Same thing for me, I would say too, I've become less afraid of my feelings. Not only am I less afraid of my partner's feelings, you know, he's not afraid of mine, I have noticed a dramatic reduction in me being afraid of my feelings. And I think a big part of that is I know going back to the like, it's safe to be myself, that like that child in the room with their parent, no matter what I'm feeling, like it's safe to be me. I'm not gonna be punished, I'm not gonna be attacked, I'm not gonna be fixed or you know, managed or manipulated in in or out of it. I just get to be me and I get to have the feelings I have. Now, I want to say, I really believe that what I think we're aiming for is love without fear. Okay. It doesn't mean there's not still going to be life. But this is where so many of you go into this, like, well, but life is hard and like marriage is hard and you have to work at it. And no, no, no, no, no. There's a difference. Okay. I can honestly say between me and Joe, I don't feel like we've had to work that hard at the relationship just being safe, honest, kind, and supportive. That's just been there. We haven't like had to create that. Now we've had to go through CPTSD triggers and emotional flashbacks and moments of me self-sabotaging because my disorganized attachment is flaring up. That's the working through I want you guys to be thinking of. In a great marriage, that's what you're working through. It's not that you're working through the like, shit, he's attacking me. I'm freaking out and screaming at him. There's like no level of like safety. There's a ton of fear in the relationship all the time. We can't really get our feet underneath us. So, to also help you wrap your head around this secure base, what it looks like, what it feels like, what a partner might be like in this. I wanted to read this list for y'all from the attached book because I loved it. It's just more and more of these, like, here's what it looks like, here's what it feels like, y'all. And it's been really fun for me to read this and to do this episode because, like I said, I'm finally in a relationship where I mean, I remember reading this list two or three years ago and being like, what the fuck? Who are these people? I've never met somebody like this. And now I'm like, oh, oh, it is real. It's not a fairy tale. Unicorns exist. Okay, so let's read a little bit more about what securely attached partners are like. Okay, so it says they are great conflict busters. During a fight, they don't feel the need to act defensively or to injure or punish their partner. And so they prevent the situation from escalating. Securely attached partners are mentally flexible. They are not threatened by criticism. They're willing to reconsider their ways and if necessary, revise their beliefs and strategies. They are effective communicators. They expect others to be understanding and responsive, so expressing their feelings freely and accurately to their partners comes naturally to them. They are not game players. They want closeness and believe others want the same. So why play games? They are comfortable with closeness and unconcerned about boundaries. They seek intimacy and aren't afraid of being, quote, enmeshed, because they aren't overwhelmed by a fear of being slighted, like the anxious are, or the need to deactivate and pull back, as the avoidance do. They find it easy to enjoy closeness, whether physical or emotional. Securely attached individuals are quick to forgive. They assume their partners' intentions are good and are therefore likely to forgive them when they do something hurtful. They are inclined to view sex and emotional intimacy as one. They don't need to create distance by separating the two, by being close either emotionally or sexually, but not both. They treat their partners like royalty. When you've become part of their inner circle, they treat you with love and respect. They are secure in their power to improve the relationship. They are confident in their positive beliefs about themselves and others, which makes this assumption logical. And finally, they are responsible for their partner's well-being. They expect others to be responsive and loving toward them, and so are responsive to others' needs. Now, I want to say, reading this list, I'm sure some of you are like, whoa, what this is like? Wait, what? This is a far beyond what I think. Like, there may be some things in here that have shocked you. And if so, go get the book. So now that I've finished that list, I just want to finish with this last paragraph for you. Many people who live with insecure partners cannot even begin to imagine how fundamentally different life is with a secure person. For starters, they don't engage in the quote relationship dance that therapists often refer to, whereby one partner gets closer while the other steps back in order to maintain a certain distance in the relationship at all times. Instead, there's a feeling of growing closeness and intimacy. Second, they are able to sensitively and empathically, and most important, coherently discuss their emotions with you. And last, the secure party engulfs his or her partner in an emotionally protective shield that makes facing the outside world an easier task. There it is. That is the world, the word I was looking for earlier. An emotionally protective shield that you are engulfed in. Holy fuck, y'all. Are we catching the vision? Are we catching the vision of what a truly great marriage looks like? Because I have a feeling most of y'all have never even heard of something like this, much less seen it. But here's where I want to tie in this next piece. I can unequivocally say this is real. So I want to quote in that Facebook post that I had quoted earlier, where I was talking about like what previous relationships were. I want to finish out the quote with where I explained what it's been like with Joe in comparison. Okay. So I said, I can't go into all the nuances and depth of what this last year in partnership with Joe has been like and taught me. But what I can say is that with Joe, it has been the opposite from the very beginning. He is truly a human that has and is doing the deeper self-work. And because of that, he has never projected his shortcomings or pain onto me. He has never gaslit or manipulated me to escape his own demons. With his steadiness and grounding, I have been able to start healing my childhood abandonment wounds. Instead of pressuring or expecting me to show up in ways that make his life easier, he has truly loved and supported me, being the big, loud, messy, tender, scared, brave, wild and free human that I am. It takes a truly grounded and powerful man to be in relationship with that much wild and not need to patriarchally break or control. It to feel safe. I have experienced firsthand for myself, y'all, what a difference this makes. It is a game changer when you are paired with a partner like this. I just can't even. I hope through this episode, through me actually breaking it down and like showing you guys, right? These core pieces of is my partner able to be an emotional adult? Right? Is he able to take responsibility for his thoughts, his feelings, his actions? And then on the flip side, is he able to be securely attached to himself? Is he able to show up as someone in secure attachment, right? That list that I told you. Are we together? Am I feeling this way? Am I able to be myself? Is it safe to be myself in the relationship? If not, okay. Then we start there and we be honest with ourselves about what is actually possible here. Because I think you guys are spending a ton of energy spinning round and round on round on should I stay without even understanding what a great marriage looks like. And if we have any of the components here to accomplish that, right? So I have a self-check for you guys. Some questions that I want you coming off of this episode to be asking yourselves. First one is Am I in emotional adulthood most of the time? And this is a piece I wanted to address here at the end. First off, saying, Woof, gentle, be gentle. Okay. If you especially tend to be on the codependent side of the coin, which most of you do, you tend to be really harsh with yourselves and excuse all of your partner's behavior because you're like, oh my God, well, I'm not an emotional adult hold all of the time. I'm not securely attached to myself. So how can I expect that from him? And that is not what I want you guys doing. I hope if any takeaway has come from this, it's what an incredible help it can be to have a partner that is more securely attached than you. And it's okay to say, that is not the case in my marriage, and I'm not going to stay in this marriage and keep hoping that one of us will somehow be able to magically stop drowning and become securely attached for the other. That never happened for me, you guys. I was never able to go into a relationship where neither of us were securely attached or emotionally, or, you know, mainly in emotional adulthood, and magically one of us became it because the triggers are so severe in those relationships, you don't ever get your head above water. So I became more securely attached to myself. I developed more emotional adulthood in the periods where I was single, where I had time to invest in myself, to come to love myself, to be supported by friends and other healthy relationships that were not triggering that wound. So if at this moment you're like, I'm not actually an emotional adulthood most of the time, that's okay. In fact, I suspect most of you aren't. That's why you're here listening to this podcast. Okay. Um, and we are going to speak, you know, I've actually got some episodes coming where I'm going to speak more about this aspect of, you know, okay, so I'm not in a lot of emotional adulthood. How do I do that? And specifically the effects that a lot of you might be experiencing from the narcissistic emotional manipulation and abuse. Because it is absolutely unrealistic to expect yourself to experience secure attachment or emotional adulthood when you have severe childhood trauma being reactivated and triggered, possibly lots of CBTSD and emotional flashbacks, right? Am I painting the picture? Okay. So, yes, first question is am I in emotional adulthood most of the time? And I want you to ask this question because this is where you get to be honest about the toll this relationship might be taking on you being able to actually do your own work. And if you are finding that you are a shit show most of the time, screaming, yelling, losing it like I was right before I went through my journey and ultimately got divorced, it's okay, babe. I've got you. Be gentle, be compassionate. And it's time to start making some moves and getting yourself in a place where you can make the journey of secure attachment to yourself and emotional adulthood your number one priority. Second question: Does my partner take responsibility for his own feelings? Or does he project onto me or ultimately end up taking his feelings out on me? And final question: Do we both get to be full humans here? Or is someone playing caretaker? Those are just a few questions that I want you to let land in your body, answer for yourself. Closing this episode out, y'all. I really want this hopefully to be a rallying cry to all of you to stop the dialogue I keep hearing where people say, well, you know, nobody is perfect and marriage is about compromise. And, you know, it's just, you just gotta hang in there. And it's of course it's hard. No, no, that is like way too much the prevailing dialogue and sentiment, at least here in the US at this time growing up. That's what I saw. And I just want to say unequivocally that if you find yourself, that's what you're leading the conversation with, that your marriage is about compromise. I'm concerned for you. I'm just gonna say it flat. I'm concerned for you. Because now that I'm in what I know is the level of a great marriage, a great relationship, I know that compromising, it's like seriously a non-issue for us, y'all. We are not fighting all the time about compromising. We are not like having to work that one through. We're not constantly, I'm not constantly thinking about how hard it is to stay, and you know how much I hope he's gonna work through his stuff, or it's just it's a non-issue. There's so many things that just don't even play that. Guess what? Because I'm not thinking about all that shit, I have all that energy and momentum that gets to be put into the things I love and desire now, right? Because I have this secure base, as you guys are seeing it, I'm fucking blowing up over here in my life right now. Because I have a secure base that I'm operating from. So check in with yourself. What are the conversations that you're leading out with when you talk about your marriage? If it's excuses for your partner or how you feel sorry for them or how hard of a life they've had, notice that. Okay. I want to say too, it's not that you need a perfect partner. And perfect, I'm putting that in air quotes. I don't even fucking know what that means. But a lot of us, you know, we have this idea, like, oh, he's gonna be six, six, two, and he's gonna do this and he's gonna have this job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. You don't need that, but what you do really need is someone who's fucking willing to go just as deep as you will into their own pain and their past and grow through that to have emotional adulthood and secure attachment in themselves. And you deserve to be met by someone that is walking towards themselves as bravely and badass, full bore, like, I want this in the same way that you are. I see so many of you doing the deep work with partners who just aren't there yet. And I think it's a tragedy to see you waiting and hoping that someone will one day show up for you while having to put showing up for yourself on hold for all of that. Oof. Okay, y'all.
unknownWoo.
SPEAKER_00So you can tell I am like this episode brought out in me this just an even deeper understanding of like, no, this is what a great, a great marriage is. And I also thought, too, you know, along this line of like you deserve to be met by someone walking towards themselves the same way you are, at least at the same level, um, another episode I'm gonna re recommend to go deeper in is gonna be episode seven, uh, where I talk a lot about guilt. And I just, you know, one of my final notes on this is like, you're not here to raise your husband. I mean, unless you want to be his mom. But if you want a partner in mutuality that can stand next to you, that you want to have incredible, amazing sexual intimacy and chemistry with, and someone who sees you and gets your soul, you have to let go of needing to be his savior and needing to raise him or help him or sacrifice yourself so that he can get through his stuff. There's, you know, there's a there's a level of that. That's the beauty of the nuance of hopefully taking the tools that I'm teaching you and taking it back into your marriage and seeing how much is this person actually doing that deeper work? How much are they stepping into actual emotional adulthood? But I know you guys can figure that out. That's the beauty. That's like the the clarion call from this is like you can armed with this new information, right, of what a great marriage actually looks like and the questions I have you ask, and now knowing you can go back and you can go, how much emotional adulthood is here? How much is my partner actually open to doing the work to be an emotional adult? And where are we starting at just on like baseline levels of attachment, right? What kind of trauma do we got in this person's background? And what kind of trauma do I have? And then coming from the neutral space of, you know, what are we working with here? And if it just turns out that the trauma we both got and the lack of secure attachment and the amount of emotional childhood where we're just chasing each other's tails around in circles is not a fit, okay, that's okay. We can move forward. We can, you know, maybe they're not gonna want to, but you can consciously uncouple knowing you deserve to have a great marriage. You deserve to have a secure base that can help you create and be all that you want to be in this life.
unknownOof.
SPEAKER_00All right, y'all. Go ahead and check out the show notes on this one and the episodes to come. Like I said, Alex is gonna be linking other episodes that we've done in the past that will be related through YouTube. So you can go see the videos of them. Um, and like I said earlier, I promise, even if you listen to it before the second time around, you're gonna hear something different because you're not the same person you were when you listened to it back then. So, all right, y'all, until next week.