The Loving Truth

Us, Unfiltered part 5: The Real Meaning of ‘Having It All’

• Sharon Pope

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In this final episode of the Us Unfiltered: Behind the Beautiful Life series, I explore what “having it all” really means — and why a beautiful life on the outside can still feel empty when your marriage isn’t getting the care it deserves.

We talk about the difference between success, happiness, and true fulfillment, and how easy it is to give our best to work and our kids while offering only crumbs to our relationship.

I share why emotional connection is real wealth, why numbing keeps us stuck, and why we need to stop saying “I’m unhappy” without offering a path forward.

We’re whole humans. What happens at home affects everything else.

I walk you through how to evolve your marriage as life changes, and two questions every couple should ask to create a next chapter that feels as good as it looks.

The life you’ve built is beautiful. Now it’s time to make it feel beautiful.

If you’re serious about healing the disconnect in your marriage, there is a path forward.

Apply for a Private Couples Weekend. We’ll talk about what’s happening between you, what you want to rebuild, and whether this private, two-day experience is the right container to help you create lasting change—together. 

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert, and certified Master Life coach, Sharon Pope.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, loves. I'm Sharon Pope. This is The Loving Truth. Now we are on the fifth and final episode of Us Unfiltered Behind the Beautiful Life. And today we're going to talk about how to reimagine the idea of having it all. Because you can have real success in your life, but if you don't have that emotional fulfillment and connection, it doesn't really feel like you have it all. So you've probably built a life that looks pretty good. The problem is it may not feel pretty good. You have the beautiful home and a lovely family. And you have careers that you're proud of. And those are all amazing. But if your marriage doesn't feel good, it's always going to feel like something is missing. Now, these words, success, happiness, fulfillment, I feel like sometimes they get thrown around and jumbled together as if they're almost synonymous. And that's not true. Because we all know people who have had financial success, but they're not terribly happy, or even not terribly fulfilled. And we all know people who are genuinely happy people, but who don't have a lot of money. And so, you know, we've been sold this idea that if we check these boxes dutifully in our lives, that we will be happy. Do these things, you will create a happy life for yourself. But what happens when that recipe just doesn't work that magically? Because having it all sometimes also means doing it all. And that leaves very little room for connection and for joy. And I think that, you know, we've heard this before, but at the end of our days on our deathbed, what's gonna really matter was was I loved and did I love? So what's going to matter is our relationships way more than all the other really important things that we are spending our time and energy on today. Now, inherent in success is that there's going to be some sacrifices. If you've been successful at anything, you've had to sacrifice something. You know, it might have been, you know, missing your child's baseball game where he hit his first home run, right? Or it might be I had to sacrifice my desires and dreams in order to raise the kids. But there's always some degree of sacrifice. And unfortunately, for many of us, one of those sacrifices, whether intentional or not, is that we put our marriage on the back burner. And so other parts of our lives feel really good because we've invested in those other parts of our lives. But because we put our marriage on the back burner, it now no longer feels good. And now it's in a place of real struggle. So work gets our best, kids get our best. But our marriage gets crumbs. It gets all the scraps. And scraps and crumbs are just gonna leave you starving, in the words of Danielle Laporte. So when it comes to checking those boxes, one of the things that can happen is that perfectionism shows up. If you have any degree of perfectionism in you, that's gonna show up in terms of checking the boxes, doing all the right things. I remember that I had some of that in my first marriage, that I needed things to look a certain way, because I think there's this idea that if it looks good, that it will feel good. And I want you to know that those are two very different things. Because having it all means something deeper than just the things that we have. It also means living a life that is aligned. And what I mean by that is a life that feels as good as it looks. Where, you know, in the same way that you have set goals for yourself at work and you're achieving those goals, in the same way that you might set goals for yourself as a parent, and your kids are just, you know, they're just, they're doing so great. They're thriving in all the ways because you've shown up for them time and time again. That you also are achieving what you want to achieve in your marriage. That's really the equation of having it all. So we do need to be able to multitask and do more than just one thing. Maybe not all at the same time, but wherever we are, we need to be present with what it is that we're doing. And so we can't expect our marriages to thrive when we turn our backs to it, when there's no investment in it. So I want to talk about the emotions of success. And I just actually, generally speaking, I just want to talk about emotions. Now, one of the things that I see with successful couples is that many times they feel like they don't have time to feel, right? They they manage, they perform, they deliver, they do the things. Who's got time to feel? So they shut down their feelings. But my friends, we are human beings, we are not robots, and so we are actually here, like in this life at this time, so that we can feel, so that we can experience life. So feeling is a really important part of that. And every single one of us is born with the ability to feel now to varying degrees, for sure. But we all have it, and some of us have learned to suppress our emotions because we think that emotions are weakness, when I think emotions are wisdom. So I want you to think about a movie that brought up some emotion in you. Like some of the great movies that that made you cry. Or it just brought up some kind of an emotion in you. Like the first one that came to mind for me, and maybe for you, is the notebook. You probably, if you're like anything like me, you cried your eyes out at that. Um, another one might be the Titanic. I'll tell you the one for me that really got me, that still gets me, and I've seen it multiple times, is the pursuit of happiness. Man, that one really is a tearjerker for me. The greatest movies make you feel something. So doesn't it stand to reason that the greatest life stories mean that you felt something fully? And the idea isn't that we are that we get to be happy 100% of the time. I don't think any of us signed up for that. And it's not even realistic. That we're going to really appreciate the joyful, beautiful times in our lives because we know the struggle and the difficult times in our lives, right? You know what it feels like to be warm because you know what it feels like to be cold. You appreciate the warmth because you've experienced the cold. You appreciate being satiated because you know what it's like to feel hungry. And so these two opposite spectrums in the universe serve us. And so the greatest life stories have experienced something, have had moving, meaningful experiences. And in those moving, meaningful experiences, you felt something. You had emotions. You weren't just robotic moving through your life. I promise you that. And so we're actually here to feel, to fully feel and experience our lives. Now, when emotions come up that we don't like or that we don't want to feel, remember how I told you that human beings seek pleasure and want to avoid pain? Well, one of the things that we will do is we will avoid our emotions. If they're negative emotions, call it grief, sorrow, sadness, um, despair, doubt, anxiety, worry, sometimes or fear. That's another one. We don't like the feeling of those emotions because they don't feel good. And so many times what we will do is we will numb those emotions. I think of them as sharp edges, like on a box or something or a corner that's real sharp. And we want to numb those edges. We want to like just soften them a bit. And so what we do is we numb them. And that's the seeking pleasure part. So we're avoiding pain by avoiding our negative emotions, and then we seek pleasure, which means we will eat junk food, right? You don't have to go very far to seek pleasure. You just grab a bag of Oreos or a thing of gelato, right? You'll overdrink, you'll drink too much to calm the nerves, to not feel the feelings of inadequacy or worry or doubt or insecurity. We might reach for porn or gambling or overspending or overworking. Like that's just a, you know, a way that society says, like, oh, that's that's a good way to numb yourself or avoid your life. But when you're overworking and you're ignoring the parts of your life that are not working, like your marriage, well, then it's just, you're just using work to avoid facing your life. We can do that with our kids. We can use our kids and submerge ourselves in their lives so that we avoid what's happening in our marriage. We can use affair partners as a way to avoid what's happening in our marriage so that we don't have to deal with it. It gives us something else to focus on. So these emotions beneath the surface, like everything can look fine on the surface, but beneath that, there's real feelings. And we have to be willing and able to allow those feelings to be present and not judge ourselves for them, not push them away, not numb out to them, but feel the full experience of them. And what I will tell you is that when you are willing to feel the full range of emotions, like think of it like a one of those things where it goes from one all the way to the right side and then it goes all the way to the left side. It's like a ball, a silver ball hanging on the end of a, is it a fulcrum? I can't remember what that's called. But it's like a silver ball that's hanging down and it swings back and forth. Everyone wants to feel all the good emotions. We want to feel joy and appreciation and gratitude and aliveness and excitement and adventure and all that kind of stuff. We want to feel all the good stuff. We just don't want to feel the bad stuff. Shame, grief, despair, doubt, insecurity, all that kind of thing. But that's not the way it works. You either stay in the numbzone of not feeling too much of anything, not getting too excited so that you don't feel too bad. You stay in that very numb zone area. Or you become willing to be the person that's willing to feel the full range of it. So I am willing to feel grief or sadness because I want to feel great joy and aliveness. And so you either get the full gamut of the emotional experience, or you get that numb zone or robotic zone in your life. And I want you to know it's a choice. I just want you to make that choice really consciously. So wealth can include so many things more than money. It can include a lot of laughter in your home. That's wealth. It can be a conversation that feels deep and real and meaningful. It can be knowing that you're able to be honest with your loved one no matter what it is, and you will still be loved. That unconditional love is emotional wealth. That is abundance because it's peace. It's peace of mind and it's peace in your heart. Let me tell you a quick story about a couple that I was working with where he had shared with me that he had a certain number in mind, that he was going to work until he had saved up or invested or whatever, that he had this number in mind. And he shared with me that earlier that year, he had hit that number. But he was still working as hard as he ever had because it was habitual. That's what he knows to do, that's where he finds his value, that's what they need from him. Like that's the expectation he has of himself, that's the expectation they have of him, all the things, right? So we think once we reach this goal, that things will all change. And for him, it didn't. And so I had a very frank conversation with him because he and his wife were on the verge of divorcing. And I said, Can you imagine that you've worked your whole adult life to hit this number, to have this thing. And they have many things, right? Um but imagine that now, right on the other side of hitting that number, reaching that goal, that you could lose half of it, two-thirds of it, you could lose it. This thing, this beautiful thing that you've built, this beautiful goal that you've obtained for yourself, you could lose it all. Because you're not paying attention to this piece over here. And he got it. And he agreed. And he's like, you're absolutely right. There's no doubt about it. Kevin O'Leary, he was on a reel and he said, Divorce is the stupidest thing you can do because you'll you'll give a third of it to the government, you'll give a third of it to your spouse, and then you're left with a third. Like from a financial perspective, he was saying it was like the worst thing you could do. And, you know, from that perspective, he's probably right. But, you know, the other thing I'll offer is that we think we can can compartmentalize pretty well. Like when our marriage isn't doing well, I can still go to work and I can still win at work. And I would argue that that's not really true, especially if you're an entrepreneur. But I think it's, I think even at some level, it's true for everybody. Because when you are thrive, like when your marriage feels really solid and grounded, that gives you a sense of security to go out into the world and do some big things in your life. And when it feels alive and on fire and connected and loving, you're gonna do even bigger things, right? You're gonna be more innovative, you're gonna be more creative in your work and other things that you do in your life. But when things are sort of crumbling at home, you can't tell me you are your most creative self at work, your most patient self at work, that you're the best leader you've ever been at work. No, you're more distracted, you're less patient, you're less innovative, you're less creative. And so we are whole people. We are not these robotic compartmental pieces that don't touch each other. We're whole people and it it all comes together. And so having it all means I'm firing on all cylinders, which means I invest in all the pieces of my life that are genuinely important to me. You know, and oftentimes people will say, if you want to know what's really important to you, you've got to look at how you spend your time and look at your calendar. You know, we know this in business that if if you spend zero time doing revenue generating activities, you should not be surprised at the end of the month or the end of the year that you haven't generated any revenue or even not much revenue. And so, how is it then that we understand that so well over here, but we don't understand that you can't just not invest in this relationship and think it's going to thrive. And then we're surprised that, like, how did we get here? So sometimes pushing so hard for success, well, that in and of itself is a really beautiful thing in a lot of ways. I'm a I'm someone who pushes really hard for success in my life. And that's something that I'm I'm proud of. But I also am really conscious that that there are other things that are also important to me, including my marriage. And so I have to invest in that as well. It's never equal. Of course it's never equal. If you spend 12 hours a day doing your job, but can you really take then 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour to spend with your spouse? Of course you can. If you choose to do it. So I think emotional connection really is one of the greatest luxuries that we can have. And when we have that, we're bulletproof in other areas of our lives. I think it takes courage to stop pretending and and to be able to say both to yourself and to your partner that I have everything that I've ever wanted, but I still don't feel connected. And so there's that sort of final frontier. But I don't think we can stop there. We can't just have that conversation with our spouse that I have everything I've ever wanted, and it all looks really good from the outside, but I don't feel connected. Or I don't feel happy. That's another that's language that that I hear used a lot. I'm unhappy. If we stop there, if we put a period at the end of that sentence, it does us almost no good. Because our partner doesn't know what to do with that. And there's an it's implied in there that you are responsible for making me happy. And you clearly have not done a good job because I'm not happy, which means I'm not going to take responsibility for my happiness. You are responsible for it. And that's not true. I just want like it's not true. Your partner is not here to make you happy. There's no one who was put on this planet whose sole intention and purpose for being alive at this place at this exact time is to make sure that Sharon Pope is happy. I keep looking for these people whose job it is to make sure that I'm happy. They don't exist. And if it doesn't exist for me, it doesn't exist for you. So we're each here to take responsibility for our own happiness. And when we do that and we come together in relationship with one another, and we walk beside one another as a witness to one another's lives, the happiness gets exponential. It layers up. It's like frosting on the cake, but the cake is my responsibility. So we can't just stop the conversation at I'm not happy or I'm not connected. You should do something with that is basically what we're saying. Is we've got to come to the table with solutions of here's what I'd like to do to see if we can get back on track. Here's what I'd like to do to see if we can turn this around. And so don't just hand your partner the problem. Come to the table, be honest about the problem, and then show up with some ideas for solutions. And if you don't know, guess what? There are experts out there, hello, that do know how to help you with that. If I could do one thing, if I could give every couple one tool and have them use that in their marriage, it would be to evolve their marriage periodically. It could be once a year, it could be once every five years, it most certainly needs to be once every 10 years. Of evolving your marriage and renegotiating it as you go. Right? Just like Apple comes out with a new iPhone, with new functionality, like every year at least, your relationship needs to get equipped with new functionality to support where you are as a couple today. And wherever you are, you've never been here before. If it's your kids are now in middle school, well, you've never been parents of middle schoolers until you were. Or you've never been parents of high schoolers until you were. Or you've never been empty nesters until you are. And so all along the way, you need to renegotiate because you get married, say, in your 20s or 30s, and then we think what worked for us then is going to work for us in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. And then we're surprised when it doesn't. So we need to get comfortable with just renegotiating and evolving our relationship to support this new stage of life. Call it every five years or every 10 years. So, my friends, it is time for you to evolve your marriage to a new place. And so the takeaway for today that I want you to do and hopefully come together with your spouse and do together is to ask yourselves these questions. What do we want this next chapter to feel like? And I'll come back to that. And the second question is what does success mean to us today? What does success look like for us today? Now, the feeling question, what do we want it to feel like? The reason we do that is because the only reason we want anything is because of how we think we'll feel when we have it. So once you can get at how is it that I want to feel, now there's many paths to get to that feeling. So partnership is about consciously creating a life that feels good on the inside, not just looks good on the outside. I think having it all means work feels good, kids are doing well, and you have a loving, honest, intentional, committed relationship. I think that's the trifecta, right? So I want to thank you for joining me for this series of Us Unfiltered Behind the Beautiful Life. If these conversations have spoken to you and you feel like you really need some support and you want to take this deeper to reconnect, to rebuild, and to reimagine your marriage, then I invite you to join me for my couple's weekend intensive. It's two days of powerful, private, guided transformation designed just for you to help you create the connection that you've been longing for in your marriage. Because the life that you've built is beautiful. But now it's time to make it feel beautiful. So if you want to find out more about that, you can go to sharonpope.com forward slash couples dash weekend. All right. Until next time, please take really good care.