Navigating Breakups in the Digital Age: Relationship Minisode 01

In our first minisode of The Wavelength, Dr. Sarah Adler is joined by Wave VP of Operations and Head of Coaching Megan Murk, NBC-HWC to explore navigating breakups in the digital age using questions from YOU!

Dr. Adler and Megan talk through many of the complex feelings and issues that arise when modern relationships end, covering topics like:

• Dealing with decision fatigue
• Fighting the urge to "get over it" too fast
• Social media and breakups
• Understanding your role in the breakup
• Wanting to get your ex back
• Believing in "the one"
• Choosing your partner every day

Tune in to hear advice on moving through the pain of breakups in a healthy way on this minisode of The Wavelength.

If you are having a mental health crisis, please reach out to 988 or a support system of your choice.

For emotional wellbeing coaching and support, download the Wave app at wavelife.io.

Our music is Gold Roses from Cloud System.

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Hello and welcome to our very first relationship mini sode of the Wavelength. In each episode, we're going to be tackling your biggest questions about relationships in the digital age, as posed by our clients and you. I am your host, Dr. Sarah Adler, clinical psychologist, Stanford professor and entrepreneur.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And today we have our head of coaching and VP of operations at Wave Megan mark to to discuss all of the questions. And just to frame this a little bit, the reason that we wanted to start doing these Wavelength mini soads is it's actually coming from you. We have more downloads than we and listeners than we thought we were going to get, which is incredibly exciting.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And what we have asked people, we have found people are asking us questions that are mirroring the questions that we're actually getting from our, our very real coaching clients. And so we decided to address some of these questions through these mini sodes, so we're going to be bringing these in between our larger episodes as well.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: [00:01:00] So this is our first try. So welcome Megan.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Thank you. I'm excited to get to do this. This is it's really fun to get to bridge the the questions right from two sides, the ones that are coming in through the podcast and then the ones that we hear a lot in coaching sessions as well.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Amazing. So tell me a little bit about why are we talking about breakups? What are we seeing? What are you seeing in the folks who are coming in and why are breakups such a big deal?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: I think that's a great place to start. So I think we all know breakups can suck, right? Whether you're on the receiving end or you're the initiator, they're generally not fun. And I think that there's a lot of it. In a normal way, a lot of emotions that go through that. There's a lot of decision making, potentially decision fatigue, right?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Around what should I do? What should I not do? There's a lot of ways that we question things. We may question ourselves. We may question past experiences. We may have doubts. Right? We may kind of swing into some, you know, kind of all or nothing thinking about our future [00:02:00] based on on some of these things.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: And I think that a lot of what we've seen with some of the clients we've had come in is they're kind of fresh off this breakup experience, right? Again, whether they are the initiator or the receiver, they're fresh off of it. It's raw. It is hard. There's a lot that's in there, and there's a lot of discomfort, right?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: That comes in that Those moments. And so we're getting some of these unique questions, some of which can be very direct, right? In terms of what they're asking, actually asking about. But part of what we know is that there's so many things that go into that experience of a breakup and that that it's very like multifaceted and nuanced.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Like that.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: I think that's, I think that's it's. It, it, it's also very unique to the person. And when we sort of think about what why a breakup? Because some, you know, some, there are some people who, who seem to manage breakup. It's always lost, there's always pain. But there's some people who really suffer with [00:03:00] breakups, any kind of breakup.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And there's some people who seem to have more, skills or support or emotion regulation to be able to like manage it as a normal part of life. And I think that that's really interesting. And I'm, I'm curious about what are the things that you're hearing when you are, when our, when our clients are coming in and they are, they want to focus on, on breakups.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Like what are you, what, what kind of, what are the main questions that you hear? So maybe we can, those are the ones we can focus on, on discussing today. Yeah.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: I mean, I think to your point, right, that there's people experience differently. I think one of the more common questions is, should I fight for this relationship? Should I let it go? Or another one should be, would be like, how do I stop thinking about them? How do I get over it?

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Yeah. So big, the questions of should I, like, right, like, how long is this going to take? It's almost a question of, like, why am I feeling the way I'm feeling? Like, when I hear that question, I sort of think to myself it's, it's not how [00:04:00] do I stop thinking about them, but it's almost a more existential question of, like, how long am I, am I going to be in pain?

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And what can I expect? So what do you, what do you, how do you handle that question?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: I think it's, it's interesting. You know, one of the things that can be really interesting is when you have a direct question posed that way, like around this type of situation, and you know that there's a lot of discomfort that's there, there's maybe a lot of pain you can maybe kind of see that somebody is trying to understand how to not feel the pain, and maybe they're trying to do it with a logical calculation of like, when will I stop feeling this way?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Or like, how can we get back together? Or when will we get back together? And so that's one way of, of trying to you know, find your way out of that pain. There's again, some of that all or nothing thinking that can come in too. So you're seeing them kind of reach for it in different ways, but part of what I often will, will try to just initially do is just to really norm that like, This is really hard, right?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: This is a hard experience. And just try to validate that there [00:05:00] is discomfort, there is pain. There is a desire to not feel that way. That's there. And just also that again, especially for some people, it's really fresh. You know, it's really raw.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Yeah, and, and you're supposed to feel lost, you're supposed to feel pain, and I, I love that idea. I think that that I think in my, in my work, I tend to do the same, which is when I get questions that feel like when, they feel very concrete, like they want it, they want to sort of, it is a black and white way of thinking about the world, they want answers, and what I, what that sort of signals to me is, wow, there is a marked intolerance of the uncertainty of how long the pain will last, and then sort of a very normal human response to avoid pain.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And so helping helping the client really sit in the discomfort and trying to reframe the pain. I love that as a normal part of the experience is like Yeah, if you had someone in your life that was filling filling a need for you or filling an interpersonal just being a part of your life and then suddenly they're gone, there is loss [00:06:00] associated with that.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: There is a normal, natural grieving process associated with that. So instead of judging your pain, trying to avoid your pain, push your pain away. Accepting your pain and figuring out how you're going to relate to your pain and interact with your pain, experience your pain while not losing focus on the other things in your life that, that feel really important is, is like, is that reframe, I think.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Yeah. Yeah,

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: right, right. Like how do you care for yourself while you know, time doesn't stop life move moves on. You have deadlines, you have exams, you have, you know, these other maybe milestone events that are planned for yourself or other people. You know, we know time doesn't stop. So how do we help to honor how you're feeling and take care of yourself while Like it's a both and right while these other things are happening,

Sarah Adler, PsyD: that's right. How do you balance that? And oftentimes I think that it's the avoidance, the trying to get out of the pain, which is the wrong agenda. So the patient is like, help me, or the client is coming in and saying like, help me feel better now, which is like something we get [00:07:00] all the time, not just around relationships, but it feels like it's a.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And then we're kind of saying, no, actually, like, you got to go through the grieving process, feel the pain, sit in the pain. Let's, let's figure out how to do that. And at the same time, we can focus on other things that we value. I think like. What I find is where that gets really, really tricky is with we could talk about attachment styles.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: We could talk about object relations theory. We could talk about relations, early formative relationships, but I do actually think that the way people, the intensity of the emotion that people feel and the people who really actually sort of get very panicked or terrified at that loss. Do sort of fit a really kind of an interesting, an interesting phenotype where it really does feel like life and death for them when, when a relationship ends.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: right? And I think that with that, too, right, that part of what's hard is that it can come from all sides. It can come from friends, friendships, right? It can come from romantic relationships. It can come from [00:08:00] any of these other types of things as well. And so I think romantic breakups. You know, especially if you're of a younger age, it's probably a first, it might be a first time that you're experiencing this, but part of what is also kind of known as you get older is that again, you, you'll probably experience this in a friendship at some point, you'll probably experience this more than once in a romantic situation.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: And so there is kind of the, the first nature of it also that I think is really hard. While there's also the, like the larger understanding that, That how we can help with coping through this can be applied to other situations in the future, too. But to the person, like, this is the only big, biggest, biggest problem in this moment.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: That makes a ton of sense. What do you think of I feel like there are a lot of strategies that people come in with again, usually to kind of facilitate this avoidance paradigm of like, I don't want to feel bad. Like I'm going to like wipe out my Instagram account and delete all of the shared photos [00:09:00] or I want to like erase every, Yeah.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Every shred of them. So I never actually have to like interact. What do you, what do you think of, of some of those strategies?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Yeah, I think, I think it's interesting because there's common ones that people will try to do, but they're also sometimes trying to monitor their ex and see what their ex is doing. Like, why haven't they deleted the photo? Right. Why am I still there? What does that mean? Right. It's almost like this inner investigator kind of wants to come out to try to again, like solution or try to figure out a math equation for what this all means.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: But I think that, yeah, I've, I heard a lot about, you know kind of going cold turkey on something like that, deleting all the socials, like all of those things people will often try to, we'll talk about distracting themselves. Like I'll try to watch a movie. I'll try to listen to music. I'll just pour into work right now.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: And then also sometimes like, it's more complicated for some people when you have kids together, right? You have this need to continue to see each other and you also [00:10:00] are shifting the way that you have access to somebody as well, and they have access to you, right? So all of those things. But yeah, I think it's very common to try to just stuff it down, not think about it, like, get, like, get over it by erasing it and kind of, like, leapfrogging this grief stage rather than kind of, you know Journeying through it.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Yeah, it's true. We're not just talking about folks that are that are, you know, single and don't share kids. Breakups are incredibly intense and incredibly complicated when you have other ties that are sort of holding you and forcing you to interact with each other. Then it gets to a whole nother level of complexity.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: That's interesting. What, what are other things that you're hearing from our, from our clients about their biggest pain points?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Yeah, it's really trying to not think about them, right, which is code for like, not feel right. Just like you mentioned it's also a thought around like, if, if somebody feels like they contributed [00:11:00] to the breakup decision some way, like, how do I make peace with what I did? Right. Whether that's like cheating, whether that's a lie, whether that's something else, it's like, there's a sense, I felt sense of causing it that, that is discomfort, discomfortable, uncomfortable too.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: And then also I think that there's like again, that fight to like, try to get it back. Like, what if this, like, and also I should say along with that, like why, like, why don't they want to be with me? Like, why would they rather be alone or why would they be with, want to be with somebody else? And so then I think it turns into that internal audit of like, why, why am I undesirable?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Right. Especially for some clients I've had where they've been together for a very long time.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And I feel like that, that is another, like, it's really interesting, right? Because again, that's also another I sort of think of that as another control strategy, of another way to control emotion. If, if I can, if I can turn this into a puzzle that I can just [00:12:00] figure out, and if I can turn it into a puzzle that I can just figure out that has to do with me, then maybe it's fixable.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Then maybe there's like a solvable, or there's a solution. I can be different, look different, do different and then get them back. How do you think about because oftentimes when I find when I'm dealing with breakups the, the intention, and I'm actually really curious from a coaching perspective and a Psychology perspective, how this is different.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: What do you do when the agenda is, I'm coming in because I, let's say, want to get him back. Like, my agenda is to, like, get him back. And you're kind of sitting there going, and I know, like, as a psychologist, it's, like, my job to sort of sit there and, like, almost, like, I'm going to acknowledge that agenda, but we're going to Explore about why that's the goal.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: What do you do from a coaching perspective if someone comes in with that, with that very focused agenda and like, what do you say?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: I would, I would [00:13:00] say approaching it the very same way. Right. Like you don't want to discount that as a goal initially, especially if you're new and getting to work with somebody and you don't really have that relationship built yet. You really want to honor that and not challenge it, but also want to be curious about, you know, why that is the goal.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: And I think what I would often do is to try to understand more of what the person is wanting, right? They say maybe they want their ex back, but like. You're wanting to feel more secure in the day to day, like you're wanting to have more of that companionship. You're wanting to have somebody to talk to and share how you feel, right?

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: So, so not making it about the person, but making it about more of the experience or the feelings or the things. And then oftentimes. When you I've found that when you frame it that way and you get like, you know, agreement around that, or you get agreement around something different, that's actually more true for them.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: It helps to better understand those desires, like absent, [00:14:00] needing to connect them to that other person.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Right, right.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Right? It's not just about that. It's about these other things.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Yes. It's not about the other person specifically. It's about what is the role, what is the function this person kind of plays in my life. So like before we, we close out here, I think that, I mean, I totally agree with that and, and would do the same thing.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And I think I had one patient say to me once, like Are you saying, like, there's a, there's a almost a myth around that we get fed by, like, the Disney Industrial Complex and by by media and by movies and all of this thing that, like by fairy tales that there's one person for us, and so oftentimes I feel like we're combating or, like, pushing against that and someone is saying, but if everyone is just interchangeable, I Like, are you trying to get me?

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Are you saying this? And it's hard. And what I find myself trying to navigate is this idea that whether someone is in your life or [00:15:00] not, the meaning that they imbued, the experience you had with them at the time where they were in your life. It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't disappear. It doesn't it doesn't get erased just because you're no longer with them, but it is data that you can really learn from, I think.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And to your point, figure out what was really successful about this? What was a great fit? What did I love about this? And then you can seek from a goal orientation perspective to then move towards other relationships. that that support that, that support those things. So it actually can be a really great moment if you can get people to accept that it's, it's normative again, like the pain is sort of normal to to really help people clarify their values of like what is important to them in their, in their relationships.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: So that's awesome.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Right. I think it's, it's so true. And again, I think especially when you're young and it's a first, it's really, really hard because you maybe are again, deep in the belief that like, this is my person and that you think that that's totally true. But, and again, this is interesting because I've been there, like I've [00:16:00] been that in my teens.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: I've been that in my twenties and now like. In my later thirties, like you kind of have a little bit of the wisdom to know that, like, that's, that's not always how it works out. There's multiple paths to, to being in relationships. Relationships can look a variety of different ways, right? And more, I think when the more that you believe that there's only one person, the more you feel like you can't knit together a cohesive journey experience of like your life and the relationships, the phases, the seasons.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: What you learned, right? What you gained and what maybe you lost at different times, but ultimately if we can broaden the horizon to see it bigger than just right now, or assuming that right now is the forever, or it needs to be the forever, then we open up a lot more space to get to really knit together a much more cohesive evolutionary experience.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: I actually think that's an incredibly wise, that's an incredibly wise piece of advice as well for when you are in a relationship because we can often find ourselves, [00:17:00] sometimes the demise of a relationship or the reason for a breakup is because there's too much codependency or enmeshment and it is very hard to maintain one's autonomy.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: in a very healthy way. In a relationship sometimes, because really good strong relationships are actually about compromise. And there's a lot of skill it takes and a lot of emotional maturity to be able to communicate your needs and to have the other person match your emotional maturity, to be able to hear that and an assessment of like, do our needs fit in or do they not?

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And I think it's a really wise thing to say. Like I've seen a lot of relationships. Breakup that should break up because they're codependent and unhealthy. But oftentimes the key I think to that that healthiness is that is that knowledge that I'm making a choice to be with this person.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: It's not a Romeo and Juliet fantasy where I have to be with them or I'm going to die. Right. Which is like something very much I, that resonates with me as a teenager as well. Awesome.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Right. Or that, sorry, the last little part about that too, that I think is so true is, is again, that idea of needing to be chosen versus getting to [00:18:00] choose. And there's so much that can come in when you get to really realize that you have agency and who you want to choose versus only needing to go with who, who chooses

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Who chooses? That is, that is so real. That is so real. So real. And that you know my, my brother, my brother's first wedding, he that rabbi said one of the smartest things that I think I've ever heard. And that keeps coming back to me. This is like 25 years later, my brother's like remarried and divorced and all the things.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And I'm sure he will really appreciate me saying that on this. Podcast if he watches it. But the rabbi at the wedding said it's really easy to stand up here in this now and in this moment and in front of all of your loved ones where there's like presents and a party and a fancy dress and in like the, the celebration of it to like choose this person to spend the rest of your life with.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And it is much, much harder to, to continue to make that choice every single day. Into the hereafter and I don't love [00:19:00] necessarily the religious construct of like you're making a lifetime choice what I do love the idea is that you are making a choice every day and that if that choice that you made yesterday is Not actually working for you today You actually have agency and autonomy to reevaluate as you grow and learn.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: Like, is this still the right choice for me? And and I love that. So amazing. Thank you so much, Megan. I, this was super fun. I love talking to you about all things. clinical. And thank you all for joining this mini sode which is a word I didn't know existed of the Wavelength. And really what we're hoping to do is provide an interesting discussion and tangible relationship advice for digital natives.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: So one thing we didn't get into that we really do need to get into at some point is like how interacting primarily through your phone impacts all of this, which is difficult. We touched a little bit on the social media. But be sure to check out new mini sodes as we continue to take your questions that are coming in from our coaching clients, as well as the interaction with these [00:20:00] podcasts.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: And we'll try to answer them for you. Our music is Gold Roses from Cloud System. And as always, if you are having a mental health crisis, please reach out to 980 or to a support system of your choice. And as always, you can check our app out at in the App Store and it's Wavelife.

Sarah Adler, PsyD: io. So thank you.

Megan Murk, NBC-HWC: Thank you.