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The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Colleen is a student of Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt who created the Imago Theory and have brought this work to over 50 countries around the world. She is profoundly influenced by this belief shared by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He said, "We are born in relationship, wounded in relationship and healed in relationship."
What are you struggling with today? Colleen believes that almost any problem we have began with a broken or unhealed relationship. The anxiety or deep sadness we feel often began with unresolved issues in our relationships with our parents, partner, family or friends. When we have unmet needs we are programed to get those needs met. When we don't get what we need we protest by protecting ourselves. this often looks like defensive, critical, demanding behaviors. these behaviors are most often ineffective. As a result we may develop unhealthy relationship with food, sex, gambling our or a substance.
Colleen invites world renown relationship specialists from all over the world to help her guests explore their own relationships and see their problems through a relational lens. She will help us explore how to create intimacy to deepen our connections. Her listeners will gain insights to create a more joyful life.
Colleen is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of South Carolina, a certified, Advanced Imago Clinical therapist, a clinical instructor for the Imago International Trading Institute while maintaining her clinical practice in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Thank you for joining Colleen today. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. Join her next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
What is Relational Literacy and How Do We Develop Conflict Positivity? with Dr. Banu İbaoğlu Vaughn
What if everything you thought you knew about relationships was missing a crucial piece? That's the revelation Dr. Banu İbaoğlu Vaughn had despite years of clinical psychology training. "There comes a moment in each relationship where the pain of childhood comes to the surface, and that's what you wrestle with," she shares, recounting the transformative insight that changed her 25-year marriage.
This episode introduces the powerful concept of "relational literacy" – the fundamental understanding of why relationships function as they do and how this knowledge helps us sustain meaningful connections. Dr. Banu brilliantly reframes conflict as "growth trying to happen," offering a perspective that turns relationship challenges from threats into opportunities for profound personal evolution.
Through vulnerable stories from her own marriage, Dr. Banu demonstrates how our unconscious patterns inevitably emerge in intimate relationships. She describes a recent revelation about interpreting her husband's helpfulness as judgment – a reaction rooted in childhood experiences of criticism – and how awareness of this pattern created space for healing and deeper connection.
The conversation explores the delicate balance between safety and aliveness that sustains long-term relationships. As Dr. Banu explains, "Humans are always conflicted between safety and aliveness. Safety is really important to stay alive. At the same time, safety, when above a certain degree, gets in the way of being alive." This tension creates the creative possibility for growth when approached with curiosity and compassion.
Ready to transform how you understand and navigate your most important relationships? Listen now to gain insights that aren't taught in school but are essential for creating relationships where both partners can thrive. How might your relationship change if you approached conflict as an opportunity rather than a problem?
Thank you for joining me today on the Relationship Blueprint. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. So join me next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
Hi everybody and welcome back to the Relationship Blueprint, where we unlock your power of connection. And today I have with me a friend and a colleague. She is part of the faculty USA faculty, turkish faculty. She really began the Turkish community in Turkey and Istanbul, having therapists learn from her and with her to spread this beautiful work that we get to do every day. And her name is Banu, and I'm going to pronounce her name it's Banu Ibaloyulu Vaughn. I'm really happy you're here and I've been. Really. We've been trying to get together to do this podcast for a while. Banu and I met in Atlanta many years ago. Banu has her PhD and her LPC. She can practice in the United States and in Turkey and she's taught in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1:And what I'm most excited about with Banu is her insights around relationships that are unique and profound. One of the things that she is going to talk about with us today is relationship literacy, like I love that term you have coined, because think about all of the language that we have around various topics that we study in our lives, but our most important way of connecting in the world. We really don't share a common language unless you're a couples therapist or you're not part of another organization, so you're going to help us really get some understanding in depth around this relational literacy and also about sustaining relationships. How do we sustain these long-term relationships? So both things we're going to look at both relationship literacy and then sustaining long-term relationships, and not in a way that we just stay married, but in a bigger sense. So I want to know if there's anything I left out about you you want to share with our listeners.
Speaker 2:No, this is all good and I'm happy to jump in. You want to share with our listeners? No, this is all good and I'm happy to jump in. Perfect, and I will start with a little story about I like relational literacy better than relationship literacy, and I want to tell you a little bit about how I got into Imago.
Speaker 2:I think all of it ties together and why I think Imago is so valuable and how it's helped me in my personal life and how it helps to bring a framework about relationships. That's what relationship literacy is Understanding why we do what we do, what happens, what to expect when we have a quote-unquote disaster or nightmare situation. What's really going on unconsciously and unconsciously in relationships. What are we looking for? There's all this stuff, and of course, that looks very different in a long are we looking for? There's all this stuff, and of course, that looks very different in a long-term relationship, right, and when I say relationship here, of course I'm talking about a marriage, but a lot of this also applies in long-term friendships and other kind of relationships as well, but mainly about a committed partnership. So I was thinking about what I was going to talk about today and I really boiled it down to why Imago is precious to me.
Speaker 2:To a memory, I was a young therapist and I was doing some couples therapy and I was pretty decent at it too, and I could get couples to really get into what's going on when they come to you with a conflict. I knew about dialogue outside of Imago. And how can they dialogue? How can they get to the bottom of the wound? What's going on with them when they get hurt? What's happening? I didn't have quite the framework Imago did, obviously, and I was going through my own relationship troubles. So I'm in a relationship that's going to be hit 25 years in September.
Speaker 1:Wow, 25 years.
Speaker 2:You guys are babies. I know Well, we're not babies, but yeah, yeah, we've been together since we were 23. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that that is one of my favorite people, which later on, maybe him and I can come back here and talk about being an intercultural imago therapy couple he's an imago therapist too, but getting back into it. So we got together quite young and I was a person who was just against marriage you know how a lot of little girls dream of being married and I was like this seems like a bad deal, for women especially, and I grew up in Turkey and my generation. I remember talking with some of my friends that grew up in liberal middle class, upper middle class families and they all had the same story If my mom had her financial independence, she would have divorced my dad, right? That was the story we grew up with, and so me, being the little, you know, precautious kid that I am, okay, this sounds like a bad deal. So I do. You know, I do have desire for a committed relationship, but especially if it's going to be with a guy, maybe that's not the best thing. However, life brought its circumstances and then I met Matt and I have a joke I say I'm with, I've been with Matt for 25 years because I just couldn't get rid of him, which is a terrible joke, but in a sense of he's been the one that had the more clarity of this is the relation he's been holding that flag of. This is the relationship I want and this is the relationship we can make work at least in certain parts of the relationship right, because in 25 years you have at least three marriages. I said there's actually a quote. I really like that. You know, one marriage ends, another one begins, and that's how we work this, anyway.
Speaker 2:So I'm doing my couples therapy. I'm a baby therapist Well, not quite baby, but maybe 30 or something and then I go to my own couples therapy with Matt and we were really struggling. We're in a lot of pain, and I remember two moments in that couple's therapist's office. One of them was when he said there comes a moment in each relationship where the pain of childhood comes to the surface and that's what you wrestle with. All the pain comes crashing in and that's what you have to decide, what you're going to do. You either work through it or you jump ship.
Speaker 2:And I remember, almost metaphorically, my jaw dropping open. Oh my God, why didn't anyone tell us this? I remember asking him. No one told us this. Because we have all these ideas about marriage and relationships. It's a given right, that's what you want, that's the goal in life Not for everyone, not these days, but in general. That's a given and it's supposed to be non-problematic. And it is so problematic at the same time. And then here I am, at this guy's office. He's just rattling off this thing. I'm like, oh my God, this seems like such important information.
Speaker 2:The funny thing was he was a psychoanalytically trained person but he had Getting the Love you Want in his bookshelf and he told me he really liked that book and I knew about Imago at the time, but I wasn't that into it and I didn't know. This came straight out of Harville's theory, right, and? And there was another moment in which I asked him do people change? Also, why should they change? Because this is who my husband is and it seems unfair to ask him to change much and plus, is it even possible? And he said something he said when people really love each other, they do change and I didn't really buy that. It was like they do, but that seems really vague.
Speaker 2:So then I later on, a few years down the line, we were good, we got through that crisis. We ended up working with an Imago therapist Wendy, wendy, yeah, and when I was working with her and then we went to the workshop and I learned Imago, she gave us a framework of this is normal. This is how relationships work and you change because this is life. You're growing. This is not exactly the things she said, but this is eventually. What I distilled it down to Is that this is about growth. This is what relationships are for. It's not about two people who are good matches finding each other and living happily ever after. You're going to go through these crises and you're going to grow and you're supposed to change, but not change into another person for the sake of your partner, but change more into more of who you are and still stay in connection.
Speaker 1:You are saying so many really brilliant things. So I'd like to just take a minute to circle back and slow down just a little bit, because the first insight you had is, like this idea that you never had heard this idea before, like this concept of this is what's supposed to happen and this is how you grow. And you had been through college, graduate school, and you were with a man who had done undergrad and graduate school, in marriage and family, and the fact that we, you know, in undergrad never heard that, or in grad had never really been, that had not been explained as kind of mind blowing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It is, and here's the funny thing and he didn't do marriage and family. It was psychology for both of us. But you know, we did clinical work and we didn't really talk about couples, we didn't really talk about relationships. I went to a school with very good clinical training and it was a humanistic, existential program and we had very good professors. We talked about the relationship between therapist and client but we didn't really know about couplehood and I remember Matt's going to get mad at me for dealing with the first time.
Speaker 2:We went to a couple of steps. We've been to couples therapy a few different times in our, you know, in 25 years. Right, the first time I sort of dragged him. He had, um, he had interrogated the therapist, was very sweet and said froy didn't do couples therapy, didn't do a couple, what is this thing that you're doing? And she was so calm and very nicely just answered a couple of questions and then he loved it once we got into it and I really loved it. It was so helpful and I was like why didn't we do this before? By then I hadn't quite figured. I've gotten the framework of why are we in relationships? The next step of this nightmare is actually part of the relationship. For some people it's a greater nightmare. For some people it's a smaller nightmare. But there's always this power struggle, right, we talk about in America.
Speaker 1:Am I going too fast? No, no, not at all. But I really like want to circle back to to this idea of change. Like your question that day to that couples therapist, you know, do people change? And you know, I think, what your summary of that was that they, they change, but not to just please the other person, but they're changing in the relationship. If they're growing, if they want to grow, get that part. So this idea when couples come in, right, we've all had this experience. If you're a couples therapist, the couple comes in and they really each have this hidden agenda of well, if you can change her, I could be happy. You know, if you can change him, then I could be happy. And that whole idea, like we are one and frankly I am the one, that way of thinking is so ingrained in our cultures. Is it the same in Turkey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hell, yeah. Is it okay to say hell, yeah, yeah, it is Very much, of course, and the thing is that I think is interesting. Couples therapy has been getting a lot more popular here, and I don't want to get off track too much, because I want to talk about these certain concepts that I think are really good for relationship literacy, what I'm seeing it that way. But here's what I also thought In Turkey, couples therapy is getting more popular. Why? Because divorce is getting more prominent, because women can leave, and I just thought about it like in couples therapy wouldn't have been possible if women didn't have the capacity to lead, and I'm saying women because historically it's been. You know, 1940s, couples therapy wasn't a thing because marriage was a given and you didn't actually have the option to opt out. So now that there is more equality and there is more power equality too, if you don't like the word power, we can say capacity to influence the outcome Now we can actually have conversations, because we don't resolve things by domination or just submission. So in Turkey, culturally too, we see a lot more of this of changing the power dynamic, and it's changing quite fast, and I also see, especially in young people that's one of my dreams is to give this basic relational literacy stuff, so that when you go into a relationship and when it turns into a nightmare, you know what to expect. You know that, hey, this is part of it. Here's how I can actually help the situation. This can lead us to growth, right, conflict is growth trying to happen. That's my favorite quote ever. It is I call it being conflict positive. You know, there's sex positive and there were conflict positive. It's a good thing when you're having conflict and here's a chance for you to grow. And growth doesn't end at 18 or 25 or whatever you consider that it's. If you're a smart person, it's going to continue. The rest of your life and relationship is an environment that you create that can help you grow as a human being.
Speaker 2:Not all roses, obviously. It's sometimes painful, but that's how growth is. Or it can be a place where you sort of go to sleep. You can have a long-term relationship, right, you can sort of make it work, but you're not really fully asking the question am I fully alive? What does it mean? What does my heart want? What am I bringing? What are my rigidities? What are my adaptations? How is this person holding a mirror for me Like, let's get together and enter the crucible. Can we use it to transform ourselves? And trust me, I know I make it sound good there are days when you're like, oh no, this is not going to work, right? You're like, oh my God, I really feel you are this person right now.
Speaker 2:And that's the fun part is, just recently we went through something like that Again, 25 years, where both therapists have done this work. I just had an aha moment, like he was able to articulate something he hadn't, because I sort of urged him to. And I had an aha moment, something as simple as when he's helpful to me, I interpret that as it's him judging me. Interesting. I have ADHD, right, I have ADHD. And he picks up after me when I seem to be sort of in the ADHD frenzy, when I'm going through doing a lot of stuff and I have to go back and clean up, and he's picking up. And I realized after 25 years, I see it as a little bit of a judgment. And just recently we talked about it and it's my childhood stuff. Right, that's my character, adaptation, because that's what it was as I was a child.
Speaker 1:Because this is really important. I think what couples eventually hopefully through the workshops or therapy they can identify the childhood challenge and it often most likely, is tied to the adult frustration, right? So whatever the challenge is as a child, so how would you have described your childhood challenge and how that links to this, in particular, this adult frustration?
Speaker 2:So it sort of makes sense. So we talked about the idea of relational literacy and how that contributes to capacity to hang in there in the relationship and create an environment that actually can withstand the storms that are going to come. We haven't really talked about exactly what you're going to do, but I'm sure a lot of your other guests have talked about it and there's stuff out there. But even the idea of understanding oh, my unconscious is doing something, their unconscious is doing something and also that there are cultural factors at play. So we have the relationship environment, we have the cultural environment and we're stepping into, we have stepped into a new paradigm in relationships where dialogue is possible, where we can say, hey, I want to show up here, we want to be one, but it's not you or me, we're creating a third. Am I making sense? You're making total sense.
Speaker 2:And part of that work is noticing when I am getting triggered right and I am unconsciously I'm not even aware, I experienced it that way implicitly feeling this little thing right, which I'm okay with because I've taken it. Yeah, I need someone to sort of help me and he's not ADD in the way that I am and he's helping me. But this is our balance and, however, now I'm growing, so conflict is brewing because I don't want to be operating out of that place. So it becomes a problem in our relationship and I'm resenting him, but I don't know why. So I say, well, you're doing this In my mind. We make up stories, right, because that's my movie in my head. I'm basing it on my past experience, my current desires and needs and also what's going on. Make up a story, that sort of matches. And so just a couple of days ago, I said are you? Then I got curious because now I'm well-trained, and I said are you looking down on me or thinking that this is a deficiency I have when you're helping me like this? And he said, no, I think actually you're working really hard and you're doing a lot of things and I appreciate that and I want to contribute, I want to make your life a little easier. So it's about him wanting to be helpful, right, and one of his languages of love, love languages is service. And then I had to look. I'm like, okay, so he doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, of course, because I grew up being criticized all the time for not being so organized and forgetting things and doing things and when my mom would pick up after me or do something that would always be this thing of you're not capable or you're not competent, even though you're very competent and smart in these things. Here are the ways you're failing and I have internalized that. So that's my stuff in the background. I wouldn't even call it unconscious, it's almost, because it's rising to consciousness now, but it's implicit and it takes some awareness. It takes some pausing and it took some struggle, because I did go through a period when I'm boiling and I'm like something's not working Right. And this was just a part of the longer conversation we have, but it was a tiny but very important part. So something's growing in me. I'm almost 50. I want to show up in life differently and this is not working anymore.
Speaker 2:Wendy and Bob talked about contracts. We have this implicit contract. This is not working and of course, when it's boiling it's bringing up a lot of gunk with it. Right, he's bad, I'm bad, they're bad. What's going on? Am I making sense?
Speaker 1:Making total sense. So this was an example. Yeah, what you're saying about relational literacy is all around really knowing how normal all of the things you've described really are. However, I love the part where you said or I can go to sleep and coexist, and you know, grocery shop, love our family, love each other. But there's this other path where we can really identify what's going on underneath. But it does take some effort. It takes some curiosity, it takes some willingness, it takes courage. Yeah, it takes some skill. It takes skill. I think Harville's new area of practicing is in order to find real love, which is really to me, what you're talking about here is that we have to practice empathy, we have to practice dialogue, we have to practice affirmations and we have to practice the idea of validating the other person's experience, our differentiation, and that's a big deal. So I love what you shared so far. So keep going. I don't want to. I know you're on this train, love your train.
Speaker 2:Okay and I like to always include the dark side. So the dark side is that sometimes we can't. Sometimes it feels so real, so painful, so important that I don't want to validate their side because I really want to be heard first and I am getting into my old defenses or maybe being like, oh, maybe I've been fooled or maybe this is the way whatever has been happening Right. So at that moment the skill is might just be having patience and saying I've been through this before, this is possible, I'm not going to die and we're not going to die, we're going to get through this. And also looking at what are the ways I'm not being honest with myself. So this is the time to really be curious, knowing that it's going to be hard.
Speaker 2:Therapist who is really clear, knows you and can separate who's well differentiated from you can sometimes hold a mirror right. So they support your relationship. They hold a mirror Sometimes it's you to yourself of using your skills, your honesty, your journaling, your art, your yoga, whatever it is. You have to bring it all to be like something is happening here and it's scary and what am I not willing to let go of Like. Am I afraid, if I'm really real, this relationship might break up, and then I'd rather settle with something that's okay than mess that balance right. That's a question we all have had, because there's a cost. Especially when you've been together for so long, there are so many things you love about that other person. Is it worth disrupting what's going on because something doesn't feel right? And I think that's always a question of balance, of degree and curiosity.
Speaker 1:It's also I love Maya's quote about most people would rather live in a predictable hell than risk taking. You know, having a taste of heaven because we know it's what would the dance that we're in. Whether it's really painful, mildly painful, is what we know, and so what we know feels I can hold on to that I'm not risking. The relationship and you brought that up is like if I shake this box a little bit, will it end, Will something be discovered that we can't come back from, and I think I'd like you to speak to that if you can just expand on that.
Speaker 2:Of course we'll always have that inside because we don't want to lose all the good things we have, to lose all the good things we have. And humans are always conflicted between safety and aliveness. Right, safety is really important to stay alive. At the same time, safety, when above a certain sort of degree, gets in the way of being alive. The fun part is, as humans we can really be creative about this, because I don't think there's a formula. It's existentially for all of us to figure this out. So for me, I can speak, I do a lot better when I'm at least as much as possible honest with myself. And even if I can't answer that question, I can hold it open or go to therapy or look there, explore it or wait and say, okay, I'll tackle it later when maybe we have more resources. That's a part of it. The other part of it is trusting your partner, knowing that they are sturdy, they can hang in there with you. So in a long-term relationship you have the safety if you've made it this far. And of course, matt and I had our therapists or our psychology background or Imago and all this stuff, and still our fights are not that different from any other couple in a certain way and it's different in the way we do them. The pain is similar because you can have all the knowledge here in your upper brain and you're still human in all other parts of you and you have every right to be. But if I trust my partner, if I know, something good's going to happen. What Maya mentions about the little taste of heaven we have tasted it before because I know. Anytime we go into a crisis, my new brain remembers, even though my old brain thinks everything's going to fall apart. My human brain says you've been through this before. Here is how you can get through this. Take a breath. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you love each other, still remembering the kindness, curiosity, empathy. Even if I don't see how they're valid, I know in some way they are and maybe, when the time is right, I'm going to see it. So you know how, in dialogue, we help people to get into that empathic resonance and validation.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, like in a long-term relationship, you're not in therapy right now. A single issue can last a few days or even a couple of weeks, but you don't stonewall, you don't keep harassing each other as much as possible. If you do, you make repairs. So you hang in there in a different way and stay curious, and I really trust human's capacity.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned, I was trained as a humanistic psychologist and I drifted a little bit away from it, but Imago is very humanistic in its foundation as well as psychodynamic. Like I do believe in humans, we have a tendency towards growth and goodness, and something in me wants things to work out in a way that brings me more aliveness, more truth, more connection, more humanity, and something in them also wants that, and what's in the way is our defenses, our fears and what society has told us, the roles, and sometimes it's just even financial difficulty, like the stresses. Right, we can talk about it as the old brain. So that's what I think a long-term relationship does. Yeah, maybe you don't always have the excitement, but you have a different kind coming from knowing this is sturdy and I know whatever happens now, we're going to be okay and we'll discover another layer in the relationship.
Speaker 2:I'm going to discover something new about myself. I'm going to discover something new about you, and I'm mentioning this so excitedly now because we just went through another cycle and the biggest thing is when we fight, we're not out there to hurt each other and we can fight well. So that's why I say conflict positivity. If you're conflict positive and you learn how to fight in a way that doesn't go for the jugular, because I think we panic when we're fighting. I'm in so much pain so somebody's got to be doing the wrong thing and I need to fix them. It's either me or them. So when we panic then we become really hurtful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're so right, and what's coming to me is a brief discussion that we've had earlier prior to our podcast together today. Today is what you're talking about with this relational literacy and what I've been sharing about real love, the decision to love long-term, the commitment that that means, because what you are describing, that you and Matt have developed over time, is reminding me of sobriety, because I often say to people that are new in sobriety, like you know, they say I only have 30 days, and I'll say, well, we all just have today. The only difference between a person who has a day of sobriety and a person who has 30 years of sobriety is the practice of reaching for another person, or yoga, or a bath or whatever instead of drinking, and so the same principles lie right around that.
Speaker 2:And one last thing I want to add yes, this is the best possibility.
Speaker 1:And it's possible for so many couples and people out there and I want to say I can imagine somebody listening to this, maybe being in an abusive relationship where there is a big power difference and they're being harmed.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, the best thing for our well-being is to be able to say goodbye. That you're no longer going over the bridge in the middle of an argument, thinking are we ever going to get?
Speaker 1:to the other side.
Speaker 2:Are we going to get divorced? You have that history of resolving the conflicts in a healthy way, enough to know we're going to get over the bridge, but it's going to be rough. There's going to be some patches.
Speaker 1:And the rain's going to fall and there's lightning, we're going to get there. It's just how long we want to stay in our defenses.
Speaker 2:Petition compulsion you just keep repeating the same thing, right. Petition compulsion Right, you just keep repeating the same thing. So there needs to be some discernment there, of course, because there are situations in which our safety has to come first and our children's safety or people around us, and, at the same time, knowing that there are all these possibilities in relationships and if we enter them with this awareness and with our sense of self and making sense of this whole thing, then they become creative possibilities. Yeah, and it's yeah. How can I make it safe for them? And, at the same time, how can I be an integrative with myself, sometimes being firm and clear and having the ask not as an insistence, but persisting in your clarity, being as safe as we can be and, yeah, inviting, but not over-empathizing and over-accommodating.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, as women, I bring this up a lot because that's something I see and think about a lot. We try to think so much for our partner that we forget about our clarity. So it's finding that balance Exactly how to invite in a safe and clear way and, at the same time, stay connected with myself. And before we get off this is the last last thing you called me brilliant twice.
Speaker 1:Why else are we here Like, why would we I?
Speaker 2:appreciate that, if you really think about it from a spiritual perspective, take it in and thank you for sharing that with me and, at the same time. Can you imagine what I might want to say back to?
Speaker 1:you and that eventually feels so different from us and that we spend the rest of our lives trying to change to meet our needs. That is not what is intended right.
Speaker 2:So if the intention is what you've described, that we're meant to be with this person to grow into our highest potential?
Speaker 1:to reclaim those lost parts and hidden selves. I love to tell the story of how I would, on paper, have married a banker who made the same amount of money and brought home the same amount every year for 30 years. Instead, I married two entrepreneurs who are high risk takers and I am not by nature, so it's interesting things show up in our time and we talked about doing it, maybe intercultural measure.
Speaker 2:A couple of things later on and enjoy risk taking and not seeing it as the you know the dangerous thing that I'm aware I spoke a little bit fast maybe in the beginning I got a little excited. I hope that pacing was okay for people and they were embracing my world taking risks is there anything else that I well, maybe I won't talk about next time I come in?
Speaker 1:that is so much freedom and joy. Right, so it's. It's in those ways that we reclaim that joyful aliveness. But they are scary because it felt like he was trying to make me do something that I didn't want to do. That I was afraid, right, yeah, to risk having a podcast. What if nobody listens to me? What if I sound stupid? What if all the what ifs that people do, all of us do, with anxiety and just to say, oh well, I'm gonna enjoy myself, and I'm gonna try to get the word out there to a couple.
Speaker 2:I could not have done that without you gotta listen to this. And then come let's talk about this. I really like what you're doing who and who.
Speaker 1:Did you watch ma, who did who? You had someone model that behavior to see all the good in his poetry, but then to to make sure you zeroed in on what was wrong. Right, and that is real love. That is a decision. So remember, going back to what Banu and I have talked about, that this romantic stage and then the power struggle. This is what we're talking about how this is difficult stuff and what you can do about it, but that both of those stages happen to us. But we have agency. We can determine how we want to go about that, and you can divorce the person. You'll marry another one just like it, maybe slightly different, but you'll still have the same challenges. So you could do that. You can get divorced, you could stay a little sleepy and just go along to get along. Or you can take this brave step, which is so exciting and so brings up this curiosity that I'm inviting everyone that Banu has so beautifully described today to bring this curiosity about the potential of the relationship. It's because of the traumatic re-injury, right, you're in there. So true, banu. I've just loved our time together. You're so brilliant and I love how you've coined this phrase about relational literacy and given us some real, tangible things that we can do and think about and really start to pay attention, and your point about safety is so important. So if you really want to do this with your partner and they're reluctant, they may think it's psychobabble. Whatever they may think, I think it's our job if we want to invite our partner into something that's a little scary. It's really important to remember that we may see the value in this. They don't see it yet, but how can we be safe and invitational and not we have to do this thing, you know, really imagining what it's like to be in their shoes and just figuring out what will my partner need for me to be so safe that he or she might try this with me, because it is scary. It's a big step. Thank you, banu, and I think that you and I know each other so well and it's really.
Speaker 1:We were used to be on a committee together and got to talk often, and now, with you being in Turkey and I'm in South Carolina, we don't get to do this often enough and I am so grateful that you're on the podcast with me today and I hope you'll come back. I love that idea. I love that. I would love to have you and Matt on and yeah, so if it was a little fast, it is the passion that I heard in your voice and we have a transcript. Wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, there will be a transcript and then you can also watch on YouTube and then we will have the captioning there on YouTube so that you can take it in a little bit at a time and invite your partner to listen.
Speaker 1:You know, what do you think about this? It's a great conversation, even if he says he hates it, you know, or she says it, you know. It's sort of like a great discussion starter to to listen to something and say the part I agreed with, the part I didn't agree with, what I didn't buy, what I didn't understand. So it's a, it's a good, it's a good place to begin and, um, I've had some other therapists who are using these podcasts to let the couples listen to and then they bring it to session. So it's a nice way to sort of get everybody thinking and then having a safe place to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I loved what Ian shared about neurodivergence. I feel like people were very confused about what's that word really mean and you know. He explains that so well in his own experience. It was really a vulnerable and powerful podcast for me too, so I'm very grateful. I'm grateful to all the people that are willing to be guests and share your vulnerability, and I want to say goodbye to our guests for today and thank Banu for her amazing wisdom and insights and your vulnerability about your own relationship, because that is really the truth. The truth is that we're all navigating this together. We may have some training and expertise and practice, but we're all walking through this together. Every relationship goes through these stages and hopefully you're going to want to do some work on yours. This is the Relationship Blueprint. We are giving you lots of blueprints for how you can create more powerful, safe, satisfying relationships. So we'll see you next time on the Relationship Blueprint. Have a great day.
