Ep. 12 Marriage Is Energetic (Nervous System Co-Regulation in Relationships)

In long-term relationships we don't just communicate with words - we communicate through our nervous systems. This episode is about the difference between attunement and enmeshment, why you can feel your partner's stress before they've said a single word, and how childhood conditioning shapes that sensitivity. If you've ever wondered why you're anxious or activated and nothing has even happened yet - this is the episode.

Book 1:1 here

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the Intuitive Drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Intuitive Drop. Today I want to talk about something that doesn't get talked about very often in relationships. This is especially in marriages. So if you are married, listen up because 10 times out of 10, you've felt this. It's that moment when nothing has technically happened, but your body knows that something's off. This is somatic awareness. And I teach it in my office every single day. So your partner hasn't said anything yet. There's maybe no argument, no bad news, and still you feel your chest tighten, your thoughts start racing, and maybe even your mood shifts a little bit to anxiety or grumpiness. And then if you're not aware of what's going on, the mind will jump in like, why am I like this? Massive judgment. Why am I so affected? What's going on? How do I make sense of this? And then if you notice that your partner is the one that's kind of holding some of this, you think, man, am I enmeshed or codependent with him? And I want to offer a different lens. What if this isn't enmeshment at all? What if it's attunement? So in long-term partnerships, especially marriages, you don't just communicate with words. You communicate through your nervous system, your emotional tone, your energy. And energy moves faster than language. So when you feel your partner before anything is said, that doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. It means your system is paying attention. And if you're lying beside your partner in bed at night, you're picking up on everything that they are feeling. If you're not protecting yourself a little bit, we'll go into that. So attunement is more the ability to sense another person because you're connected to them. And then enmeshment is when you take responsibility for what you sense. Those two are not the same thing. So for many of us, including myself, this did not start in adulthood. As a kid, I picked up on everything from mom and dad. Those subtle shifts, the silence, the tension. Well before arguments broke out. I learned very early how to read a room, had a sense when something was about to erupt. And without anybody asking me to, I became the peacemaker, peacekeeper, peacemaker? Both. My body learned at that time that if I can feel it early, if I can soften it, if I can mitigate the anger or the fear tension, then maybe everybody would be okay. That kind of awareness gets really ingrained on a deep level. It becomes automatic, not conscious, not chosen. I didn't choose to be the peacekeeper. It's just how my nervous system learned how to survive. So it's not surprising that as an adult, I feel people very deeply. I can sense emotional undercurrents before they're named. And it's not surprising that eventually I found myself working with women and emotions. I did train for this work, but I've actually been living it for decades. For a long time, this that for me, that sensitivity was a survival strategy. But now, when it's held with boundaries, as I want it to be for you, it becomes a skill. And it's a big part of why I do this the work now, so that little kids in the lives of these women I work with don't carry it. So those children don't become emotional barometers for the household. So they don't feel responsible for keeping everyone regulated. And so they don't learn that love means they have to abandon themselves. When adults learn how to process and feel and regulate their emotions, the nervous system of the entire family changes. And that's not a small thing. That's a generational pattern breaker. So attunement can look like feeling anxious before you know why, noticing that your mood shifts when your partner is stressed, suddenly thinking about money and safety or logistics, feeling unsettled, even when nothing bad has happened. And this is especially common for women because we feel this deeply. And it's even more common for mothers. Not because we're weak, but because we're wired for co-regulation. Sensitivity becomes a skill because we we know that connection matters, safety matters, and someone has to notice this. Now, attunement can slide into enmeshment. Enmeshment isn't feeling your partner enmeshment, is when their stress becomes your emergency. You feel responsible for fixing their emotional state. You abandon your own grounded center, your body goes into hypervigilance. And it's the difference between I feel you and I need to handle this for you. But most of us were never taught how to tell the difference. And I'll give you an example. So my husband was had started to become stressed about money. He didn't need to say much. I just could feel it. Because we have this tractor with a snowblower on it. And if you're in Ontario, Canada, with the amount of snow we've had, you need snowblowers. And the snowblower broke. And he didn't sleep that night because he's like, oh my gosh, how do I fix this? Is this a big fix? And then the next day, around the same time, uh, the furnace decided to do a hiccup and not pump out heat unless it was on emergency mode. And he's like, What is happening? I don't understand. And now both of these things were fixed and solved quite quickly. So logically, everything was fine eventually, but energetically, my I'm laying beside this man in bed, and my body went straight into everything's falling apart. We're not safe. I need to fix something. And suddenly, then instead of focusing on the stuff that I couldn't fix, the tractor or the furnace, but I could spiral about my business. I could spiral about income, about the future. And nothing new had actually happened, but my nervous system had absorbed his stress. And that's the moment when attunement quietly became enmeshment. Now, the answer isn't to shut down your sensitivity. That would be kind of a violence against your very nature. The work is energetic sovereignty. Being able to say internally, this isn't mine. I can witness this without carrying it. I don't need to fix what isn't asked to be fixed. Sometimes that looks like just dropping into your body, feeling your feet on the floor, slowing your breath, and letting two emotions or nervous systems exist in the same place without merging them together. You can love someone deeply without absorbing their fear or anxiety. And you can be attuned without abandoning yourself or disappearing. Now, when couples don't understand this dynamic, stress tends to multiply. So he has 20% stress, all of a sudden it becomes 30% in your body, which becomes 40% in his body. It also creates resentment. And then money issues can turn into bigger deals, like identity threats. And of course, then intimacy goes right out the window because there's no safety between you. But when this is understood, there's more room, more room for softness, more room for truth. And you stop asking what's wrong with me in that super judgy tone, and start asking, what is my system picking up right now? And what do I actually need to do with it? This is also when I turn to source God higher power and be like, is this mine? And I will feel a distinct yes or no in my body. And then I ask, can you please take this? Can you take this emotion? Can you take this heaviness? And I surrender it. Surrendering has become a big deal for me lately. So marriage isn't just emotional. It isn't just logistical. It isn't just about communication skills. It's energetic. And then learning how to stay attuned without absorbing is one of the most powerful relational skills that there is. Not just for your marriage, but for your nervous system, your sense of safety, and your ability to stay rooted in yourself while loving another human being. I hope this was helpful. Have a really, really good day.