Part 1: The Leadership Habit Killing Your Relationship

Amy Evans: The very skills that made you a top performing sales leader are the same skills that are slowly killing the connection in your marriage or your relationship. Welcome back to the Women in Sales Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Evans. I coach sales leaders and CEOs on how to help hit their number. This show is here to give you inspiration, coaching, and real talk as you grow in your leadership. If this episode lands for you, would you please forward it to someone in your life who needs to hear it? That is the single best way more people find this show. Today's episode is the first of a two-part series with Dr. Alexandra Stockwell, and I am re-releasing it because the response from you all was so strong the first time. Here is what you're going to walk away with in part one today. First, There are four types of relationships. You're gonna learn which one you're probably in and you didn't even realize it. The second thing you'll learn, the leadership communication style that is making you so successful at work and quietly costing you passion at home. And finally, the exact tool, the exact words for the next time something blows up over something as small as a chore that wasn't done. Or dishes left in the sink. I'm gonna be honest with you. When I recorded this, I thought I was here to interview Dr. Alexandra about her work. And what actually happened is that I got coached live on air. And I share something in part two of this series that I've never shared on this show before. So stay with me all the way through both episodes. Part two drops next week. A little bit about my guest. doctor Alexandra Stockwell is a physician turned relationship and intimacy coach, the author of Uncompromising Intimacy, which is a book you can find everywhere books are sold, and the host of the Intimate Marriage Podcast. She has been married for twenty nine years. She's got four children, and she specializes her coaching on high functioning career driven couples who know how to make things happen at work, but struggle with finding connection and intimacy at home. If this sounds like you, this episode is for you today. Let's dive in. Dr. Alexander Stockwell, welcome to the Women in Sales Leadership Podcast. I think I told you this before. I really have been looking forward to this conversation for a while. And the reason for that is I know this is true because I dealt with this. So many women in my audience have spent years really in. excelling in leadership roles. And sometimes what's going on truly when they get home is that there's this quiet struggle behind the scenes in their relationships, in their marriages, in their partnerships. And when I found you and I listened to your book, Uncompromising Intimacy, I found myself just identifying over and over again with the stories that you shared. I just was like, she's talking about me. I did that. And I could even hear the voice in my head talking about how I would respond to some of the situations that you talk about in the book. We'll get into that. But but the reason I want to get back to what my hope for today in this conversation is that your voice, Dr. Alexandra, is it okay if I call you that? Is that what you want to call? Yes, and you're welcome to call me Alexandra. I'm happy for people to know I'm an MD and then Let's be Amy and Alexandra here. I'm so grateful to be on this show. Good. Good. So my my hope is that your voice really can become a turning point for someone who's listening today. A woman who's craving not just connection, but also that aliveness of intimacy that doesn't become like a one-time or a fleeting thing that happens, that's something that could actually Be lasting and real. And that's what you have based your work upon. So I would love to get to know you through some questions and introduce you to this audience through some questions. And so the first one I have for you is you grew up a child of divorce. Right? Yes, I did. How did that shape your views on love and partnership? You know, it's very beautiful how you ask that question. I don't think I've been asked that maybe ever, despite, as I was saying earlier, being interviewed about four hundred times. It's it's hard to convey how deeply my attitudes about love and relationship were shaped as a result of being a child of divorce because I just didn't know anything else. But I'll begin by describing that When I married my husband, he and I were very much in love. His parents also his parents divorced when he was six, mine when I was nine. We loved one another so much. There was no external indicator of concern. And yet, even on my wedding day, I fully presumed that we would get divorced. It was like inside I had two voices, two attitudes, two sets of feelings that were blended very harmoniously. They both genuinely felt like me. But on the one hand I thought, this is the love of my life. I adore him. I look forward to growing with him and building a life together. And on the other hand, even though there was nothing wrong, I just assumed that we would get divorced because I didn't really have any internal reference point or sensibility that it would be any different. And in fact, when We went on to we have four children, but when we had our first, I remember thinking, ⁓ and this was before iPhones. I'm fifty-six and so I certainly use my phone a lot, but I had a pre phone marriage, I'll say. Right. Right. ⁓ that I would mentally make notes so that I could tell my daughter in the future how beautifully her parents got along when she was young, because I just thought It's inevitable. And there are a few more kind of details I could convey, but I think the important thing is to say that somewhere between ten and fifteen years of marriage, I kind of had this basic aha that no one else knew was happening inside me, but I kind of felt like I was hit by a two by four. And I thought, you know, maybe we won't get divorced. It's not now I've been married twenty nine years and I feel really comfortable knowing that we won't be divorced. And I'm not anti-divorce, just to be clear, but I I'm you know, th there's a there's a path forward with many flavors and all kinds of circumstances, but I'm very confident that we will continue to be married until one of us dies. However, the phase from being sure we would get divorced to my current experience was thinking to myself, Well, we might get divorced, but it's definitely not certain. And I need to stop thinking that. Wow. Now another piece to your question is that when I had this thought to myself, you know, maybe we won't get divorced. It inspired me to really Really prioritize my many questions about how do we create a fantastic marriage. Hey, I wanted to share something with you. I'm super excited about it. I'm hosting a master class for you. And the topic is going to be on elevating your career, getting yourself to the next level. It's totally free to join. It's going to be coming up in June. And for you. You have an opportunity to sign up to make sure you get on my early access list to join the masterclass. How do you get on the list? Really easy. There is going to be a link in the show notes wherever you're listening to or viewing this show from. So you can number one find the wait list link and you'll find the wait list to masterclass link. Or if you're a LinkedIn person like I am, go find me on LinkedIn, alinevins on LinkedIn.com. And you can find my wait list link right there at the top of my profile. Easy at your email address. It's simple. You'll get notified as soon as the master class is available. And I'm really excited to see you there. And I've come to understand, and this is a phrase that is in multiple locations on my website. That having a fantastic relationship is a learnable skill. And the reason that I have such conviction is because I didn't know how, and I learned it, and I have taught so many other couples. And the other thing to say about this is that as mammals, human beings are mammals, and one of the main ways that we learn is through imitation. Now, when it comes to Calculus and biochemistry, obviously that is not learned through imitation. That is far more cognitive in learning that. But when it comes to relationships, how we are in our body, how we are with someone else's body, how comfortable we are with communication, how self-expressed we are courageous enough to feel, where vulnerability weaves into our presence in intimacy. That is all learned through modeling unless we make a point of learning, finding a teacher, a book, a podcast, a coach, a therapist, a training, whatever it is, and specifically learn how to have a fantastic relationship. And I have so many clients, particularly I'll say particularly men who have backgrounds in STEM or tech or you know. Who've done a lot of learning say, why isn't this taught in schools? Mm. So that's something. That's that's my my initial answer to how being a child of divorce influences my views about love and relationship now. Because the bottom line is that it resulted in my feeling fairly cynical. I don't have a cynical personality, but what I've just shared began as a cynical attitude. And it has inspired me to really codify I remember when my husband said to me, I just wish I had a manual so I would know how to be successful with you. And I have taken that seriously, and so I think of my work as a kind of cumulative living manual, and the good news is that whatever you want to experience, you can learn the skills so that you do experience it. Okay. So how d what led you to this work? Well, okay. I've kind of given the structural context and inside is the reality that when my husband and I met, it was the first week of medical school. He's a practicing physician. I no longer do clinical medicine because I'm a relationship and intimacy coach. But we met the first week of medical school and the first eight or so, eight or nine years of our relationship, we were in medical school, we had exams every six to eight weeks doing rotations in the hospital. W we got married. We had I had my first child at the end of my third year of medical school, my second just before my internship. So what I'm trying to convey is that the first eight or so years, many sleepless nights, either due to babies or working in the hospital, exams, just not a lot of time together. So we never had those like romantic weekends that I used to think ⁓ that's that belongs early in a relationship where you can just kind of lie in bed till three in the afternoon exploring one another or go to the beach spontaneously. We never had a phase like that. We never had a lot of relaxed time together and our sex life I refer to it as functional sex, meaning we were Each having orgasms, we were definitely having intercourse and it was fun, it wasn't problematic particularly, but it was nothing like what the poets write about. It wasn't anything where afterwards I felt my heart had opened or I felt closer to my husband. It was as I'm saying, functional sex, like it was happening, but it wasn't it wasn't resulting in the deepening of intimacy or the expansion of passion. And given our love and collaborative partnership in other areas of our life, I just presumed that when we had more time together, then this area would just shift from relatively dehydrated to heating up and becoming passionate. So now fast forward, we've been married 10, 11 years. And I'm not working any nights or weekends. And we don't have babies and diapers. We had a long pause after the first two, before the last two. So we had a phase. And my husband's only rarely working on the weekends. And so the point is that we have more time together after the kids are asleep with no responsibilities other than to be with one another. And to my surprise, We enjoyed spending more time together, but our sex life didn't actually evolve. And that just was unexpected to me, and I thought, okay, it's not just more time that we need, because we have more time and nothing is really shifting. And then I got a number of books and went to various workshops, like wanting to learn what is what is the magic code that can really ignite our passion. And in the context of that exploration, I did an extremely in-depth training on sex and intimacy. It was for lay people. And also doubled as a training for coaches. And at the time, I really didn't know what a coach was. I took letters after my name seriously. And my main association with coaches was like overweight 60 year old men and Russian young, beautiful figure skaters or football coaches. Like I really just didn't understand the coaching world at the time, which was much smaller anyway. And but in my work as a physician, I had done a lot of focus on child development. I was I was in family medicine, but I consulted in a number of private schools and was just really fascinated by educational models and pedagogical choices. So I just was curious how are these how are my classmates going to be taught to facilitate this in people they've never met before? And so I went to the teaching lab And that very first time in the teaching lab, I just felt like I had come home that so much of what I wanted to do as a physician I could do a lot more directly as a relationship and intimacy coach. And I actually don't remember exactly what you asked me, but I'll just say that then I began coaching and in learning how to have a fantastic relationship, I I've done many trainings I have my own personal experience, but also I've just learned so much from the couples I've worked with. You answered the question. Okay. I knew I was. I just didn't remember what it was. You were on track. You were on track. So so so that brings me to you you you set me up perfectly. So from what I could gather, you you tr you focus your practice and your serving really high I'm gonna try to figure out how to word this, like high functioning, career-driven couples. That is correct. The way I usually describe it is couples who know how to make things happen in other areas of their life when there's any kind of professional matter or something with the house, often with parenting, like these are people who know how to solve problems and grow from there. And in that situation where people know how to make things happen in the rest of their lives. They're used to feeling competent. It's really confronting not to know how to make things happen in intimacy and in the bedroom. And so there are just the challenges of communication, intimacy and sex, but it's layered over with the confronting feeling of incompetence, which is not typically part of the ambitious driven successful person's experience in life. I mean, maybe at twelve, but not at thirty-five, forty-five, fifty five, or sixty-five. Yes. Yes. Okay. So all of that resonates. I've like so here's the part where I have to confess, like I'm actually divorced, Alexandra. I think I knew that. Yeah. Okay. So I was married for 17 years and I'm happily divorced, which is, you know, not ever I feel fortunate to be able to say that. But, but, and I should say, and I have a vision of finding my pr a person, like my like my person, my real person. And so when I was listening to your book, ⁓ I was listening it through the experience of I'm I'm trying to grow and evolve and you know, prepare myself for, you know, this this person's gonna be here with me. I'm I'm gonna manifest it somehow. Right. ⁓ and then I'm also looking at the book from the experience of my lived experience of 17 years. And when you t said confronting just now, ⁓ my gosh, there were so many moments that it wasn't like Confronting in a way that made me feel like I was being shamed or I was wrong, but confronting in how challenging it is to actually have a your mirror a mirror held up to you and you can see yourself and say, ⁓ no, I did that because I felt that. I mentioned that before. So one of the things that really was so powerful for me was that you described these four different types of relationships. And I was hoping you could walk us through them. Yeah, absolutely. Although before I do, I just wanna share a story, which is the very first couple that I coached, and I work with couples who've been together for a while, and they're having conversations with me that they often haven't had with anybody else or with one another. So it's it's I'll say sacred work. The point is that I am very respectful and set up the container so they can be comfortable. Meaning I set the sessions up so that they don't need to perform to be in a session with me. They can be who they really are. And I remember the very f I I like can see it in my mind now the first couple I coached and I knew they both were very motivated to work on and improve their relationship. And I saw how she talked to him and about him, and I was kind of shocked because it was dismissive and it the thing that shocked me about it was that he didn't even respond. It was like he was used to being spoken to that way. And I thought it was so dismissive and disrespectful. You know, she wasn't angry, it was just like her sharing how she thought and interacted with him. And right before ⁓ sorry, right after I had that ⁓ experience of it being shocking, like literally a nanosecond later, in my mind I thought, that's how I speak to my husband. Yeah. And I think having that mirror held up, whether it's because our spouse graciously or not gives us feedback or because we have a window into something another way. It is confronting and it's such a necessary awakening. So ⁓ ask me the question again. That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. But ⁓ but hang on a minute. I'll get you to that in a second. But to me in and this is this is what's so ⁓ many, you know, executive women, leaders women in leadership with, you know, highly educated, high functioning They are out there n leading managing teams all day every day. ⁓ they would never speak that way to anybody. I would have never spoken that way to anybody who worked for me or worked on my team or that I cared about. But I definitely spoke that way to my husband. I did. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know I learned it from my mother. I mean There are all kinds of things we could say about that, although if I go in that direction, I do want to say that even with let's say respect and politeness, one of the biggest challenges for the woman you've just described is that being a manager, being a leader, being a delegator, and Communicating as a manager to her employees or to those who report to her, that is the winning mode. That is why she has the success that she has and the accomplishments that she has and the income that she has, is because she has learned how to lead and interact with others in a way that delegates, directs, and manages. And so if that's what we do, I don't know, eight, ten, eleven hours a day, five, six, seven days a week, mm-hmm, it's completely understandable that the winning communication style would be the one that we would use with our children and husband, and I'm talking in a heteronormative context here. And that is the f first unconscious, deeply destructive pattern. Because you may, if you're listening and you recognize yourself in this, you may even find it successful to manage your husband, to treat him as you do someone who reports to you because the trash gets taken out, the bed gets made, the children get dropped off, the dinner is ready when it's supposed to be Vacations are properly planned. I mean, I could go on and on with the details of our lives, which are generally so full that actually can happen successfully when you manage your husband well. Meaning you use your skill set that has been so successful in other areas of your life. The problem is that is a total passion killer. There is no erotic heat in what is more like An employer, employee, manager, employee, parent-child relationship. It is a healthy, normal response for a man who is treated that way to feel emasculated, to have confidence drop. Even when the household is running well, because you're using your skills with good impact, you're undercutting the vitality. of the marriage, you are really eroding the connecting culture between the two of you. Maybe I'll just stop right there because this is not something that I ever hear named by somebody other than me, but it's so real. It's so real. It is so real. I did this. I di I did this. ⁓ you know, and look, I mean I I stand by my decision that I made to to initiate the separation because it needed to happen for a lot of reasons. I'm not gonna get on into in this conversation today. However, I'm here to grow and learn. I don't want to repeat the same stupid shit that I did before. and so it's so helpful to hear you describe in such true like real life truth of the damage that we can do in an effort to just get something done, right? It's the checklist, we've got a the list never ends. And so it's about, you know, we we are successful because we get things done. And if we approach the getting things done ⁓ and bring that mentality to the relationship that becomes really challenging. That's what I just heard you say. But I want to go back to that question I st I started to I was began to get us to because this was a real aha moment for me. Yeah about the four types of relationships. Yeah describe the four types of relationships. I'd love to hear you walk through them. Sure. I'm going to again interject something and then do that. And that is one of my favorite notions is that we all have multiple marriages. It's just that some of us are lucky enough to have them with the same person. Holy smokes, that is the coolest thing that you just said. Wow. Yeah. And so my marriage now, we didn't go through a divorce in between, but my marriage now is nothing like it was before. And if I had gotten divorced, I would be in a different marriage now. with somebody else. I d you know, ideally I'd be married to somebody else if I were divorced. That's all too theoretical. But I just really want to offer that that I just don't believe that people on their wedding day know the things we're talking about. And this is where, again, having a fantastic relationship is a learnable skill. And either it's learned with the person you make a lot of mistakes with or it's learned and then you find someone else. Like I I just wanna convey that the the growth, the individual personal growth is essential either way. I love that. So there are four types of relationships toxic, termination, toleration, and conscious partnership, and I will define each of them. So a toxic relationship, most of what I teach, it could be interesting and enlightening for someone in a toxic relationship, but it's not appropriate to implement the skills because in a toxic relationship there's anger and fear most of the time. One or the other person feels one or both of those emotions. And when you don't feel safe, then growth, expansion, learning new skills, that's not the right move. The right move is to Change the circumstances and internally become safe. So I think, you know, we can have like moments of a toxic relationship in other relationships, but I'm talking about the pervasive theme where you can't really genuinely relax with your spouse. Well, there are so many people who have good suggestions for you how you can transform your circumstances. But this conversation isn't meant to address that situation. Then we have the termination relationship. And that's a relationship where one or both, but often one person has internally already decided to terminate the relationship, but they're staying until The kids are out of the house until the mortgage is paid off, until she can rearrange the finances to make the divorce allocation of assets more favorable. Maybe there's an elderly parent and only when whatever caring is required comes to completion. There are a lot of circumstances where people can love one another and one person can be crystal clear. this relationship is going to end, it's just not the right time. And so what characterizes a termination relationship is that one person has basically already given up on the relationship. And often that can bring more peace, more ease and collaboration because the kind of tension is gone because it's resolved with that decision to move on, even though the relationship lasts for a long time. And so what I'm sharing Can be used in a termination relationship, but typically that comes with reconsidering whether or not it remains a termination relationship, meaning one that will end when circumstances support that. And then we have the toleration relationship, which is far and away the most common relationship there is if you look anywhere among married couples. you are going to see a lot of toleration relationships. And what defines the toleration relationship is acquiescence, putting up with things, tolerating, and most of all, compromise. Far and away the most common relationship advice that is given to anyone getting married or married is that you have to be good at compromise. If you want a happy marriage, Compromise is the way to do that, and that is just completely wrong. If you want a pleasant, bland, collaborative, dehydrated partnership, compromise is a winning move to create that. But if you want a dynamic, erotically alive, adventurous, beautiful, growth oriented relationship. Which is the conscious partnership. That's the fourth kind, where it doesn't mean things are always perfect, but you're aligned to grow and discover and be self expressed. That is the definition of the conscious partnership. But if we go back to the third type, the toleration relationship, I just want to say something about how I think about compromise. In the context of a long term relationship, compromise basically means withholding what you want, withholding who you are, so that your partner is more comfortable. And similarly, when we talk about uncompromising intimacy, the name of my book, as you said earlier, I don't mean Intimacy that comes from being uncompromising in the sense that you always get your own way, that you don't ever have to compromise. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that where compromise is withholding who you are so your partner's more comfortable, uncompromising intimacy arises when you learn how to be self-expressed, how to bring all of yourself to the relationship. How to be a great manager and also receptive and collaborative and more emotional and more logical, just the wholeness of you when you learn to bring that into the relationship and ideally invite your partner to share as well who he is. That's what uncompromising intimacy is about. So the real d distinction. and kind of bridge to evolve from the so commonplace and much easier to maintain un unless you have skills, which is the toleration relationship, the bridge from that to conscious partnership is learning the skills to know yourself better and share who you are in a way that feels good to receive Even if it is a little uncomfortable. Hmm. You in the book, you told a story about the dishes being left in the sink. I I mean, I think if everybody had a dollar for how many times the dishes were left in this sink, we'd we'd have a nice tidy p pile, ⁓ a nice sum. ⁓ but but you you in your telling of this like very real actual story that I think the people women who are listening right now are gonna say, Yeah, ⁓ my gosh, I've been there. When you gave that example of how to turn that situation around, that really hit home for me in terms of practicality. Can you can you share about that? Yes. So the setup is that maybe I have an early work meeting, or maybe I've had a long day and I'm exhausted, I need to go to sleep, whatever the context is. I have a conversation with my husband and he says he'll clean up the kitchen and do the dishes. And so I wake up the next morning and the dishes are in the sink. He hasn't done what he said he would do. Yeah. And in that moment, I don't necessarily feel like I have a lot of choices, but I do and I have made every one of the things and every one of the choices I'm about to say. I could Go in and just walk out again as though I didn't even see it. I could go in and start doing the dishes, but you know, clattering, making the china hit the side of the sink so that everybody knows that I am doing the dishes. I could just do them and be like muttering under my breath. Pissy and resentful at how unreliable he is. Hassle, I could go to him and kind of explode my frustration and say, Would you do the dishes you said you'd do them? And they're still there. I mean, there's so many. That was my that was my MO, by the way. I would have been the like, what the fuck? Can I count on you? Are you kidding me? I cannot believe they're in the sink again. Yeah. I can't trust you. That's right. I can't trust you. So the point is that there are all these different ways to handle this, none of which results in feeling more connected with my husband. Yeah. But none of them result in me feeling more connected with my husband. And in fact, they all result in my feeling. disconnected and then I need to get over it or someone needs to apologize. And maybe it happens right away in some marriages, maybe it takes four days. Like it's a mess. So this is the situation in which the tool I reach for is making a vulnerable communication. And there are a few ways, a few steps to doing that. So regardless of who ends up doing the dishes, I want to put some attention to what this actually meant to me. And then I want to make a communication with my husband. And the first thing to do is to say, I have something vulnerable or I have something meaningful I want to share with you. Are you available to hear it? Because if he doesn't say yes, That's just gonna be a mess and cause further disconnection. He's gonna respond with defensiveness, shutdown. He's gonna get angry. Like anytime you're gonna have a more meaningful, more vulnerable, not just logistical conversation, you wanna both be a yes to having that conversation. And either he's gonna say yes, he's available. Or he's gonna say no and you can make a plan for another time you're gonna have the conversation. Then when you have the conversation, the first thing to do is to say why you're going to make the communication. And this is so important because if you share why and it's something that's motivating for both of you, then that right away puts you on the same team. And gives a context for whatever comes next. If you don't say why you're making the communication, then he is going to hear it as an attack. Very likely. So in this instance, why I might make the con the communication, well, I I'm gonna make up a few scenarios. One is I might say, I I feel really hurt and I want to reconnect. That's one. Another might be. We were planning to have a really great date night tonight, but I'm feeling disconnected and if I can make this communication, we can talk it through, I'm gonna be ready to have a fabulous time with you this evening. That's if I know that a vulnerable share is gonna work for me. That wouldn't be the first time. But you've gotta find something that he's gonna be motivated by and you are too, because that's how you're gonna stay in the conversation when it gets a little challenging. So Let's just say that we had a date night plan that evening, and so I'm gonna say, ⁓ I really wanna have a great time this evening, and in order for that to happen, I need to communicate this to you. And he's gonna say, Okay, or just listen. He doesn't need to there's no particular script for him at this moment. And then I'm not going to say I'm really angry you didn't do the dishes. It's so hard to not do that. Even when it's true. Although you shouldn't be making a vulnerable share if you're still running a lot of anger. You've got to calm yourself down in order for this to go well. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter what you say. You could have the most amazing eloquence and he's just gonna respond to the fact that you're angry. So you really do need to take responsibility for your own feelings and get to the tender thing underneath which is almost always there and we rarely look for it. So Let's see, if I if I really put myself in that situation, what I would end up saying instead of I can't trust you or like that might be the thing to say, but what I want to emphasize is that in the vulnerable share, it's actually not about him. It is not feedback on his behavior. It's a sharing of the impact on me. And for me, when my husband says he's gonna do the dishes. And then they're still there. What I would be saying is When I saw the dishes in the sink this morning My heart sank and I felt taken for granted and unloved. And my goal is not for him to feel badly. It's for him to see me. Like this is where uncompromising intimacy is cultivated. This is a place where compromise is definitely easier. Not saying that so neither I nor my partner are uncomfortable and just getting over it or getting pissed that the dishes were there, like that's actually the easier move. But the more transformational move, which Creates more intimacy and more passion in the relationship is to look at what actually got hurt under all your competence and all your defenses. And for me, one of my go tos is that I just don't feel lucky. I'm not saying that that's a universal response. That's my response. And we all need to discover like what's the core. thing that's get that gets hit. I'm unlovable. I don't feel loved. I I'm a failure. Whatever it is, like that I I don't want to minimize the journey and discovering what is underneath when we peel off the reactive layers. But for me, it's often that I just feel taken for granted and I don't feel loved. And my husband who may have just forgotten or may have fallen asleep on the couch because he too was tired or any number of things, he never intended for me to feel that way. This is why it's really great that you brought up the different kinds of relationships, because in a toxic relationship, then this wouldn't be true, and that's why I don't suggest this kind of communication in a toxic relationship. But where there's love and companionship in a toleration relationship, he would never know that impact if I don't tell him. And notice as I'm doing this, my tone of voice, my presence, I'm not even blaming him for my feeling that way. I'm just sharing that that's how I felt. And honestly, When you use these skills that I'm referencing and demonstrating right now, then there's more closeness as a result and more connection, more intimacy that builds as a result of my sharing something like this and feeling seen by him and embraced either literally or just metaphorically by him. Such that we feel closer, erotic energy is gonna flow more freely after that kind of an intimate moment. And in the end, I've had some crazy situations where I've been glad he left the dishes in the sink because we never would have had that moment if I didn't feel hurt and sometimes it's cause hurt to him that's often harder. So it's often easier to feel hurt than to cause hurt and not know what to do about it for many of us. But anyway, the connection that comes through genuinely sharing with simplicity and without blame. I really want to emphasize what I've s even though I'm saying many sentences to create context, what I actually shared with my husband is quite simple and there's no blame in it. And the way I get to something simple is by really looking inside, journaling, reflecting Being in the shower thinking about it. So I'm not just going from seeing the dishes in the sink to a communication with him which is going to be reactive. I am getting to know myself better and what my experience is and then sharing it with him so that these countless kind of mismatched moments with varying intensity and emotionality attached, all can serve to create more connection, more intimacy, more Safety, more being seen, received, and loved. As you were sharing about that, what came to mind for me was this responsibility. That's what I was hearing. I was hearing I am responsible to communicate. How I feel. Which is comedy for me slightly, but it's not it's like tragic comedy. Because everything you just described, Alexandra, is the recipe that leaders learn for how to give feedback and you know, challenging feedback. different companies, different places call it different things, but you know, you're having a critical conversation where you're gonna address something. And what you just described was like, A, you know, make sure that you've you're not having that conversation in the heat of the moment when emotions are running high. Give yourself time and space to process what was the real impact for you and it And and be able to communicate that impact of whatever it was, the small breakdowns, because there are gonna be breakdowns that are gonna happen, right? In every relationship, but the you know, what what was the impact of that breakdown on how you felt? And it's an offering to the conversation, the relationship to allow for a little bit of a of a repair to w happen. ⁓ my gosh, I'm so sorry. Here's what happened. I wasn't doing this to just be a jerk. Yeah. ⁓ so that's what that's what was going through my mind here. But it but it's so funny how we can do that in an office or when we're leading teams of people. When it comes to this person that we share our life with, we've built a family with, somehow that learning just like vacates as soon as we log off of the computer or get home from the office and to be reminded of the power of that kind of communication. Yeah, you know, it's not because we forget what we know in our intimate relationship. I think part of it is that We we learn about intimate relationships with more children. And when we get triggered, what happens most often is some younger part of us gets activated and the mature, emotionally intelligent, responsible grown up who knows how to lead tens, hundreds, thousands of people. with grace and precision and obviously able to give good feedback. You don't get to a position like that without doing so. That part of us just vacates the premises when we get hurt. And so the thing that I want to add to the very beautiful description you gave about the relevance of responsibility is that yes, we need to Take responsibility for how we make the communication. But in many ways, what's even more empowering and transformational is to take responsibility to figure out what the real problem is for me. Because it's never that the dishes weren't done. Even though it can feel like it. It's something that's more tender and not necessarily accessible in the heat of the moment, it requires some personal inquiry. And in my opinion, when we take responsibility for our own experience, like excavating what's underneath, and that's a process that becomes more and more efficient the more we do it. When we do that, making the communication responsibly to someone else, in this case a spouse is actually much easier and takes a lot more willpower. I sorry, a lot less willpower, a lot less willpower because the important thing is to know What's really happening inside me that yes, it was triggered by my husband, but it wasn't like the nature of my response is not on him. That's mine to understand and work with. And so when I take responsibility for identifying what my experience actually is, then I can communic can communicate about it in A responsible way in the sense that you just described. We are gonna pause for today. If something in that conversation hit for you, and I think it did, take one small action this week. Try the vulnerable share that Alexandra walked us through. Pick one moment, one dish left in the sink, one missed thing, and instead of going to anger or silence, like I used to, go underneath it. Find what actually got hurt and then share that simply with the person you love. Next week, part two of this conversation goes places that I genuinely didn't expect. When I first sat down to record, we talk about what happens when you're the higher earner in your marriage. And Alexandra shared a statistic that really stopped me cold, which is forty-five percent of women now out earn their husbands, and almost half of those marriages end. I share something about my own marriage. in this next episode that I have not talked about publicly before outside of this podcast. So come back next week. You don't want to miss part two. And in the meantime, if this episode meant something to you, please forward it to one friend who needs to hear it. And I'll see you next week.