Welcome, AwakenYou listeners! I’m so excited to share that today’s episode is the last of the series I have been sharing with you over the last several months where we have been talking about how to divorce-proof your marriage. I love how life gracefully synchronizes itself because I just looked at my calendar to discover that next week’s episode will release on the exact same day that I released my very first AwakenYou in your marriage episode, which was also the very first blog post that I wrote way back in the beginning, that episode was titled How To Start Loving Yourself. When I looked back after a year of writing weekly posts and reading that article, I got tears in my eyes because when I wrote that article, I didn’t realize that this would be the premise of the work I do. My passion is to help women let go of the relationship they have used to protect themselves and bring to life the person they unknowingly held hostage most of their lives. So it feels so good to be wrapping up this series so I can bring you something special next week. What is it you’d like me to share with you? I’d love to hear because I’m not sure yet what I’ll be bringing you! This week we will talk about the memories we have of our marriage, and before we get started, I’d love for you to take some time to think back on your marriage. Does your marriage have bad memories, or do you look back and have fond memories of your relationship with your spouse?

While you’re thinking about that, I want to mention another synchronicity that has happened around this episode and last week’s Marriage Masterclass, where I talked about getting to know your partner and the work of creating your life and marriage memory book! That was not planned, my friends and I believe that these things happen on purpose, and I’ll share more about that as we dig in, but I have one more fun thing to share with you before we do that, and that is my March Mini-Coaching Challenge. I am challenging myself to share 24 free 30-minute coaching sessions this month as a gift to the world. Life will always contain uncertainty, and right now, I think that all of us are experiencing what we might consider a higher amount of uncertainty. Go to my show notes and schedule your session today and then bring me any problem you are struggling with. In that session, you will share that struggle, I will ask questions, and let’s help you create some space to navigate towards your next steps forward.

Here we go! Marriage memories, now that you’ve had some time to think about it, what do you remember about your marriage? Does your mind automatically search for all of the things that went wrong, highlighting them? Does it seem difficult to come up with anything beautifully amazing and joyful?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, you are not alone. When I begin working with my clients and ask them to tell me about the beginning of their relationship, most of them tell me everything that went wrong. They may admit that they probably felt in love with their partner at some point, but they blow over it like it wasn’t mind-blowing awesome. Yeah, I’ve been there and that’s where we start, taking a look at why that happens, and what you can do to start changing the story you tell about your past.

The story we tell about our marriage’s past when we’re unhappy in our life and marriage and why this has become our story

It’s the state we’re in. When we are unhappy in our job, we focus on everything that has gone wrong in our job since the beginning, the same in our marriage. We feel unhappy, and when we feel unhappy, we search for evidence to prove our thought that our marriage is a mess. When we try to think of the happy times our brain is confused, we might remember some details about significant times in our marriage like when we first met, our wedding, vacations. Still, our brains have buried those thoughts that make us feel happy because we are unhappy.

This is why my free Abundant Love course is so important. The course helps you see how your brain is seeking evidence that things are bad; it enables you to change your thought patterns by intercepting them and building a path back to where you are looking at your marriage differently. As you start to look for evidence that things aren’t as bad as you have let yourself think you start to feel better and are able to start doing the work of re-building your marriage foundation and part of that process includes re-writing your re-written past marriage story.

What I want you to first recognize is whether this has happened for you or not. When you look back and tell the story about your marriage’s past, how do you feel? If you’re unhappy in your marriage I would guess that you are not telling a happy story because that would be counter to what you currently believe, this is called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias has you unconsciously searching for, interpreting, favoring, and recalling information in a way that supports your belief. When you were romancing and doing the work of winning the heart of your spouse you were happy and you searched for all of the things that made you happy, discounting those things that might have made you think that things weren’t going so well.

The interesting thing is that NOTHING different has happened to your past story except how you tell it!

How to start changing the story you tell about your past

The process is all intertwined inside the work of deciding that you want to create a different dynamic in your own life and your marital relationship. As you start learning how to feel better about yourself and your life, you will start showing up differently in everything you do. You will start noticing the negative thoughts about your spouse and your marriage and decide that you will no longer think them.

Once you decide that you want to change your relationship dynamic, you start creating awareness around all of the things that I share here in AwakenYou and how they may or may not show up in your own life. In each of my episodes, as I help you create awareness around different personal dynamics, I also share steps to start taking a u-turn away from that dynamic towards the dynamic that will feel better and more aligned with your authentic self.

When it comes to telling the story about our past relationship, I talked about it in this month’s masterclass, which you can watch after listening to this episode, and I will also share highlights of that process today.

Your life memory book

I have created a tool that helps you get to know yourself better called Your Life Memory Book, but this isn’t what you see on most people’s living room coffee table; it is a deep dive into the story of your life. There are multiple purposes to creating this book, but primarily I created it as a tool to help you get to know yourself better, and in the process of making your life memory book, you will get to know your spouse better. The making of this book will have you looking at your past and recording what you remember of it, but this book isn’t something you write and then leave; it is a book that evolves and changes as you start to do the work of growing and becoming the person you dream of being, the person you are capable of being, the person you were designed to be.

If you’re curious about creating your life memory book, please watch my March Masterclass and subscribe to AwakenYou in your marriage because in a future episode, I will be talking in detail about this process so that you can start looking at your life story, sharing it with your spouse and learning more about their life story. All the while getting to know yourself and your spouse better and adding positive memories and creating your future chapter, and watching how it unfolds.

This project is a passion project in development for me as I explore all of the benefits of this tool and how I might bring it into the world in a way that changes the lives of thousands of women and their most important relationships.

Today what I want you to think about is the story you tell about your marriage’s past; notice what you want to do with thoughts you used to believe about your then partner and what you think of them now. Are you thinking in a way that confirms the story you are telling yourself about your current marriage? Now you understand why and you get to decide what you want to do about that. Do you want to do the work of changing that story? How is that story actually serving you? We know that it isn’t, and how can you start poking holes in that story? How can you stop making excuses for how you felt back then and start believing that indeed you were happy, regardless of any “flawed” thinking you believe you had back then. You could even ask yourself how your thinking right now might be flawed.

I have left you with some great questions to ask yourself this week; write them down. Each day take 10 minutes to answer each one, see what you come up with and then schedule your free 30-minute coaching session, and I will help you work through whatever it is you discover so that you can stop feeling stuck and start moving forward towards what you want.

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I am a life coach who works with women and couples struggling with how their lives and marriage feel through awakening their true selves. My process isn’t about changing your partner; it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your life and marriage, which by the way, will have you see your partner changing as well. If you’re ready to take yourself to a place where you can fall back in love with your life and your spouse, then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s talk about your next steps to a life you are crazy in love with!

Welcome, AwakenYou listeners, so happy to be here with you this week because today I have some promising information to share with you as we work through this divorce-proofing, divorce-awareness series. The topic for this week is all around the repair attempts we make or don’t make when we are in a conflict with our spouses or anyone for that matter. If you haven’t been in the habit of attempting to make conflict repairs AND if you have all of the first four indicators, which include the four horsemen then your chances for divorce get up there, into the 90+ percentage range. The good news I have for you today is that if your relationship contains those first four divorce indicators: harsh start-ups to conflict, contempt, criticism, stonewalling or flooding and defensiveness but you are willing to learn how to make repair attempts then you are on the road to improving your marriage because being able to make successful repair attempts after conflict turns out to be the secret ingredient to a successful marriage!

As we have worked through these divorce indicators, some of them are easier to start changing than others. Many of our conflict styles start developing at a young age through modeling from our caretakers, how we learned to connect with them, and how we learned how to protect ourselves. As we grow and develop, these patterns run in the background and start to become who we are and how we unconsciously deal with conflict in our adult relationships. As we begin to notice that we aren’t getting the results we want in our relationships we typically see it as an outside problem, that our partners are the cause of our discontent.

We might start thinking that we are married to the wrong person and that if we could find the right person then the conflict would end. The problem with this thinking is that most of us have unresolved conflict coping mechanisms and we carry those into our next relationship along with mixing in the new relationship dynamic that comes from starting new with a person that has a whole different set of conflict coping mechanisms.

The other dynamic that I see with couples is getting to this place of complacency in their marriage. A place where they assume that their desires are overrated and that a stale relationship is what happens after years of being with the same person and so they stop addressing the conflict that is happening inside of them to “keep the peace.” Though this might seem to work on the outside it keeps us from growing and creating what we really want which is an intimate relationship that we look forward to going home to, a relationship where we look forward to connecting honestly, even if it means working through some differences of opinion.

Today I want to share some hope with any of you who are feeling lost and resigned to a lackluster marital future. I’m going to share a simple solution that can start you moving in a different direction and it’s something you can start implementing on your own, right now.

Stopping the conflict and stating you need a break is the secret ingredient

As you start to pay attention to the common conflict interactions between you and your spouse and begin to recognize the damage these dynamics are having on the health of your marriage you can start the process of change. As you listen through my AwakenYou episodes and start to recognize what your relational habits are you can start implementing new ways of reacting that will have you taking a u-turn in your relationship. Back in episode 38: How To Self-Soothe To A Happier Marriage I talked about coming up with a way to stop conflict in its tracks, then stating to your partner that you needed some time to decompress and then agreeing on a time to come back together and continue the discussion after both of you have had time to re-think and re-approach.

In AwakenYou if I am working with an individual this helps them create awareness within themselves while diffusing the tension allowing their partner to do the same, they become the leader in creating a new conflict dynamic. When I am working with both partners each of them is working on themselves with the tools I share so that together they can create a new relationship dynamic tsunami – meaning that the change happens much quicker when both partners are willing to do the work and are committed to finding a new way to work out their differences.

When you are able to stop the conflict and take a break you diffuse the tension helping to avoid flooding and you are sharing that you want to change, that you want to do something different in an effort to build a stronger relationship. This is called an attempt to repair and if your partner accepts your attempt to repair, over time you will start to grow closer and get to know each other better because you are actually working through your conflict instead of avoiding it. This repair attempt has you offering to start a process of reconnection with your spouse after the disconnection that comes from the conflict ( through the process of reconnection, you feel the power of connection.

What to do if your repair attempt doesn’t work

Keep at it. If you’ve been in an unhealthy conflict loop for as many years as I was, recognize that this will take time, especially if you are working it on your own. Initially, it won’t be surprising if your spouse doesn’t react in a way you are expecting because they are on the defense, they are not used to the way you are reacting and looking for an unexpected punch to be thrown! You keep working on what you are doing to change the way you show up in your life for yourself, your spouse and your marriage and things will start to shift.

Along with this is that because you are working on your relationship with yourself, you start showing up differently in general, you stop showing up the way you think you need to in order to have a happy life and are creating your happy life. With this new life dynamic you will be incorporating other tools that will help you build a stronger marital relationship outside of the time that you are in conflict. As you learn how to recover from conflict you will have more connected time to work on some of the other tools I share in this podcast to build up your relationship including Ep 37: Getting To Know Them, which by the way, is the topic of this week’s Marriage Masterclass so go get yourself registered for that right now! Also recognizing bids for connection (Ep 40) as well as responding positively to them (Ep. 41).

My action steps for you this week are to decide how you will stop conflict when it happens, share with your partner that you want to work on this and what your conflict pause action will be. Then share that with this pause you will be taking 10-15 minutes to get emotionally regulated (find out how in Ep 35) and that you want to come back together at a designated time to discuss what happened. Note that you can do this same work without having an explicit conversation with your spouse about what you are doing and you can still implement the work.

My last action step for you is to schedule a mini-coaching session to get help with this, I will share thirty minutes of my time to help you resolve a specific conflict and get you moving towards reconnection in your marriage. This month I am challenging myself to help 25 people by sharing with each of them a free mini-coaching session and right now with what is going on in our world, who doesn’t need that? Now, get that free session booked and get registered for my March Marriage Masterclass where I am going to help you get to know them better!

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I am a life coach who works with women and couples struggling with how their lives and marriage feel through awakening their true selves. My process isn’t about changing your partner; it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your life and marriage, which by the way, will have you see your partner changing as well. If you’re ready to take yourself to a place where you can fall back in love with your life and your spouse, then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s talk about your next steps to a life you are crazy in love with!

Hello, my AwakenYou listeners! Is anyone else besides me wondering how this can be the last week of February? Two-thirds of the way through the first quarter of 2022, wow! I have been doing some amazing things over here in AwakenYou, including re-vamping my Abundant Love free course, which you can grab from my website by following the link in the show notes, and then there is my monthly Marriage Masterclass, where in March we will be exploring How To Get To Know Them. This class will be beneficial for those of you who feel so distanced in your relationship that the idea of coming back together and re-creating something beautiful truly seems like a fairytale. This class will teach you how to start taking steps towards rebuilding your marriage and feeling so much better than you do now because when we invest time and effort into what we want, it feels so good! This week I want to pause everything you have been learning about how we show up in our high-stake relationships that actually push us further away from what we want. I will dig into what your body language is saying to your spouse.

As you listen to this series about divorce-proofing your marriage I want to help you create awareness of where your brain may be going. I have heard back from several listeners who are telling me that their partner is a classic example of some of these traits; criticizing, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, etc. while it is good for us to see what is happening for our partner, I want to help you navigate this in a way that is most useful for you. I first want to make sure that you are looking inward before pointing fingers; I want you to look at how you are showing up and how this dynamic has been playing out in your relationship. From here, I want you to focus on how you are working on showing up more helpfully without pointing fingers but from a place of wanting the relationship to grow and flourish. Pay attention to what comes up for you when you want to start conversations and practice having empathy for whatever your partner may be experiencing. So often, we tell ourselves a story about the other person that has us sitting in the victim position; the victim position has a very narrow focus; all we can see is how we are losing in this situation. What we know is true is that being open and honest and confronting that which is creating conflict within us may bring up habitual coping mechanisms in our partners that have nothing to do with us as a person but how they perceive our words. Our job here is to notice our part, become aware of common reaction mechanisms in your partner, and start figuring out how to create a new pattern. Your job isn’t to fix your partner but to be the partner willing to open up and create a new dynamic.

Body language is an indicator of how you are feeling

You will often hear me say that how we show up reflects how we are feeling and that when we say words or take action from a negative emotion’s energy, they will always be received negatively. For example, you can say the words “I love you.” from many different emotions, and depending upon what emotion you are feeling at the time, the words will be received differently. Imagine saying those words after an unresolved argument where you feel angry, hurt, or resentful. Now, imagine saying those words from a place of disconnection or discouragement, or disappointment. Lastly, imagine how you say those words when you feel happy, content, joyful, passionate.

Using these three examples, not only will the energy in the delivery be different, but your body language will be different, and the other person feels and sees this come through. In the first case of anger and feeling hurt, you might look to the side when you say the words, your actions might be stiff and forced, you might be internally forcing yourself to spit the words out in a smooth way and contemptuously rolling your eyes. This won’t feel like the sort of love we crave, but it will feel more like forced love.

Next, let’s look at saying “I love you.” from a place of disconnection, discouraged or disappointed. The words might be soft; your body might feel soft and withdrawn, you probably won’t make eye contact. Inside, your heart might be crushed, and you might be wondering if things will ever get better; this sort of “I love you” feels uncommitted and fake and obligatory.

Now, think about times when you have been so full of joy and passion, the delivery of “I love you!” looks and feels like true, genuine love. It’s light and airy, energetic and free; it screams, “I want to be with you forever!” “My heart is overflowing.” There is no eye-rolling and tensing up going on, you are relaxed and without boundaries, you are open to receiving all that the other has and giving all that you have to offer. It feels like heaven.

So this week, as you work through some of the possible divorce predictors found in your marriage, I want you to pay attention to what your body is saying. Start again with awareness within yourself and start working on feeling the emotions you are experiencing while working on connecting to the origin of that emotion without blaming someone else; look within. When you begin to notice your body language, you can start working on how you want to show up – as you do this work, that alone will soften up how your spouse shows up – mirror neurons.

When it comes to your spouse and their body language, start paying closer attention, later writing it down, seeing where they may have been coming from and what might have triggered their reaction. Process through it, and then during your intentional time together, ask if you can talk about it and share what you have noticed from YOUR perspective and how it makes YOU feel, as well as what you think might be a helpful way to work on changing together. When one of you notices disconnecting, turning away or against, behaviors like turning away, picking up the phone, changing the subject, being defensive, tensing up, turning red in the face, eye-rolling, and the other partner points it out, please don’t deny – this is gaslighting – if they see it you are somehow conveying negative energy. Instead, pause, count to 5, check-in with your body and if you are feeling light and happy, then acknowledge that and share with your spouse that you didn’t mean to convey what they are accusing you of. The opposite is true; if you are feeling tense, pause and let yourself come back down, acknowledge that you need some space, and process what just happened for you.

Remember, we are creating discomfort when we don’t talk about what is happening for us; when we don’t talk about our inner conflict and don’t align with our true selves AND confrontation and working through our conflict IS uncomfortable, but the difference is this: the discomfort of working towards a relationship that you want that has both of you working towards resolving conflict and creating connection gives you a result that feels amazing. The hiding and not addressing what you are struggling with might feel like the comfortable solution, but that inner conflict will never go away; it will grow, it will feel awful until many, many years later you have to start the work of facing them. As my coach Aimee Gianni says, “The amount to which we are willing to open up honestly to our spouses will dictate the level of our relationship intimacy.” So my question to you today is this: how close do you want to get with your spouse?

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I am a life coach who works with women and couples struggling with how their lives and marriage feel through awakening their true selves. My process isn’t about changing your partner; it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your life and marriage, which by the way, will have you see your partner changing as well. If you’re ready to take yourself to a place where you can fall back in love with your life and your spouse, then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s talk about your next steps to a life you are crazy in love with!

Hello, my dear friends! We are one day past Valentine’s Day, and my heart is filled knowing that so many of you took the work we did in this month’s Marriage Masterclass and used it to create the first Valentine’s Day that felt good in years. We enjoyed a day of love on Sunday with quite a few tears for me because one year ago, on February 13, I suddenly lost my pup Zeta, so Valentine’s Day now holds an even more special place in my heart. A whole different type of emotional flooding than we are talking about today, so with that, let’s move into today’s topic! This week I’m going to elaborate on a concept I have brought up in several previous episodes, including last week’s, where we discussed stonewalling (Stonewalling To A Disengaged Marriage), John Gottman’s fourth horsemen. This concept is Gottman’s third sign divorce is in your future; let’s answer the question: does flooding have your marriage underwater?

Get your note app or your notebook ready so that if something sounds familiar to you, you can jot it down and pay attention to how it might come up in your marriage. I’m going to start with helping you understand what emotional flooding is to better recognize it in yourself and/or your partner and then help discover why it might be happening for either of you. Then we’ll look at both sides of the relationship to determine how each of you can best navigate this dynamic and bring your marriage back to shore and dry ground.

What exactly is flooding?

In short, flooding is what happens when you perceive danger. It is the “breaking point” of what you can handle emotionally, and when you reach this point, your body and mind react as if it is in danger. Your pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain that can rationalize what is happening, shuts down, and your primitive brain kicks in. Basically, our nervous system has kicked into overdrive flashing “danger,” and we go into primitive brain thinking: we do whatever it takes to feel better, avoid pain and conserve every bit of energy that is flooding out into our body. This could look like running or shutting down-stonewalling (flight) or an angry explosion (fight).

There are times when what on the outside appears to be a minimal problem escalates into flooding; some would use the term “trigger” to describe what happens or even the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” An example could be your spouse disappearing right when the meal is ready to be served. This may have been happening for quite a while. One day your reaction is to get mad at him and tell him how disrespectful he is for hanging around and watching the meal get made and then disappearing when the food is served and that you would really like it if he could be kind enough to be ready to eat when the meal is served so you can have a meal together. First, there is more going on here because this was a lingering problem for the partner getting mad, and they neglected to bring this up in conversation when things were calmer, and now it’s a blown-up argument. In contrast, the other partner is taken by such a surprise that they shut down and maybe leave or lash back out over something as “simple as” not being at the dinner table when dinner is served.

Why does flooding happen?

What is happening is our sympathetic nervous system or our involuntary nervous system detects danger and reacts to avoid the danger. It doesn’t know that there is no wild animal in the room wanting to eat you for a snack; it defaults to fight or flight. We want to recognize that what feels threatening is different for each of us; it might be part of a habitual defense mechanism developed in early childhood around feelings of rejection or abandonment. Extreme emotional flooding experienced consistently is most likely stemming from your brain seeing similarities to past trauma and then repeating whatever response you adopted to protect yourself from the emotions you weren’t ready to experience.

In other cases, it could be less complex where negative life circumstances have you in a more easily aggravated place; lack of sleep, sickness, bad news at work, or any combination of these unresolved life circumstances.

How flooding affects your marriage

If flooding is a response, people have to conflict well; guess what, it will affect any relationship that contains conflict, which is true of all marriages. All marriages will contain conflict and disagreement; it’s normal if each partner is open and honest, not hiding and people-pleasing. It takes deliberate steps to resolve conflict, and if one or both partners get flooded, they are no longer able to think rationally and hear the other person’s perspective. No solutions or compromises are being worked out, and often the flooding escalates into an argument that leaves both partners frustrated and unresolved, making moving forward more and more difficult.

What to do when your spouse is the one getting flooding

I recommend you start by paying attention to what happens when a difficult conversation is initiated. Be curious about what you see and don’t react. Then during a quieter time, bring the subject up in conversation, and it could look like you expressing concern around how they react when you want to have discussions.

Secondly, I would like you to go back and listen to Ep 45, where I talked about creating better marital communication by considering the start-up of your conversation. How you start the conversation will impact your spouse’s reaction, allowing them to stay in the conversation longer. When you can sit down with your partner, express your concern and share how you are working on changing your start-up, if necessary, you both have awareness around this situation and can start working on it. During this conversation, you can come up with your signal that one is approaching the line of flooding or has already crossed it and that you both need a time out.

Lastly, this one is so important for all of us to practice. When we decide it’s time to have a conversation around something that might present some conflict, check-in with each other. You don’t have to say, “Hey, I have some difficult stuff to talk about, are you up for it?” because that right there can put the other immediately on the defensive and already closed down before the topic is even presented. Instead, start with a light conversation, “How are you feeling today?” “What type of day did you have? Do you feel rested from work stress, or do you need some downtime?” Maybe even transition into something you want to share about your day and make sure that you have come up with a way to bring up your discussion without criticism, contempt, or defensiveness. Share how you are feeling about whatever you want to discuss and why you are feeling this way, keep the focus on you and then share what resolution might look like for you. Also, I want to suggest that if you know your partner struggles with flooding, you can share that all you are doing right now is sharing your perspective and what you are struggling with and that they don’t even need to have the discussion now, that you are empathetic and understanding enough that you want to work on resolving your conflict differences. Let them decide what they want to do and come up with a day and time to revisit the topic. I suggest you post a reminder somewhere where you will see it, so you both continue to process, prepare, and show up for each other at your set time.

What to do when it is us who is getting flooded

First and foremost, understand that flooding isn’t something to be ashamed of or feel guilty about; it is an instinctual reaction to needing to feel safe. Understanding this will help you see that there is a different way and that it might take some time to change, and you can ask your partner to help you with this. You can start to understand a bit more about yourself and why you react the way you do, exploring what you really need and how you might start setting up boundaries to protect yourself from getting to the state of flooding. You might need to use your sign that you came up with your partner in Ep 35 Emotional Regulation when they start a conversation in a way that triggers you to become overwhelmed.

Second, start paying attention to what happens in your body when you are triggered. Pay attention to your heart rate, tensing of muscles, zoning out, or tuning out your partner. You are responsible for yourself; remember that defensiveness (Ep 51 How Defensiveness Hurts Our Marriage) and blaming your partner aren’t tactics for good conflict management. Start getting familiar with your responses so you can start to see them coming. Then start paying attention to actions and words your partner might say that trigger your flooding response so that you can recognize them as they come and later share these discoveries with your partner, which is part of getting to know each other.

Third, start taking better care of yourself. 80% of the people flooding are men, and I don’t mean to generalize, but from my experience, there is no scientific data here, but men, in general, seem to be less into their self-care routine than women. So start considering your sleep hygiene, stress management protocol, diet, and exercise. An episode to re-visit would be Ep 38, Self-Soothe To A Happier Marriage. This is also where another tactic comes in: learning how to set boundaries for yourself. Boundaries might look like saying no and potentially disappointing someone else. It might look like questioning your “need” to do something you think is expected of you versus standing up for what is right for you and your value system.

Fourth, take intentional time to process and journal about what happens when flooding occurs. Look at the before, during, and after and then commit to a time to come back and re-visit the conversation.

Fifth, learn how to disengage from familiar protective styles by learning where your style came from and understanding that this is an old pattern. Recognizing that you are actually safe where you are, learning how to be present, and seeing that you aren’t actually in any danger.

Sixth, working with a therapist might be a necessary step and a loving action for yourself, your spouse, and the future of your relationship.

This information is important to understand and share; it could be the difference between staying married and developing your relationship into something beautiful or divorced. Because both flooding and stonewalling are so dominant in the male culture and with women who tend to live more in their masculine energy, this information needs to be shared with them to recognize and choose something different. Our men and a lot of us women need to hear this information and understand that there is a better way and that this better way will lead to so much more than a happy marriage; it will lead to a healthier life, a longer life, and more than likely a promotion!

I want to share that this episode and the stonewalling episode are dear to my heart because I see this dynamic repeatedly when I work with couples through their conflict styles and help them manage so that they can actually hear and understand each other. I’d love to hear how this might resonate with you and what you learned while listening and how I can help you work through what might be coming up for you. I have been weaving couples coaching into my practice and would love to have either you or both book a call to talk about your struggles within your marriage and how my program might help you. A happy household, a happy community, and a happy world start with you and your marriage.

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I am a life coach who works with women and couples struggling with how their lives and marriage feel through awakening their true selves. My process isn’t about changing your partner; it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your life and marriage, which by the way, will have you see how your partner is magically changing too. If you’re ready to take yourself to a place where you can fall back in love with your life and your spouse, then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s talk about your next steps to a brand new life you are crazy in love with!