Let's just start at the most basic level. And can you define for all of us what is estrangement?

People define it in different ways. That's part of the problem with the research that's been done. The way that I think of it is a cut off in a relationship that may be temporary, may be permanent, but where it's not just people getting out of touch. It's where one person... Because typically, it's one person wants it and person doesn't. More typically, it's initiated by the adult child because that's my area of specialization is with parent-adult child estrangement. And the parent doesn't want it, the adult child does. So I think of it as either a complete cutoff or a near-to-complete cutoff.

How common is estrangement?

Well, apparently, it's very common, and getting more common all the time. A recent study out of Ohio states that 26 % of fathers are estranged from their kids. The same study has found 6 % of mothers are, but other studies have found that closer to 10 to 11 % of mothers are estranged from their kids. But if you expand it out away from just the parent-adult child to family members in general, then something like 27 % of families in the US are estranged from a family member. So it's incredibly common. I think growing more common all the time.

Why do you think it's growing more common?

I think it's a variety of reasons. I think our culture is becoming more identity-focused, more tribalistic, where we have in-group, out-group ideas, and that no longer includes family. I think the notion of family has radically changed, where, say, prior to the 1960s or so. There was the idea of honor thy mother and my father, respect thy elders, families forever. And that's really been turned on its head, where increasingly the idea is that you've chosen family, the family who you make it, that that people don't owe their parents anything, that the most important thing is the preservation of my happiness, my well-being, my mental health. So there's always been a strange, but never before have they been based on the idea that it's actually good for one's mental health or it's even an act of existential courage to cut off a parent or a family member. And it's tied to what the sociologist, Anthony Giddens, talks about as the evolution from the role to self, whereas it used to be a very clear ideas prior to the 20th century, arguably before that, but where the ideas about what it takes to be a member of a family was fairly clearly defined, being a good parent, being a good child, et cetera, being a good adult child.

And then it changed much more towards an orientation towards self. So what Giddens talks about is that we've had the evolution of what he calls the pure relationship, where relationships are now purely constituted on the basis of whether or not that relationship is aligned with that person's ideals, their goals, their aspirations for happiness, et cetera. And if they're not, then the relationship is viewed as being problematic and corruptive and not worth pursuing.

You see it all over social media. If you look at all of the... Just put a post up and you're like, Oh, if they had cut them off. Toxic behavior. What do you want us to know before we even jump into this topic of an intentional cutting off of a relationship with a family member or a friend. What do you want us to know about the reality of relationships, the dimensional reality? What is true about relationships that last and what relationships are meant to be about?

Yeah, I know it's a good question, and there's probably no really easy answer to that. The way I think about it is both at the community level and at the individual level. I mean, at the community level, I feel like we culture are really suffering. We have high rates of mental illness. We have high rates of depression in particular, loneliness, social isolation, increasing atomization, increasing the tribal view. So we're really coming apart at the seams. It really feels like we're living at a time when our culture is falling apart. So at the community level, I think that family is an important part of that aspect, and that people should do whatever they can to prioritize family and family relationships. That said, I don't believe that people have to do it at any cost. There are family members who are very destructive or are very hurtful, who aren't willing to make amends, to take responsibility. Most of the people that I work with are the parents, and my whole method is around that you have to take responsibility for the things that have caused your child to turn away from you. If you don't feel like you understand, then you have to pursue empathy and understanding and compassion.

But from the Well, from a child's perspective, I would like to see more compassion for parents that parents typically do the best that they could do, given what their own social, economic, temperamental resources were, their own childhood traumas, et cetera. And they deserve a certain period of time of being able to work on the relationship and to have a hearing and that thing. So that's the general way that I would think about that.

So, Dr. Coleman, I'm fascinated with how you got into the work of counseling and supporting parents who are estranged from adult children. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to do this?

Sure. I was married and divorced in my 20s, and have a fully-grounded daughter who I'm very close to. But there was a period of time in her early 20s, when she cut off contact for several years, in large response to my becoming remarried and having children in my second, which is my current marriage, or some 30 plus years. And there are many ways that she felt displaced by that, hurt by not so much the divorce because she was so young, but just by all the things that can happen with divorce and remarriage and bleeding about blended family and the like. And at the time, there was nothing really written to advise me or help me. I was in therapy at the time, trying to get help, and the advice I got was terrible, as it often is.

What was the advice that you were getting?

The advice was just like, you need to remind her of all the things that you've done her and correct her memories and just show up at her place and demand that she see you. And all those things are... None of them really caused her to feel understood or cared about or like I had any degree of compassion for what her experience was. So it really wasn't until I just learned how to stop explaining, stop defending, stop blaming, and respect where she was coming from that things began to turn. But during that time of estrangement, it was easily the most painful, awful, disorienting thing I've ever been through or ever hoped to go through again. The idea that... I don't know if you have children, Amy, but the idea that your child would cut you off and you may never see them again is horrifying, painful, and terrifying as well. So once we did have a reconciliation, I thought, Well, there's so many people struggling with this. I wrote my first book on the topic in 2007, When Parents Hurt. And as a result of that, I got a wide following of parents here and in other countries who are dealing with this.

On the basis of that, I developed a system of webinars that I still do, a free Q&A every other Monday. And as a result of that, I did a research study of 1,600 estranged parents that's been published in numerous academic journals. They wrote my most recent book, Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to heal the Conflict. As a result, I also And now I have developed a training program for therapists because there's a huge deed, which hopefully will be live in the next week or two. People can visit my website if they were interested in training or learning more about that.

So let's talk about that moment of estrangement. What typically drives, and I'll focus on adult children since that's your area of expertise, but I'm sure that all these themes apply to friendships where there's estrangement all kinds of relationships where there's estrangement. What are the factors that typically lead someone to say, That's it. I'm going to cut my parents or somebody else out of my life?

Yeah. There's a number of pathways. If you look at the surveys of adult children, what they typically will say is emotional abuse, physical abuse, neglect, differences in values. Those are the most common things reported by the adult child. Child. But other pathways are divorce, obviously my own personal experience, but also, statistically, in my own research study and in my own clinical practice, 70% of the parents have been through a divorce. There's a number There are ways that divorce can increase the risk. One is it may cause the child of any age to blame one parent over the other for the divorce. It can bring in new members, step siblings, half siblings, new stepmothers, stepfathers who have to compete for emotional and material resources. It may cause the child to support one parent over the other, even if the parents don't need to be, have that support. Finally, in a highly individualistic culture like ours, it could cause the child to see the parents more as individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses and not as a family unit that they're a part of. Divorce is a clear risk. Mental illness in the parent, but equally mental illness in the child, the adult child.

The role of therapy, bad therapists or therapists that just aren't very well-educated in this who assume that every childhood, every problem that surfaces an adult has a childhood trauma at the heart of it, which isn't necessarily true, but so many therapists believe that and put the adult child on the pathway to estrangement.

Hold on a second. I just want to make sure everybody hears that. So you're saying that there are lots of therapists out there that take whatever their client is telling them and run with it and basically facilitate the linking of childhood issues with estrangement being something that they should consider?

Yeah, consider or do. I mean, I've had numerous parents show me letters from adult children where they said, My therapist said that you're a narcissist and you can't change, so I'm not willing to do family therapy with you. And these are often therapists have never met the parent. They're diagnosing the parent from afar. And more problematic, they're assuming childhood traumas that may or may not exist. I mean, childhood traumas are a real thing. But in this day and age, There's the assumption that if somebody has a problem in adulthood, well, you just have to figure out where the childhood trauma lies, and then the doors to identity and happiness and meaning will be open. But that's really problematic. We're really preoccupied with traumas at this point in our culture and society in a way that's really causing a lot of harm.

So I'm sure that as people are listening, there's a bazillion bells going off. And so I, of course, want to go, Okay, well, let's talk about childhood trauma and all that stuff. But I want to stay in this topic because I personally believe that everybody listening has had either an experience with estrangement or they know somebody who is really struggling because of estrangement. And I can think even in my own family that when my uncle died, he had never met two of his grandchildren. And just how helpless I felt about wishing somehow that could have been repaired before he died and knowing the heartache and the frustration and the anger and the sadness and the grief that happens when somebody makes a decision to cut you out of their life, and you don't even really know why.

Right.

And so is that... For a baseline, how do you know if this is a situation of estrangement versus just busyness? And I don't really like that brother of mine, so I don't really call him very often, but he does get the Christmas And you have this card from us. How do you know you're in the boundaries if somebody has deliberately cut you out?

No, it's a good question. It's not the answer isn't at all obvious. And I think that a lot of parents today end up getting more estranged because they're wanting more closeness from their adult child and the adult child feels capable or desiring of giving. And so often, there was a survey done at the University of Virginia that said that a majority of raising children, want and expect to be best friends with their children once they're grown. It's great work if you can get it, but a lot of adult children don't necessarily want that level of closeness or intimacy. And one of the problems with social media, which can be another pathway to estrangement, is that it allows a certain intrusion of the parent on the adult child that they might not want. I think I think a certain percentage of estrangements occur that wouldn't have occurred in the past because the adult child could just organically become who they are, independently develop their own voice and autonomy without parental influence. Whereas now, parents can reach their child, their an adult child anywhere in the world within a matter of seconds. And so I think a certain percentage of adult children feel very crowded today.

What's the most common complaint I hear in every single estranged adult child's letter is, You need to respect my boundaries. So Boundaries have become the most important thing. And it's in part because parents, parents raising children over the past four decades are more worried. They're more worried about getting their children through the narrow bottleneck that can land them in a successful life. They're worried about the world that their children are inhabiting. So parents have become more anxious, more guilt-ridden, more intrusive, more surveailing. And that doesn't always work in the parent-adult-child relationship in the long term. So to circle back to your question, it may not start out as an estrangement. It may start out more as normal distance. But as soon as the parent starts to act to victimize or hurt or criticizing the adult child, then they're putting themselves on the path to a potential estrange.

You know, I can personally say there was a period in my relationship with my mom who I love deeply, and I know she loves me. And as I look through the family history, both on my mom and dad's side, They have, I guess, somewhat complex arm's length relationships with their family. Love, but not hanging out all the time. And part of it is physical distance. And there was a period of time where I was newly married, and I was so enthusiastic about my husband and about his family. And we were living closer to my husband and my husband's family. My parents the Midwest, there on the East Coast. And I know it was an extraordinarily painful period for my mom because she, from a distance, felt like she was losing me to another family.

Yeah, it's very common.

And I started to sense that resentment or that fear, and that started to upset me. Yeah. And so we got into a period of time where we didn't know how to come together, how she would say something, I would get offended. I would say something, she would get offended. And it felt like our relationship had all of these landmines that neither one of us wanted there. I just wanted to get back to that, I just love you, and you just love me. And I could see that without me doing a tremendous amount of great therapy and without us even having almost like a period where we tolerated each other, that it could have led to a disastrous and hurtful situation for both of us because we're both very opinionated. We have big emotions. We're very similar. We didn't know how to navigate this without hurting or upsetting the other person. I think at least when I... I'm so grateful it didn't end up differently because I feel closer to her now than I ever have. But I can see how... It's almost like when people separate before divorce, I always roll my eyes and I'm like, What's the point here?

Sure.

I can see how just going, I'm not going to call them. I'm not going to pick up the phone. I'm not going to go visit. I'm not going to do this. That de-escalation can lead to something like this.

Yeah.

Is that what you've seen?

Yeah. You're saying that the de-escalation can actually help, that it can provide- I think it can help on some hands, but I could see how not talking to somebody for a month or two months or a couple months, and just being that cold, uninterested, distant, I could see how that would actually throw gasoline on the fire because the emotions actually build.

And then every interaction is so high stakes. It's a recipe for disaster.

Right. Yeah. I think you're putting your finger on a couple of important things. When I was talking about the path Pathways to... That's strange, but I didn't list one of the most common pathways, and that's when the child marries, the adult child marries. And if there's conflict between the son-in-law or daughter-in-law and the parents, sometimes the son-in-law or daughter-in-law basically says to their spouse, Choose me or them, you can't have both. And men, in particular, are vulnerable to that. But you're also putting your finger on the fact that the parents can commonly feel like, Well, how can the other parents get to spend more time with you or the grandkids? And in some ways, the parents of sons are more at risk of that because of what sociologists refer to as the matrilineal advantage, which means statistically, daughters more likely to prioritize their own family over sons, et cetera. But that is a really common source of estrangement or beginning conflict. To your point, that once conflict starts, it can quickly spiral out of control and lead to an estrangement. For parents, I think most parents feel panicky when the adult child starts to pull back and be more distant, become less available.

That causes what John Gottman refers to as the pursueer distanceer dynamic.

What is it called?

He talks about it from a marital research perspective, the pursueer distanceer dynamic, and it's associated with a high risk of divorce, where one partner, more typically the wife, is pursuing the other for more contact, more intimacy, more communication. The other person, more typically, the husband pulls back more, becomes more shut down. And over time, that dynamic is more rigidified and harder to change until the couple splits up. A similar thing I observe with parents and adult children around estrangement, where the parents start to pursue more and more and more, Why aren't you calling me? Blah, blah, blah. And then they're off to the races.

What are the big mistakes that you see People who want to reconcile with somebody who's cut them off, what are the big mistakes that people make or that you made?

Yeah. I have a whole webinar on this called the Five Most Common Mistakes makes of estranged parents, and I'm sure I made all of them. The first one is thinking that it should be fair. As soon as you think it should be fair, then you're going to, first of all, you're going to feel more victimized by your child, which is not a good place to be, both as a person, but also in terms of how you communicate. It's going to make you feel more angry and resentful, and that's going to come out. The idea that it should be fair is the idea of, Well, I was a much better parent than my own was. Think of all the sacrifices I made. I was there for this in so many ways. But from the parents' perspective, it isn't fair. It's much more about, practically, what works and what doesn't work. And that relates to the second common mistake, and that is using guilt, thinking that you're going to motivate your child through guilt. I'm currently writing an article called The Last Jewish Mother, because I'm Jewish, and it's a trope in the culture about the Jewish mothers can guilt trip their kids into contact.

The joke, like how do you get a Jewish mother to change the light bulb? Don't worry, I'll just sit here in the dark. So the idea, it's an affectionate trope that the mothers could use guilt to motivate their children. But I call it the last Jewish Mother Because parents can no longer do that. Guilt is now considered a toxic, coercive, corrupt a forest. It's antithetical to the idea that the adult child doesn't owe the parent anything and shouldn't feel guilt. So using guilt is not not going to work, including statements like how miserable the adult child is making the parent feel through the estrangement. Third common mistake, and I see therapists enabling this mistake, is returning fire with fire. The adult child says something angry or assertive or critical, the parent fires right back at them and tells them they're ungrateful and challenges them and says, You can't talk to me that way. You need to respect me. It may be true that they want respect, but returning fire with fire never works. The fourth is assuming that it's all about the parent, which goes to what you and I were talking about before, about there may be not as much contact because the adult child is more preoccupied with their own life, their own children, their own career, their own social lives.

What I tell parents is, look, when we have adult children and grandchildren, they're front and center of our minds, our heart, our consciousness. But for our adult children, that's not the same. We're not at the front of their hearts and minds and consciousness. And I know that was true with my own parents as well when they were alive. And like you, I was very close to them, to my parents. So I just knew that when I called my parents or visited them, that I liked both, but I knew it meant much more to them than it did to me. So if my adult children call me or visit me, I know it means more to me than it does to them. So the mistake is not knowing, assuming that every bit of distance or non-responsiveness or not returning that text right away or that email or whatever is personal, because once you make it personal, then you are on the pathway to a strangement. The final mistake is not knowing, is feeling going to recognize how long a stranger takes to reconcile. But it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. And then even if you're taking the best next steps, that it still may be a matter of months or even years before you can get your child to respond.

Those are the most common mistakes that I see. Well, let me add one more. And that is one of the key parts of my strategy with parents is helping them write an amends letter where they take responsibility, where they're not defensive, they don't explain. They find the kernel, if not the Bushler, truth in their children's complaints. And a common mistake I see with letters is that they say, well, if I did anything wrong, or, I'm sorry, you feel that way, or those things which aren't really taking responsibility and not really facing the hard cold truth about the mistakes that they made, because as parents, we all make them. But it's a hard thing to do. I didn't love doing it myself when I did it, but it is the most effective way to potentially bridge a distance between a parent and an adult child.

What I would love to do is go mistake by mistake and unpack it a little bit more so that we can understand how that mistake that we make when we're trying to make amends or trying to make contact with somebody who has cut us off, how it backfires and what it feels like for the person that has cut you off, because I think that would be helpful. The first one was to think that things should be fair.

Right.

So why is that a mistake? And if you think things should be fair, what do parents do that backfires?

One of the things that I teach parents, particularly who've been in a longer term estrangement, is the principle of radical acceptance. And part of radical acceptance is that saying that it is what it is. I can take all the best steps, but I may not be able to do any better. And we think that things should be fair, we're really injecting a certain amount of resentment and bitterness and unhappiness into the equation. So it just isn't very helpful to one's mental health, regardless of reconciliation, to to say, Well, this isn't fair. I shouldn't be treated like this. I was such a good parent. I was a better parent than my own parents were. They're not acknowledging all the good things that I did. They're rewriting history. I mean, all those things may be true, but tormenting yourself with that feeling is just going to make you miserable, but it's also going to make you more resentful to your adult child. From your child's perspective, it's completely fair. They wouldn't be doing it unless they thought it was fair. So one of the things I tell parents to do when they write in a men's letter is to start by saying, I I know you wouldn't do this unless we felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do, because that's how it feels to the adult child.

And the parent has to get on the same page as the adult child. If this parent comes across as being defensive or blaming or not willing to take responsibility, game over. The whole child is going to go, Well, screw you that.

I'm not going to have a relationship with you. This is why I did it in the first place.

Exactly. That's right.

And I think resentment is the powerful word there, because in this feeling that things should be fair.

Right.

What you're not saying is, I resent the fact that I gave you fucking everything, and this is what you're doing to me? Right. Exactly. And I see this even in myself. We were just yesterday after school, quickly trying to find a black suit for my son for prom this weekend. And we went to three different places. Thankfully, we found something. And I turned to him and I said, Hey, can you give me a lift home?

Right.

Before practice. And he said, Oh, Mom, it's going to make me late for practice. And I caught the words before they came out of my mouth. But what I almost said to him, Dr. Coleman, was, Are you fucking kidding me? I just spent an hour and a half with you and spent hundreds of dollars on a suit to support you. You Can't drive me 10 measly minutes home? And then I thought for a second, not because I was talking to you today, but I was like, How is shaming or being resentful? Or that is a example of how I think I'm trying not to be transactional. I will love you in. If I buy you shit, you need to do something for me. But it's hard. And so I can see how that opinion that I'm doing this for you, so it has be fair on my terms. Because I could step into his shoes, which is what you basically ask your clients to do, to get from the one side of the table to putting your arm around your child and trying to see it from their point of view. I basically took him shopping because that was the window that was convenient for me.

And so from his side, he was also accommodating me, and he didn't want to be late, which I can understand based on So I love that because I think the resentment piece is what somebody who cuts you off, picks up on or this transactional thing. Talk about guilt for a minute. So isn't guilt similar to the it should be fair, so you should be doing that? It's part of this whole thing.

It is, yeah. And it just doesn't work anymore. There's plenty of cultures where it still works. There's plenty of where the notion of filial obligation, duty to one's parents, et cetera, is still very active, particularly in Confucius and other Asian cultures. And in Latin American cultures, it's the notion of familism. There's the bond of the family that's considered a very important value. In those kinds of cultures, there's more of a place for a parent to come at it from a perspective of like, Look, I'm your mother, or I'm your father. This is what kids should do. It's more tolerated and accepted because the adult child has embraced those values. But in the rest of American culture, North American culture, there's the idea that adult children don't owe their parents anything, and that guilt is an excessive, coercive, corruptive demand. And so if the parent makes the child feel bad, then somehow they're now putting themselves in the role of being a toxic, narcissistic person who the an adult child should cut off in order to preserve their own mental health.

Let's talk about the Amends letter and the five steps to reconciliation. And again, whether it's an adult child or it's a sibling, or it is a friend, or your parent is the one that pieced out, and you don't know why. I can't tell you. I have sat in the last month next to people on planes who have disclosed to me. One man in particular said, I'm a fan your podcast. Could you please do something about estrangement? In his case, it was a daughter with mental health issues who they have not talked to in seven years.

Common.

But that's something that I keep thinking about, which is I know a lot of people that are dealing with this.

Yeah.

I wanted to do an episode because this is way more common than I think the studies even indicate.

I totally agree with you.

And there is There's a tremendous amount of content, I agree with you, coaching people to cut people out, to have boundaries, which are important. Sure. We may differ a little bit in terms of the influence of childhood trauma on adult behavior. I think our difference probably has more to do with how much people lean on it versus taking responsibility for healing it.

Sure.

But when you get to that point where you feel like, I don't have the ability to have this person in my life, it's easier to just stop having a relationship with them. What are the five steps for somebody who's on the receiving end of that? Because we don't talk about that a lot. We don't talk a lot about, look, your parents did the best they could. If you look at the way your parents were treated growing up, it explains a lot about what they did. It doesn't justify it, Dr. Coleman.

No.

I agree. But it certainly explains it. But what are the five steps to reconciliation?

Yeah. Well, it depends on who the person is who's seeking the help. I increasingly am having more adult children contact me who the parents cut them off, or they're the ones who want help. Or even if the parents haven't cut them off, they just want an improved relationship. And I'm happy that my book speaks to the adult child as well, because it was written for the parent. I It typically requires leader. I mean, if the adult child contacts me, then I'll reach out to the parent, but I'll also explain to them my method in the same way that if they were the ones who had reached out to me. And I'll say that this is the way that I work. So you need to know that before you sign on to doing any sessions with me. If you imagine that my goal is going to just be to side with you about how terrible your kid is, it's not going to happen. So I'm very clear about that as a a framework. Civil Well, some things are more complicated because for parents, it's very easy for me to get a parent to take the high road, to take responsibility, because they're in so much pain.

And there's this a role violation of if a child cuts off a parent, there's a feeling like Well, it is my obligation to heal this. And I clearly, even if they feel like they're innocent, they can feel a great enormous sense of shame that their child feels like they've failed them. So there are parents who won't do what I tell them to do. I can't help them if they will. I tell parents this isn't about right or wrong, per se. It's about what... It's about the practicality. I mean, I do think that there is a moral basis to what I preach. The parents should take the high road, that their children didn't choose to have them, and therefore it isn't coming on parents to take the high road and take responsibility and not get pulled into the weeds, not return fire with fire. But there's not a third option. Parents sometimes want me to help them see how unfair their kid is being or that thing. That just doesn't work. But anyway, with siblings, it's more tricky because parents are willing to walk over hot colds, which is sometimes required. But siblings typically aren't. So somebody has to take the high road.

Somebody has to be willing to not get pulled into the weeds, to make amends, to probably take more responsibility than they think is fair. I mean, if both siblings are equally motivated to heal the relationship, and I have worked with those siblings, that's easier. Then it's more like marriage therapy. Then you can examine the dynamics that shape them both and get them to learn how to communicate more and make the unconscious processes much more conscious. But more typically, one sibling is completely estranged, and the other sibling is in pain about the estrangement. So typically the person who's in the most pain has to show more leadership. So that's the tricky part.

I love what you said before we jump into the five steps. I just want to take a highlighter and make sure that everybody heard something that you said. You said that your personal belief is that the parents have a moral obligation to take the higher road because they chose to bring their children into the world. Correct. I think that's an interesting thing to think about because you're right, there has been this rise of individualism, and I'm responsible for my happiness. I don't even know where I was going with it, but I just felt like that's a very profound thing. And I think a lot of times when you get really wrapped up in feeling like things should be fair or your kids owe you something, we forget as parents that we're the ones that brought them into the world. They didn't choose us. We chose and created them.

Exactly.

And that doesn't mean they owe us anything. If anything, it means we owe Give them something.

Yeah. I would argue, I would say two things of that. One is that I extend that even to wills. Like a lot of the parents in my practice, they have been treated miserably by their adult children. And it wouldn't surprise me. I'm sympathetic to some of these parents who want to cut the kids out of their will. But I say, I don't support parents doing that. Why?

Because it seems like my natural reflection is, of course, if you're going to cut me out of your life, why the fuck would I give you any money? Because I've been paying for your ass your whole adult life. Why would I continue to do that if you don't even... Do you see how quickly I could go into that? I'm an angry, resentful parent? Sure.

Yeah.

Why would you say that? Why should somebody who's had a kid cut them out actually give them money?

Yeah, I totally understand. And I'm sympathetic to any parent. The reason is that we're parents forever, and we're parenting long after we're gone. My parents are both dead, and they still continue. Their influence still persist with me, some good ways and some bad ways. But I don't think our responsibility as parents ends when we die. And as much as I hate the way some of these adult children treat their parents, how contemptuous, how self-righteous, how rejecting they are, how much they've emmiserated the life of the parent. I still think that the role of parent continues after the parent dies. And it's also an issue, a question of what do you want your legacy to be? Do you want your legacy to be that you punish your child from the grave? And that doesn't mean parents have to give their child every single penny, but that they might give them what they would give them if they were still alive. A, and B, if there's other siblings, it greatly complicates a sibling relationship if one of the children is cut out of the will. Yes, I do think there's a moral obligation to parents. I think there also is a moral obligation to it from adult children that we've lost sight of in this culture.

I actually do think that that adult children owe the parents something. I just don't think that parents can demand that or extract it or guilt trip the child into doing it. But I think as a culture, some of these children who are estranging their parents have been given a quality of life that their parents would have dreamed of. So the idea that the children just gets to say, Well, you didn't go... I mean, some of the reasons that adult children cut off contact aren't because the parent was abusive or neglectful. It's because their therapist has convinced them that the parent was more responsible for how their lives turned out than they were, or the kid got married to somebody who hates the parent, and the kid isn't strong enough to stand up to their spouse and say, No, they're my parents. I want them to see them, and I want them to see their grandchildren regardless. I think that in the same way that parents have a moral obligation, I think adult children do, too. Now, that doesn't mean that they're obligated to stay in contact no matter how abusive or hurtful or critical or shaming or rejecting the parent is.

But But they are morally obligated to give the parent a time of due diligence to repair, to do therapy, to hear them out, to think of the parent in a more three-dimensional way, to view it from the perspective that you were saying earlier, that they did the best they could, not in a way that they just get to be forgiven no matter how crappy their parenting was, but a perspective of compassion rather than contempt. So I think both sides, there's moral obligations.

That's beautiful. It's really beautiful because I know in my own life, and I mentioned about my uncle never meeting his two grandkids, it was heartbreaking that they were at the Memorial service.

Yeah.

And I I think you probably see that a lot, that people show up in death because there is something deeper that connects us all. I think that that's what that speaks to. We have this inability as emotional beings to navigate what feels like endless landmines that can develop between us. And so what are the five steps that people can take in any situation in any relationship where there has been an estrangement and you're the one, whether it's you want to take the higher ground or you're the one that's hurting more? What are the steps, doctor?

Yeah. Well, what I often tell parents is there There's a lot more things you can do wrong than you can do right. So the things you can do wrong are contained in the five most common mistakes that we've already discussed. The things that you can do right are to show compassion, to take responsibility to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in a child's complaints, to communicate that you know that they wouldn't have cut off contact unless they felt like it was the healthiest thing for them to do. If you have no idea what the reasons are, and some parents don't, to say that it's clear I have significant blind spots as a parent or as a person that I don't have a deeper understanding, but I want to, would you feel comfortable writing me and telling me more about what your thoughts or feelings are that make you feel like this is the healthiest thing for you to do? I promise to listen or read purely from the perspective of learning and not any way to defend myself. On the one hand, to not give up, but at some point you might have to stop as a show of respect.

So for example, if you're getting your letters were turned unopen, returned to sender, threats of the police called on you, communicating through an attorney, or your kid just gets so unraveled, then you should just stop completely for a year. Sometimes stopping completely works because the adult child can feel like the parent is respecting their boundaries, finally. It can make them respect the parent more, that they're not just continuing to try no matter what. That old saying, How can I miss you if you don't go away? Is sometimes true in family life. It can create that space the adult child to come into. So there's a lot of reasons why sometimes just stopping completely is the right thing. But a lot of it, and this is particularly true of parents who have been victims of parental alienation, where they've been brainwashed against the parent by the other parent after a divorce, is to embody what I call the lighthouse model, that you're just there on the beach, you're steady, you're broadcasting light from this definite point on the beach while your child is being pushed up and down out at sea by the waves, and sometimes they'll come out and see you standing on the beach there, broadcasting light, and they'll get oriented towards you, but then they'll be carried back out to sea and pushed underwater again.

But your task as a parent is to be steady and loving, and compassionate, and available, and responsibility taking, and hope that over time, your child can find their way back to you through those efforts.

Can you define or can you describe what an amends letter is and how you write one?

Sure. First of all, they're much shorter than parents often think they should be. Typically, two paragraphs is as much as I recommend. You don't want it to be so long, so much rope that you're going to hang yourself with it. They should be courageous. In AA, they talk about making a fearless and searching moral inventory of your character flaws. I think the same is true of an amends letter. If your child has made complaints about you, to be able to really fearlessly say what those were and how you can see how that could have impacted your child, how that might have been hurtful or traumatizing to them or damaging to them or affective their feelings of trust or safety or security in you or the relationship. With you. That's critically important to not blame anybody else, to not make excuses, to not say, Well, I was a single mother. Well, your dad didn't pay any child support. Or, Well, your mother blamed me for divorce when it wasn't my fault. Or, You You had ADD or learning disabilities, or, You had your own issues, or no, no, no. It's 100% about empathy, responsibility-taking. But there has to be blood on the tracks, meaning that the parent has to actually show courage in facing their own character flaws, not in a self-hating way, but just in a way, and that's critically important as well, it shouldn't be an exercise in masochism, even though it is a painful thing to do, I understand from my own personal experience.

They're not fun letters to write. They're actually super hard.

What was it like for you to write one to your daughter when she cut you off?

There's two things that go into it. One is, is this going to work? And the other is just having to face the reality of some of her complaints. I can empathize with the ways that she felt sidelined when I remarried and had their children, and how my children from my second, my current marriage, had a much better quality of life and were raised in the context of a stable marriage, and she didn't have that. And she went back and forth between two homes. There was conflict with me and her mother. And there was a lot there to be hurt and upset and feel displaced about. So it was very painful. There have been numerous times where we've cried together about it because it was just really painful.

What was her response to your letter?

Good. To her credit, what I tell parents is I was just lucky that my daughter had whatever it is that causes an adult child to forgive and to accept. Not all parents, they're parents who are just as dedicated or empathic as me or communicate just as well or better than I did, who's the adult child wasn't or isn't willing or able to do that. But I was lucky that she was able to. It didn't happen right away, and it often doesn't. That's why I say it's often a marathon, not a sprint. So it took a while. Actually, we had a number of conversations. It wasn't just like one The whole thing like, oh, great, clouds aparted, all this is forgiven. No, it still comes up periodically. I mean, not a lot, but those things are fault lines in a parent-adult-child relationship that probably exists in some form, will always be there in one form or another.

What if you're the one that's in the middle? So I've been in a situation where my two closest friends, one cut the other one-off and didn't talk to her for three years. And I was in a relationship with both of them. And one kept trying to reconcile an absolute Stonewall from the other. Yeah. What do you do if you're the sibling or the other child, or you're the friend in the middle?

Yeah. Well, it's often that a sibling will be... One child is estranged, and the other sibling is not estranged the parents. And what I tell parents is, you can't really have your non-estranged child advocate for you. First of all, if one of your children is estranged from you, they're showing that they're capable of using a strange, so they may well estrange that sibling. Second of all, the sibling may say that if you're acting like our parents advocate, I will cut you off, or if you tell them anything that I'm telling you. So often the strange sibling makes the other, the not a strange sibling, swear that they won't reveal what their reasons are, what they're thinking or feeling, sometimes even where they live. So I tell parents that they have to accept that boundary and limit as difficult as it is. The other thing I tell parents is that if you have one kid is estranged, you don't want the non-estranged kids to feel like they have to hold up some mirror of you as the great parent. They know how much pain you're in. So you're better off saying to them something like, Look, your sister, your brother is estranged.

Either we don't understand it or we do understand it, but I don't want you to feel like you have to repair my self-esteem by making me feel like I'm a great parent or whatever. You may have the same complaints about me or you may have different complaints, but I want you to feel like you have... That there's room to do that without worrying about being overly burdensome to me. Now, if you're the friend, it's a similar dynamic where you don't really have that power to really change very very much about it. And you really won't serve your friendship to be overly allied one against the other, even if you think that one person's more fault or more troubled or more difficult. We've all got, probably, most of us have at least one difficult friend, right? So we can be sympathetic to the other friend who's on the receiving end of that. But if you put yourself in a position of advocacy, it's not typically wanted. And so that can cause the person who's being advocated against to feel more misunderstood or ganged up on or that thing.

I think if there's one thing I'm taking away from this incredible conversation is that when this happens, there's typically on the part of the person that is estranged, this story or feeling that you just don't get it. Yeah. And I'm tired of trying to explain it, and I'm tired of you defending yourself, and it's just easier and better for me to remove this from my life right now. And that's why everything that you're counseling us, which is the opposite of how you're going to feel when you feel wronged or hurt or desperate to reconnect with somebody, that really you have to step into the shoes of the other person or at least give them the experience that you have as much as it may seem unfair or it may it may seem like it's one-sided, or it may seem just... I don't know. I'm sitting here, I can't even put myself in the shoes of somebody who's experiencing this, even though there's estrangement on both sides of my family, in extended family, and even though my two best friends didn't talk for three years, and even though I see examples of this everywhere, everywhere. It must be a profoundly painful and challenging and humbling thing to do to say, This is so important to me that I'm going to be the leader in this process.

And the only way that we're going to make progress is if the person that's cut me out actually feels like they've been validated and understood without me defending myself.

Yeah. No, I think it's really well said. I think it's a really good summary of what this looks like and feels like. And one of the challenges is that generations are often talking past each other. So It's an important article by nick Haslem, who's an Australian psychologist, and he called it Concept Creep. What he found was that over the past three decades, well, his article came out in 2015, so it's more than that at this point, but there's been an expansion of what we consider to be hurtful, traumatic, abusive, neglectful behavior. So often the adult child is saying, You neglected me. You were emotionally abusive. You traumatized me. And the parents are like, What? Because they're looking at it from the way those terms were defined when they were growing up, whereas the adult child is looking at it in a very different way. So often, if the adult child is saying, You emotionally abuse me, the parents, particularly a lot of these parents who've given their children a really good quality body of life, just can't relate to it. And so what I tell parents to say is, I wasn't aware that you... It's clear that I have blind spots that I wasn't aware that that felt emotionally abusive to you.

I'm glad you let me know. I would like to learn more about what that felt like to you, how that's impacted you. Is there something you'd like me to read? Would you like to get into therapy around it? Are there things you'd like me to work on in my own therapy? So again, it's to the point that you were making, the parent has to really go toward the adult child's complaints rather than away from them. They do have to show a certain amount of courage and willingness to get into the really painful territory of how the child feels like they neglected them or hurt them or let them down. And no parent really particularly wants to go there.

Definitely not.

It's not a fun place to be.

So when you get to the point where it's like, okay, I have gotten the message. You don't want to talk. I'm going to just go silent for a year. Do you send somebody flowers on their birthday? Do you send How do you engage with somebody who doesn't want to engage with you?

Yeah. Well, there's a difference between a kid who's a minor, which I would say that parents shouldn't give up, versus a kid who's more full-fledged adult. So no, I think if somebody's going to let the line go cold for my recommendations, I recommend they don't do anything. Because I think that for some adult children, they really need to feel that the parent's absence. For some estrangements, they're really trying to get in touch with a certain part of themselves that they don't feel like they can access with the parent involved in their lives. The parent, in some ways, is too important in their mind. The parent feels really unimportant, but it's in part because the adult child is closed off contact in every avenue of access to that parent. So it's that feeling that the parent feels cut off because they haven't cut off. But the child is doing it because they feel like the parent's too important in their mind. So if the parent can do that, can be no contact in the same way that the adult child is requesting, then it allows the adult child to feel themselves in a different way in relationships with the parent.

So it's what I call lose your parent, find yourself.

Wow. Why, Dr. Franco, do attachment styles matter?

Yes. So our attachment style really impacts how we give and receive love And thus, our ability to build healthy relationships with other people.

Wow. Does everybody have an attachment style?

Yeah, we all have an attachment style. It's basically like we all come into new relationships with a set of assumptions, and those assumptions define our attachment style.

Okay. So can you give me... We know that the four attachment styles we've already talked about, secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized. Disorganized, yeah. Can you give me four signs of each attachment style?

Sure. Yeah. So let's think about this practically in our relationships. If you're with someone securely attached, you set a boundary with them, they accept the boundary. They don't try to push it, change it. They don't suddenly pull away because you set that boundary. If you're with someone securely attached, they're comfortable being vulnerable. You'll see that they're being vulnerable with you, but almost in in a more reciprocal way. They'll be vulnerable, they'll wait for you to be vulnerable back, then they'll be more vulnerable, whereas someone avoidantly attached really won't be able to be vulnerable. If someone is securely attached, they can address you directly, but not confrontationally. Let's say this is in a friendship context where it feels like the friendship has been one sided. The securely attached friend will say, I love you, I want to be close to you. I've noticed I've been the one reaching out and that's been hurting me, and I want our friendship to continue, so I figured I'd bring this up. Those are some signs of securely attached people. Anxiously attached people, their core fear is that everyone will abandon them. So you can tell what someone's anxiously attached when they're almost willing to give up their sense of self to be in relationship with other people.

So they're hyper accommodating often until it It really blows up, and then they become the opposite. When it comes... They anxiously attach people because they fear abandonment. They're not necessarily good at setting boundaries. So they might agree to things, and then It seems like they're resentful about it. We talked about egoistic giving, that they're generous oftentimes to get people to like them. They're attracted to relationships with people that don't seem to like them very much because they've learned that they had to earn love. So you'll see an anxially attached person having these friendships with people or these relationships with people that mistreat them because that makes them motivated to earn love. And that's what they learned about love, that it's something that's earned not freely given. And then avoidantly attached people, you'll know they're avoidant because they're never vulnerable. You don't feel like you really know them. When you maybe do have a moment of intimacy and closeness, they suddenly pull away. And you're like, what What the heck is going on? They have a lot of shame, but they don't really admit to it. So they really struggle with things like apologizing, whereas an anxiously attached person is going to over apologize.

The avoidantly attached person is going to say, no, this is not my fault. This is your fault. They just don't tend to put much effort into their relationship. So if you feel like, man, this person, I'm trying to connect with them. They're not really meeting me there. And that person might be more avoidantly attach. I can't get them to try. They're not really trying. That might be a sign of avoid attachment. That being said, of course, attachment is not stagnant. In different relationships, we can have different attachment styles based off of the attachment style of the other person. It's hard to say based on your interactions with one person, what their attachment style is.

What about somebody who's disorganized? What are some of the signs that you're in a relationship or a friendship with somebody who has a disorganized attachment style?

Yeah. So the disorganized attachment style is it's not organized, right? So it feels like chaos. Sometimes they want you to get really close. Sometimes they're pushing you away. Sudden withdrawal. They have trouble regulating their emotions because their relationships have not helped them do that in the past. People have not validated their feelings. So you might get more escalation more anger. They might be interpreting your actions with a lot of negative intent, like you're going out of your way to harm me, to destroy me. And so it'll feel chaotic. You will be like, what is going on? I thought we were just connecting, and they have a very different interpretation of the situation. And usually with a disorganized attachment style, there's a history of a pretty brutal background, like a history of some abuse in childhood.

Is it easier to spot someone's attachment style in yourself or in somebody else?

You know, one way that I hear other people's attachment style is how they perceive other people. With anxious people, you hear them say, all my relationships are fragile or everybody's going to abandon me. And the avoid guidance, you'll hear them say, nobody can be trusted. And when you have this one template about everybody, it's a sign that it's not actually everybody because you're not actually discerning each person. You just are coming in with this understanding and superimposing it onto the present, which is what attachment style is, really. So when I hear someone secure, though, they always try to give people the benefit of the doubt while having boundaries. So they'll say things like, I had to love that person from afar. And they can admit that even though we didn't maybe be... When they talk about their exes, there'll be some complexity. It didn't work out for this reason, but I like them for this reason instead of my ex was just evil. So you'll hear that complexity with securely attached people, and you'll hear them trying to be as loving as possible to people while also having them recognize what they need for themselves.

So both things. There's just more nuance with securely attached people. I'm sorry, I'm answering your previous question, but I'm realizing, so I have so many more thoughts on this. Whereas, avoidantly-attached people actually have memory issues because they block out their emotion. If you ask them to talk about things, they are not very expressive. It's hard to get them to describe things. It's hard to get them to describe what they think or what they feel because our emotions are big indicators of what we think it feel and our opinions in our internal world. So it almost feel like with someone avoidantly attached, it's like, yeah, the conversation is maybe, specifically when you talk about relationships, the conversation doesn't go as deep. Whereas anxiously attached people, their memory, they tend to miss to remember things and remember things as more negative than they actually were. So that's really interesting quirk, attachment theory and memory. But back to your major question, which was, is it easier to recognize in yourself and someone else? Honestly, I think anxiously attached people tend to be so hungry for information as to how to improve. So when I talk, anxiously attached people already, they follow up with me and they're like, that's me.

I'm anxiously attached. I cling. I'm so afraid everyone's going to abandon me. I think everybody's judging me. So I think often anxiously attached people, they hear the basics of Attachment Theory, and they quickly see themselves in it. That's not happened to me as much with avoidantly attached people. Again, they struggle with vulnerabilities. So I imagine it would be harder to say I'm avoidantly attached, and I've had these struggles in the past.

So if you Sure. I have a question about that because that's fascinating. If you are avoidantly attached and you're listening to somebody talk about attachment theory, given that somebody that has an anxious attachment style might immediately self-diagnose, might immediately see themselves, what is an avoidant attachment style person likely to experience as they're learning about attachment style? Sales and considering themselves as they're listening to you, Dr. Franco?

Yeah, discomfort. When you get deep with avoidantly attached people or you try to get them to acknowledge some of their wounds, they feel very uncomfortable with that. And maybe they'll stop listening, honestly. I mean, this obviously depends. And honestly, there's some research that finds that if you're in a relationship with someone who's avoidant but has humility, there's a lot better outcomes. Whereas if the avoidant person is like, everything's your fault, and I'm fine, and you're being sensitive, then it's going to be really hard to connect with that specific form of avoidant attachment. So there has to be, with an avoidant attachment, a willingness to look at yourself and to be conscious of your patterns, which I think anxiously attached people tend to be more willing to do. If you're having conflict with an avoided person, often they are just stonewalling or they're ghosting or they're minimizing or they're saying, we're not going to talk about this. Basically, anything related to relationships and intimacy really scares and overwhelms avoidantly attached people. Sometimes we think of anxiously attached people as more sensitive in that they get really overwhelmed when a relationship is not going well, but so do avoidantly attached people.

They just express it. They express that sensitivity through removal. They're so overwhelmed emotionally by relationships, by intimacy. And so they're Stonewalling, which is a sign of being emotionally overwhelmed. They're being closed off. They're being dismissed because it's too emotionally overwhelming to look at some of their own patterns, because fundamentally, avoidantly attached people have a lot of shame. If you tell them they've made a mistake, they have this core belief that I am a failure, that I am deficient. They probably won't admit that to you. But any time you try to offer a critique to an avoidantly attached person, that you might trigger that core wound of, I'm a failure, I'm deficient, which is why it can feel so hard for an avoidantly attached person to hear some of their patterns and hear some of their dynamics.

Hey Mel, it's Jennifer. Can you do a podcast not on marriage advice, but something about how marriage is so wacky, hard, and unusual, and worth staying the course? I went back and listened to your opening podcast and was so blown away by the exposure of what you'd gone through, but also of the impact upon your marriage. And so I'm blown away that your marriage existed through all of that. I feel a lot of cultural pressure and voices about leaving marriage, but not so much about staying. Like, maybe the pendulum has shifted generationally from, Stay for the Kids to, Leave to make yourself happy. But isn't there another another perspective on the why of staying. Do you think you could talk about that? I love the show, your vibe, your honesty. It really helps. Thank you so much, Mel. Thank you for this question. I love your vibe, and I love the question itself. I also want to thank you for distinguishing between the request of asking for advice about marriage and relationships versus just talking about my experience of how hard and wacky having a long-term relationship can be. The truth is, I don't talk about this topic of relationships and marriage and giving advice about it all that much, because the fact is, I don't think I do know the secret to marriage.

I've been married for 26 years, but I feel like my husband Chris and I, we are still figuring out the secret to marriage. I also worry, if I'm being perfectly honest, and I promise this would a brutally honest episode, that if Chris and I started giving relationship and marriage advice and we somehow held ourselves out there as the model for a marriage that works, it would blow up our own marriage. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it seems like every other day there is some author or influencer that has been giving relationship advice who then announces that they're getting divorced, and I personally do not want to get divorced. But I can't stop thinking about your question. You're not the only one who has been asking me to talk about the secret or the strategies or just some of the things that Chris and I have learned along the way after being together for 28 years and being married for 26 years. Jennifer, after much trepidation, I decided, Fuck it. I'm going to answer this. The first thing I want to talk about is your observation about whether or not that pendulum has shifted generationally when it comes to advice about marriage, and in particular, when marriage gets hard.

I agree with you. I think for somebody our age, and for those of you that may be new to listening to this podcast, I am 54 years old. My husband is 53 years old. We have three children who are going to be 24, 22, and our son is about to be 18 years old. Chris and I have been through a lot of ups and downs. Growing up, the relationship was always, you got to stay together for the kids. I personally think that is the world's worst advice. A lot of the research bears out the fact that your kids know when you're miserable. If you're staying only to tough it out for the kids, your kids are now seeing a model of a relationship that is profoundly dysfunctional. The The way that they learn about relationships is by observing you. I don't think you should stay for your kids. I think that is lousy advice, and a lot of us have heard that advice for a long time. What I believe is that if you do decide that you're going to stay in a relationship, you have to do that for yourself. When you consider the reasons why you want to stay in a relationship, if you put yourself first, it may be that it matters to you based on your values to keep your family intact.

And one of the things that I think a lot of people don't think about when times get really tough is that your marriage is actually more than just you and your partner. Your marriage is your family. It's your network of friends that you've built together. It's the history that you've created together. And so if you see value in what you've created to date, that's a really valid and important reason to work on your marriage to work on your marriage and relationship and try to work through the challenges that have come up. But that right there is very different than staying for the kids out of guilt and shame. So stay because you want to stay. Work on it because you want to work on it based on your values and based on what you feel in your heart. I also agree with you, Jennifer, that there has been a big swing. I mean, you see it all over social media. Leave to make yourself happy. If you're unhappy in that marriage, you just walk right out that door. I would extend this conversation that you and I are going to have today beyond marriage, because I think that the same things that make a marriage healthy and happy and go the distance are the exact same thing that makes a friendship happy and healthy and go the distance.

We live in this world, and I worry a lot about this, where people are really quick to just X people out, to ghost somebody. I'll tell you something about being in the content space. Anytime you put up something on social media and you talk about narcissism or toxic behavior in other people, the post goes crazy. People love to just talk about other people being toxic. I worry about the fact that we have gotten to a point where the pendulum has swung and people are starting to feel like, When things get tough, I just leave. When somebody's a jerk, I just walk Out with it. They're the problem. The fact is, the exit door is usually not where you find the best answers. That's typically the easy out. I have found over and over and over again that the answers to a better relationship are usually in the mirror. What I want to say about that is this. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's abusive, leave. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's narcissistic, leave. If you're in a relationship that makes you absolutely miserable and you have tried to work through everything, you should leave, and that will make you happy.

But if you're leaving because you don't want to do the work, that's a problem. That habit of bailing when things get tough, you're just going to take that right into the next relationship. That's why I am saying it's not necessarily the answer that's going to make you happy. The reason One way I think that it is important in a friendship or in a marriage or a relationship to stop yourself from walking out the door and just pause long enough to do the work to stay is, number one, I don't know a single person who has truly put in the work to repair a marriage or a friendship who regrett it. But I do know a ton of people who just got frustrated and got divorced, and they now regret that they didn't try harder, or that they now miss friends that they ghosted or stopped talking to years ago over something stupid because they were too afraid to have the hard conversation. I do, based on the 28 years that I have been in a relationship with my husband, I have seen this over and over and over again. If you are willing to put yourself in pause and attempt to repair the the marriage or the friendship, you're not going to regret that effort.

Second, and I've already alluded to this, a marriage isn't just a relationship that you have with your partner. It's the community. It's the friendships and the networks that you've built. It's the history that you have together. When you end a marriage or a friendship, the truth is, you basically blow apart all of those things. That's another reason why it's trying to work on it. If you still see something for yourself inside this relationship or friendship. I think a lot about the fact that when people get divorced, I would love to think that everybody can have a modern divorce, and you can blend families, and ex-spouses can be partners, and everybody can be with their new partners and blended families and have holidays together. That's how it should be if you're going to end a marriage. But that's not the norm. I I just want to be honest because I don't think we think through these things that you won't have the same relationship with the sister-in-law that you love. You will not be going to your old in-laws if you adore them for the holidays anymore. Friends are going to feel funky because they're going to feel like they got to go with the one or the other in terms of your relationship.

That just is how it is right now. I wish it were different, but I promised you I'd tell you the truth. Now, I want to just deliver even tougher love about whether or not you decide to end this marriage. Because the fact is, let's just say that you end this thing, right? What are you going to do? Oh, I know exactly what you're going to do because you've also seen this a million times. Once you get out of this marriage, you're going to be highly motivated to get in the best shape of your life, to get back out there, to get healthier, to be more private, to be more vibrant. Why? Well, so that you can attract somebody better. What if you were to just do that now? I mean, why not do that for yourself? Again, I want to say, don't stay with somebody who's abusive. But if you're sitting there bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends or just your friends in general and your family, that you've become room mates and that your spouse is no more fun, and you don't know who you're married to anymore. But underneath all that, you just wish it were better.

You still love this person. Don't just throw in the towel because you're frustrated. Do the work. That's what I've learned. You talked about the fact that in some of the beginning episodes, I shared a little bit about our story. A lot of you already know it, so I'm not going to go into great detail. But for those of you who are new, who are listening to the podcast, back in 2008, I had lost my job. We were 800 grand in debt because my husband's restaurant was going under. His restaurant business was really struggling. He hadn't been paid in months. We were just, oh, leans on the house, drinking ourselves into the ground. I got to a point where it was easier to be angry at Chris and to just be resentful of him and to be like, I don't like you. I don't want to be with you. You fucked this up. As if it wasn't partially my fault, too. I want to say something to you if you're sitting there thinking that the grass is greener. Look, maybe the grass is, but I want you to stop and consider something If I ever get pissed off at my husband and I'm like, You know what?

Chris is annoying. I just can't stand this about him or that about him, or he's always thinking about something. He doesn't talk, he's not that fun, and he doesn't make me laugh, or what about that, Whatever you may bitch about. I stop and say to myself, What's the average 50-year-old guy like? I mean, anybody my age, sorry, dudes, but any one of you that gets to the age of 50, you got shit in the closet. You got stuff that you have lied about. You've got things that you're ashamed of. You've got things that you haven't worked through. And so here I've got two options. I can either turn toward the person that I was once in love with and do the work to make it better, to grow together. I could roll my... Or I could roll the dice. I could end something because I'm frustrated or pissed off or things got challenging or whatever the situation may be. I could literally go try to create a relationship with somebody else who, by the way, I have not seen what this person has been doing for the last 28 years. I don't know what the hell they're telling me, whether it's the truth or not.

I don't know what trauma they have buried beneath their skin. I don't know what bullshit they did in their prior marriage. But if you're willing to turn toward the person that you're with now, you know at least part of the story. For me, It has always seemed worth it. No matter how hard things got with Chris, no matter how scary things got, no matter how much we resented and hated one another, no matter how much we were drinking, I never got to the point where I thought, It's way better to roll the dice and try to meet someone new than to try to work it through with this person right here. The truth is, and I'm sure this is true about you, I've talked about Juicy Peaches and embracing your Juicy Peachiness on this podcast. But there are days I am not a peach at all. When a marriage goes off the rails, When you get to the point where your roommate, it's not just your partner's fault. That gets to this concern that I have, that we are so quick to just cut people out of our lives, to call people toxic, to end something because we're sick of it.

We haven't even done the work to try to fix it. We You haven't had the harder conversation. That's it. I feel like it is always worth working on it. If you're struggling in your relationship or you're struggling in a friendship, absolutely Hit the pause button. Do not spend another second bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends about the situation, and put your time and energy into working to make it better. Because I guarantee you, you have not communicated what you're feeling clearly. You You have not made requests about what you want. You have not started unpacking where things went off the rails. And the truth is, if you're willing to work on it, you can make it better. I don't care how long or how little you've been married. If you're willing to work on it, you can make it better. I think that is the secret to a long-lasting marriage, relationship, friendship. It lasts because you're willing to work on it. That brings me to the most important caveat of all of this, and I think this is the biggest single truth about relationships. Relationships only work if both of you are willing to work on it together.

This is not a one-way street. There is no halfway on this. There is no, I'm going to fix myself, and that fixes my marriage. You will never change your marriage on your end on your own. Period. Full stop. If you're listening to this and you have somebody that won't work on it with you, I need you to listen to the takeaways that I'm about to give you, the lessons that I've learned, actually, very recently after being married to the same person for over 26 years. These are lessons that I have learned very recently after Chris and I have been in marriage therapy for two years. Even saying marriage therapy is weird because I think about going to therapy like going to the gym. That it's a way to make something better. In fact, at this point, I have benefited so much and learned so much about my husband that I didn't even know, having been married to him for the first 24 years. It's so incredible to have a third person who is not sleeping with you guys or living with you guys to weigh in on what they observe. It has been one of the greatest things that we have ever done for our relationship.

I'm kicking myself for not having done sooner. And so what I want to do is I want to share with you because I'm just getting so many questions. How did you guys go the distance? How did you make it through the challenging times? How did you do it? The way we did it is that we were both willing to do the work. And no matter how far apart Chris and I felt or were, or how much we were struggling in our lives, or our careers, or financially, or with addiction, or whatever it may have been, the one The thing that I can say is that we were always willing to work on it. No matter how pissed off we got with one another, or frustrated, or isolated from one another, I knew deep down that he did love me and that I loved him. Having faced bankruptcy and having been unemployed and having struggled to pay for groceries with three kids under the age of 10, I know that when life gets hard, it is so much easier to be frustrated and angry because you're triggered than it is to be afraid. Back when the restaurant business was really struggling, I was so pissed at Chris.

I was just resentful. I was resentful that he wasn't successful. He knew it. He could feel it. That only contributed to the shame that he felt. The fact is, there are going to be years in your relationship relationships when it goes the distance that are amazing and years that completely blow. Years where you feel very connected and years where you feel like you're in your own corners. And the past couple of years and going through the craziness that happened during the pandemic. It's been really painful, and it did some real damage to our relationship. And so this is why, Jennifer, I'm so happy that you did not ask for marriage advice, because, again, I'm going to say everything I'm about to share with you, these are not the secrets to the perfect marriage. I am not the expert in what your marriage should look like. I like to keep my marriage between Chris and I. In fact, there are things that Chris and I talk about with our therapists that our kids don't know. You want to know why? Because it's not their fucking business, and they shouldn't know. And your kids are not your therapist, and they're not involved in your marriage, and you shouldn't be talking to them about the stuff that you're mad about related to to your partner.

It's terrible to do that. Work on it with your partner. Because the more time you spend complaining and griping about your partner to your friends or your family or, dear God, do not do it with your kids, you need to be spending twice that amount of time talking to your spouse. See, that's why you're not connected. That's why you have problems, because you're not actually talking to your spouse. So when we first started seeing a therapist, it was in 2020, and we decided to to go to therapy because we had some major things going on because obviously the pandemic turned our life upside down, and we were both at our wits end, and we were fighting a lot. And here's one of the first things that our therapist said to us, and it really has stuck with me. I think that this framework will be really helpful for you, too. He observed that Chris and I are excellent at the transactional aspects of life. We can cook dinner together, we can sync up our calendars, we can run errands, we can do projects around the house. We're really great at parenting together. We get the day-to-day stuff done.

We love spending time as a family. We have meaningful work that we feel connected to. But here's what happened. Somewhere during the past, probably 5-8 years, we got so swept up in the doing that we stopped being connected. The fact is, I was very resentful that he wasn't successful in his career. At least in the beginning, I was really resentful. I can see that my resentment made me turn on him, and it made me turn on him when he needed me most. I stopped believing that he would be able to to save that business. I can see, and I will admit, and this is one of those episodes where I'm the asshole, and I'm just going to admit all the things that I did wrong in the hopes that you don't repeat the mistakes that I made, I can see that I was engaged in what I've seen people call the quiet quitting. For me, it was the quiet quitting of a marriage. You might not even be conscious to this. You might be doing You might be doing this in your job. You might be doing this in your family. When people use the term we've become roommates, I think that what you're talking about is that you're in a relationship where one of you is quietly quitting.

You're doing the bare minimum. Your resentment and griping is building. Maybe you saw your parents doing it, enduring something. For Chris and I, in all of the doing, we lost that deep emotional connection to one another that we had worked so hard to build over the years. Resentment for me, had started to really come in, and he could feel it. The emotional connection that you have, that's the glue for your relationship. When it becomes really transactional, there will be resentment, and there was resentment on Chris's side, too. And that emotional connection is what was missing for Chris and I. The love was there underneath it all. But there was this mid-layer that had built up that made us really lose a connection to one another. I remember this particular moment. It was right before we went to therapy, a really close friend of ours saw us at a dinner that friends of ours had just invited a bunch of us over for a barbecue. She called me the next day and she said, Is Chris okay? And I said, Yeah, I think Chris is fine. Why? And she said, Something's wrong with him, Mel. And I said, What do you mean?

And she said, There's just something missing. The light behind his eyes is gone. There's normally this magnetic connection between the two of you. And I haven't seen the two of you in a couple of years, but it's just something's wrong. And she was right. What was wrong was, number one, we were missing the connection. We were disconnected. And there There are a lot of other things wrong, too. One of which I would come to learn is that Chris was really struggling with depression. And so that brings me to, well, what do you do? How do you get the connection back? Mel, if I'm going to hit the pause button and before I just shove the middle finger in the air and say, You're the problem. I'm out of here. I'm going to be happy. I'm leaving. I'm done. What do I want you to stop and think about before you do that? Well, there are six things that you got to do, in my personal opinion, that you can do and that do work if both of you are willing to work on it. We're talking about what I've learned in the last couple of years about marriage.

My husband and I, as you now know, have been married for 26 years. We've been together for 28 years. We started seeing a marriage counselor, a therapist, whatever you call him. He's amazing. Dr. Cooper. I love this man. Thank you, Dr. Cooper, if you're listening. I want to share with you six observations that I have from my personal experience about why it matters, why it's important to work on it, and what you need to do if you do want to repair a relationship that's broken or you want to improve and continue to grow together. The first thing is you have to be intentional and say to yourself, I am going to turn this around. I'm going to make it better. Because There's no half-ass in your marriage. You have to decide to make it better. Wishing it were better is what you're already doing, and it's very different than committing to make it better. Nothing in life is going to change until you make a decision to change it. Then you have to schedule in what you're doing with your partner to change it. See, I look at marriage as this living thing. It's like a container in which you and your partner either grow or you wither and dry.

I know that sounds brutal and dramatic, but it's true. If your marriage or your friendship matters to you, make it a fucking priority. It's really simple. If you want anything to grow, this is common sense. You got to care for it. You have to tend to it. You got to water it with kindness, with interest, with support. You have to tend to both your and your partner's on growing growth. I mean, it's critical to your marriage. I've said this a bazillion times, and I'm going to keep reminding you, our marriage is not perfect. It's not the ideal. It is for us. I've already shared with you that there are years that are wonderful, where we were wonderful to each other, where we were together all the time and investing each other's growth and growing together. Then there were those years that sucked. We caused each other a lot of pain. I want you to view the painful stuff in a relationship like weeds in a garden. Over time, if you're not careful, those weeds, they fucking take over. So do not ignore the little shitty stuff because weeds, they start out as just It's a teeny little thing.

And then have you ever noticed you go away from your garden for a couple of days and it rains and then the sun comes out and these teeny little weeds are like five feet tall? That's the little, shitty, irritating stuff. Talk about it. Ask for what you need. Clear the air. Do not harbor resentment. And I'm telling you, therapy, if you can afford it, get yourself to therapy. It is a gift. Chris and I were already talking to to an individual therapist, but that's not working on your marriage, by the way. That's working on yourself, and you should work on yourself. But it wasn't until we came together and made it a priority that things really started to shift. One of the things that I love about talking to a therapist is that for me, I get more out of a 45-minute call with a therapist. We have never met our therapist in person. We do the entire thing virtually. But hitting the pause button every other week to truly unpack something that happened between the two of us, listen to one another. That's the hard part for me, I'm learning. To learn about one another.

This is better than any damn date night could ever be. Because we're not just going out and having time alone. We're actually investing in our growth. That's very different than having a steak and a bottle of wine. We're digging out the weeds in our relationships so that things can blossom and bloom so that when we do go out for that meal and that night out, it's actually more than just a dinner date. It's something that has real depth to it. For you, if you can't afford therapy, I totally get it, but I totally understand. I have been in that place in my life. There are free online courses you can take together. There are books that you could read together. In fact, the episode that we just released, Dr. Nicola Para, her brand new workbook, How to Meet Yourself, is a guided journey through knowing yourself better. You could use that. $25. Use that to make your marriage better. So there are things that you can do if you get intentional. So number two, this is also something that is critical. It seems like common sense, but you got to do You got to develop a genuine sense of interest, again, in the person.

You were interested when you first met them. Remember that? But I bet along the way, you started to decide, Oh, I know everything I know about this stupid person. There they go again. Eye roll. Well, in therapy, I learned a lot about Chris that I didn't know. I'm going to say this again. In therapy, I learned a lot about my husband that I didn't know. I'm talking 24 years into marriage, things that I didn't know. I'm not talking about deep dark secrets. I'm talking about the way that his thoughts and his feelings impact him. For example, I had no idea how traumatized Chris was by his childhood. Because it wasn't like anything horrific happened to him. His mom is one of my closest friends, but he was a latchkey kid. His parents were always working. His brothers were way older. Nobody was ever around. So It was this slow death march of isolation and feeling constantly alone. His experience was when I get home, nobody's there. When I play baseball, nobody shows up. That if I ask for something, I get teased. Nobody listens. So he stopped asking. In fact, he stopped asking to such a degree that he used to have a nickname in his family.

When he was little, you know what they called my husband, the Monument? You want to know why? Because he didn't talk for two years. Everybody laughs about it. It was like some big joke. The truth is, it's actually really sad. I mean, they laughed about it because nobody knew any better. Because he was just a little kid that felt like he was unseen and wasn't worthy of love, his needs didn't matter. He didn't know how to ask, or it just shut him down even more. I learned that part of the reason why he never asked for anything is because his experience growing up is that nobody gave a shit. That helped me go from being annoyed at how quiet he is to really wanting to help support him. Because the fact is, he isn't the most diffusive person. He's not the hardy, hard, hard guy. He's A very deep thinker. Being interested, yes, it means be interested in somebody's hobbies, be interested in what happened to them, be interested in what they're saying. But it also means be interested in learning more about them as a human being. We're all guilty of assuming we know someone just because we've known them for a long time.

So starting today, here's how you can apply this. Assume starting today, That you don't know a lot about the person that you're with. That there's a whole part of them to discover. I'm not talking about some deep, dark secret. I'm just talking about how they feel, how their childhood impacted them. Just think about your sofa a When I think about how much I've changed, my God, in the last four years, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, I've lived that in my own mind and body. Unless you talk about it and listen to each other, you're not going to know that. I can give you another example of how little we know about each other. When I was hosting this daytime talk show, we did an episode where Chris was on, and there was this marriage expert relationship person. Chris revealed on national television that when it comes to being intimate, he prefers to have sex in the morning. I had been married to the guy for 22 years. I had no idea that That's what he preferred. You're not going to really get connected to someone unless you're interested in learning more about them. Ask more questions. Be more curious.

That interest also means be loud and celebratory. I've been working on this. Chris, as he's leading his men's retreat called Soul Degree, I'm cheering for him as he is pursuing a master's in spiritual psychology. I am rooting for him as he is studying and getting a certificate to be a death doula. I am clearing the schedule, making sure he's got time to do that as he is pursuing a certification to do integration therapy for the new psychedelic modalities. I'm all in. Him feeling supported and celebrated, that makes him know that I'm not only interested, but that I love him enough to be supportive in the things that he wants to do. Of course, he is cheering loud for me. This isn't just obvious. This is also researched. Celebrating and sharing wins is critical. It's probably one of the reasons why your roommate, you need to start pointing out what's going right instead of griping about the shit that's going wrong. Researchers from UCLA discovered that the single most crucial factor in tightening or destroying a bond that you have with your partner is how you react to good news in one another's lives. How you react to good news, based on research, way more important than how you react to any bad news.

Here's why. You see, researchers found that celebrating your partner gives your partner an emotional lift. Whereas playing down big news It's like, Oh, that's okay. That's okay. It leaves a lasting chill. You can start implementing that practice immediately. The next time your partner has something good happen, big or small, celebrate that shit. Show them how proud you are. Give them a high five. Hug them. If they don't have something amazing going on, freaking call it out. Thank you for taking the dog out. Thank you for doing this. The small things really matter because when they're ignored, those small things become weeds and resentment that grow and that separate the two of you. Now, the third thing, we did an entire episode on this. I call it Get on the Fun Bus. I'm serious. In therapy, one thing that I said over and over to Chris is this, Our life is too serious, man. I am so sick and tired of talking about all this serious shit. I am tired of the problems. I am tired of just feeling like life is a grind. We need to have more fucking fun. The thing about fun, and we talked about this on the episode about having fun with your family around the holidays, holidays, is you're not having fun unless you plan to have fun.

I think we all make the mistake of thinking that, Oh, fun has to be spontaneous. No. When you were little, your parents planned all the fun shit you did, and so you got to get serious about inserting fun again. In fact, I want to share a story with you. This is how important this is and how this simple concept infuses a dead relationship with new energy. It infuses that roommate syndrome that you may be feeling with this new rhythm and fun that can happen. Instead of that slow quitting, you can pick up the fun again and start to reinvest in each other. And I'm telling you right now, the more that you can bring fun back into your relationship, just like you did when you were dating in the beginning, remember those days? There's a reason why dating is fun because you're planning fun things to do. Just this past weekend, we had flown from Southern Vermont to Northern California to go to a business meeting, and we had 90 minutes before we had to get to the start of this business meeting. And as we're driving from the San Francisco airport, I'm like, Oh, my God.

Have you ever seen the Redwood Forest? I think Mirror Woods is right here. Neither one of us had never been there. So we pull off the highway. It is 4:15 at night. The Mirror Woods National Forest is closing in 45 minutes. There is a dark, looming rain cloud coming, and it looks like it's about to rain horizontally. We drive straight to Merewoods with 30 minutes to spare. We were the only ones there. It was so fun. And there were this dark, cloudy sky, so it felt like we were in a hobbit movie We hadn't planned it. It was so fun, and it reminded me, We need to do more of that. So the fastest way to create more energy, go see a great movie. Go exercise or hike together. Take dancing lessons. Cook something new. Check out a concert. Head to a theme park. Ride a roller coaster. Go skinny-dipping. It doesn't matter what you do. Do something that you used to do when you were dating. Just make it fun. And what if your partner doesn't want to do any of these fun things? Total bump on the log. All right, well, when we come back, I have somebody who's struggling with that, and we're going to hear her question next.

All right, welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and we're talking about the things that I have learned after being married for 26 years and working with a marriage therapist with my husband for the past two years. We've covered a couple of them, and now I want to address a question that I am getting a lot. This one comes from a listener named Jenn. Hey, Mel, it's Jenn. How do we continue to move forward through the change process with a partner who's not willing to move forward to, or at least encourage you. There's a huge gap coming, and it's really scary. Thanks so much, Mel.

We appreciate everything that you do.

I can hear the fear in your voice, Jenn. It is scary when you get to a point where you realize that you've grown apart from somebody that you used to know. But first, remember, if underneath all that, you still truly love this person, and you're willing to work on it. You can absolutely make it better, and it's worth doing the work on. But your question is something that I get a lot. Your partner is not encouraging you, and your partner sounds like doesn't want to do the work. I'm going to address this, and I want to just make sure that there are two aspects to this question of your partner not wanting to move forward, not wanting to join you, not encouraging you. There is two situations where that's true, and one of them is not that big of a deal, and one of them is a really big deal. If you're with somebody that doesn't want to do the things that you want to do, they're not interested in having fun. For example, let's say my husband really wanted to go to a dude ranch. I personally have zero interest in doing that. I do not want to move forward with that idea.

I once went to a dude ranch to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday, and I got bucked off a horse and broke my leg and my tailbone. Not interested in that. However, it is important if you want to go the distance. I believe this so much that you are able to do things on your own, and you are supported in that. It's very different to say that your partner doesn't want to be the plus one in your professional dancing career, or they don't want to be the plus one in your desire to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. That's cool. You should pursue things separately from one another. You should have friends that you go off and do things with. You should have goals and hobbies that are yours alone. But I don't think that's what you're asking. I think what you're asking is, what do I do if I want to work on this, but My husband will not go to therapy. My husband will not address the problems. My partner or wife will not do the work. If you're in that situation where you're willing and you love this person, and they refuse to go to therapy, it's not going to work.

You can go to therapy alone, but you will not be working on your marriage. You'll be working on yourself. And yes, therapy will change you for the better. It might just change some of your habits and your mindset, so that changes the dynamic in your marriage. But to me, that's really a marriage of enduring. It's a marriage that you're surviving. Because you're with somebody that's not willing to meet you halfway. When you're in a relationship and the other person won't work on it, what's going to happen is, and I've seen this happen over and over and over again, is the one person who's willing to go to therapy, who's willing to look in the mirror, who's willing to work on themselves, you know what they tend to do? They work themselves to a new level and right on out of that marriage. That's what happens. Because if you don't continue to grow with somebody, you're going to grow to resent them. That is a scary place. But my only recommendation is you got to keep asking. You You got to work on yourself. At some point, there will become a time where you're going to say, It's not negotiable.

In order for me to stay in this relationship, you have to be able to do X, Y, Z. If you can't do those things, then I can't stay in this because you're not willing to work on it. I hope it doesn't come to that. Now, another thing that has made a big difference in our relationship in the last couple of years, bringing us much closer together, is reversing roles. This is not some thing you're going to do in the bedroom, although you can. This is not the thing that I'm referring to, although maybe Chris and I should try that. But what I'm talking about is the default roles that you both play in your relationship. I used to be the person, and this is probably due to my anxiety, where I was the one that was always planning everything. I would pick the restaurants, I'd set the agenda, I would bulldoze the path forward. Here's what I learned in therapy. That in me moving so fast all the time and always taking control, it created two major problems. Problem number one, Chris had zero room to step in and take the lead and take care of me.

The more I just did it, I I just took care of it, I just picked the restaurant, the more I made Chris feel really concerned that if he tried to do those things, I wouldn't like what he did. My busyness, my proactiveness, my anxiety about it, my just get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done, it literally made his silence and his thinking worse because there was no room for him to do anything. Second, and here's where the real kicker came, I started to feel like everything was always up to me, and that if I didn't do it, nobody would do it. It's funny because this dynamic that I created because of my anxious and go-getter nature, literally was the reason why this happened. I would do everything and then be like, Why the hell are you doing something? Why is it always me doing something? Then Chris would go like, Well, because you're always doing something, and I never have time to do something, and I would like to do something, but you've already done that thing. We were just locked in this. We were physically together, but having a massive disconnection in our emotional experience of being together.

That theme showed up over and over and over again in therapy. In fact, when Dr Cooper said to us, You guys are great at transaction, you're sequestered emotionally. That's exactly what he meant, that you're great at doing all this shit, Mel, and you're great at doing all your shit, Chris, but you're in your own corners emotionally, and you're not aware of how one another is feeling. So how are we changing that? Well, there's a lot of slowing down I'm learning when you are changing a relationship for the better. Because what you're really changing in your relationship when you change it for the better is you are breaking apart the old patterns, and you are replacing them with new ways of showing up. And so Again, it's like habits that you need to break and replace and a muscle that you need to wrap. Me, personally, I'm working on stepping back instead of just racing ahead full throttle. I am giving Chris the lead on planning and organizing. I mean, the man does design and lead men's retreats for crying out loud. So for example, when our anniversary came up, normally I would pick what we're going to I would do all this stuff.

I also noticed that I have this propensity to be like, Oh, no, that's okay. You don't have to get anything. Oh, no, I don't need anything. Let's not do presents this year. And then I'd be pissed off that there were no presents. So the poor guy couldn't win. I told you I was the asshole in this relationship. So I said to Chris, Why don't you just take the reins? Don't even tell me what we're doing. And it was incredible. He surprised me and booked this place that was literally less than an hour away from us in Southern Vermont. We took a few days off to just unplug and eat phenomenal food and sleep without the dog waking us up at 5:30 in the morning. Chris surprised me. It was on our 26th wedding anniversary on that first night with this stunning ring and vows that he had written out. The ring was really insane because Chris had not given me a piece of jewelry that he had picked out and bought for me since our engagement ring. I'm going to say that again. In 26 years, Chris had not picked out and given me a piece of jewelry since our engagement ring.

I had always pointed things out and told him what to get and again, manage that. What had happened is a year ago, we were deep in therapy, and I was out in Vegas to give a speech, and Chris had come with me. As a lark, one night before we were about to pull into the elevators at the hotel, we walked into this jewelry store, and I tried on this crazy ring. And little did I know Chris had called the store after we left Vegas, got the details, and had a jeweeler back home make it. And he had been holding onto it for months, waiting for the right time to give it to me. Now, I, of course, had nothing to give to him, but it was incredible. And after that experience, I nicknamed him the Trip Leader, because I realized that the moments in life that I feel the safest and the most in love with him are not when he's giving me jewelry, it's when he's the leader. He's blazing the trail when we're hiking. He's setting up camp when we're camping. He is really doing what he does best, which, ironically, is planning.

In he's so good at it, I might never, ever plan a thing again. One other thing I want to say about that. When our 25th wedding anniversary hit, things were so bad between us. We didn't do anything. I mean, imagine making it to 25 years and being in a state in your marriage where you're like, I don't even feel like celebrating. We have so much work to do to find our way back to one another after all the shit that we have been through these past couple of years and how far apart we feel from one another and how much resentment has built up. For him, how much shame and regret. For me, shame and regret, too. That on our 25th wedding anniversary, we didn't do anything. We didn't celebrate, we didn't post about it, we didn't toast. We just Let the day come and we let the day go. For us to get to a point a year later where he and I have been working hard to truly address the things that went sideways, and to hear one another, and to be interested in one another's experience and feelings, and be interested in showing up and changing, that's what we were actually celebrating.

That's why there were new vows. That's what's possible when both of you are willing to do the work. The fifth thing is you got to ask for what you need. It's taken me 20 some years to just ask for what I need. This is a novel idea, but instead of being pissed off at your partner, why not just ask for what you need? It's a lot easier than being angry and annoyed all the time. I think a lot of us get into trouble. This is that slow, quiet quitting that I was talking about, Because we show up in a relationship and we expect our partner to behave the same way we wish they would. We don't ever fully communicate what we actually need. They don't ever fully communicate what they need. I gave you the example of us being married for 20 years and me not even knowing that Chris prefers to be intimate in the morning. Never talked about it. That's dumb. Why not just talk about it? It just is so obvious. I'll give you another example. I love flowers. I I love, love, love flowers. I have parents that turned a wooded plot of land in suburban West Michigan into this gorgeous, gorgeous perennial garden.

I just love flowers. It reminds me of my childhood. I love taking care of them. I love growing them, and I love buying myself flowers. Nothing makes me happier than going to the grocery store, and if I see a little bouquet of tulips or daffodils, I mean, I'm I'm talking $3, $4. You don't have to buy the roses. I just love having fresh flowers in my house. When Chris goes to the grocery store and he buys a bundle of tulips for me, it's like, Oh, my God, you were thinking about me, and you know this about me. It took me a long time to tell Chris that. Do you know what was happening instead? For years, when I would travel, I would take off on a Monday to go give a bunch of speeches. I'd return home on a Friday, like a lot of you do, that travel for work, that are road warriors out there. I would come home, and you know what would be on the kitchen counter when I got home? A vase full of the dead flowers that I had bought for myself, that nobody in the family had bothered to pull out of the vase while I was gone.

When I would walk in and see those dead flowers, that was a sign to me that nobody even thought about me while I was gone. Nobody was expecting me to come home tonight. Nobody was excited for me to come home? One day I said to Chris, You know, it would mean a lot to me if when I come home from a business trip, or, hell, whenever you go to the grocery store, if you just Picked up flowers. Because when I see, I'm talking grocery store flowers people. I'm not talking go to the florist. I'm saying the bare minimum. When there's a little bundle of tulips sitting in a plastic vase on the counter or a Mason jar, it makes me know that you're thinking of me. I'll tell you, that's all it took. Every time the man goes to the grocery store, he returns with flowers, and it puts the biggest freaking smile on my face. So ask. Instead of punishing somebody, instead of quietly quitting, get loud about what you want. And in return, ask your partner to get loud about what they need from you. Don't assume that you know your partner's love language or what they wish that you were doing.

Just ask them and start doing it. And finally, this is a big one. Assume good Intent. One of the things that I've learned about my husband Chris, it's been a reminder, really. This is one of those things that happens when you really slow down and you get present with the person, whether it's your spouse or your partner or a friend, is that my husband's just a really nice guy. There's not a mean bone in Christopher Robin's body. I get so worked up in my own shit that I forget that. I just forget that he's not out to be an asshole. He's not trying to screw me over. He's not some dickhead that's doing that. He's just a nice guy who's doing his best. See, I think we forget that. If you deep down still love the person that you're with, but there's all this crap that's built up, find your way to anchor there. Assume good intent. Assume that they didn't mean to use that tone of voice, that they didn't mean to frustrate you, that they didn't mean to fail at whatever they failed at, that they didn't mean. Assume good intent Remember the person that you fell in love with, because I believe that person is still deep down in there.

But any relationship, whether it's a friendship or a family relationship or a love relationship that goes the distance, there's shit that builds up. But the person who they are at their core, that doesn't change. That doesn't change. If your response to me saying, assume good intent is, oh, Christ, Mel. You're starting to make a case about the person you're with, there's your answer. Get out. If you can't even admit that at their core, this is a good person, this is a nice person, then get out because you're with somebody that's not a nice person. You're more committed to making your case and being right about than you are about seeing something deeper that's worth working for. To me, that's the bottom line, because that's what I've learned through these past challenging years and at times very painful changes in years that we've been through, that if you're both willing to look a little deeper and remind yourself of why you loved them in the first place, if you're both willing to look in the mirror and work on yourselves and your relationship, you can work through anything. You really can. You can get through some horrific things.

You can get through things that seem insurmountable, whether it is addiction or the death of a loved one, or cheating, or bankruptcy. You can get through all kinds of things if you're both willing to work on yourselves and your relationship. If you're willing to remember that Deep down, you're with somebody that is a good person at heart that maybe lost their way. That your relationship is a living, breathing, organic thing, a place where you're either going to grow or you're going to wither and die. You got to care for it. You got to tend to it. You got to shower it with kindness and genuine interest and support. And please, dear God, can we start having some fucking fun? I mean, let's just stop waiting for another couple to invite you over and start throwing some dinner parties and some dance parties and some playlists and have some fun. Maybe it's that we've all gotten a little too serious. Save the serious talk for your therapy sessions and bring the fun to the rest of your life. Bring your inner life to the surface. I'm telling you, your connection will not only grow, but it will also grow strong.

In case no one else tells you today, I hope that your partner or your friend tells you this, but in case they I'm going to tell you, I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life and better relationships. And how about you start putting what I just shared with you to work right now? Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.