I'm Laurie Gottlieb.

I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic.

And I'm Guy Wench.

I'm the author of Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy advice column for Ted.

And this is Dear Therapists.

Each week we invite you into a real session where we help people confront the problems in their lives and then give them actionable advice and have them report back to let us know what happened when they did what we suggested.

So sit back and welcome to today's session.

This week, a woman who feels rejected by her husband wonders if there's any hope for their marriage.

I'd given them an ultimatum a month and a half before that, where I said, let's focus on our relationship intensively.

If things don't go in the right direction, we're going to have to figure out the next step.

He told me that I was threatening divorce, and then he said I'm done.

I'm just done.

First A quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only.

It does not constitute medical or psychological advice and is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part orn ful, and we may edit it for length and clarity.

In the session you'll hear all names have been changed for the privacy of our guests.

Hey guy, Hi Laurie.

What do we have in our mailbox today?

Today we have a letter about a marriage that's very young and not going too well.

And it goes like this, deotherapists.

My husband and I have been married for a year and five months.

We dated long distance for only nine months, and I was so sure I was making the right decision in marrying him.

I didn't think twice about it.

During our courtship, we facetimed about an hour every day and had weekly date nights where we would get dressed up, drink wine, and discuss one or two of the thirty six questions to lead to love.

We would sometimes play music together, and the trips when we would see each other were full of affection, cuddling, good conversations, romance, and fun.

I thought I had found my dream man.

Soon after we got married, there was a sudden change in his behavior.

He does not like to sit right next to me on the couch anymore, but now on the space of at least six inches between us.

He has become snippy with me, and when I tried to make conversation, he often gives me one word answers.

He's gregarious with his teenage son, friends in the community and acquaintances, and he's charmed my family and friends.

I'm not sure exactly what happened between us.

When I moved across the country and into his house.

I tried to redecorate the house and took down most of the artwork in the living room so I could put up my own.

I was under the impression that I could redecorate the house, but he did not appreciate this, and that ended up being our first real fight as a couple.

He's been colder to me ever since then.

I waited so long to find this man and would love for things to work out between us, but I feel like I'm his last priority.

His parents tolerate each other but don't enjoy each other's company or companionship.

My parents had an extremely loving, fun, affectionate relationship.

My mom also passed away suddenly two years ago.

I'm thirty eight and really want to be a mum, but I don't know if I can waste more of my time with him.

We've been to therapy, but his work schedule often doesn't work with our therapists, so he hasn't been able to join me in therapy for months.

I gave him an ultimatum that we wouldn't try for a kid together for the next three months and would focus intensively on our relationship.

I suggested doing a marriage workshop or seeing another therapist, but he's against the idea.

I would appreciate any guidance on how to proceed.

Thank you, Emily.

The thing that really stands out for me here is just the lack of communication that's going on with this couple.

She mentioned that she moved in with him and she redecorated the living room, but it doesn't sound like they talked about it first.

And then they had what she said was their first real fight is a couple, and I wonder what that looked like.

How did they talk about this disagreement?

And the other thing that really stood out to me was that he does not want to engage with her in any way, even after she's made several attempts to try to talk in therapy with him, to try to go to a workshop together.

He just seems to flat out refuse.

I think that is very concerning.

And the other thing is that with all of that, and with the sudden change of behavior that she talks about, she doesn't give us any hint of the why.

It sounds like she doesn't know.

So in all the conversations they've had so far, in the therapy that they've been to, and that he did attend a little love, I don't know if that didn't come up or if she never got a satisfactory answer, because she sounds bewildered and confused.

The other thing that strikes me is that she said her mom passed away suddenly two years ago, which seems right about the time that either she was getting into this relationship or was already in this relationship.

And I wonder what she's done in terms of her grieving.

She mentions that she's thirty eight and she really wants to be a mom herself, and I wonder how this all fits together.

We have so many questions, So let's go talk to her and get some answers.

You're listening to, dear therapists for my heart Radio.

We'll be back after a short break.

I'm Laurie Gottlieb.

And I'm Guy Wench and this is dear Therapist.

Hi Emily, Hi Guy, Hi Laurie.

It's very nice of you to come on our show.

Thank you so much for taking my letter.

So, Emily, we were looking at the timeline, and from what you were writing, it seems that you met your husband around the same time that your mom had passed away, and we weren't quite sure of what happened when and how one affected the other.

Could you tell us a little bit about that.

Yes, So, my mom passed away a little over two years ago.

She had a heart attack, died very suddenly, and so I moved back home to be with my dad to help him out.

And right before I moved back home, I decided to add this guy on Facebook who I had met a couple times in person.

It just so happens that his family lived out where my dad lived, and he was out there visiting his family.

We decided to meet up when I was moving back there.

So it was just kind of this amazing serendipitous meeting where we met up a few times.

He was out there for Thanksgiving and I was just moving back there to help my dad out, and then he was coming back here where we live now, on the other side of the country.

Basically, I guess it was about two months after my mom passed way, so then we started dating long distance and then got married pretty quickly.

But yeah, I kind of I wonder if my mom passing away, if that kind of opened me up to wanting to be really committed in a relationship.

I think that might have been a factor there.

Where were you in terms of your own relationships at the time that you started dating your husband, meaning had you been in other long term relationships?

When was your last relationship before this?

Yeah, I've been in several maybe one to two year long relationships that some of them started out very serious.

I thought they were going in the direction of marriage, and then one or the other party ended things just because things didn't feel right or didn't seem like they were going in that direction in the timeline that I wanted.

I didn't really want to date someone for like seven or eight years before we getting married and having kids.

I've always known I wanted kids, So a lot of the relationships kind of ended because they wanted to keep dating for several more years before getting engaged and then moving on.

But you're saying, Emilie that many of them started out serious and then kind of ran into problems.

I'm just curious about how quickly things became serious, because I understand there's a difference between obviously waiting seven and eighty is and waiting seven to eight minutes, and so I'm just curious about how serious quickly.

That's a good question.

The other very serious relationship I had, it lasted maybe almost a year, and it was in the first month.

We were talking about big things like having a family together, and you know, said I love you very early on, like in the first month or so.

You're saying that the relationships ended because you wanted to get married and have kids.

But it sounds like in the relationship you're describing that that person was very serious from the beginning.

So how does it shift from we're really serious, this person was talking about marriage in the first month to finding out this person actually doesn't want something serious.

Yeah, that's a good question.

So the other relationship I'm thinking of, some things came out about him and that concerned me, and I brought them up, and then I think he felt insecure after that point, and he didn't think he could live up maybe to my expectations.

So it went on maybe another six months, and then he ended things.

What were your expectations that were hard to live up to?

He was kind of into more partying than I was, like with his guy friends.

He would do some drugs that I wasn't comfortable with, and he said that he would be willing to change those habits, but I felt like it was kind of a forced thing, and I think he said that I was kind of controlling, so I felt like he didn't really mean it when he said he wanted to change those habits.

Is that something that has happened with you several times where it's very intense in the beginning, And by the way, often things are very intense in the beginning of a relationship because people are really excited about each other.

But it sounds like things go from zero to sixty.

Yeah, right away.

That's the big one really where it went from zero to sixty.

There was maybe another one also that it was started out really intense and then fell apart, and this other guy I'm thinking of ended up having some alcohol issues.

But part of what goes from zero to sixty are your expectations?

It sounds like, in other words, I might get really excited about someone and might even say I love you to that someone and talk about maybe marriage and kids.

It times that I don't really fully know them yet, and then when I find out more, it turns out maybe that's not that possible.

With your current husband, things started long distance.

But it sounds like your expectations went from zero to sixty again.

Yeah, they did.

He was giving all the signals that he wanted the same things as I did.

He told me on our first date, like I want marriage and a family, and I thought that was really attractive.

Actually, I've really liked the directness, and I haven't met too many guys who turn out to actually want a family.

I feel like I've met a lot who maybe say they do, and then they end up having some issues that get in the way of that.

You seem to have choked up a little bit when you said you haven't met many guys who have wanted a family.

Can you talk about what just happened there?

Yeah?

I mean, like, I guess I would love to have the whole package.

Someone who's really awesome wants to spend a life together and grow together and has the same like long term goals with a family.

Maybe it's made me a little impatient when I'm dating people.

I don't think the issue, Emily, is that some of these guys are saying, yes, I want marriage and a family, and many other guys do not, And so that means okay, good, they're at least serious and want the same things I do.

What a relief To feel that relief and to feel like, Okay, this is the right track, I think is absolutely fine.

I think what happens, though, is that that excitement and the impatience, as you pointed out, makes you fill in a complete picture from just a few dots.

Yeah, and so you're making a ton of assumptions about what's filling in those dots, and then you're in the process of discovery about whether this lives up to the assumptions that you've made.

Yeah, but the impatience is causing you to decide on a prospect before you've fully vetted that person.

Yeah, that's one hundred percent correct.

That's a good point.

Is it one you've been aware of?

I definitely am aware of it.

With dev like, it's been pretty clear things changed, so quickly, and I did think I was vetting him by having daily conversations, hour long FaceTime meetings and then also weekly date nights, And I thought that that kind of thing would continue, and he had different ideas when it came to marriage, like it just it didn't continue suddenly pretty suddenly.

So yeah, I did fill in the blanks, I think, But I also I thought I was like doing my due diligence and getting to know him.

Did he propose while you were still long distance?

Yes, so you decided to get married even though you had never lived in the same city, right.

Did you think that maybe things would be different when you're actually in the same location.

You don't have to be living together, but at least be in the same city.

Yeah.

I remember people suggested that to us, like, well, maybe you could go there and just work and live there and get to know each other better.

And I was like, no, we're good, We're getting married.

So before you moved there to get married, did you both talk about what it would mean to be married, and how did you talk about integrating your lives from being long distance to all of a sudden moving in together creating a life together.

Sounds like he was married before.

He has a teenager who lives with him.

How did you talk about that?

And did you even know his son?

I did know his son.

We took a lot of trips to see each other back and forth, probably once a month or so, a long weekend at least, and then I spent like a two week period with them before we got married, and we were kind of getting the house ready a little bit for me to move in, and that all went pretty well.

I knew we weren't going to talk an hour every night at dinner like we had been doing that whole nine months, but he now says that he neglected his son while we were doing that.

I knew things would change, like we probably weren't going to have as many high quality conversations, but I didn't know things would change as much as they did.

Is his son living with you full time?

He's with us halftime and I'm actually I'm currently out of the house.

I moved out about two weeks ago because things came to a head.

We had a really big fight, probably a couple weeks before I wrote the letter, and he ended up stonewalling me after that fight for like six weeks.

What was the fight about?

So he's lived in this house for a long time, and in our office there's his desk, his son's desk, and my desk, and my desk was just piled with stuff because I didn't have a bookshelf in there, and he had two full bookshelves, and so I was asking, Hey, can I take over this one shelf here to put some of my stuff on.

We had talked about that for actually several weeks, like, hey, one of these weekends, let's move the stuff from the shelf so I can put my stuff on it.

And it just didn't happen week after week.

So finally I said, hey, listen, if we don't get around to it next week, I'm just going to do it on my own.

And he got really mad about that.

What does that look like?

Where he got really mad about that?

He raised his voice, kind of gets really anxious, uptight.

It feels just not good to be around him.

He was like, don't create a problem for me, Like, if you move that, I'm not going to know where it is.

That's going to create another problem in this house.

And then I said, okay, listen, you can make your own decisions about what you do, but I'm going to take that into consideration.

I've given him an ultimatum a month and a half before that, where I said, let's folks on our relationship intensively.

If things don't go in the right direction, we're going to have to figure out the next step.

He told me that I was threatening divorce and then he said I'm done.

I'm just done.

So he basically stonewalled me for six weeks after that.

What does that look like?

He stonewalled you.

I started sleeping in a different room because he asked you to no because of just the tension from that particular fight.

So he stonewalled you, but in reaction you left him.

Yeah, I guess we were both maybe stonewalling each other.

Yes, your first big argument was around the same issue of you redecorating the house and here you want to just move something Michelle for much smaller endeavor than you know, redoing the living room, and he's not participating.

Did you express to him how you felt about those things?

Were you able to say things like, I really want to be able to feel at home.

The way that you keep postponing this makes me feel like you're not making room for me figuratively literally, Were you able to talk about the emotional piece for you.

I did.

I said all of that, and his response he wanted to redecorate together, but when it came down to, hey, here's a picture of a couch that I think would look good, or here's some bookshelves I think would look good, he ended up turning down every proposal I had.

And I told him that too.

You say you'd want to work together, but then you turn me down for every suggestion I make.

So when you moved out, you said, two weeks ago, how did that go down?

And what's happened?

Since he and his son were going to be out of town this one weekend, and I was just like, okay, this is my opportunity to get everything out of here.

I moved things into storage and now I'm staying with friends.

Since then, he's written me.

Actually every day he texts me and asks how I'm doing, and he's trying to be in touch a little bit.

I'm confused, Emily, because you said you had that argument about the shelf.

He said, we're done, and then you decided to move out, Like he might have said that in a moment of anger distress, but then you decided to move out.

It doesn't sound like the two of you really communicated about what happened between you.

What he meant by we're done, why you were moving out?

Yeah, what do you think it's in the way of the two of you communicating.

You mentioned that you went to couple's therapy, and then it was hard to get him to go there.

But in the times that he did go, there were the two of you able to communicate it all.

Yeah.

I really enjoyed couples there because it was like one of the few times where we really did communicate.

What was he able to tell you about himself and his feelings about you coming into his house and coming into his life with his teenage son and redecorating, and and why he was feeling a little bit crowded and wanted some space.

Did you understand the why of it?

Yeah?

He also said he felt like I was controlling.

We didn't talk a whole lot about the space and the redecorating in Couple's Therapy.

I would say a lot of last year the beginning was like me meeting friends in this town.

We were in trying to establish myself a little bit and finding my own happiness.

So I'm not completely reliant on him.

Actually, Emani Laurie's asking what did you learn about his feelings about things?

Because when you're saying he said, I am controlling.

What did you learn about how he feels in these situations or in any way about these things?

I got a sense that he was very anxious about his son graduating from high school next year.

But what did you learn about his feelings about you?

He said, he was very grateful for me, and he thought I added a lot to the family, and he really loves me and cares about me.

I mean another complication in first year of marriage, he found out he had cancer, so he had to major actually two major surgeries for that.

How far into the relationship were you when he found out he had cancer?

About six months into the marriage he found out he had cancer.

I wondered if the lack of like good communication and coming up with kind of a system of communicating regularly was because of all the things he had to deal with with his health.

But his last surgery was almost a year ago.

Was he able to talk about his feelings about having cancer and how he's feeling about those surgeries and prognosis and all those.

Things a little bit?

But he's not an expressive person about his feelings.

He likes to think of himself as this like happy, go lucky, golden retriever.

People come to him with their problems.

He's just always the happy one.

So I think even with me, that really put us at a distance, because he wanted to come off as just always had it together, didn't really want to discuss things that didn't make him look strong.

But you would ask him how he's feeding about these things.

I don't think I did at that point.

Why not?

Do you think?

I think part of it was so one of our assignments from our couple's therapist was to check in with each other every night and try to include something about a feeling that something good or bad that happened in the day.

And he just had a very hard time including something that had to do with his feelings.

I'd feel like, so, how was your day and he would say it was good, and I'm like, can you give me more details?

Else?

Who did you interact with?

And he didn't really want to go there.

What you're asking, Emily is the what who are you with those kinds of things.

That's not so much about feelings, that's reporting events.

I'm thinking about the fact that your mom died a couple months before you started this relationship, and I don't know how you processed your grief or how you've gone through that.

And then your husband gets cancer six months into your marriage, and it sounds like the two of you didn't really talk about what was going on for either of you, and you keep talking about how he's not a really good communicator.

But I wonder if you're aware that maybe you don't have a lot of practice in communicating, and that when the two of you are together, do you want to have some kind of communication going on?

Mm hmm, but that maybe the way you're going about it hasn't worked because the two of you just really don't know how to do it.

You say he had cancer.

I don't know.

Is his prognosis okay at this point and besides surgeries, did he go through chemo, did he go through radiation?

None of that?

Just surgery thankfully, so his prognosis is pretty good.

But it must have been scary.

Yeah, it was terrifying for me.

And I think I did communicate that, especially at the beginning when we were trying to figure out what was going on, and I remember him saying he was scared before the surgery.

Did you know how he wanted to be supported?

I think I did, and he was extremely appreciative of me being there for him.

And he says, like, I saved his life because I told him I like insisted that he go to a really good cancer treatment center.

So yeah, he was like, he was very appreciate of that, which was nice.

What makes you emotional when you're saying that right now?

I don't know.

It's nice.

I guess it's just like he really I think he did have maybe he does have feelings of love toward me, but he's it just didn't get expressed enough.

And so when you recall a moment like this where it the gratitude of the affection did get expressed, that's moving.

Yeah.

I mean I want to get back to something you said earlier that was just curious about.

You said that he and his son were out of town and that was your opportunity to move out.

Why did you need an opportunity to move out?

Why did you have to wait for that?

We had started going to therapy.

It was like three weeks in a row, and that's the first time we were going consistently since last year.

I think he knew I was serious about what I was saying, So I was afraid, and I was thinking about past relationships where I've stayed too long, and I've had this moment in those relationships where I was like, oh my gosh, I wish I had left, like nine months before when there was kind of a window.

It was just an obvious window to get out.

You moved out without telling him that you were moving out.

No, I texted him and told him he was out of town.

And that's kind of when I decided to do it, when he had left already and I just sent him a text and.

Said, can we back up just a second.

You went a couple's therapy.

For three weeks, you'd been trying to get him to go to therapy.

He's finally going to therapy, and you finally get what you want, meaning you're talking at least with a therapist, and when you finally get what you want, you decide to leave.

Yeah, what did you.

Learn about him in those three weeks?

If you could put aside all of your feelings about when it happened, and you were an observer and like a journalist and just reporting on this, what do you think you would say, oh, this is what I learned about what he was experiencing.

You don't have to agree with it, but just what did you learn about his perspective?

I learned that from his perspective, I wasn't taking his story into account or his needs and wants.

Which were what the needs and wants.

Well with the house.

But he really wants to have a say in what happens and what goes on.

That he communicated to you, even independently and before.

But what did you learn about his feelings or his needs and wants, Because yes, it sounds like he's not the most fluent and open communicator about his feelings.

But as Laurie was saying, your communication issues come when you encounter someone like that.

What tends to happen with you is that you think, Okay, I can't get information from them.

I need to make unilateral decisions and think about what's best for me.

And at that point, you start making big decisions without including him in them, without communicating to him about them, so you start therapy.

It would have been a good opportunity to say, look, I'm starting this, but it is too little, too late in some ways.

So I'm here because I want this to work out, but I need things to progress, and I want to be clear that I'm not here with a ton of rope, at least to alert him and the therapist that you know you're in some kind of place there.

But yeah, those processes happen in your head.

You move out, you're living with him and with a teenage boy who's going to be affected by that, and it's not something that's discussed.

There's no preparation for the kid about the move that's about to happen.

It's almost like, well, I decided and I'm doing it.

Do you notice that you tend to start making these decisions by yourself.

I actually did bring that up in therapy in what way.

The week before I did send that text.

We had in our therapy meeting, I said, I'm looking at moving out.

What was his reaction?

He told me he didn't want me to move out, since he told me I'm done, since that big fight.

That was one of the first times he told me how much I do mean to him and how much he loves me, and he thinks I contribute so much to his life and the good far outweighs the bad.

And then you moved out anyway.

Yeah, why because of the too little, too late.

I think I'm not sure why you wanted to go to therapy with him if there was literally nothing he could do to help prepare the marriage.

In that last session, I did say, I'm going to be looking at moving out unless some kind of miracle happens, like if you want to go to an intense therapy workshop weekend with me.

But why are the anti because he's finally coming to therapy consistently.

But any couple therapists, if you come in and say, a couple syrapist, you have three weeks to fix this because otherwise I'm out.

No couple syrvice would take you because I like, well, that's not going to happen in three weeks, and so let's not waste anyone's time or money.

And so he's actually going you actually say I'm really thinking of leaving at this point, and he's like, but I really appreciate you, and you make my life richer.

And at that point you don't give it, say we'll give this process six months and evaluate.

You literally cut and run.

At the point where he's I don't know how much he would have been able to do, but he's showing up at least.

Yeah, Why that's not clear to me.

Why.

I guess it was like it was after the sort of deadline I had already given of, like let's try to work on ourselves intensively for three months.

He wasn't able to go to therapy that whole three months.

Why did you even engage in therapy with him at that point if you were sure that there was literally nothing he could do to repair the marriage.

It sounds like you weren't communicating that you were done.

And my other question is why were you done if finally you're getting what you want.

He's coming consistently, he's communicating how much you mean to him.

He's saying all the things that he wasn't able to say before.

And as guy said, we don't know what would have happened.

Maybe you would have found indeed, this is not a marriage that works.

But right at the moment where finally you two are in a position to communicate with each other and get to know each other better, you, as guys said, cut and run.

M hm.

Does that make sense to you?

If you weren't willing to give the marriage a chance, why were you going to therapy?

Why did you ask him to go.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think I wanted to talk to it and just hear what was going on in his head at that point, because I didn't know.

But you didn't communicate that.

You didn't say, you know what, Here we are in couple's therapy.

There's absolutely nothing I'm willing to do to repair this marriage.

But I just want to hear what's going on in your head.

Well, I did want big change to happen in him, in us, that.

You didn't give it an opportunity to happen.

Big change doesn't happen in three weeks.

Yeah, And to me it smacks a little bit of stuff you've done before, which is that you decide in your own head.

Right.

This one wants a family, he wants kid, He's kind, affectionate.

It's a long distance.

We only see each other once in a while.

We've never even had an argument.

I always say to people, and until you've had an argument, you don't know the person.

Now, there's a lot that hasn't happened.

I've met the son, but I haven't lived with a son.

I don't know how that's going to go.

My mom just died recently.

I might be looking for another family as a replacement.

Unconsciously, all those things might have been going on, but you're goind have decided, Okay, this is it.

I'm going for it.

And at the point do you decide you're going for it, the data doesn't matter because you're going to go for it.

So then you go, and you immediately assume I get to redecorate the home that he's lived in with his son without asking him, and then he gets really upset, and then you decide, Okay, I'm giving an ultimatum, not let's talk together and give ourselves a period of time.

You give the ultimatum, and you decide, and then, despite a change in the circumstance of him again with no guarantees, actually engaging in a process that might even theoretically lead to the big change you were looking for.

Nope, but I gave myself an ultimatum.

So now I'm going to make another unilateral decision and move out and not even tell him.

And so you have this pattern of making decisions that involved the other person by yourself and then enacting them regardless of whether that's a fit with the new realities.

I think I also knew he would be really upset when I like and I didn't want to be there with them in the house movie out.

Emily, I'm going to interrupt, because what I notice is that when I ask you a question, or Guy asked you a question, you go off to something else.

Guy was talking about a pattern that he's noticed, and I'm wondering if it made you uncomfortable to hear that, and that's why you went off to talk about more content as opposed to your feelings.

What was it like to hear guy talk about that pattern that you have.

Maybe it made you anxious, Maybe it made you feel defensive.

Yeah, I think I do feel like a little bit defensive, But it is good to hear too, and I know I have things I'd like to work on.

We're not saying that dev hasn't contributed at least fifty percent to what's going on between the two of you, but we're saying there is something that's going on with you that maybe widens the gap between what you say you want and what you actually do.

So you say you want a stable relationship, You want, as you said, the whole package.

You want this person that you really care about, that you really love, that also wants the things that you want in life, marriage, kids, and then you do things that set you up for not having that.

We don't know what dev is willing to do or capable of doing, and I don't think anybody has that information at this point, but we do know that a lot hasn't been talked about between the two of you.

That you had a long distance relationship where you say he was very communicative and very emotionally present, and then you got in the same place.

There's obviously going to be a big adjustment to living in the same place with someone integrating into the family where there's already a teenager, and then he gets very ill.

You're still dealing with the loss of your mother and you want to be a mom yourself.

And then finally, after all of this, he says, Okay, I'm coming to therapy.

And he's there consistently for three weeks, not much, but you know, we don't know what would have happened, and you text him and say, I'm out of here.

So you wanted something, You started to get closer to the possibility of seeing whether or not that could happen, and you leave, And that's the pattern we're talking about.

What's important to us is for you to see whether it works out with devor or you want to move on to somebody else, that you see this pattern so that it doesn't repeat.

Yeah, I feel like I need to process it because it's like as soon as something kind of shows some kind of potential or possibility, I make a unilateral decision a lot like I've got to get out of here.

Yes, you described him as he was the man of my dreams.

And if given it was a long distance relationship, given it happened right after your mom passed away, given you never really had any big arguments, that you never actually lived with him or with the sixteen year old, then he couldn't have been the man of your dreams because there was just too many unknowns.

But you kind of decided he's the man of my dreams.

Therefore I'm plunging forth.

And that part is problem A and problem B is once you decide to plunge forth, if there's signs that, oh, maybe not so fast, you don't heed.

And if there are signs that maybe not so fast in terms of leaving either, you don't heed.

And that's the issue that you make these decisions, and then you do them by hooker by crook, even if they counter your own wishes and needs and what you want.

Yeah, kind of impulsive decisions.

Reactive the reactive decisions, and what you're reacting to is a deep longing and desire for this connect that you haven't found in any of your other relationships either.

And the question is are you doing the things that will help you find that or are you getting in things too quickly, leaving them when maybe there's a possibility of having something better that gets in the way of what your goal is.

Yeah, it would be one thing if you went to therapy and dev was not interested in having any of these conversations or opening up in any way that would give you really good information.

And even then, though you probably wouldn't leave by text, it would be a conversation in therapy, even if he wasn't happy about it.

This is why I'm leaving.

I don't feel you're able to show up in the way that I need.

But he's trying to show up and it's only been three weeks and we're not saying stay or go.

We're looking at how you make these decisions that seem to what you're saying you want.

You said, I've always really wanted to be a mom.

I want the guy, I want the family, but you haven't been able to find it.

And I don't think it's just about dev you've had other relationships.

I think this similar pattern has happened.

Yeah, And we want to make you aware of the pattern, because if you're not aware of the pattern, you'll repeat the pattern.

Yes, I don't want to do that.

And part of the pattern is as loris saying, yes, you're thirty eight.

Sure, you have a lot of friends who've gotten married already, you have kids already, and you're feeling the sense of time and urgency, and that's making you rush things.

And my concern for you right now is now you're thirty eight and married and you want to rush things again, Like I don't want to spend too much time in therapy because I'm thirty eight.

If it's not going to work out, I need to end this and move on to the next thing.

And then you're really likely to rush the next thing.

Yeah, for sure.

And to really examine what you imagine marriage is going to do for you.

What kind of hole is it going to fill for you?

What kind of safety will it provide for you that you don't already have.

You try to move very close, thinking that that's going to provide all of that.

I see you nodding, so that resonates and maybe dev got a little lost in this.

You had ideas about I'm going to move in the house is going to look like this, and you know this is what it's going to be like.

And he needed more time, he needed more space, but couldn't communicate that.

One thing he did communicate was I feel like I neglected my son, and so he was probably trying to protect his son a bit, but didn't know how to communicate that to you.

Right, So these are all questions that couple's therapy could be really helpful for.

Where's our independence, where's our togetherness?

Where's our space?

Where's our closeness?

Right?

You said that you've been texting since you've moved out.

What's the current understanding of what's going on?

We haven't really asked any hard questions.

He's just asked, how's your day today?

What did you do today?

So you're continuing the pattern of talking without talking really, Yeah, how does it feel to you where you've moved out?

It's such a dramatic move and that you're texting back and forth without addressing what's going on.

Is that more comfortable for you or less?

I actually didn't want to be really talking right now.

I'm just sort of giving brief replies to his messages.

What do you want right now?

I think I want to cut my losses with him, move on.

I'm thinking I will want to just have a kid on my own at this point.

I know I do want a kid, it just hasn't worked out with anyone.

And I'm like, I don't have much time.

It feels like a lot of decisions are out of fear as opposed to a sense of groundedness.

That's almost like rushing into the marriage where maybe you haven't done enough research on whether that is the right decision for you.

And I think that what you end up doing is wasting a lot of time.

That is the thing that you're afraid of doing is wasting time.

But I think that you waste time by making impulsive decisions because if you could slow down a little bit, and here's the paradox, if you could slow down a little bit, you'd actually make better use of your time.

So if you had slowed down a little bit with dev In the beginning.

You'd be more clear now at thirty eight about whether or not this was the right relationship for you, or maybe you would have broken up earlier and found a different relationship that worked better for you.

But the rushing is what trips you up.

The rushing actually wasted your time.

Yeah, good point, And now.

The rushing again might waste your time.

The rushing to leave this might be a waste of time because you don't really know whether there's something that could really work here, which you could find out within a few months.

You'd get a sense of what direction you were headed, and that's not a huge time cost.

And you'd also learn a lot about your patterns, so that even if you decide that, okay, we took six months and I don't think this is going to work, you don't want to do that with the next person.

Even if you have a kid on your own, you'll probably still look for a partner, and you don't want to do that, especially with a child.

Keep making these impulsive decisions.

Yeah right, The slowing down actually prevents you from wasting time.

I don't know how to do that.

You have to a identify the reactive rush impatience, and you have to learn to tolerate it, because you have to get a little bit more comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing.

You keep saying I want to cut my losses, I want to minimize how much I'm losing, But the minimizing losses is not a strategy for winning.

You have to learn to catch it and sit with the discomfort of not knowing if this is going to be the right decision, but knowing that taking time to think things through and to identify what seems like the most reasonable course of action, that's the thing that's going to allow you to make more sound decisions.

The voice in the back of your head is going to be saying, but hurry up, and you're going to have to learn to say, I mean giving myself, say, three months to explore this in therapy.

I'm giving myself this much time before I decide to stop looking for in future fertilization.

And even once you do that, the voice in the back of your head will be shouting at you to hurry up that it's dangerous.

Once you know the pattern, you can identify it and try and neutralize that voice as much as possible, But you have to know that it's there and that it's going to keep trying to trip you up by rushing and wasting time because of it.

That's really good.

Yeah, my therapist actually said that to me, that I make impulsive decisions.

Speaking of things happening suddenly, you said that your mom died of a heart attack unexpectedly.

Can you talk a little bit about what that was like for you and what has been like for you since, and how much you've shared of that pain with dev Yeah.

It was awful.

It's been so hard.

We were so close, so it was really I miss her a lot.

She was a wonderful person, just an awesome, wonderful grandma.

And yeah, and mom and friends.

We had just a really fun, warm relationship.

We're very much alike too, of all my siblings.

And the other part that Lloyd's question was about how much of this you shd with Devin.

I don't mean in a single conversation, because grief is something that's ongoing and that needs to be talked about in an ongoing way.

Yeah.

I did.

When we were dating, shared a lot about her and how much I missed her, and I remember we would talk on zoom and I would be crying talking about her.

How would he react.

He was very warm and sympathetic and sweet and just would let me cry it out, and it felt very therapeutic to talk to him about it.

Actually, he was able to come to her memorial service, which was like six months after her death, so he was really nurturing and there for me in that time.

And then like after we got married, I remember crying about her, thinking about her, and telling him more about her, and it was a little bit different.

I don't know.

I got a feeling like that he was not comfortable with it.

I don't really know.

Why, but you didn't ask.

No.

That's been kind of my achilles heel.

I think in a lot of relationships, I want to accommodate the other person and I want them to feel comfortable.

But I've had a hard time kind of speaking out about my needs.

I think I had communicated in our therapy sessions.

He did know that that was a need of mine, like emotional closeness and intimacy.

Did he know how to give that to you in a way that you were looking for somewhat?

I would ask, Hey, it's Wednesday, can we do our date night?

And he'd be like, well, it depends.

We might have his son that night, and he wouldn't want to do it if we did have his son there, and then rescheduling it was hard and a lot of times it just wouldn't end up happening.

Did you get angry at some point and go stop pushing me off?

This is important?

Yeah, that one I did.

I said, Hey, I'm going to set a timer right now for five minutes, and it was good to talk about it, and it was a little bit longer.

So when you insist, when you follow up, when you really have agency and empowerment, you're like, oh, no, this is happening.

It happens.

Yeah.

What's notable to me is that he engaged in the conversation with you and it felt good afterward.

Yeah.

I have a feeling that you would learn in couple's therapy if you stayed in it with him and he stayed in it with you, how the two of you could have more of those kinds of conversations when you're actually able to talk about things.

He seems open to change, And I think that willingness is so important in a marriage.

Are you willing to meet your partner somewhere that makes sense for both of you, that feels good for.

Both of you.

And also he doesn't do subtle In other words, if you're hinting, implying, you know, even requesting softly, it's probably not going to land.

But when you're being super clear, then he is it.

I definitely hear you.

It's hard.

What makes it so hard for you?

I think being a middle child with a lot of sisters, it was like the squeaky wheel gets the oil kind of thing, and I didn't want to be a squeaky wheel because there were just so many other needs.

As a kid.

What you learn is that my needs are less important because there are people who have louder voices speaking wheels than mine, and so I, you know, contact them my parents, and there's only so many resources.

So I'm gonna sit this one out exactly.

Yeah, that's kind of how I grew up.

And you're finding that that doesn't work very well in a marriage, right.

Yeah.

So, Emily, we have some advice for you, and we think that you have to make a really thought through decision and we want you to choose between two options that we see that you have.

The first option is that you decide that you know what, I'm going to give this marriage one last chance.

I'm willing to give it six months in couple's therapy to do several things.

First of all, to practice speaking up, voicing my needs, voicing my feelings, really learning to be much more open and much more communicative yourself in this relationship, because that is a lesson that will work for you in other relationships.

But if you decide to take this option, what you need to do is talk to dev and I need to say to him thev First of all, I want to apologize for how I left.

I texted you.

I didn't coordinate that with you.

I didn't discuss it with you.

I didn't plan it with you, and I really should have.

But I did what I tend to do, which is to rush, because I want this so much that I think I rushed in to the relationship.

We both did, and now I rushed out of it.

And I think both of those were mistakes in some way, because there are a lot of things you and I didn't discuss before we got together.

We didn't discuss what it would be like for me to move from where I am to go to a new place.

We didn't discuss what it would be like for me to live with a teenager for the first time.

We didn't discuss how you would feel about somebody moving into your home and how you would make space for them.

We didn't discuss the fact that he felt that you were ignoring your son too much and not paying him enough at ten during our courtship, and therefore, how is it going to work when I'm there, what accommodations we have to make.

There's so much we didn't discuss, And when I think about how you feel about certain things, I have so many questions because I don't know, because we didn't have those conversations, and I think we really really need to have them.

And I have to say that there are times when I've been really clear in terms of what I needed from you, and you delivered in those occasions when I was really really clear, and it felt really good to me that you did.

And these are the steps that couples usually take on the road to getting married.

They have these conversations.

And for you two, all those conversations that you had on zoom or on the phone, there are certain things that you might have shared that felt very intimate, but it's very different from being face to face with another person on a daily basis.

And so it's almost like you have to go back and do the things that you didn't do in the right order.

You don't want to waste time, and we don't want you to waste time.

So what I think waste your time is dilly dilling?

Is am I in this?

Am I not in this?

How long should I hang on?

Should I stay at my friends and just keep texting him?

That's a complete waste of time.

We want you to either say to depth, I'm really sorry for how I left.

We didn't take the steps in the right order.

I feel like there's a lot of potential here, but only if we go to couple's therapy and we go every week for six months, and I understand that some weeks you'll be out, but I don't want to miss two weeks in a row.

So if you're away, we can zoom so we don't miss two weeks in a row, and that we both really open up to understanding each other, to saying the things that we're afraid to say about how we feel about ourselves and each other.

Everything's out on the table and we can make a really good decision.

Because dev I don't want to waste time.

The other option that you're considering is just to kind of cutbake minimize your losses, which is the strategy you typically use and think of maybe just go and having a kid by yourself.

And we're concerned that that option is also replicating the pattern from the post of rushing into things before you know enough.

So if you decide I don't want to I waste more time in this marriage because I don't think it's going to go somewhere and I don't want to spend six months doing that, And we think you should also not rush into having a kid right now.

I think that you need to use the same amount of time to really work on you, to really figure out this pattern and where it comes from and how you change it going forward.

So either way, you're not wasting time.

You're using these six months to set yourself up so that you don't end up wasting time in ways that don't serve you because of impulsive decisions.

So if you decide I don't want to ask Dev to go to couple's therapy with me for six months, we'd like you to go into individual therapy and tackle these issues that we've addressed head on about this pattern that you have the impulsivity, the avoidance, the sense of I'm going to grab onto this because it feels safe, and this place of operating out of fear.

And the middle child dynamic of let me not voice my needs and my feelings and make too many demands because you know, my parents have squeaky wheels to take care of, and not just be disappointed.

Yeah, we would like you to spend the six months thinking about what would be the best next step for me.

Would it be having a child on my own?

Would it be freezing my eggs?

Would it be dating in a different way and considering that I might not have a biological child, but I might have a child a different way.

What are those options?

What does it look like to have a child on my own financially, logistically, emotionally, all of the things that, again weren't discussed going into your marriage you would need to discuss in therapy going into this parenthood situation so that you're not thinking about it after the fact.

What would it be like for me?

Is this the life that I want?

Would I regret not spending those six months seeing what is possible in my marriage given that there's so much that I really do love about him, but neither of us is skilled at communicating, and neither of us knows how to talk about the important things yet.

But can we learn, Maybe I can develop these skill sets that I can take with me to another relationship if this one doesn't.

The other thing we would like you to do is that, if you do decide that you want to invest six months to learn more about who you are to each other in the marriage, that you together find one hour to do what sort of a modified date night.

Date nights can feel like a lot of pressure.

People feel like we have to be intimate.

It has to be a grand gesture.

It has to feel like it felt when we were in that honeymoon phase.

And what we would like is just for you to do something that you both find fun and you only have an hour.

It has to end after an hour.

So maybe you like to take walks, maybe you like to listen to music, cook together, but it can only take an hour, so it can't be a big deal, and it doesn't have to feel romantic or anything like that.

It just has to feel like, wow, we have so much fun when we do this.

Let's go take an hour and do that and don't feel like you have to enjoy it in the way that you enjoyed it back when you were in that honeymoon phase.

Just be there in the moment.

We don't want you to spend a lot of time planning because because I think that that tends to feel very stressful to dev Yeah, but we also don't want him to feel controlled, where it's like, here's what we're doing.

The assignment should be, let's take ten minutes.

We're going to set a timer and we're just going to throw out things that sound fun to us, and by the end of the ten minutes, we're going to decide on one.

It's going to be super fast, and we're going to spend one hour doing it, and we're going to pick the date that we're going to do it this week.

And if you decide that you are invested in this for the six months, you need to make the couple's therapy appointment this week before you report back to us.

Okay, all right, and we want you to make that decision in the next twenty four hours.

Twenty four hours.

Yeah, you have twenty four hours to decide which route you're going.

Okay.

The reason that we want it in twenty four hours is because we think that, even with this information and processing it, that you're going to steal dilly dolly because that's what you do.

And then you're going to make an impulsive decision.

And we want to say either way you're going to spend it is oh.

My gosh, oh are you guys my whole life.

Well, that's why we're trying to not waste your time.

So right now you have twenty four hours.

By tomorrow evening you are going to get on a zoom with Dev and have one of two conversations with him.

So how does that sound to you?

Yeah?

I like that.

That's good.

All right, So we very much look forward to hearing from you.

Emily.

Thank you guys so much.

I appreciate this.

You're very welcome.

It was just interesting to see how in their relationship so much of what normally would happen leading up to a decision to spend a life together didn't happen because she was in such a rush and he was in such a rush for whatever reason.

And they both don't have good skill sets in that regard, so it wasn't a comfortable, easy thing for them to do.

Yeah, but when you think about what happened, her mom died, she's moving somewhere new, he has a teenage son.

They're not used to having a third person.

There and then can sit.

And that was right six months into their marriage.

So one of the things that people think about therapy is that you're not supposed to tell somebody whether to stay with somebody or whether to go.

We can't make those decisions for people.

But I think what we're asking her to do is to really look at here are these two ways that the next six months could play out.

What do you think would help you grow the most, given that you're just discovering that you have this pattern that you haven't spent a lot of time with it.

Maybe you were vaguely aware of it, but it really seemed to hit her in the session.

Wow, I never really thought of it that way.

And that's why we gave these two options that both of which are a six month hiatus from rushing into something out of something, because she can't rush in either direction.

So I think it's really important that we put the speed bumps in all way.

Yes, yes, the speed bumps in order to help her to get more clear and really reinforcing that paradox of sometimes you need to slow down in order to move faster in the direction you want to go.

Absolutely you listening to deo therapists.

We'll be back after a short break.

So we heard back from Emily, and I'm really interested to see what happened and which option she chose.

Hi, Lauri and Guy, thank you so much for talking with me last week.

I wanted to give you an update on your advice.

So I met with Dev and I did apologize for how I left and decided to ask him if he would be open to doing therapy every week for six months.

I really liked Lorie's point about that I could grow more and doing therapy with him than I would doing individual therapy.

And I also did really appreciate Guy's point about trying to break my pattern of dilly dallying.

So I did decide to ask him that and he agreed to that idea.

So he is going to be traveling a lot this spring, but he did commit to doing weekly therapy and if he has to miss a week, then we'll do zoom therapy.

And we did go back and forth on some ideas of a one hour date we could do together.

At first, he actually threw out the idea of doing pickleball, which I thought was a really cute idea.

We had a snowstorm coming in the next day, so we ended up deciding to just make dinner together.

But we do want to play pickleball together at some point, and I thought that was just really fun and kind of a creative idea on his part.

Making dinner together was really nice.

He was being really sweet and affectionate with me, which I really appreciated.

It felt really good.

It felt like he is making it clear to me that he does want this to work.

It was really nice to spend that time with him.

He kind of like cuddled next to me on the couch a little bit, and it was good.

It did feel maybe a little bit confusing, too, because he hasn't done that in so long, and I don't know if we were just in a rut as a married couple living together.

But I do think it's definitely been beneficial that I'm out of the house right now.

I do feel nervous a little bit about how I will feel in six months, but I'm trying to keep in mind that the goal of this time is to ask questions that we should have asked before we were married, and so I don't have to decide now how I will feel in six months, and I can decide one way or the other if my questions are not being answered satisfactorily.

But I really, I really appreciate the time you guys spent with me and the insights you had.

I just can't thank you enough.

I did want to know your thoughts on how do I know when I am dillydallying?

So thanks a lot.

So it sounds like this week Emily really stopped the dilly dilling and she did make a choice between the two options that we had suggested, and she chose option one, And it sounds like dev was very receptive to trying that option with her.

Things changed very very quickly in terms of going from he wants me six inches away on the couch to he kind of snuggled up with me on the couch.

He agreed.

It sounds like immediately to do the six months of couple's therapy and if he's out of town, to do it on zoom.

So it sounds like once she communicated in a different way, he decided he was going to respond in kind.

I agree that was encouraging.

I just don't know if that's a behavior he's going to continue once they're actually physically back together in the same house again, because again, they did really well when they were long distance.

It's the in person stuff that didn't work.

And now they're not long distance, but she's not living there, So that's something that I'm a little concerned about.

And I'm also concerned that she will take a foot of the pedal too soon.

In other words, if this continues for a little bit, you'll go Okay, things are fine without doing full six months of vetting.

Yes.

I like that she realizes, though, that there are a lot of questions that she needs answered that should have been answered before she got into a marriage.

And so if she can keep her eye on the prize there and wait the six months, if they both do the therapy weekly, they'll learn a lot about each other, and they'll learn a lot about themselves individually well.

And I hope that they keep up this sixty minute date again.

It can be really low key.

I think a lot of couples think we need to do something really romantic, and we don't have time, and it's stressful.

Just that idea of let's play pickleball for an hour or let's just cook together.

Those are the kinds of things that people need to just connect with each other in a way that's not about the disagreements, which doesn't mean they're avoiding them.

It just means this is not the time, and we have a different time, which is called couples therapy, where we do talk about those things.

I often say to my couples patients, like, guys, don't forget date night can be about romance, but it can also be about fun and should be, and they should remember that fun is just as important as romance.

And she asked this question about how would she know if she's kind of falling into those patterns again, And so I hear it when she says, oh, I'm worried about how I'm going to feel in six months time.

There's the pattern because you're not focused on how you feel right now, on what's going on right now now.

You don't know how you're going to feel in six months time.

But when you're asking yourself that you're not paying attention to how you're feeling right now, that's something you really emily have to watch out for that you're really asking yourself what's going on in the present and doing that rather than anticipating how I might feel and what do I do if I feel that way six months from now.

I like too that she added to the email that she had forgotten to leave in the voicemail that they already made the couple's therapy appointment.

So I feel like they're really on that track.

It's not just let's talk about it or we've agreed to do this, but we actually have an appointment.

And I hope that they say to the therapist in the first session, we're here because we want to take six months to get to know each other and this relationship better, to see how we feel.

We rushed into this, and we want to see where we are in six months and make some decisions.

And I think that's going to be really helpful for the therapist to know.

And another consideration is that the in crisis right now because she moved out, and people are much more flexible and willing to do stuff when they're in crisis, but that will die down soon, and that's when they really have to be mindful and intentional of continuing all of these efforts even if the crisis is behind them.

Next week, a man who met his current partner because they shared the same ex wonders if they're past will doom the relationship.

Seems almost too good to be true, like am I missing a key thing?

Or is there something wrong with me and something wrong with my current partner that attracted us both to the X?

Or is there something that he saw in both of us that's gonna like drop at some point.

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