Welcome to the Relationship Cleanse podcast. The relationship advice podcast that gives you practical help free your relationship of anger, resentment and frustration, together we will breakdown a big relationship problem into its little actionable steps so that you can make better choices around love and partnership. Thanks for listening. I'm George Streeter, your host and facilitator for the At Home Couples Retreat. hen you feel frustrated, resentful and like your relationship is going nowhere that's exactly when it is a good time to take an At Home Couples Retreat. At Home Couples Retreat can help you rekindle love and clear anger and resentment. It's simple, it's easy, and it works. You can sign up at www.athomecouplesretreat.com  Let's get on to today's episode.

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Today's episode is What To Do When You've Lost Compatibility With Your Partner. Now I did an episode on this or something similar to this in episode #2. But that was about emotional shut down. In today's episode, we're talking about the loss of compatibility when you still feel very strong attachments to your partner. What do you do when you're no longer compatible? Stay tuned.

It's scary when the partner you love and thought you knew starts thinking, talking and acting in ways. That seem foreign to you.

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You wake up one day and you don't understand them anymore. You start to doubt if you really knew them at all. You question the entire basis of your love as you watch them react differently to things you felt were settled in your relationship and you start to feel suspicious. You notice you don't trust them as much. You show resistance toward their new behaviors in their new ideas. They show frustration towards your resistance. Do they still value us,  that is the relationship you ask yourself? You wonder who's influencing them and does that influencer have my best interest at heart ?

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I was in my first marriage for 18 years. And I often said 16 of those years were very, very good, but the more I reflect on my first marriage and my contribution to its end,  I can see where my ex wife and I ignored some important red flags in our marriage. One big red flag we ignored was my personal shift in needs, values and desires. I had a burning desire to build a marriage and family therapy practice with my ex wife. I envisioned us learning, experimenting and growing in our own relationship, then helping other couples do the same. The only problem was I had a successful career in football and she was a committed stay at home mom. When I imagined us having our own marriage and family therapy practice, I pictured us having meaningful couple time as we worked together, involved in work that we loved and that really mattered to us. I was passionate about relationships before I became a relationship coach. And, my ex? Well, she eventually became a therapist after our divorce. Something I had encouraged her to do while we were married. 

I thought with her training and my passion we were a perfect fit to start. 

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I thought with her training in my passion we would have the perfect platform to help people. I also felt it was the perfect way to stop traveling. And to have a more family centered life instead of a football centered life.

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But even as I speak about it today, my desire back then was so precious to me that it was hard for me to communicate it well. When I did bring it up, the children, my career, the mortgage they always seem to be the excuse to stay in my current field. My ex would say "George, you don't have the temperament to be a therapist". And then I would try to change myself and try to make myself over to win her approval. I was trying to win her approval to follow my dreams, and the reason I was trying to win her approval to follow my dreams is because I was too afraid to follow my dreams on my own.

08:31 Overtime I started to feel real resentment at things I felt in my life was holding me back.

I resented the house so we sold it. I resented home schooling so we put the kids into high school. That was a great decision by the way. I was in at my job so eventually I left it. At the time I was just angry and operating from anger and looking back on it now. What I was doing was I was trying to clear a path to get to where I am right now. Eventually I became resentful of the voice of my partner telling me I couldn't do it. I set up the conditions to leave my marriage.

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My ex and I don't communicate now. The way I handled my growing resentment, and being in approval of my own desires, is something that I regret. I didn't do it cleanly. I didn't do it the right way. What I needed was help to clear my resentments and get back into a loving relationship with my then wife. And to address my desires from a constructive in not a destructive place. We went to a therapist. I felt like the therapist didn't understand me. I felt like my wife didn't understand me. Of course she didn't,  I couldn't even speak my desires clearly, so how could she understand that we needed to embrace a new way of being with each other. But instead of embracing change,  we tried to hang on to the status quo. 

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Now there are lots of status quos in relationship.

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There's so many of them that I don't even want to try to label or give examples of them. But here's what I want to tell you. The way to find your status quo is to think about some of the initial Impressions and perceptions you had about your partner,  before you became their partner.

Now for my ex wife one her status quos was that I was this, taciturn rugged football player who ignored his own pain and the pain of others, so how could I embrace the pain of a client as a therapist.

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She saw me in my career in the NFL and rightfully wondered how was I going to get from point A to point B, points that were part of our status quo. You have your own status quo in your relationship.

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A point A that you can break free of from your partner. Or point A. That you have your partner stuck in.

The thing is, we don't want to change the status quo because to change the status quo means we are changing our compatibility. We want to know or feel like our partner is always a certain way. Even though in our mind we know that this can't be possible or true. Now there's a good reason for this change, incompatibility or growth. feels like your relationship is dying.

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It's natural to fear change. Even the partner who says they want something different worries that they can't make positive change happen. And so they wonder if it's even worth it to bother. I know I felt that way. When I wanted to change my career, my response to my own desire was to get the approval of my wife first. Her response to my dream was to keep showing and feeding me reasons why my dream wouldn't work. We wanted to cling to the status quo because we feared that moving forward would tear us apart. The reality was that the old relationship we had was dying and instead of burning it down and letting something new spring up from the ashes, we kept trying to go back to the way things were. And before we knew it, we woke up in different worlds. Instead of change being an instrument for making things new, It was the instrument of our death. 

The reality for all of us floating around on this sparkling blue marble in space is that we don't know what the future holds.

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We have no idea whether tomorrow., the day after or the next day is our last.

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But we can be certain of one thing, and especially in relationship, that if we cling to the status quo, we won't be able to adapt. We won't be able to adapt to the changing needs of our life or of our relationships. And just like me, one day you'll wake up and find that your partner is a stranger and that you no longer know one another.

To remain compatible. To remain in loving resonance with one another, you have to risk stepping into the unknown with your partner and be willing to create something new.

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The question is, can we see a change in value and a change in desire as an indication that it's time for the relationship to grow? Can we accept and love a partner who wants things that are different than we expected to have in our lives for ourselves? Can we learn to work together to create something new together? And push past fear. And find a new way to appreciate in love a changing partner.

Working through a relationship that's lost its compatibility is about learning to accommodate your new needs and values. It's the safest way to bridge what I call the compatibility gap? When your partner's values change, it affects the entire relationship. The key to loving for a lifetime is being able to navigate these changes together. If you hold on to the way things were, you risk creating circumstances where your partner's growth has to occur outside of your relationship. So the first thing to remember when your partner's values shift, is to shift how you relate to them.

Your partner is changing. They may change their political views, their eating habits, or their mindset. It also means that their thoughts and behaviors will change to match their new value system. So be open to your partner's new point of view. This doesn't mean you have to like or endorse their perspectives. For example, if your partner reads a book about alligators and wants to own one or two as a pet. You get a say about how that affects your world. What I'm saying is,   be open to investigate how to make your partners new ways of being fit into your life together.

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The most secure way to help your partner grow and maintain your closeness is to understand your partner's emotional world.

What I want you to try is emotional empathy. I'm not talking about sympathy. Sympathy implies that something is wrong and you need to feel sorry for your partner. And the real reality is that nothing is wrong. Emotional empathy means putting yourself in the same feeling state as your partner. It means being able to understand and relate to the feelings of frustration, confusion, or stuckness that your partner is experiencing, In the current situation, as their values shift. And it means understanding their excitement and desire to move onto a new path and embrace the unknown tha is calling to them.

Now to be successful at emotional empathy, you can't make your partner's frustration about you. It's not, it's about them, and part of their frustration is creating the separation they need to feel themselves.

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Your partner needs space to feel himself or herself. So that they can be in closer understanding or contact with their new values. So let me share some ways in which you can help, create space, so that you can emotionally empathize with your partner.

One idea is don't ask questions that suggest you doubt that they love you. That's the last thing you want to implant into the mind of a partner looking for their own truth. Engage your partner to get deeper answers around the messages they are already sending to you. For example, when they say for the 100th time," I'm so tired of my job", follow up with "Tell me how your job makes you tired." Or "What does tired of your job feel like for you?" If they say we need to change our life, ask "What changes would feel good to you?" If they say we need to  think about being a mother or father?" Then ask "what does having a child make them feel?"  The key is for you to make the focus of your questions about your partners feelings and not about yours. 

By taking the focus off of yourself, you give you and your partner a chance to sync up. And by asking feeling questions, you get a better understanding of your partner's emotional state of mind and you create a bond. 

You become part of their solution. A help to create a way out of their crisis of value.

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The second thing is to let go of the old relationship. I don't mean saying goodbye to your partner, I mean saying goodbye to any attachments you had to the way things were, or who you thought they were. You and your partner live in a loving orbit with one another. If one partner shifts their orbit, then it changes the gravity between you. A shift can produce fear and tension, and it requires a change in the assumptions you have about the relationship and about the person you're in relationship with. It's natural to cling to what you know and fear what you don't know. For better or for worse, the old relationship feels safe and comfortable. But if you cling to the past, you're saying to your partner "I don't want you to grow". And worse, you're saying "The old version of you is good enough for me.". The problem is that your partner is signaling that the old version is no longer suitable to them. So you need to let go of the old relationship. Let go of your old ideas about your partner and lean into creating something new on a deeper level with your partner. 

Have you ever noticed how fear and excitement can feel? Both can make your palms sweat, your heart rate go up, and the hair stand up on the back of your neck. But one thing excitement does, that feared does not, is excitement is expensive. So try to be curious and excited about what your love will evolve into. Don't say to your partner things "Like you always liked this before, why isn't it good enough now?" When your partner tells you that they don't want coffee anymore, or whatever it is they tell you they don't want. Limiting phrases like "you always" or "you never" , they only signal your attachment to their past.

When your partner is undergoing a change in their value system, show that you are on their side by being excited and curious about who they want to become.

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Ask questions like "What do you desire for us going forward?" Or  "What's important to you now?"

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If they say they don't want to take the dogs to the dog park like you do every week, ask. "Well what fits into your new priorities for the dog?"

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Create some space by letting go.

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Now, the reality of this is that sometimes it means grieving what has been lost. And this is OK. And sometimes it's necessary.

The final step is to become a witness, I suggest you become a witness, instead of just listening. Here's why, sometimes when we listen we make silent judgments about what we here. I know I do. If my wife says "I didn't look at your blog because my mom called and then it had some emails to look at", I can get into my own head and stop listening once I hear "I didn't look at your blog". 

And if I'm not conscious, I can wake up listening to my own mind complain that she always comes up with some reason why she doesn't listen to my blog or she never supports me. You get the picture right? So I don't want you to listen. I want you to witness. Also, when we listen, we are listening for what's important to us. And we may not notice what's important to the speaker. If I say "I am certain I can make this work, but I'm not certain how to do it just yet". You might clue into my certainty about my ability, or my doubt about how to do it, depending on how you feel about me as a person on that day. The point is, when we listen, we bring our biases into whatever we hear. Now witnessing someone is completely different. When you are a witness, you take in all of the facts and evidence before you make a judgment. You reserve judgment until you understand all the facts. In other words, you don't make someone guilty of hurting your feelings or disappointing you, until you know everything. So try being a witness to a partner who's having a change in values?

Finally, be empathetic with yourself, your world is shifting too. Remember you and your partner live in a loving orbit with one another. This means you will want to try self empathy. If your partner develops a "save for the future" attitude, then may feel any hopes of that Caribbean vacation. You always want it being put on hold. Self empathy in this situation means that as you feel your own unmet desires and expectations for Caribbean vacation. Slip away with uncertainty because of the shift in your partners. Saving habits.

Don't over react to these feelings. Don't make them wrong or right yet. Try being a witness to yourself and give yourself the same emotional empathy you give to your partner. Giving yourself empathy may mean taking a closer look at your own desires and values. And as you adjust, to the new orbit created by your partner, you may find that your values shift as well.

In summary, change is scary, but change happens, so try not to make your partners new values about you. Empathy will go a long way and it cuts both ways. Be empathetic with yourself as well as your partner. Ask your partner "feeling" questions to get a deeper understanding of your partners new desires. Understanding will help you bridge any compatibility gap in your relationship. Let go of the way things were and be curious about the new possibilities for your relationship. And lastly, remember to witness your partner getting all the facts before you make a judgment. I hope these tips help you with any loss of relationship compatibility. And also understand that this loss of compatibility is natural. It has to occur if you are to grow.

Well this has been another great episode of the Relationship Cleanse Podcast. Thanks for listening. And as always, I want to know what you think. How was this episode for you? What value shift would be a real challenge for you?

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What shift in your partners values would be hard for you to take? Let me know. Email me.  As always, you can get in contact with me at www.homecouplesretreat.com.

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Just email me right through the website. And I'll respond as soon as I can.

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Again, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the Relationship Cleanse Podcast.