Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Dr. Random podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah, and here's the deal. We don't do boxes here. Every episode is different, every conversation has its own flavor, and no topic is off limits. If you're looking for predictable, this isn't it. But if you want real conversations, honest takes, and a touch of intellect in the best way, you're in the right place. This is Dr. Random podcast.
Hello, everybody, listening and watching, and welcome to the Dr. Random podcast. And I'm Dr. Sarah, and I am here today with a guest that I'm really excited about. Our topic, and it's basically revolved around marriage and saving marriages.
And just he has an amazing amount of insight and wisdom on this topic. And so I'm proud to introduce Dr. Lee Baucom, and he has some amazing resources also with, you know, along with his website, you can see some stuff on Instagram with him and some amazing books.
And so, Lee, I'm going to let you kind of share with the audience, kind of, you know, introduce yourself to everybody.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
So my background was I was trained as a therapist, and at the end of my PhD, I was writing my dissertation, wrapping it up, and I read an article about coaching that was early. So this was early 90s, mid-90s, and so there wasn't a coach on every corner at that point. And I turned to my wife and I said, this is how I do things. Now. We're in a small house. I'm writing the final stage of a PhD that she has walked with me through. And I went, this is how I do these things. And she said, what are you going to do?
Well, I was already a little frustrated with the coaching world, especially around marriage therapy and the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness in marriage therapy.
And so I finished my PhD, was already in practice at that point. After my first master's, I was already in practice, and so I was already operating that way. But I went ahead and did some training, three years of training as a coach. And in the middle of that, I realized if I'm going to complain about something, I probably ought to say what I actually think helps. And so I started working on a project about what works and what helps a marriage recover.
And that led to, in 1999, so all the way last century, putting a website out about how to save your marriage. Savethemarriage.com is that site. It's still there, and it has. I kept upgrading and upgrading until I had a full system there on helping people to save their marriage. So savethemarriage.com was kind of the beginning point where I started helping couples, really around the world. Led to my podcast, and it also led to several of the books that I've written. I've written seven books on both relationships and thriving in life, and I don't see those as being distinct areas. There's a lot of, if you're not thriving in life, it's hard to thrive in your marriage.
If you're not thriving in your marriage, it's hard to thrive in your life. And so they. They kind of walk together, but they are different kind of spheres that I've outlined. And more recently, I realized that a lot of people aren't at the point where their marriage is truly in trouble yet, but it's hurting and it's in a chronic state of disconnection, which we can talk about how that happens.
And. And so I've created an app called the Unpause App. Like they pause their relationship. The Unpause app, which is at unpause your marriage dot com. And that's designed for people who are at that. That chronic point who want to step back before they hit the crisis point. So unpause your marriage.com is the not yet in a crisis. And then save the marriage.com is yes, I'm TR crisis.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Okay, so Unpause app, everybody check that out and add it in your, you know, phone. And yeah, that's. That's so much content surrounding marriage and, you know, to kind of get into, you know, I myself might seem strange people. I'm not married, but I'm doing this topic and, you know, I want to get married someday. So I feel like this is a great step for me to take before and get all this enrichment.
So I would say some common things that I am seeing out there that tend to come up with marriages is, you know, I don't know if you've heard this before, but I've heard, like, when there's that sense of, like, I feel like I'm giving up, one of the people feels that way.
If they're ever doing that at the. Both at the same time, that's when you're in trouble. But there can be, I guess, different stages where one is feeling that way and the other one is. But it's good when one isn't feeling that way so they can hopefully work on it and make it strong. Like, no, you're not going anywhere.
I don't know. Kind of your thoughts on that when the marriage kind of. That's an underlying factor Yep.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: So it is very common for people to be at different levels of what they see as kind of the problem in the relationship. And, and the reason is the, it's the perception of what's going on. So let's, let's back up. I talked about the pause that happens. And, and so if you're interested in getting married at some point, take this as a warning, the danger point here.
So, because it's very subtle when it happens for people and how they get into trouble. And this is why there can be some variance in where we are in the relationship. So if we track back, you find people who are attracted to each other, decide to get to know each other, begin to start building their connection, building their relationship. And so they spend a lot of time, effort and energy on connecting with each other across three different levels, which we can kind of also go into.
And, and so they create the strong connection, strong enough that they think that they want to spend the rest of their lives together.
And then they go and have this, what seems like a very short ceremony to go from being single people to a married couple who are now facing life together.
And at that point they step into life and, and here is where they fall into the trap, because they have their relationship. And there's like, we've got that nailed down, right? We've got that. We were committed to each other, we're good.
Now we can turn our attention to.
And you can fill in the blank. Parenting, career, hobbies, friends, travel, whatever it is. There's something aging parents or something that is like, we've got to put our attention here because now we've got this. We don't worry about that, we'll do that. And so we will hit the pause button. And it's not like they say to each other, hey, let's hit the pause button. It's a subconscious piece, but they think we'll devote the energy over here and we'll come back to us. You know, we'll, we'll still do our thing, but the comeback to us is always kind of down the road a little bit. And so as it keeps moving down the road, the habits of connection that got them together switch to habits of disconnection. And so there's less and less of that connection along these three levels that are there.
And as that happens, they start experiencing the pain of disconnection from each other.
Since we humans are such connecting creatures, we start feeling that pain of disconnection and it feels like a threat to our well being.
The research has shown that when people are experiencing that disconnection in a relationship, it registers in the brain the same place that pain, physical pain does. Like, if I bang my hand with a hammer, it's. It's lighting up the same parts of my brain of feeling like my spouse is disconnected from me.
Okay, and so when we're in pain, what do we do? We try to relieve the pain in some way.
Sometimes. Sometimes it's relieve the pain by pulling the person in. That rarely works at that point.
Sometimes it's by walking away and trying to find something else that will soothe the pain. And so that ends up being lots of the problems we see in relationships. So if we track back to back when I was in the office, people would come into my office and tell me what the problem was.
And almost always they were naming a symptom of the problem.
And so we see, for instance, people saying, we have a communication problem. It's rarely a communication problem.
Or we have a we're fighting about money, or we just feel like we're ships passing in the night. Those are all symptoms of the underlying issue, which, by the way, includes infidelity. Infidelity is a way people try to find connection somewhere.
It's just not the way that would be helpful for the relationship. It ends up being destructive.
So the underlying issue is truly disconnection. And since most people miss that fact, they don't start moving towards connection. That's thus the unpause app.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Okay, love that.
And just, you know, everything you just went into, you can. It's like looking at that timeline of how that can happen, it seems like it's kind of similar, sneaky, almost like it kind of can sneak up on you.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: It is very sneaky. And it's not a choice that people know they're making. They just simply think, we've put all of this energy into this.
So we've got it. I'll tell you a quick story. I. When I was in practice, in my office, before I went completely virtual in my community, if you were going to get married in seven of the larger places of faith that were around that office, you had to come see me for three sessions. So I saw a lot of couples on a regular basis. And I would always ask this question, well, so just a little confession. My job was to pick a fight to help them see that they didn't have it all together yet. That was so, you know, I was trying to kind of get under their skin a little bit. And so I would ask them, you know, if I walk down the road and I run into somebody and say, hey, what's the chances of a marriage surviving? Most people would say, 50, 50. It's a little bit better than that, but just a little bit better than that. So it's. It's basically that.
And so I would ask them, you know, given the statistics, why do you think you've already beat the odds? I mean, if you're headed down the aisle, you already have some confidence that you're beating the odds. Why do you have that?
And they would always say, because we have the real love.
And that's not what does it. The other people have the real love, too. The love doesn't carry the game because the love is based in connection. It's based in how we protect the relationship is based on how we take action.
And so if you hit the pause button because you think you have it down, you're eating away at that connection, and eventually it begins to falter.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Okay.
Yeah. It's almost like I was thinking, yeah, just saying, oh, it's the love, but not enough. I almost think of is that Princess ride where there's, like, not enough.
But anyways, you know, one of the books, I've mentioned it before, but Gary Chapman wrote a book called Everything I Wish I Knew before I got married. And along with your books, I think that, you know, all the books you've written. I encourage everybody who's married or wants to get married, Read his books. They're. They're just so good.
And another thing with marriage that I'm finding, like, little things that you would say are, you know, like you said, fighting. For instance, like how you argue, how you grew up in the home. How you handle conflict, I think can be huge, too, like a make or break.
Like, for instance, I remember reading something with, like, how you apologize, how you say you're sorry, things like that, or, you know, little things that can come up. Like, well, I grew up doing the household this way in the morning, and I grew up this way. Like, you know, you think my family, we woke up in the morning and my mom made breakfast for us every morning, or we. If she didn't make pancakes, she, like, put out cereal. You know, it was, like, always some kind of breakfast for us where maybe somebody else grew up, where it's like you're eating something, running out the door.
And so maybe there's an expectation with each person, which sounds strange, but you're thinking something as simple as how you do breakfast in the morning could cause a conflict. Right? I mean, just little things. But I think some of the bigger Things, too, that I have found there are problems with marriages, too. And I think this might be more in younger marriages, but I'm not sure where it's almost like the parents interfere or there's almost like a problem with. And I don't know if you can address this where it's almost like the apron strings haven't been cut, or maybe there's too much interference in the relationship from others. And I think that's my biggest fear with things, just to speak to that, because I've kind of accepted experience that where, you know, I even heard one time somebody said, well, maybe if so, so blah, blah, blah, would have butted out a little bit more, maybe their marriage would have survived. Like, just these two people concentrate on themselves instead of having everybody else kind of put in their forethought and their opinion.
And I just think it's so important to somehow, if you could get through to the person who you're in love with and they're in love with you, like, you have the mindset of, you know, we're not going to let anybody or anything interfere with how we feel for each other. Like, kind of have that really strong confidence and bond with each other.
And I think in the podcast with Dr. Karen that I kind of mentioned, I said, you know, it's almost like my relationship with Jesus. I know it's strong. You know, people could judge me all they want from the outside, but I know in my heart, like, if I had Jesus standing next to me, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have that.
That confidence and like. And so I'm kind of just wondering your thoughts on approaching the relationship within marriage like that. When you. When you feel like people are trying to intrude or interfere.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, let's. Let me. Let me step back and then I'll step into that, because you. You brought up something important. You talked about expectations and expectations.
Overall expectations are good ways of spoiling your life, period. Whether it's an expectation of how life to go or how marriage is going to go, these expectations are.
Well, the reason they're a problem is because that's not how life goes, and it's not how relationships go. They don't follow what we expect. And so then we're left with this gap between our expectation and our reality, and that gap is disappointment. So that happens in life when people have these expectations and things don't go the way they had planned, the way they had scripted. They don't know what to do because they're now in this new area and that's all about our desire as humans to feel control. We just end up trying to control the wrong things. We're aiming at things we cannot control and then forgetting about the things we could control. So there's the expectation piece. You're exactly right. A lot of the expectations we carry, though, are hiding within us.
How I expect, for instance, breakfast to go, I don't think to bring that up. You know, it's just. It just seems like this, the. It's the right way. Whatever I have in my head is the right way until it runs square into the face of somebody else's right way. We'll put them both in quotes. And they are just ways. They're just different ways of doing it. And couples do have to negotiate that. And, and they. The only way you really discover those is being in a committed relationship where you are together, often under the same roof, where you are interacting on a regular basis over those things that maybe while you were dating, maybe while you were. You had your own places, you wouldn't have noticed, for instance, the differences or, or even it didn't matter how they did breakfast because then you could go do your breakfast, right? So those, those things often didn't matter until suddenly it's there in front of you, and you have to work through that. So there is that expectation.
But let's broaden that out a little bit, because I think the expectation of who's going to be a part of our lives is a part of what you mentioned at the end. Like, how are our family members going to play into that? How are our parents or friends or other people?
And so one of my beliefs is that a marriage is where you're trying to create.
Well, let me say it differently, because a lot of people aren't even trying, but where you could create a we, like, we have this thing that's us, and that doesn't mean you lose yourself to it. Whenever I say that, people are like, oh, you're just talking about, you know, the couple that has the same shirts and eat the same food and think the same way, and they can't find themselves in it. That's not it. You have to bring your best self and show up at your best way, your most genuine way in order for that to be a true we, a true strength. And so another way to think about it is we're a team. We are in this together.
And so let's say what we use a sports analogy. Let's say you've got a team on the court and somebody up in the bleachers is yelling for you to do something a certain way. A good team is not going to listen to that, not going to pay attention. They're going to stay on their game plan. They're going to make sure that they have protected their team and how they're going to play that game.
And so, you know, parents from the outside, unless their opinion is asked, they aren't coaches. They don't have the opinion. But we have to decide that we are in this together. We're the team.
If we need feedback and advice, that. That's something that should be clear with both people. One of the ways that I often see what you're talking about undermined is one person kind of seeking outside advice on how to handle the marriage rather than dealing with their spouse and figuring out how to team together.
And so they're inviting that in. But if the. So nobody can invade a marriage unless they're allowed to, that's. Yeah, we can decide not to listen to that. And then that allows that person to go, oh, okay, I don't have an opinion here. Which is an important growth step for a couple.
So, yes, there is often interference, but the real issue is whether the couple goes, nope, we're good. It's. We're going to figure this out ourselves or at least find decent advice rather than what we often get, which is the advice of a family member siding with their family member in that structure. Right. And so it's not even a what's best for the team. It's what's best for the person I love, you know, who's special to me, my family member. And that's where it gets to be destructive.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. And that's. Honestly, that's kind of a fear I have. Without even being in a current relationship with marriages, I always feel like, you know, are you gonna let this be our life together? Are we going or no? Are you gonna go behind my back and always be asking other people for advice about me without just coming to me first and talk to me, like, ask me, or, you know, here's the question.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: When there is a fear there, what does a couple do with that?
Like, how would you. I'm just theoretically, let's move forward. You've got this person and you're thinking, maybe this is the right person, But I'm worried about this.
What does it mean? A, if you cannot come to some agreement together, what does that mean?
And B, how do you structure that together? Like, you know, how. How are we going to be a team? For instance, would be A good convers. What does that look like to you? Does. Does it look like there are these other people having opinions about the plays we should run, to use the analogy?
Or do we stand in this together? How do we do that? Because even people who have been very connected with their family can make a conscious choice if they know what the goal is of keeping it within the marriage, of making a shift in loyalty. Because that really is what you're talking about. I mean, in our lives, we. We have shifts in loyalty. When we're kids, our loyalty is often to our family, and then it begins to be to our friends and family, and then it kind of varies until we get to this person. We're like, you're my number one loyalty, and I adjust everybody else's. And, yeah, they're going to struggle with that because I'm shifting, not them. Right. I'm making that shift. And they have to adapt to that. They have to find that to be the new reality.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess, you know, would you say it's like communicating that to your partner, like, genuinely, this is a fear of mine? How would you make me feel secure and confident in this? I feel like it's almost like, you know, to be intimate.
You want them to open up to you about things instead of feeling like it's kind of a betrayal, in my opinion, to feel like the person you're in love with is going behind your back and discussing your relationship with, like, say, their family or something. Because it's. Because then it makes an awkwardness when you go around that, you know, and I know that happens. Like, everybody probably does it, you know, but it's like, how.
How do you keep it so that you don't.
Or. And sometimes even. Maybe it isn't even your partner. Maybe it's even an intrusive family member. Like, how would you say you deal with someone like that?
[00:23:02] Speaker B: So an intrusive family member can't make it any further in than we allow.
Okay, so that's. That's still back to the. It's. It's not for somebody else. And I've had this conversation about, for instance, boundaries. Boundaries are what I will not let somebody do to me.
It's not up to somebody else to know what my boundaries are. It's up to me to communicate what my boundaries are in a marriage. It's not up to somebody else to know what our boundaries are. It's up to us to protect the boundaries of the relationship. So let me just kind of modify your language a little bit. You said what are you going to do to make me feel safe? Right. I would change the languaging of that to how are we going to make our relationship safe from the outside influence? What are we going to do about that? What does that look like for both of us to do that?
Otherwise, you're still in the you me frame. And the important frame is us, our relationship. How are we going to protect our relationship from outside influence? This is what I'm willing to do.
Can we agree on that? For instance, would be a healthy conversation. So an agreement is very different than an expectation.
Expectations are. There's an intrinsic expectation, an intro. Intrinsic expectation is one that I don't even kind of recognize. Like breakfast. This is how breakfast is done. That's just how it is.
You know, most people can step back a little bit and go, well, that's really not the case because I've been with, you know, I've stayed over at somebody's house when I was a kid and I saw that they did breakfast differently. And you know, I've been to other countries where they do breakfast differently. So clearly there are different ways you could do breakfast. But still there's. Within my little brain there may be a. This is how it happens, right?
So that's an intrinsic and extrinsic is when you say, I expect you to do this.
Both of these are problematic, but there's a difference in the problem. One is it's hidden until somebody trips over it. So I'll just kind of give a goofy example.
When my parents first got married, this is the intrinsic. They got married and each of them would take the mail that needed to go to the post office and just stick it by the front door.
And. And so the mail just accumulated. Each was expecting the other was going to take it. Just. So it just kept on accumulating. They finally sat down, like, when are you going to take the mail?
And. And here's why it's set up that way.
My mother's father was a postal worker. He went to the post office every day. And so he would just grab the mail on the way out the door and take it.
My father's father was a minister whose church was right beside the house. So he went from the house to his office, just cut across the lawn. And my father's mother would, on her way to the store or errands or whatever, would grab the mail and take it to the post office. So they each expected the other was going to do that. Just. Just how things happen. That's how it's supposed to Work. That's an intrinsic expectation.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: The extrinsic. When I say to somebody, I expect you to do this, there is a built in trap to that.
So the trap, the expectation trap is you can't ever get above zero.
You can only meet my expectation.
You get the ground level. That's it.
That's not a very great place to feel like you are.
We want to feel like we can, you know, kind of rise above that. But let's give an example that probably puts us in better focus.
Let's say I have a teenage child and I say to my teenage child, you have to be in by 11 tonight. That's an expectation. I expect you will be home by 11. To use a longer sentence.
Well, if they come back, come home at 10:50, they followed my expectations. So they got just, that's to zero.
There's nothing above that in an expectation. Okay, you, you came home when I said to. So we're good.
But you don't exceed it. And, and so there's a zero sum. But let's say you come in at 1101, now you've broken my expectation and now there's a problem. Right. So there's a trap to that. And, and so everybody feels bad when an expectation is not met. There, there can be problems, but even if you do meet the expectation, it doesn't feel great and just gets you to zero.
So when we put expectations on a spouse, it's not like we can get anywhere with that as opposed to an agreement where we both feel like we have ownership of that.
Can we agree to this?
And both people say yes, I can agree to that.
Then if there's a problem, there's a question of ownership. Why didn't you follow through? That's a fair conversation.
And that allows us to build trust and connection because both people are, feel like they are equal in this relationship. So anyway, that's, that's the expectation trap that gets a lot of couples in trouble. And especially if there is a, a problem with connection, like they don't have the connection that they need, they don't feel connected with each other. And that's when we get the ships passing in the night, the we're just roommates kind of language that people talk about.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Okay.
And I had a thought, now I lost my train of thought. Oh, I feel like those expectations, the, the intrinsic expectation and the, what did you call the other one?
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Sorry, extrinsic. Stated once. Yeah, they're extrinsic.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: I feel like that could also play into finances, possibly a lot because I think there's kind of, that could circle around finances and marriage, you know, and
[00:29:02] Speaker B: so that is a big, it's a, it's a conflict point for couples, but they miss why it's a conflict point.
You're correct that there are expectations around money that we all have, probably because money, of all the objects around us, money has more symbolism than almost anything else. We grew up with messages about spending and saving and the importance of money and, and who makes the decisions around money. And, and all of those things. And so it's not a neutral device. There's, it's loaded. There's a lot of books have, have, have made their mark by saying that a spender, you know, marries a saver and a saver marries a spender. And the fact is, if you add any two people, there's going to be a difference in how they view it. That doesn't make one a spender and the other a saver. Just means they have a different viewpoint on what that looks like.
And, and so the underlying problem is that they don't see that resource as our resource.
So back to that team thing like that. This is our resource. This is the our money. We. That's why it's so important to have that, that framework.
Back to those couples I was seeing in my office, I would ask them as I was picking fights, so how are you going to do your money? And at that point, they were still in a you me framework.
Often one was making money, the other is making money. They had their own separate accounts and they'd always just done their own thing with their money and they hadn't needed to or had to or wanted to think of it as hours.
And so I would ask the question, and they would often go into these long formulas involved formulas on how to. How they make it fair or split it up or whatever else. And, and the fact is there is a reality to every home. There are resources coming into that home home and flowing out of that home. That is just the reality of it. It's our resource coming in and our resource going out. Any way you subdivide, it is only a mental creation. It's called mental accounting. To, to look at the money psychology people, they call it mental accounting where we're making divisions where there actually are not divisions, it's fictional divisions.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:31:20] Speaker B: And, and so a couple who can say this is our resource can then have agreements with each other on how to.
We are going to treat our resource. What are we going to do about that so that it can Be some discussions about, you know, what, maybe what price point needs a conversation.
How you're going to plan for the future, how you're going to use money to enjoy today. I mean, those are both valid. How do we use money to plan for the future and feel safe. How do we use money today to enjoy what we have right now? Those. That's a conversation. And if it's our resource, that conversation is much less about what are you doing about the money and what am I doing about the money and who's fair and who's left out.
And. And so when I watch people, they would come in and say, you know, we're always fighting about money. You're not fighting about money.
You are fighting about money. But that's not the issue. The issue is you're not seeing it as our resource. And there's disconnect and disconnection sours any ways of working together as a team. Because if, you know, if you're siloed off, you're no longer a team operating individually.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I'm just like, okay, wow, finances.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: So if I brought it out, it's not just finances.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Fights about parenting, same issue. These are our kids. How do we want to be parents to them? Not how do you parent the way I say that's not it. How do we support each other as parents? How do we. What do we want for their kids? That's a we question.
If it's around in laws to say our family rather than your crazy family. My crazy family. Right. That it's our family. When you marry, that is. I mean, historically speaking, that was one of the things we recognize is you're joining together the families that way. And so to be able to say, that's my family too, is a way of going our right. So, families, how are we going to understand where each other stands on issues like religion and politics? You don't have to agree on it, but you have to understand and be able to be supportive of that together. So that's a we conversation.
If we around sex, that's another big conflict point.
There is no more physical representation or could be no more physical representation of being a we than sex. And so when people are fighting about that, that's often why they're fighting. They have this disconnection and they're no longer about our being connected that way as much as what am I getting or not getting? What are you getting or not getting? And so that's. That changes the conversation around that.
So these big areas of conflicts are all representative of that we factor.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Okay.
Yeah.
And so the solution to a lot of this, you know, I think, oh, if you take a half an hour in the morning, which some people might think this sounds unrealistic, but either in the morning or in the evening and set aside time to sit together and pray together, in my opinion, opinion, and read the Bible and do a devotion, you know, I do that daily myself. And so I think this is just me. Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but I'm like, I think it's going to be fun when I find somebody who wants to, you know, get serious with me and get in a relationship. I'm like, I'm excited to think, like, oh, I'm gonna have somebody sitting with me now and we can have our coffee and like, discuss what we're reading. And I think, you know, that to me builds a bond.
And I think, like, would I take it? Would I get my feelings hurt or get upset if they didn't see the importance in that, you know, or how would I encourage that?
And I know that's kind of not really an actual marriage issue. That's more of a beginning stages issue, but.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Well, it's a conversation piece. But one of the things that's hidden in there is you have an expectation about how that's going to carry out in your marriage and your, your spouse, or soon, whatever future spouse might need to have a conversation about whether that's the way. They may have a very different way of connecting with God. They may have a very different way of processing that. And to be aware of the expectation you might have and for you to be aware of what their expectation around, that would be a conversation point.
You may discover that if that is really kind of the heart of the matter for you, and you don't agree on that, that that's the wrong way to move forward like this. This expectation isn't going to happen and that's going to be a disappointment.
I would say that the solution around that is around connecting, though. And you pointed to how you feel there's a connection there like that that would foster connection for you.
Let me suggest that that is a layer of connection. I mentioned earlier, there are three layers or levels or dimensions of connection. And it's not you go from 1 to 2 to 3. It's that they are all there. So the first level is physical connection.
And many times when I say that people are sex. Well, no, but, yeah, I mean, that is one way. But any loving touch is that, yeah, my dog understands physical connection. When I'm Sitting on the couch, she's up against me and wants to be close to me because that's what warm blooded creatures do, to feel connected. But we humans have this other thing where we can talk and express things and talk about what's happened to us and reference what happened last year to us and all of those things that our verbal capacity allows. And that adds two other layers to it.
So the next layer up is emotional connection.
Emotional connection.
So if physical connection is non verbal, I mean, it doesn't matter how much I talk about a hug or a kiss or anything else, unless I'm doing that, it's not actually connecting. It's just.
But an emotional connection. There is the non verbal. So we've been talking and you're on the same page as me, you're nodding along.
That tells me that we're, we get where we're coming from in this. And that's, that is a way we do it in all relationships. In a marriage, it includes these two pieces of feeling like you get each other and that you support each other. Those are the two big components of emotional connection. Whether it's expressed verbally or the non verbal nods, the looks, the glances and all that stuff. So emotional connection is that midpoint.
Many times couples think they're doing that, they'll come home. How was your day? I had two meetings and I had to get in a report. That's not how your day was. That's a report of what happened during the day. Right. That's just a schedule thing.
Emotional connection as rapport building. Not reporting, but rapport building. How was your day? Oh, I had a tough meeting. It really was tough on me and I felt like my boss was coming down on me and the other person being able to say, oh, I'm so sor. Hey, you know, you, you've got this and support. Right. So that is the difference between a report and rapport that fills in that emotional connection. But let's go one layer up from there. And that is spiritual connection, which is all verbal.
Spiritual connection. When I say it, often people say, oh, you mean religion? And my response is, well, no, but yes, that's included. So to your. This is what I would like in, you know, this connection point, this 30 minutes of Bible study and conversation and prayer. That would be a spiritual connection because it's sharing this deep value that you have.
Yeah, others may not have that type, but we all have a spiritual connection need.
That's where it dwells in us. The what's most important to us, our core values. What we dream about, what we hope for, what we fear. And all of those pieces are part of that spiritual connection. And so now back to those couples that came in my office. They always would tell me about a conversation they had where they fell in love. And it's almost always this spiritual connection where they would say, you know, I was attracted to this person, got to know them, really like them, felt really connected with them. But then we had this conversation about the families we grew up in, about the dreams we have, about what we hope for in life, what we fear in life. And I've never shared at that level before. And that's when I knew I lost love them. So that it's that, that level of sharing of your, your core self that creates the place where you go, oh, this is the person I love. This is the person I want to be with. The problem is many people stop that conversation pretty early on. They have some of those conversations and then they drift away and they don't notice they're not having them because they haven't named that as this point of connection.
So those three levels do a couple of things. One, it broadens out maybe what you think of as what would be connecting and what would kind of help foster that connection.
Two, it helps you see where couples disconnect because they're no longer doing those areas.
Sometimes couples are completely separated in one, two or all three areas. They're just in their separate little silos.
And three is it creates the targets for how to turn that around, how to reconnect. You can reconnect physically, emotionally, spiritually and preferably all three.
But then it leads to the question that people often ask of, well, tell me what exactly to do.
And many people, so that we've already got three different ways and three different levels and lots of ways that might happen for people. So my response to that is to use the non clinical suggestion of a little bit more than where you are right now.
So you can't go to a lot more, right? If you're, if you haven't been talking together and sharing together and your spiritual connection is gone to say to your, your partner, hey, tomorrow morning we're going to spend 30 minutes in prayer and meditation and Bible study.
They're going to go, nope, not doing that, that's too much, right? And so you have to go a little bit.
So sharing, hey, I read this verse or this book or whatever and it really meant something to me and I just wanted to tell you about it. Or emotional connection. How did that meeting go? Tell me about the hard part of your day or physical connection, patting them on the back as a starting point, if that. You're completely disconnected, but just a little bit more than where you are right now.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Now.
Okay.
Yeah. And that's all great.
And I'm making mental notes in my head for all this.
And, you know, you made me think of something, too, though, as you were discussing this, when sometimes I. I've found. Say you feel that it's kind of starting, like you feel a connection or you feel something. And this is kind of. I guess the. This could be in marriage. But I'm kind of thinking more before if you're okay with talking with. About that. But when you notice.
I think I saw something where you were discussing the intimacy and abandonment issues and how they kind of intertwine. And I think, like, when you do share intimate things that, like, maybe, you know, when you're talking about maybe you have the spiritual and the.
Because you said the physical, the spiritual and the.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: What was emotional.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: Emotional.
So maybe you have the emotional and spiritual, but you haven't had maybe, say, like, the physical yet.
But there. Maybe there's like a pulling away or a fear of intimacy or fear of abandonment that kind of comes up because they're like, whoa, like, I'm really feeling this for this person. And they kind of like. Like freak out and back away. And I feel like, you know, that was something I kind of wanted to touch on, if you're okay with. But, like, I'm seeing kind of a trend out there with stories with guys where it's like they kind of run away or they get scared when they start to really feel something for a woman, and then they kind of settle for something less when they should have gotten out of that fear and gone after that woman of their dreams or whatever. I don't know if you kind of want to touch on that, because it made me think of it with the emotional and the spiritual, how important that is and keeping that flowing throughout the marriage and when that happens, you know.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's true for all of us. As humans, we have two core fears around relationships. One is the fear of intimacy, and the other is the fear of abandonment. The fear of intimacy is not the fear of being intimate as much as losing myself to the relationship.
Those are connected. I just want to clarify that this is an overall fear of where. What happens to me in the midst of this relationship do I feel like I am losing myself? Like, this person wants more and more and more and more of me, and I. And That's. And again, I want to be clear. This is the fear of that. This is not what has to happen or should happen in a relationship. It's the fear of that happening, that I will lose myself to this relationship. So that's a fear of intimacy. When that happens, when I have a fear of intimacy, what. What am I going to do to rectify it?
Pull back. I'm going to create some space and make sure that I'm maintaining myself.
Then there's the fear of abandonment, which is I'm going to lose that which is important to me. Now, there are two ways that people respond to feeling that fear of abandonment. Assuming they don't just manage it right, and assuming they can't just sit there and hang on to it, but assuming that they have a negative reaction. It can go in one of two directions. The primary one is if I have a fear of abandonment, I will try to grasp, hold, and pull in the person that I'm afraid I'm going to lose. Like, I've got to hold on to this. Which, by the way, is a good way of triggering someone's fear of intimacy.
They will suddenly go, oh, wait, wait, we were trying to get more from me. I was trying to get some distance. And so when they feel pulled in, they're going to pull away.
The other is some people who will say, okay, instead of you leaving me, I'm going to leave you, you. So a way of dealing with the fear of abandonment is I'll leave you first. And so they flee the scene instead of trying to deal with stabilizing the relationship.
So both the fear of abandonment and the fear of intimacy have the potential of creating this really difficult dance between a couple. And. And. And if they are already disconnected, that ends up being harder to manage. The fear of intimacy often happens, though. So let's say we have this disconnected relationship, and the person goes, I don't want to lose this, so I'm going to try to hold on to this person. And that triggers their fear of intimacy. And so they end up being further away. I call that the chaser spacer dynamic.
So Clementine sleeping beside me. And if I've got her in the backyard and I need her to come to me, I can make a mistake and I can try to go get her. And she goes, oh, it's a game, and I'm going to stay away from you. And the faster I chase her, the faster she'll run, as opposed to trying to invite her back to me with, say, a treat or a pet.
Now that's a game. That's a fun game for her. In a relationship, it's not so much it's a game as much as it's a pattern.
So somebody is chasing harder, I'm going to flee harder. And so the chaser needs to become the pacer to find a way of moving slower and be invitational on that. That really is my approach that I use in both of my programs to help people understand that dynamic so that they manage themselves as the crisis is unfolding or as they're trying to change the chronic disconnection.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah, especially, you know, I'm just thinking maybe this is a lot of the underlying issues with the, you know, people because I think, I think there's the desire. People want their marriage to be good. They want to be intimate with somebody. They, you know, as humans, we crave that closeness, you know, and I think that especially with online and social media and there's that disconnect of embodiment with people a lot.
I almost feel like the, the, the fear of abandonment and the intimacy thing is almost more.
What word am I looking for?
Sorry, I'm like trying to. Why am I not thinking of the word right now?
It's more magnified.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Any crisis will magnify those feelings. Yeah, any crisis will drive us to question our, you know, where we are in the relationship. What am I going to lose? Am I too close? Am I too far away? And notice those. Fear of intimacy, both of them are about losing. Fear of intimacy, I lose myself. Fear of abandonment, I lose you. They're both fear based and about losing something. And then what do we do when we're fearful of losing something? We try to act against that and find something to get back in.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: What would you suggest for say, maybe the audience?
I like to think of men taking the lead, so. And maybe I'm being an unfair expectation on that. But, you know, what would you say to them and out there who, who seem like they're not say, going after their dream girl or they're having that fear when they start to feel like they're getting close and it kind of freaks them out or, you know, they back off. Would you.
What would you encourage to them as a solution or which book would you have them read? I'm just curious.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: So, so that's not a, there's not a gender issue to this as much as there's a human issue to this.
Both people can feel either of those fears and react to those fears.
I also think that generally speaking, we're in a marriage. It's best served it. If whoever awakens to the fact that we're having a problem, decides to take action, then we don't build in an expectation of who that falls to. It falls to us to fix that. But one person can start that process, and it's going to be whoever goes, wait, this isn't right. We're not at the right place. And so I think it's important for both people to feel like they have the power to do that.
Let me just say that for the both of the resources that I have, here's how we can think about which one is necessary. Let's say that you're on this boat together, because that's what you know, you get married, you're on the boat together, and you're headed down this river of life, and you think, oh, this is great. We're just going on down.
And then suddenly you're aware that way off in the distance, or maybe closer than you think is the waterfall. And you don't want to go to the waterfall. So there. That's two different positions. One is you're far enough up upstream that you go while we're disconnected, and we need to turn this around and take action, maybe go down this other channel. And that's where the Unpause app comes in. You realize you need to change the habits of disconnection and get back to connection.
And so that that app is designed just for that. It helps give training and exercise. There's a morning exercise and an evening exercise. There's also a.
A way to ask questions there that the app will respond to you. Based on my training, all of my information, and all of my books and programs, and we'll give you an answer on how you want to proceed.
So that helps you to undo the habits of disconnection and the. And because an app can send you reminders, it's actively helping you change those habits back to the habits of connection.
But you might be past that point and you're hearing the waterfall is very close at hand, and there's threats of divorce or separation or continued fights, and you know that your relationship really is headed for the rocks. And that's when you want to use the Save the Marriage system. And that's savethemarriage.com that system is designed to help people begin to turn the dynamics around from the hurting and the potentially ending of the relationship to one that is healthy and thriving.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: I think some of the problems that can stem from marriage is when the man possibly doesn't feel appreciated. I've been hearing That a lot.
But, you know, they talk about the woman feeling safe. But I also think it's important to make a woman to make a man feel safe. In your research and all your books and everything, do you have anything that's maybe advice or wisdom in marriages for women on the kind of the opposite end? Because I hear a lot about men married, making the women feel emotionally safe.
But what about women for men? So that they don't flee off and go have that affair. They don't, you know, go tangle into other areas such as maybe addiction or things that sneak up.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: So this. This may be helpful just kind of as a. As a closing remark.
The connection is what creates a feeling of safety in the relationship.
It also, when you are connected, you feel the appreciation. When you're disconnected, it robs the appreciation and it robs the safety. So that's. People often report that, and what they're actually more clearly noting is the lack of connection that's in the relationship.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Okay. All right.
Okay.
And I. I feel like we could go on and on, Lee, on this topic, but I know, you know, our time is pretty much up here for the Dr. Random podcast, but I just want to thank you so much for having this conversation with me. And I think you've laid out a lot of wisdom, and I'm hoping maybe. Maybe you'll even want to come on again and we can go into some other topics. But I just want to thank everybody for listening in. And, Lee, do you kind of want to share with everybody again, just real quick, where how they can reach out to you and obtain your resources?
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah. If you're in the middle of a marriage crisis, the place to go is savethemarriage.com if you just realize that you're in a disconnected relationship and you want to reconnect, that would be @unpause your marriage.com.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: okay.
All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening to the Dr. Random podcast.
Reach out to Dr. Lee Baucom.
And I'm Dr. Sarah. And I'm, as always, we'll say ciao.
