Feeling emotionally distant from your partner amid daily chaos? In this episode of Love Unboxed, Dr. Colleen Mullen addresses the subtle yet pervasive "invisible drift" that can erode intimacy in busy relationships. Through relatable scenarios and actionable strategies, she offers guidance on rekindling connection, even when time and energy are scarce. Learn how to implement meaningful rituals and small gestures that can make a significant impact on your relationship. Key Topics: Understanding emotional drift in relationships Implementing the "10-minute bridge" communication ritual The significance of small gestures, like love notes Redefining date nights for busy couples Utilizing weekends for intentional connection Insights from Dr. John Gottman's research on emotional bids Whether you're navigating the challenges of parenthood, demanding careers, or both, this episode provides actionable advice to help you and your partner stay connected and nurture your bond.
Title: The Invisible Drift: Staying Connected when Living Busy Lives
Host: Dr. Colleen Mullen
Episode Highlights:
Understanding the "Invisible Drift": Explore how emotional distance can develop silently in relationships due to daily stressors and routines.
Real-Life Scenario: Meet Maya and Jordan, a couple navigating the challenges of balancing careers, parenting, and maintaining their bond.
Expert Insight: Discover Dr. John Gottman's research on "bids for connection" and their significance in sustaining emotional intimacy.
Actionable Strategies: Implement four practical tools to strengthen your relationship:
Establish a 10-minute daily check-in ritual.
Exchange thoughtful notes or messages to express appreciation.
Redefine date nights to fit your current lifestyle.
Utilize weekends intentionally to reconnect.growthmachine.com
Encouragement for Initiators: Gain perspective if you often find yourself initiating connection and learn how to navigate this dynamic constructively.
Resources Mentioned:
Dr. John Gottman's research on emotional bids
Connect with Dr. Colleen Mullen:
Website: drcolleenmullen.com
Instagram: @drcolleenmullen
TikTok: @loveunboxedpodcast
Call to Action:
If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to Love Unboxed and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners seeking to enhance their relationships.
Until next time, Let's keep hope alive!
Transcript prepared by A1 Steak Sauce.
The Invisible Drift, Episode 8
[00:00:00] Hi, Dr. Mullin. Hello, Dr. Collin. And my question, my question for you is, which probably hits at the beginning of our relationship,
[00:00:14] Do you still hold out hope for finding love or improving the love you have? Well, love Unboxed is the place for you. Welcome to Love Unboxed, the podcast for the Hopeful romantic. Your host is Dr. Colleen Mullen. She's been helping her clients find love and stay [00:00:30] in love. And now she wants to share what she knows with you.
[00:00:34] Dr. Colleen is here to sprinkle a little magic on your love life. Get ready, folks, because today we're diving into a brand new unboxing adventure. Let's join Dr. Colleen and embrace the adventure that awaits.
[00:00:51] Hi and welcome or welcome back to Love Unboxed. I'm your host and fellow hope for romantic [00:01:00] Dr. Colleen. And today's episode covers a topic that so many people are gonna relate to. But first I wanna check in on you. You know, we're just getting to know each other here in the last few months. If you've joined me before and.
[00:01:18] There's a lot of stuff going on in our world. If you've been, you know, getting lost in the algorithms on your doom, scrolling, it's okay to take a break. It's [00:01:30] important to take a break. You still need to be able to attend to the things that are important to you in the life that you're living right now, no matter what is going on around us.
[00:01:41] So there will be those everyday stressors. There's gonna be the family stressors that exist. And you gotta make sure that you keep your mental health in check. So make sure that you're still doing the things that you normally do to help yourself. And if you're struggling with the [00:02:00] amount of stress that you might be feeling it, it can be a great time to seek out counseling.
[00:02:06] I know it can be hard to get an appointment with someone, but there are many large practices in most major cities and locations, and these days you don't have to go. Look for someone right in your town. You can look to the next big metropolitan city and look for someone who does online sessions. It opens up access to so many more providers.
[00:02:28] You do have to stay [00:02:30] within your own state. If you're in California, you look up only therapists in California, or if you're in Arizona, same thing and so on. My checking in is really just kind of reminding you to take your own pulse. The pulse of your relationship, your family, and see what you need to attend to that might be getting lost in the shuffle of all the chaos, and make sure that you're managing what you [00:03:00] can and seeking help when you're struggling.
[00:03:03] I hope that you're doing okay. It seemed like a good time to check in with everybody. In this episode, our Kohler ask a question that is. Something that I hear come up in sessions, and of course I have experienced it even myself. Let's get into that unboxing now and find out what our caller is calling about.[00:03:30]
[00:03:34] Hey, Colleen. Uh, it's Joe. My question is. How can we connect to our partner when they're always so tired after work and have no energy? What's like a good thing to do, uh, to, you know, connect after work when there's no energy and there's kids and all that? All right, that's my question. Bye. Okay, [00:04:00] first of all.
[00:04:01] Thanks Joe for this question. It was real and relatable and if you are listening to this and nodding your head along with me, you're not alone because I'm right there with you and I'm sure some other people listening are as well. And what Joe is asking about is how do you tend to your life and the things that are important to you.
[00:04:23] When you are living between the margins of Monday through Friday with a chaotic and [00:04:30] busy schedule for you and your partner and maybe your family. And Joe does mention that he has kids. So some of the answers I'm gonna give are directed towards people that have kids. But if you are listening to this and you don't have any kids, or your kids have already grown up and moved out of the house, well, I'm gonna say that.
[00:04:52] I think you should still listen 'cause I think you're gonna benefit from listening to this if you relate to having a busy schedule and one [00:05:00] where sometimes the last things that get done are the things that are truly important to you and sometimes just to you. So I'm gonna start by telling you a short snippet of the life of Maya and Jordan.
[00:05:14] Maya is a high achieving creative director and Jordan is a public school teacher. They both have very busy professional lives. On top of that, they have two small kids under the age of six. They came to [00:05:30] therapy not because they were fighting, but because as Maya had said it, it feels like they were just co-managing as a household.
[00:05:39] The old roommate situation, Maya felt like they weren't building onto their relationship. Their nightly routine was just as chaotic as sometimes their work life was, because with two kids under the age of six, they really didn't get a lot of time to [00:06:00] just collapse on the couch after work. Their nightly routine was a lot of focus on the kids and what they needed to do to get them into bed, and by the time they were finished with dinner and the bedtime routine.
[00:06:15] They might get 30 minutes to just veg out on the couch of some quiet time, but they weren't having any connected time. Maya had felt that when they did get to the end of their night, that might've been an [00:06:30] opportunity to connect, but she acknowledged that even she like loses herself and her Instagram algorithm, and Jordan likes to scroll through the TV to see what's on when he gets a few minutes to relax before bed.
[00:06:44] And they'd make some small talk, but it was often focused on what their meetings were like during the day, or task management kind of communication over the kids' schedules. Not much real communication, and then they would [00:07:00] call it a night. So there was no big blowups, just emotional silence, and it was very loud.
[00:07:08] That slow, quiet drift, that's what kills connection. I. So many people think conflict is what kills a connection, but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's just the ongoing absence of meaningful interaction that kills the relationship. It wears it out as you [00:07:30] drift apart.
[00:07:33] Okay, let's zoom out for a moment and bring in the science. Dr. John Gottman, one of the foremost researchers in relationship psychology, found in his studies that moments of connection. There are things that we call bids for attention. These are the foundations of emotional intimacy. These bids can be tiny, like smiling at your partner, asking a question, [00:08:00] touching them as you walk by them in the hallway, sharing a look with them.
[00:08:04] In Happy couples partners respond positively to these bids. 86% of the time in couples who later divorced, that number drops to 33%. It's so important. It's one of the most important things that I'm often teaching my couple clients, is paying attention to their partner. It matters, even the little moments.[00:08:30]
[00:08:30] What's even more validating for Joe's question is that the research shows that stress and exhaustion do significantly lower the number of bids and our ability to notice or respond to them. So it not only lowers how well we respond to our partner's bids for attention, but it also lowers how often we're even enacting those bits for attention.
[00:08:54] You know, when you're just tired, you're just not. Bothering to interact [00:09:00] much. So what does this mean? It means that your relationship is not broken. You're tired, your partner is tired, and the environment isn't that connection friendly. But I'm gonna give you some ways to change that.
[00:09:18] Okay. So how do you shift? Well, the connection that you're gonna go for during your busy week. It doesn't have to be grand. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but it does [00:09:30] have to be intentional to reframe this. The connection is not about the amount of time, but the quality of the attention that you give each other during the week.
[00:09:43] So what can you do? I'm gonna give you four tools for realistic ways that you can reconnect when you're both. Literally exhausted.
[00:09:56] The first way to connect with your partner is to create a 10 minute [00:10:00] bridge ritual. This is to bridge the gap in communication that can happen between Monday and Friday. At the end of your day when everything is done, and just as you're feeling like collapsing, I want you to set a timer for 10 minutes. I want you to put your phones down, turn the TVs off.
[00:10:21] Just sit near each other and ask each other these three questions. What was something that felt heavy today? [00:10:30] What's something that you wish I knew about your day today? And what's one small win from today? Even just taking these 10 minutes a night can help build an emotional bridge. Between Sunday and Friday when there isn't a lot of time for quantities of quality time.
[00:10:56] So it gives you little bits of moments of [00:11:00] quality time that helps bridge that gap to help you stay connected. And that brings us to number two of my four tips for staying better connected to your partner during a busy week. My number two tip is to. Read them a little love note. I'm stealing this idea from my dad when he was dating my mother.
[00:11:22] He would leave her love notes. He would just use little pieces of paper that like post-it note [00:11:30] size, but I don't think they had post-it notes back then. It was super adorable. I had the chance to find some of these notes when I was going through big bins of my family pictures after, I think it was after my mom died.
[00:11:43] They were really the sweetest thing. My parents didn't even have, well, I wouldn't call their relationship once I was old enough to know better a healthy one, but they did have a sweet start of it. The little [00:12:00] notes meant a lot to each one of them. They're both very sentimental people. They work for me too.
[00:12:06] I am a words of affirmation and acts of service type of gal. That's how I feel. Most loved and love notes go a long way in my book. So if you're not accustomed to leaving little notes or sending sweet messages around to your love, try it. Have fun with it and know that you are, you're just sending a [00:12:30] little note, a little message to let your partner know that you're thinking of them.
[00:12:35] You're letting them know that out of sight doesn't mean out of mind, and you don't have to use little notes and leave them around the house. You can of course, send a text message, an email, a voice memo, any type of messaging works because it's with the intention that you're sending the message. It's not about the method of the message [00:13:00] and you're leaving it for them to just find.
[00:13:02] You don't need them to respond. You're not soliciting anything from them. You're gonna say, have a great day. Not are you having a great day? You are gonna say, have a wonderful afternoon, miss. You Can't wait to see you anything. So try it out. Have fun with it. Let me know how it goes.
[00:13:29] And that leads [00:13:30] us to number three of my four tips for staying better connected to your partner during a busy week. Number three is that you'll have to redefine date, right date night. Doesn't have to mean leaving the house or dressing up. You could have a couch date. You could have a picnic in the living room.
[00:13:51] You could have a picnic in the backyard, a little two person barbecue, a little small plates kind of dinner with [00:14:00] candlelight and a good playlist playing. And you could also do things that make it date, like, of course, I've already mentioned a playlist and maybe candles, make it a little ambient, but also have date like conversation.
[00:14:17] Focus on getting to know your partner as who they are currently. There are lots of apps out there, websites, little books you can buy that are questions for [00:14:30] couples, and there are great ways to keep learning about your partner. And it's never about finding the difference. It's about getting curious, oh, I didn't know you like this thing.
[00:14:42] I thought you didn't like this thing. Now you do. When did that change? You're just getting curious about your partner. They'll say their dream vacation is one thing. You'll say it's another. It doesn't matter if they match up. You can say, oh, what do you like about that place? What do you [00:15:00] wanna experience there?
[00:15:02] There's lots of ways to have conversations with your partner that don't involve talking about the everyday stuff that you're used to talking about at home. So if you're gonna have your date at home. You should have date like conversation. And number four of my four tips for staying better connected to your partner during a busy week is to use your weekend intentionally.
[00:15:26] And I know that if you're dealing with, [00:15:30] you know, your own active lives and you've got kids at home, they might have active weekends. I want you to find little touchstone moments in the day that can anchor you together. Maybe Saturday morning coffee or dinner together on Sunday night so that you're ending the weekend together, finding time that helps you touch base with each other, pay attention to each other, and recognize that you're both still on the same team, even if [00:16:00] one's running off with one kid and one is going off with another to a different soccer weekend or something.
[00:16:05] Even if the time that you get together is only 30 minutes, protect that time. Like it's the most important meeting you're going to have all week, because it is. And before we wrap up, I wanna talk for a second to some of you who are listening that might be feeling like they're always the one initiating the connection.[00:16:30]
[00:16:30] That can feel really heavy. It can really feel unfair. So if you're listening because you're having a struggle like this in your relationship and you're feeling like this, I wanna let you know that even though you're the one getting curious about how do you find this connection, so you are going to be initiating, I want you to remember that initiating doesn't mean carrying if your partner is open to [00:17:00] trying, even as exhausted as they might be.
[00:17:04] That matters. But if they're not willing to be open to trying ways to stay connected to you, and you've let them know how important that is to them, then that's a different conversation. And I'm here for that conversation with you too. If you're listening to this and you do try to initiate things with your partner, and more often than [00:17:30] not.
[00:17:30] They really don't get to like get past the resistance to the suggestions that you might be making. Reach out. Leave me that question and I'm happy to go over some ways that you can manage yourself during that time and how you may go about seeking help or figuring out what you need in a relationship and are you getting that where you are?[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] So let's get this box closed with one last takeaway that I want you to think about. Connection isn't about doing more. It's about noticing more. Noticing the micro moments where love can shine through in your day. Holding your partner's hand, catching their eyes when you're both busy doing something.
[00:18:25] Sharing those few moments. To talk about how your day was, [00:18:30] no, to my original caller, hope for romantic Joe, I wanna say that you are not out of love in your relationship. You're just out of bandwidth, and that's fixable. So that's it for today. My hope for Romantics, if this episode resonated with you.
[00:18:53] Please share it with a friend who might need a little relationship encouragement. And if you are [00:19:00] the one writing the Post-it notes or offering the 10 minute Bridge chat tonight, know that you're building something beautiful. And if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe to get notified as new episodes launch.
[00:19:15] And if you're really liking it. I'd love a review wherever you're listening to the show. Every review helps my algorithm pop me up just a little bit farther up the notches on Apple and all the other [00:19:30] podcast players. If you'd like to stay connected to me in between episodes, you can find me on Instagram.
[00:19:40] I'm at Dr. Colleen Mullen and I'm on TikTok as Love Unbox podcast. And if you'd like to check out other things that I do outside of the podcast relating to my work as a therapist. Please make sure to check [00:20:00] out dr colleen mullen.com. So until next time, let's keep hope [00:20:30] alive.