Dr. Colleen tackles the question : "Should you solve your partner's problems for them? " She unboxes the topic and gives practical advice that anyone can apply in their relationship.
Love Unboxed Episode 1: Why You Don’t Want to Solve Your Partner's Problems
Introduction
Host's Relationship Journey
Insights from Personal Experience
Podcast Purpose and Call to Action
Unboxing Relationship Challenges
Guidance on Supporting Your Partner
Case Study: Financial Stress in a Relationship
Conclusion and Podcast Continuation
Closing
Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary slightly.
Love Unboxed Episode 1: Why You Don’t want to solve your partners' problems
[00:00:00] Do you still hold out hope for finding love or improving the love you have? Welcome to Love Unboxed, the podcast for the hopeful romantic. Your host is Dr. Colleen Mullen. She's been a therapist for over 20 years and a lifetime hopeful romantic. She's been helping her clients find love and Stay in love, and now she wants to share what she knows with you. Get ready folks, because today we're diving into a brand new unboxing adventure.
[00:00:30] Hello and welcome my fellow Hopeful Romantics. I'm Dr. Colleen. I am so excited to get this show going and I'm so happy you stopped by to check it out. I call myself, and say this show is for the hopeful romantic for a couple of reasons.
[00:00:50] The first reason being that I don't think you really have anything in life if you don't have hope. Maybe you relate to that one. And the other reason is because I tend to be an optimist. Even though I have seen a lot of trauma and tragedy, I tend to fall on the side of optimism. And the term hopeless romantic just does not sit well with me, even though I understand how it is meant.
[00:01:16] So, I decided to tweak it a little bit and I have defined the hopeful romantic as someone who, when it comes to their relationships, [00:01:30] They've been there, done that, they've had successes, they've had some failures, they maybe even find themselves confused at times and they don't know really what to do. And sometimes they just really want to give up, but they don't.
[00:01:46] So that's the hopeful romantic and that's definitely me. And I'm going to guess that some of you listening will relate to that definition too. Yeah? So that's where the term comes from, and I'm hoping to use this show to create a community for the hopeful romantic.
Before we get into the meat of the show, the actual unboxing, [00:02:08] I thought I should share a bit about my own relationship history so you would know where I was coming from and because it's relevant to why I'm doing the show and why I continue to do the work I do with my clients every day in my private practice.
So I have lived a handful of decades in life so far and have been in and out of my fair share of relationships.[00:02:30]
[00:02:30] And every time I thought I was heading towards success. I was actually heading towards a breakup and usually I was the one breaking up the relationship. And after a pretty big breakup some years ago, I finally decided to take a good look at what I was missing. I was teaching people every day the things that they needed to do to be successful in relationships, and I was helping them create that.
[00:02:57] I had been trained by some of the top [00:03:00] innovators in the field of psychology in the last 50 years, and I was pretty successful in what I was doing, and I was pretty proud of the work I was doing. And I was coming home in whatever relationship I was in and feeling like a hypocrite because I could not get it right.
[00:03:20] And what I realized is that I made a mistake that I see that a lot of my fellow clinicians make. And that is that I thought since I had [00:03:30] learned the information as I did, you know, I had my master's and my doctorate. And I thought that since I had that education and all that information and knowledge in my head and the years of experience and the success with my clients, that I would just naturally be doing these things that would lead me to a happy, healthy relationship. But I didn't, and I definitely wasn't living out that life, uh, in healthy relationships. [00:04:00]
And I ended up walking around with what I now see as a great big blind spot when it came to my love life. I really did have to go deep within myself and do my own self-work to overcome the ingrained patterns that I was living out in my relationships.
[00:04:17] And I did the work and I continue to do the work, do the learning, the introspection, go to my own therapy, and then,almost six years ago, I met a man who was [00:04:30] also in a similar space when it came to dating. We both wanted to change our experience in our future relationships, and we were talking about wanting to do it differently.
[00:04:39] So we decided to really take this on as part of how we were going to build our relationship. So we went about our relationship very differently than we had in our past relationships. We were very conscious about the things that we did and we said, and we were very intentional in our interactions. And I'm sure I'm going to share more [00:05:00] about our life together in future episodes, but just know that a few months ago we decided to get married.
[00:05:05] It was a great big celebration with everybody that we loved. And we couldn't be more excited to live out the time that we get here in this lifetime together. And we get to live it out with a blended family. I am actually the unofficial parent of my sister Suzy, who has some special needs. She lives with us. [00:05:26] And my new husband has a couple of grown [00:05:30] kids and even three cutie grandkids. And I just pinch myself some days, you know, is this really my life? Because if you saw me. When I was in my early adulthood, you would not think that I would end up successful in any way, let alone professionally and maybe in love, but it is my life and I'm so grateful to be living it.
[00:05:54] And now I want to help you get more of what you want out of your relationships. [00:06:00] The Love Unboxed podcast will only continue to exist if you, yes, you listening, leave me voicemails with your relationship questions. To leave me an online voicemail, just go to love unbox podcast. com to click on the link to the message page.
[00:06:17] You get about five minutes to speak, so go ahead and tell me what you want me to know about your relationship struggle. And finally, I need to tell you that this show is for education purposes and possibly [00:06:30] entertainment purposes only. Although I am a licensed therapist, in this capacity I am not your therapist, and this show is not meant to be a replacement for therapy.
[00:06:41] If you are looking for a therapist, there are resources posted at the end of every show notes on every episode.
And now, we have an unboxing to get to. Our first Hope for Romantic shares a struggle that, although complex, is relatively common. So let's get to it.[00:07:00]
[00:07:02] Hi, my name is Mike. And my relationship question is, if you're in a relationship and your partner has a challenge, is it a good idea just to solve that challenge for them? Are you better off just listening to them and hearing them out as opposed to going straight to, you know, finding a solution for that particular problem?
[00:07:25] That's a great question, Mike. Thanks for that. You know, this is a question that comes up [00:07:30] so much in my work. And just like Mike sounded, it can be stressful to know what to do in those situations. So should you solve your partner's problems for them? Well, the short answer is generally no. Don't do it.
[00:07:46] Jumping right in to solve your partner's problems. It doesn't often help your partner fix anything when they're actually stressed. In the course of a relationship, you and your partner will have lots of life dilemmas that come up that cause [00:08:00] stress and chaos. When the person that we love is in distress and has a problem, of course, we want to help them relieve that.
[00:08:09] And there are lots of times when you may be presented with an opportunity right away to help them resolve their problem. But here's why you don't want to do that right off the bat. When our partner has a problem somewhere in their life, let's say an issue with a co-worker, of course, we want to help them get to where they can get to [00:08:30] resolution, but first we want to be more of what they actually need and less of what we think they need.
[00:08:38] That's important. Be more of what they actually need and less of what we think they need. I'm going to give you some questions you can ask your partner to help them pull out a solution. the stress from inside so that maybe they can calm down a little bit, be more relaxed in the evening. Maybe they can start thinking [00:09:00] about their own ways of problem-solving.
[00:09:03] You know, we're not really good at problem-solving when our head is filled with the stress of the actual problem. And then also with you being able to sit and support your partner without problem-solving, you're actually learning more about your partner. You're learning about how they think. You're learning about what stumps them up in life.
[00:09:26] And they're getting to have the experience of you being there for them in a way that isn't the cycle that couples can get into where somebody says, Oh my gosh, this person at work just driving me nuts and we got to work together on a project. And, you know, if you're a natural problem solver, like, you know, a lot of us might be, we might go, Hey, well, what about this?
[00:09:54] Or did you try this? Or did you talk to them about this? That might not be what they need. [00:10:00] A lot of times when people are stressed and they do start sharing with their partner, the big reason why you don't want to go into problem-solving is because they need to just vent. They don't actually, they're not actually asking or soliciting help from you.
[00:10:18] They're just sharing and sharing is so important. So what I'm going to do is give you a couple of questions that you can ask your partner to help draw out [00:10:30] the dilemma that they're stressed over. And I'm going to give you a clear example of why it's so important to ask some of these questions. Okay. The first question I want you to ask your partner is, what has you so stressed about the conflict or what is stressing you out about this situation?
[00:10:54] And it might be really clear because they're saying, “Oh my gosh! This thing is stressing me out!” but [00:11:00] ask it anyway, they'll tell you. And then the next question that I want you to ask them. is, “What is the worst thing that could happen if the situation does not change?” Such a pivotal question. It's one that I love so much that both myself and my husband, we use it with each other. [00:11:23] When one of us has, uh, starts venting about something, you know, sometimes we shortcut it and we [00:11:30] just jump to that question altogether. It's such a helpful question. So, at the end of this conversation, where you’ve been helping your partner release some of their stress by being curious about what's going on for them and what they're worried about, [00:11:45] You'll get to ask the question about problem-solving. Once you hear, you know, a fair amount of their stress and you think that they've gotten it all out, you can ask them if they feel like you understand [00:12:00] what they're going through right now. And if they say, “Well, yeah, I think so”. Okay, great! If they say, “I don't know”, then say, “Well, is there anything else that you'd want me to know about what's going on for you?”
[00:12:13] They can give you more information, but then you say, “Would you like some help with this?”, “Would you like to know what my ideas might be?” When you get to that question, that's where you also empower your partner to say, [00:12:30]”No, I just needed to vent and it feels good to do that. So, thank you”. Or “Yes. I would love to shoot some ideas past you or see what thoughts you have on the situation”.
[00:12:42] Sure. It could be helpful. So, let's get into the example from a couple I worked with many years ago. So I was working with this couple who were both very successful in their own right, in their own careers, uh, and very financially [00:13:00] stable, even had a few investment properties, which is relevant to the story.
[00:13:05] And they came in for counseling. around the topic of we're just not connecting anymore. And in particular, the wife didn't feel that the husband shared enough of what went on inside his mind with her because he would be stressed out a lot of the time and they both had very high stress jobs. And so it sort of came with the territory, but he [00:13:30] wasn't good at letting it out or figuring out what to do with his own stress.
[00:13:35] So he often just kind of brooded in the evenings. and it was wearing on the relationship. So I'm guiding them through a couple of questions, teaching them how to help draw out the problem from the partner. And when we get to the question regarding what is the worst thing that could happen to you in this situation, the husband looks at me and he [00:14:00] says, “Do you want me to just tell her the reality of the situation, what I know will happen? Or do you want to know like the crazy that's going on in my brain?” And I said, “Well, of course, why don't you tell her both?” And so he said, “The reality is that once I do this thing that I'm stressed about, it'll be fine. Even if I think I messed up, no one else will notice. Um, because I know I obsess on how I present things to people and I've done this a hundred times. I'll do it a hundred times more. And the reality is, absolutely nothing about my day, let alone my life, will change. However, why I get stuck in my head is that I literally think that I'm three steps away from homelessness and financial ruin because I worry [00:15:00] that if I don't present things well. I'm going to immediately lose my job”.
[00:15:06] And you know, it's a hop, skip and a jump to be homeless for this couple that was actually quite laughable because they, they weren't even close to being financially stressed. And the reality is that this man's job was very secure. And if I remember, he might've been one of the principal owners of the company.
[00:15:26] So it wasn't like he was really risking [00:15:30] anything, but he was so consumed with how he did when he had to be in front of people and present things to maybe the, uh, staff or people at outside entities that the business deals with, that he would got so worked up in his head that he would literally write himself out of a job and then out of all of his other assets.
So, in reflecting on this with the couple and the dynamic and what had been missing, the husband [00:16:00] said that he knew he had irrational, what he's calling irrational thoughts, which they are. And we all kind of have them at some time sometimes. And he knew that, like, everything would be fine if he could just get through the task.
[00:16:15] But sometimes these tasks are like five days away. Sometimes they're two weeks away. Sometimes they're six months away. And he would still carry that with him like a cloud. And it was altering how he interacted with his wife in the evening because he'd be stuck in his [00:16:30] mind. And the wife on her end, she was just absolutely floored that her very confident, successful husband was literally scared that he was going to do something that could jeopardize their whole life together.
[00:16:48] So, in the end, they got into a practice of having a conversation at the end of every day, checking in with each other. “Was there anything [00:17:00] that was bothering them? Stressing them out about outside entities, you know, uh, people that they dealt with, even things like traffic? Some people carry the stress of the day generally.
[00:17:13] And they did this for a few weeks as I prescribed them to do it. And they reported back that after these few weeks, it was starting to feel like more something that they looked forward to. And what they looked forward to was, number [00:17:30] one, they are connecting with each other on a deeper level than they had been.
[00:17:35] And number two, each person got to fulfill a different role to the other. One of them got to say, “Hey, I need…I need some support. I need a reflecting, uh, board”. The other one got to be the supportive partner who could listen without shutting them down. And that's where you have more connectedness, more working as [00:18:00] a team, and also the ability to have autonomy to also say, “Gosh! Thanks for letting me vent. [00:18:07] That's all I really needed right now. I know that the situation can resolve itself”, or, “I've got ideas and I'm going to handle it. It just felt good to get it out”.
So, for Mike and all the other hopeful romantics out there who struggle with not knowing what to do other than suggest solutions for your partner's problems, [00:18:30] I hope that this is helpful. I encourage you to try it out. It's pretty safe, it's pretty simple, and let me know how it goes.
And now, we're at the end of our episode. The only way this show will continue is if I continue to get questions from you, the other hopeful romantics that are listening. So think about it.
[00:18:55] Where are the obstacles in your relationship life? Just go to [00:19:00] loveunboxedpodcast.com to click on the link to leave me a voice message online and remember you get five whole minutes to tell me your dilemma. All right.
In the meantime, you can find me on Instagram. I'm at Dr. Colleen Mullen. And if you want to work with me on your relationship dilemmas more up close and virtual, actually, you can find me at my business page, CoachingThroughChaos.com.
[00:19:30] And if you're here because you used to listen to the Coaching Through Chaos Podcast, thank you so much!
Until next time, let's keep hope alive.
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