Relationships shape our mental and emotional well-being, and the way we connect with others can transform our lives. Hosts Bill Courtright and Eddie Reece dive into the heart of relationship therapy, unpacking the keys to building stronger bonds through active listening, kindness, and vulnerability. From navigating conflict to fostering true intimacy, this episode provides actionable insights for improving connections with yourself and others. Whether it’s your romantic partner, a family member, or even a colleague, learn how to create healthier relationships that last.
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Building Stronger Bonds Through Relationship Therapy – Relationships, Part 1
We’d like to thank you for coming back to this episode. We’re going to begin our series on relationships. If you’re anything like me, you hear the term relationship, and it sparks maybe some awareness, maybe some understanding or an opinion, or a definition. If you hear that someone’s in a relationship, that certainly has a meaning or context. To the degree we interact with people throughout our lives and we look to experience as much of our humanity and human experience as we possibly can, I believe that has a lot to do with others. It is because, in my opinion, outside of one trivial exception, the world is made up of others, as far as I’m concerned.
Others, the concept of a relationship, although Eddie’s the therapist, I can’t wait to hear his opinion, but I would think a lot of the reason people may go to therapy, by themselves or even with others, is a result of something they’re feeling in regards to the most important relationships in their life, whether that be their marriage or with a parent or loved one, or perhaps it’s even at work.
Relationships, in my opinion, are a pretty important part of our mental well-being and a lot of what we experience throughout the scope and spectrum of mental health that we’re here to learn. It is my belief that it has a lot to do with how we interact with and how we experience other people. With that, Eddie, when I say the term or the word relationship, from a therapist’s perspective, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
The Number One Relationship Problem: Ourselves
You said people are saying that prospective client calls, “I want help with my relationship,” they mean their romantic relationship. That is a mainstay of counseling. My practice is very much geared toward helping people with their relationships of all kinds. The number one relationship we have the most problems with is the relationship with ourselves.
Notice I made that plural because we have all kinds of different parts of ourselves in our heads. If you listen to your thoughts for just a minute or less, you will hear those different parts generally in an argument. “I want to eat pizza today.” “I don’t know. I had pizza two days ago. We shouldn’t be eating that much pizza. We need something healthy.” Those are two different parts. That’s not the same guy.
There’s a guy that wants pizza. There’s a guy that wants healthy. There’s another guy that says, “We haven’t had Mexican food in a long time.” It’s a group in here. The relationship between all of those parts determines, more than any other thing in your life, the quality of your life. If you’re unhappy, sad, anxious, miserable, whatever, I’m going to wind up helping you as a client by pulling these parts into the open and having them have a conversation with each other.
It is because, again, if you listen to your thoughts, each part only gets to say maybe 1 or 2 sentences. Another part says 1 or 2 sentences. Nobody’s listening. We pretty much walk around all day with arguments going on in our heads. We wonder why we’re anxious and why we want distractions. If you had a room full of people and they were all arguing, that’s what you’d want to do. You’d want to leave.
I teach people how to communicate in a way that I call the kindness dialogue. It’s just a rebranding of what therapists do anyway, but with a few little twists in it. How to actively listen, how to have a communication that leads to connection more than separation? You don’t argue. You sit down and listen to each other.
The goal being each participant can, at some point, see the other’s view of the world exactly as they see it and then communicate that to them. It’s through that process that we have better relationships, which is exactly the same thing I would do with a couple that’s out here. I would teach them that same way of communicating.
That’s how you improve relationships. That’s how you improve your life. If you don’t have the life you want, I can pretty much guarantee you that some part of that dissatisfaction is a dissatisfaction with, generally, multiple relationships, inside yourself, with other people, with the environment, with culture, with something. All of those are relationships. I have no problem saying that virtually anything that somebody walks into my office with is a problem of relationship. They don’t know how to have a healthy relationship that is built on intimacy, kindness and care.
It sounds like that has to begin within, is what I’m hearing you say. Correct me, this is just my interpretation, but I heard you say that the act of active listening with empathy and then seeking first to understand, which sounds to me like validation. To any person who’s been married, we want to be validated. We want to be heard. We want to be seen, right?
Right. The problem that couples have when they come in here, even if they know that language, is they don’t want to be validated. They don’t want to be understood. They want to be agreed with. I have to show them if that’s what they’re after, that’s not going to work because they’re not going to agree with you. There are so many myths, and we can talk an awful lot about this, about romantic relationships, like we have to agree in order to be happy. Good luck with that.
I wrote something a long time ago about how people come together because of things they have in common and agree on. “We both like this.” That causes you to feel close to somebody, but that’s not going to sustain you. What will sustain you is being able to share your differences in a way that creates intimacy. “I disagree with you, and I know how to do that. We know how to do that in a way that causes us to feel close to each other.” That’s what will sustain a relationship.
A relationship is sustained by being able to share your differences in a way that creates intimacy.
They believe that. They think that. They act that way, but I don’t have much of an emotional charge in a way that makes me want to go and change that. I had a client that was upset that her husband eats too much pizza and he’s getting fat. He said he wanted pizza. She told him, “Absolutely not. You cannot have a pizza.” I’m going through the whole thing with her about, “You’re telling him that you’re in charge of him and what he eats.” “I don’t want to do that.” “That’s what you’re doing. That’s not going to work.” There is that myth of, “They have to be like me in order for us to be a good couple.” It’s just not true.
You’re still touching on empathy. You’re touching on compassion and kindness. I use the word validation, which may have been misapplied.
It’s the proper word. It’s just that most people don’t mean it when they say it.
Achieving Intimacy And Connection In Relationships
Tell me more. Tell us more, for those of us that are in a relationship that matters and is important to them, how can we disagree without being disagreeable? How can we get to intimacy and true connection when we know that it’s impossible to live in a fairy tale where you’re going to agree and get along all the time?
You may know that, but you don’t know really that. There’s a saying that those who know and don’t do, don’t know. If you go on, “I know my partner has different beliefs and everything,” and they do. I’m not going to find somebody that believes everything I believe in, which is to be a clone. I know that but you’re not operating from it in a way that says, “I have to learn to navigate that in a way that isn’t me trying to control them, make them different, make them like me.” All arguments are, “I’m right, you’re wrong. We’ll be okay when you agree with me, when you are like me. I want you to be like me.” That’s the argument, which is why arguments don’t help.
It’s more like venting.
It’s being manipulative and controlling, but no one sees it that way. “I’m just trying to explain to you.” No, you’re not. Just is a great word. If you say just, you’re arguing and you’re being controlling and manipulative.
It is because you’re attached to some outcome that you’re trying to construct.
It is because when you go, “I’m just trying to explain to you,” you’re not just trying to explain to them. You’re trying to convince them that your way is the superior way and they should adopt your superior way because it’s superior. Why wouldn’t you? Your way is stupid.
This adversarial approach, in trying to influence, I could see that being unproductive, certainly. I could also see that when you rally around a common goal, or if there’s a mutual desire for something or some common outcome, you might come to the same side of the table and look at this, “How do we accomplish this? How do we solve this? How do we get to this place where we’re happy, where we’re content?” I don’t know if that’s the right word.
It’s not necessarily happy and content. There’s always the possibility that you come up with the third way, as the Buddhists say. It’s not your way, it’s not my way. It’s something entirely different. Once we put our needs together and then become supportive of each other’s needs, then that’s a third way.
A cooperative way.
The word I like is consensus, that we both agree that this is a good idea rather than a compromise, which most people use. I tell my clients, “Don’t ever compromise. Never.” If you’re having to compromise, it is something that’s important to you. If it’s important to you, and you give up a piece of that, you’re not going to be happy. Don’t compromise. Work toward a consensus, something that you both walk away from and go, “That’s good. That works.”
I’m reminded of a saying I heard. I’m not sure who said it or where I read it, but it was, “One convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.”
Sure, but then you have not convinced the man because you have silenced them. Arguments just don’t work. I tell my couples, “You’re not allowed to argue.” They’ll go, “I’m not arguing.” I go, “You’re arguing. You’re not allowed to argue.”
Let’s take a proactive approach. Let’s go back to intimacy and connection because when you said that, before we went on air, we were talking, and I heard intimacy and connection, and it got me excited, or at least enthused, to hear more. Let’s take a proactive approach and look at if intimacy and connection is a goal or an outcome, or something we may strive for, or we want to go in that direction. Let’s just say I want to go in the direction of intimacy and true connection. What would you say to me?
You’re going to have to be vulnerable, which means you’re going to have to, first of all, learn what your feelings are. Most of us have no idea how we feel. The gal that I mentioned, who’s mad at her husband for eating pizza, she’s like, “What do I say to him?” I go, “You tell him how you feel.” She’s lost. What she’s afraid of, as we drilled down, is that her husband’s going to become fat and depressed, and then that will make her depressed. She said, “And then we’ll just live in this dark room and die.” “You’ve got to tell him that.”
To be vulnerable, you must first learn what you’re feeling and be able to experience that feeling fully.
It is because that’s what’s frightening for some people.
Vulnerability is, “This is what I’m feeling deep down inside.” It can be multiple things. I’m able to experience that feeling. That’s the other problem. Somebody with an anxiety problem doesn’t have a problem being anxious. Anxiety, being anxious, is not their problem. It’s being anxious about the possibility of being anxious. “I’m afraid to be anxious.” The way I treat that is, “Let’s help you be anxious and know what to do. The reason you don’t want to be anxious is because you don’t know what to do with it. It just gets big. You cruise that off. You’re uncontrollable. You have a panic attack.”
Let’s teach you how to be anxious. You’ve got to be able to feel your feeling, know what it is, feel it, share it as the feeling, and then have it validated, which is when the other says, “I see the world from your perspective, and the way you feel makes perfect sense. You’re afraid I’m going to get fat and depressed. That’s going to make you depressed, and then we’re both going to die. You’re scared. You don’t want me to eat pizza.”
That’s brilliant. That is important. I think there’s so much to unpack just in that. You talk about kindness as a pillar of decency, and it’s so important. I heard you talk about compassion. You didn’t call it compassion, but that’s what I heard. Tell me if I’m out of line there, but there’s this idea that through a vulnerable place, operating under the presumption that the person we’re going to be vulnerable to will be compassionate.
Navigating Vulnerability And Compassion In Relationships
If they’re not, now we’re going down a different road. Provided that this is a healthy and loving relationship and that the person that you’re being vulnerable to is kind, then I could see that breakthrough happen. However, what about those? We’ve talked about being attached to outcomes, and we’ve talked about expectation. What happens when we’re vulnerable with someone not having a good day, the compassion isn’t there, the empathy isn’t there, and the validation isn’t delivered? We’re likely to feel probably less than in that moment.
It’s not a pleasant feeling, but if you’re a grown-up, you know that people have off days. If it’s somebody that has been kind to you in the past, and today they’re not, it doesn’t mean they don’t love me anymore. It just means they’re not in a place to hear it. You have to be forgiving rather than, “Why can’t you listen to me? I’m trying to tell you how I feel.” You’re arguing, and you’re shaming them, and you’re not being kind at all. This brings up another point that everybody struggles with as they move toward becoming vulnerable, is learning who you can be vulnerable with, and that’s not an all-or-nothing thing.
If you think about the people in your life, and you go, “I have these people, and I have this group of people that I’m close to,” you don’t have the same amount of closeness and vulnerability with all of them. Most people have no one who knows everything about you. I’ve heard it said a lot of times, “I have all these different friends. I wouldn’t invite them all to the same party.” That tells you that how most of us operate is that this part of me connects with you, and I can be vulnerable about this, but not this, or I can be this much vulnerable.
You have to learn these gradations of how do I know how to trust people? It’s a matter of, “I’ll be a little vulnerable to see how it goes.” It is because I can be a little more vulnerable, but then that’s as far as I can go with that. If you have a primary relationship with somebody, there will be things that you’re not going to share with them, which is another myth that, “If we love each other, we can say anything to each other.” No, you can’t. They don’t need to know about that.
What do you say to the concept or idea that a relationship is only as strong as the secrets?
It’s something about if there are secrets, it’s unhealthy, which just isn’t true.
Having a little bit of individuality, having a little bit of inward thinking is not necessarily unheard of.
There’s secret and there’s private. Private is just none of your business. Secret is, “I don’t want you to know.”
That sounds like shame.
Yes. “I have shame around that, so it is a secret. I don’t have any shame around something I’m private about, but I’m just not going to share that with you.” There’s no reason for me to, or the level of vulnerability doesn’t work that I would have in our relationship. I don’t buy that having secrets in a primary relationship equals dissatisfaction or an unhealthy relationship. Maybe there’s some amount of secrecy that would be a problem or something like that. If you’re half a pathological liar, that’s a problem.
If you’re living a lie, or if the deception is such that the person that is known isn’t the real person, I think that could be a problem. To the degree things are kept private, and you can live with yourself, I think that’s important. You’re the therapist. I think a lot of that, what’s private, what secret has to do with, what am I willing to live with? In the context of this connection and this intimacy, where does the line of what’s private encroach upon what’s not true? When does withholding the truth become deception and lying and that sort of thing? I don’t have an example in my mind.
The Impact Of Affairs On Relationships
That’s something that couples rarely ever talk about because, again, this myth, romantic relationships, “We wouldn’t have any secrets, and if there are any secrets, then you lied to me about that. Our whole relationship is a lie.” No, it’s not. I’m not lying about all those other things. A couple comes in, typically somebody finds out about an affair, and, “How could I ever trust him?” Part of the problem that led to the affair is that you’ve believed in this concept of trust to begin with by recommending you don’t ever trust anybody. It’s not you want to trust that they’re going to not be okay.
What you’re talking about is how can I trust that the other will never, ever do this again. I go, “You tell me how that happens and how you can prove it,” because as soon as you throw that in, somebody has to be a detective. You always have to check and you always have to ask and you always have to suspect. That’s not going to work. Don’t worry about trusting. It doesn’t mean your whole relationship’s a lie. “They’re a good parent, aren’t they?” “Yeah.” “They’re a good provider, right?” “Yeah.”
“They do the things around the house and are a good business partner with you about things. They’re not stealing money from you. They’re not beating you. It sounds like a good relationship. You want to throw it all away because they were naked with somebody else. Why? Is that the criteria for whether you are loved or not? All this other stuff has nothing to do with whether they love you or not?”
Is it the fact that they’re feeling less than, and that’s something they’re having a real problem with?
A couple has an affair. A couple has whatever somebody would call a betrayal. There is a lot that each contributes that brought it about. I’m not up on this stuff, but I saw a headline. Some gal was this TikTok sensation because she spent 80 hours or something doing little 2- or 3-minute stories about being married to a pathological liar. It just blew up the internet, apparently, according to this headline.
The little bit I’ve read, nowhere was anything even hinted, maybe if I kept reading, that the millions and millions of people that were glued to her TikTok to hear this continuing saga never went, “What’s your problem? You’re not married to a pathological liar. Everything that you know about them makes perfect sense. They’re just wonderful. One day, you learn you were lied to.”
I’m sure she’s telling the story and then he didn’t do it. There’s another part of healthy relationships. It’s to get away from a victim-perpetrator mindset about anything. If you’re married to a sociopath and they rob you of all your money, there’s something about you that contributed to that. Your naivety, let’s say you were generally showing some version of the romantic ideal is so important to you and your sense of self that you’re not in that relationship. You’re no good. This person is the person who agreed to be in that relationship with you. You went along with it.
Another part of healthy relationships is to get away from a victim-perpetrator mindset.
Romantic Myths And The Reality Of Relationships
Sounds like love is blind. When you said that, I thought of that saying, “Love is blind.” That idea that love is not all those feelings.
Love is not blind. Naivety is blind. Love is not blind at all. Love is sees. When I see you, I love you.
What is blind?
You’re blind because you believe in myths and fantasies and then stories. One of my favorite songwriters, Steve Goodman, has a great song about this guy who’s being taken in by a story. One of the ending lines is, “You only fall for lies and stories when you want to.” I’m not sure it’s in a little more of us, but it’s this idea that nobody’s the bad guy, which is another piece of our romantic myth that somebody has to be a good guy and somebody is a bad guy, that somebody was betrayed. “They betrayed me.” No, they did what human beings do. You picked them. There’s something wrong with your picker.
I think this is a good spot because I think, as we said, this is a series on relationships, and I look forward to future episodes where we talk about romantic love and healthy romantic love in the context of what you mentioned as lust and naivete. It made me think of the idea that what we look for, we will find. Sometimes, we’re not seeing what really is because we’re maybe rose-colored glasses looking for something.
To your point, our opinion or our vision of what this is supposed to be, the fairy tale. All of a sudden, the warning signs were there, likely. How many times have you heard that from friends and family when you went full-on into the relationship and everyone else was like, “I knew that wouldn’t work out?”
We can do just about a whole episode on how to go about deciding that you’re with somebody worth being with.
I think that would be a great episode. We’ll start with romantic love and then we’ll get into the decisions that are likely going to present themselves as you pursue romantic love, yes?
Right, because the way we go about making that decision is just dead wrong.
That’s what you call, Eddie, a cliffhanger. This has been another awesome episode. Folks, please, again, if you like what you’re reading, don’t keep us a secret. Like and subscribe to the channel. Look for updates in your inbox, as well as on your notifications for YouTube and everywhere you find podcasts.
If you have any questions, or you have an idea for a topic you’d like Eddie and I to discuss, please put it in the comments below. We’ll be more than happy to weave that into the future episodes. This is something that we absolutely love to do, and we feel like we’re doing some good work. Let us know your thoughts, and we’ll continue to bring you this content on a weekly basis. Thank you very much for tuning in. Take care.
Thanks.
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