Well, hello there, and welcome to this episode of the Terri Cole Show.
I am so excited that you are here.
So I'm gonna start by asking you a question.
Do you ever feel like when your partner comes home, that the first thing they do is flip
on the TV?
Or the first thing they do is grab a beer?
Or the first thing they do is not say hello to you?
You ever feel like sort of an afterthought?
Or maybe you are doing that because what I've seen in couples, when I used to be a couple's
therapist practicing years ago, is that we can really take for granted our partners.
Like it's so easy to.
So in this episode, I'm gonna be giving you some tips and strategies about how you can
ritualize acknowledging your person.
It's gotta be mutual, of course, but there are rituals that we can put into place that
will keep us close with the people, especially the one person we say we love the very most.
So before we get started, if you are new to my channel, please introduce yourself in the
comments, cuz we are a friendly bunch.
And make sure that you subscribe and hit the bell icon so that you get notified when we
roll out new episodes, which is every Tuesday and Thursday, cuz I wouldn't want you to miss
a thing.
And if you are new, my name is Terri Cole.
I'm a licensed psychotherapist, a relationship expert and the author of Boundary Boss, which
you can get at boundarybossbook.com.
And I wanna say, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your questions and your comments
on this channel.
It is such an active, alive, interested channel.
I love you guys and I love to highlight your comments.
So astrialinda had a comment under the episode called 8 Simple Mental Wellness Strategies
for Every Day and they say, "Thank you so much for being such a beautiful soul, Terri.
These are all great tips, but I really feel the most important one is mindfulness.
I think that we get so caught up in the current of life that we don't look at the beauty that
we are passing as we're in that current.
We just go along in that current and are all consumed with, well, the current haha.
Yes, technology is wonderful, but I do find myself on it way too much and I'm gonna try
to do better.
I'm worthy of the best life that I can have.
And so is everyone else."
Well I thank you so much for saying so, I wholeheartedly agree.
So how about we move into today's content?
So you've probably seen, you know, when you come home for, if you have, let's say a pet,
if you have a dog, not a cat, we're just gonna talk about a dog.
You come home or you watch on, if you watch on reels or Instagram, dogs are always excited
to see you.
Like literally jumping out of their skin, the most excited they're, this just, it's
the most amazing thing that you came home even if you just left, not that long
ago.
Now I'm not saying that our relationships need to be like that.
But also think about young children, how excited, you know, you walk in and they're like mommy
or daddy, like they're running towards you.
Now.
All right,
you're not gonna get that from probably a 16 year old or a 14 year old.
But there's something about that acknowledgement that is so important.
And there's so much joy that comes along with it.
But somehow when we're in committed relationships that are long term, it seems, it's very easy
for, um, those things to go by the wayside.
So I'll tell you a little bit about my own personal experience in my life.
And then I'm gonna give you some ideas of things that you can do to not end up allowing
- or the day to day life, wear you down to the point where you become numb towards your
partner, where you become blasé.
Right?
Think about it.
When, when someone passes away, it's like that, that people get so sad if they didn't
have a chance to properly say goodbye, right?
It's, that's one of the biggest things that I've heard as a psychotherapist is that they're
so sad that they didn't get a chance to.
And I always think about it's really not necessarily that last goodbye, even though I understand
why people feel that way, but it's really about how did you live with that person?
What was your relationship like with them on a daily basis?
Were you appreciative?
Were you present?
Right.
So we think about it in relationships, therapeutically, there's different versions of this, but we
call it the four A's of healthy relationships.
So attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection.
Now I'm gonna go into these a little bit.
I think they're pretty self explanatory, but a lot of things that are self explanatory,
it doesn't mean that we actually do them or that we prioritize them in our life or in
our relationship.
So attention.
What does that mean?
It means when you're talking to your partner, get off your frigging phone, right?
It means when you're talking to them, they should not be on their frigging phone.
At least that's a rule in my life and in my house, it's very, I'm very uninterested in
talking to anyone who has their head in a screen.
And if in the beginning of when, you know, phones were everywhere because I'm, I'm old
enough that I've lived through, not nobody having phones and only having, you know, beepers
and you know, I've gone through the, the gamut, but I just couldn't believe.
And maybe it's because it was so new, but once it became ubiquitous where it was everywhere,
where everyone like 13 year olds, 15 year olds on phones, I just couldn't believe how
much the rules of engagement societally seem to change.
I mean, not for me, no, no phones at the table.
No.
And I will not talk to someone who's on their phone.
Now, not because I'm mad, but because I have other things I could do.
If I'm only gonna get half of your attention, I, I'm not giving you my full attention and
I'm positive
I deserve your full attention.
I have no doubt about it.
And I believe that you deserve mine, cuz I'm also not interested in having like a, a half
of a conversation.
So it would be my kids at the time as they were getting older, this is when phones came
in and they'd be like, I'm listening.
And I would just say, I need you to listen with your ears and your eyes.
I need all of the things.
Um, because the disconnection is so profound and because we live such busy lives, it's
so easy to just be disconnected.
We have, I mean, tech is one of the biggest connectors and disconnectors right.
Think about the pandemic, how much being able to Zoom with people we love who we hadn't
seen in two years, and my kids live all over the place.
So it was like one of my kids lives in Canada.
So we couldn't see him and his kids, so painful.
But we were able to FaceTime.
We were able to Zoom, which without a doubt made it so much better.
So attention is the first a, we need to give that to each other and it's, it creates trust
and safety.
Right.
And I would say even, even expansion, right when your partner is telling you something,
instead of like giving them auto advice or instead of, um, telling 'em what you thought
they should have done, or instead of like wanting them to hurry up their stories so
you can get to your story, learn to ask expansive questions.
Then what happened?
How did you feel?
What was that like for you?
My husband was just, um, just did a podcast that he had done last year, which last year
didn't go well.
And yesterday it went great.
And I was like, what was different?
Tell me more because I'm interested in his experience and I want to be the person he
wants to talk to.
Right.
I want to be, I am the person he wants to talk to, but do you know what I mean?
I wanna stay that person by being, giving him my full attention and being what I call
more of an athletic listener, like an active listener.
It's not just letting him blab on and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's giving him my positive, full attention.
Listen, you guys, I'm not saying we have to do this every second of the day, we're raising
kids, we're making eggs, we're, we're doing things, right?
But when you create sacred time, which I'm gonna give you in the guide -- so don't worry,
all the stuff is gonna be in the guide for you: terricole.com/guide.
I'm giving you ideas of ways to ritualize what we're talking about.
So attention is the first one.
Acceptance, right?
Acceptance.
Because here's the thing.
It's acceptance means that we are viewing our person with compassion and understanding.
It's like keeps us safe in our relationships.
You know, we make mistakes and if there's judgment and if there's, um, harshness on
the mistakes, there's not acceptance.
And it feel- it is unsafe.
Right?
Vic and I, my husband and I, we've been together 25 years.
We work really hard to create a safe space.
Like if I'm beating myself up about something, he's like, "Babe, you're a human being.
You made a mistake.
We'll fix it.
It's not the end of the world" or vice versa rather than piling on and making it worse.
Being in acceptance is like, I'm still here, right?
Acceptance of the shortcomings of your partner, of the vulnerabilities of your partner.
Being trustworthy, emotionally, means being in acceptance.
Now it doesn't mean accepting abusive or bad behavior.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about accepting the fact that your partner is gonna have amazing qualities
and they're gonna have less amazing qualities.
Right?
So part of what I want you to get out of this episode is that how you behave on a daily
basis, right, day to day, it can either be tearing down your relationship or it can be
adding deposits to the well of good will, as I like to call it, where being polite,
saying "please, and thank you," acknowledging, right?
Affectionately, acknowledging each other, which I'm gonna get to.
But all of that is something that when the [_] hits the fan and hello, it will because
we're human beings and this is life, you will now have all of this more flexibility within
the relationship.
You have this well of good will.
These shared experiences that create a resiliency and a flexibility within the relationship.
So if on a daily basis, you're tearing each other down and being super critical and judgemental
of each other and you know, just all the things you're not doing right.
When the [_] hits the fan, and it will, then what do you have?
There's not a lot of bandwidth for you to use if you are tearing each other down on
a daily basis, simply by being lazy, simply by being, by doing the lowest thing that people
can do, right?
This is the path of least resistance.
Being critical is so pedestrian.
I'm sorry, but it is.
Just being hypercritical, it's like being the laziest mothereffer in the world.
It's, it's so easy to point out what's wrong, right?
This is the way the brain is wired.
Right?
We have the negativity bias, which means that
we remember painful things five times more readily than positive things.
So you've gotta work five times harder to hold onto the positive stuff about your partner,
because the negative stuff will just, it's just gonna stick in your brain.
So with acceptance, you really wanna work to not be super critical cuz it's painful.
And that goes both ways, of course.
The third A is appreciation, acknowledging, right?
Thank you.
Being grateful.
Appreciation is major in my marriage, major, where we are always appreciative of each other.
And this may sound really weird, but whoever gets up last and makes the bed, the other
person's like, "Hey, thanks for making the bed."
This is like every day somebody makes the bed and somebody says, thank you for making
the bed.
If Vic unloads the dishwasher, thanks for unloading the dishwasher.
Thanks for taking out the garbage.
Thanks for doing every frigging thing.
You know why, cuz you know who doesn't work for me?
My husband, he's got his own huge career.
Like he does not work for me.
Everything he does to make my life easier, every kindness that he extends me, is a gift.
And I appreciate that gift.
And that goes both ways.
It's like cherishing the other person, not being entitled.
Oh my God, entitlement will kill love faster than lots of other things.
Entitlement and resentment are just such love killers.
They really are.
Because here's the thing.
You are not guaranteed anyone.
Maybe your children, maybe, but even that is not a guarantee.
But even if you're married, even if you said til death do us part, we need to continue
to work these four A's.
If we want the relationship to be one that you want to last until the end of time, right?
Who wants to live in a world of resentment and judgment?
It's so incredibly painful.
Appreciation and gratitude I would say is, if I could only say one winning formula in
my marriage, cuz I have a very happy marriage, that would be it.
And I actually, we do all these four As, which is important.
And the um, last one is affection.
And this is affectionate communication, right?
As well as physical affection.
Listen, everyone has a different level of their need for affection, but being verbally
affectionate, calling each other sweet names.
Um, my husband calls me a million different things, I can't even - angelpuss.
I mean, I can't, I could go on.
There's like ridiculous, but they're sweet.
And it's literally him referring to me with affection and always calling each other "babe,"
always saying, "Hey love," "Hey, whatever," those things actually matter.
Right?
When you express affection in your relationship, what does it instill in the other person?
It makes us feel wanted.
My husband and I go out of our way to say, "Hey, you look amazing."
Or "I love that."
I post about him quite a bit because he is in my life.
And I'll say like, you know, "My smoke show of a husband, my one and only," again, um,
because I value him like truly.
And I feel that affection, but so much of that has to do with the fact that when, you
know, times get tough and have gotten tough in our marriage in 25 years, of course you
have rough times, you talk about it.
We've gotten into therapy over things.
We've, we've raised teenagers together.
My husband was a widower and I came in when they were like 12, 14 and 16, you know, acting
out teenage boys.
That was not easy.
Although they are my family, you know, I mean, this is my...
They were definitely my destiny, but we needed help.
And so we got help because I didn't want these four A's to leave our life because times were
hard.
We worked consciously and actively to continue being affectionate, appreciative, having acceptance
and giving each other our attention.
Those are really the most important things.
Um, I love this quote by Elizabeth Gilbert.
She says "To be fully seen by somebody then, and be loved anyhow, this is, this is a human
offering that can border on miraculous."
And that's really what healthy love is.
And that's where the acceptance piece comes in and we celebrate what's amazing about our
person, and we try not to harp on the things that are not...
At their shortcomings, cuz you know what?
We have our own shortcomings.
I always think about that.
If I'm feeling critical of Vic in my mind about something, and then I think, yeah, and
you're a day at the beach.
You're super not.
So don't be critical.
Have the conversation if you need to have a conversation, but it's how it's approached.
You can have really difficult conversations, but you can approach them with love.
You can approach them.
Every time Vic and I have a conversation about anything, both of us are so well aware that
we are both a stand for the marriage, meaning it will be easier not to have a hard conversation,
but that is not what is best for the union.
So we have hard conversations because we love each other and we wanna stay that feeling
of being in love and committed and interested and excited by each other, and interested
in what the other person thinks.
And that means you can't sweep the hard stuff under the rug because that's where resentment
starts to build.
So let's talk a little bit about ritualizing acknowledgement and attention and affection.
Be mindful to say hello and goodbye.
Don't just leave the house, right?
Find your person, kiss them goodbye.
Say goodbye.
The first thing you do when you come in, drop your stuff and say, "Hello, how was your day?"
Kiss your person hello.
Even if you haven't been doing this, and listen, maybe the physical stuff might not be right
for you, but the attention stuff is right for everyone.
Don't just come in and flip on your computer or come in and grab a beer.
Find your person, say hello, right?
How was your day?
Talk before you move into something else.
With my husband and I, every time we separate, even if he's just going to the dump; maybe
it's, maybe being flirty or being cute.
And I'll always say, "Come kiss me goodbye.
Don't just leave."
And that again, maybe we're extreme and maybe we're corny.
I don't know, when the kids were teenagers, they definitely thought we were corny.
But my feeling is, it can't hurt.
My husband kissing me 10 times a day is not going to be bad for my relationship.
I'm positive of that, but couple's not kissing each other for months on end, that is definitely
bad for a relationship.
Make sure you kiss each other at the very least good night every night.
Even if I get into bed after my husband, which doesn't happen often, but if it does, I will,
I don't wanna wake him up.
So I don't kiss him on his face, but I'll kiss his arm or whatever part of his body
might be sticking out of the blanket because it's a ritual.
Because it means something to me to acknowledge him before I go to sleep.
These are things that you, you can create them as rituals.
My husband and I do a nightly gratitude practice -- and all of the info, you guys, is gonna
be in the guide: terricole.com/guide.
So don't worry.
You'll have it.
Nightly gratitude practice where we talk about three things we're grateful for throughout
the day.
And then we talk about what our favorite moment of the day is.
And many times those gratitudes include each other, of course.
And then we do what is called a weekly or a biweekly - we do it every other week - State
of the Union, where we choose a Sunday morning, stay in bed, have coffee, read the New York
Times, and talk about like, Hey, how we're doing?
Like, is there anything we need to clean up?
We talk about gratitudes.
We talk about what's been going amazingly.
And then we also talk about, is there anything that needs our attention?
Because if you can start doing a State of the Union, you don't have to call it that
you can just call it breakfast in bed every other week, right, if your person isn't into
self-help stuff or whatever.
But it's something that if you institutionalized talking about the good stuff and the hard
stuff, your relationship will be so much healthier for it.
So I hope that this added value to your life.
If it did, please share it with the people in your world.
I so appreciate you spending time with me.
And as always, take care of you.