Fighting for Connection - Creating a Secure Marriage

New Life

• Brett Nikula, LMFT • Season 3 • Episode 71

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It's just too hard to improve upon the AI summery so here you go.

As the Nicola family tree extends its branches with the arrival of Bram Walter Nicola, I, Brett Nicola, invite you into an intimate reflection on the beauty of beginnings and the deep-rooted theories that guide our connections. In the glow of my newborn son's first days, witness the living embodiment of attachment theory as my wife Kelsey instinctively navigates the delicate waters of our child's emotional needs—a dance of bonding that promises to shape his world and ours.

Venture with us through the landscapes of the heart, where we examine the true essence of security in our closest relationships. Unwrapping the layers of what it means to feel safe, I share how symbolic actions can stir the soul yet may not anchor us in honesty and trust. We'll traverse the challenges that arise when our relational needs go unmet, discuss the art of self-regulation, and share strategies for communicating effectively, all in the pursuit of cultivating the lasting and fulfilling bonds we all yearn for. Join me in celebrating not just the beginning of a life, but the ongoing journey of nurturing the connections that make us whole.

Speaker 1:

Episode number 71. Hello and welcome to the Fighting for Connection podcast. I'm Brett Nicola, a husband, father and fun lover. Listen in as I share stories, tips and inspiration that will move you toward the connection that you want in your relationship. Hey everyone, I am recording this on a glorious Wednesday here in downtown Buffalo. I feel like every time I talk I get on here. I guess I talk about the weather, but it's just maybe the default way we all try to connect. It's kind of a cliche thing, but really the weather down here or out here in Minnesota is extraordinary and I feel like that's what I hear throughout the country, both in the United States and Canada. But I think, if I have my facts right, the high on record for January 31st in our area is like 46 degrees Fahrenheit and today it's supposed to hit like 54 or 55 degrees. The sun is out. It really feels like spring out there and spring is just a time of new life. And it really feels fitting that today the podcast is all about new life because last Thursday Kelsey and I welcomed our seventh child and our fourth son into our family and we have already completely fallen in love with our little Bram Walter Nicola.

Speaker 1:

Last Thursday I was in an appointment with a couple and, I'll be honest, it was a pretty heavy session. This couple was really sharing some heavy things with each other, and that's just the nature of my work, that sometimes these conversations are. They're big, important conversations. And I saw a call come through from Kelsey. I just talked to her like 30 minutes before this. So seeing her calling me, knowing that she knew I was in session, I kind of figured something was up. But I ignored the call. And then I got a text from her and all the text said is hey, I think my water broke. And then, maybe a couple minutes later, I got another text that said come home now. I've never been in this situation where I've had to bail in the middle of a session, like maybe one time I remember having to excuse myself to use the bathroom, but up until now I've never had to end a session like this. So we were 10, 15 minutes into our session and I was like, oh boy, how am I going to just say hey, bye with what was going on in session? So I tried to kind of patch things together, tie up the loose ends and I finally was like hey, I just got to let you know that I got this text from my wife and I'm going to have to kind of let you guys go. I want to let you guys go gently, but that's just kind of what's going on and this took 10 or 15 minutes, which had both of myself and Kelsey sweating for sure. Luckily, my office is seven minutes from home and I was able to grab Kelsey and we made it to the hospital in just 10 minutes from our home with our guests or hospitals just 10 minutes from our home, and we had plenty of time to spare. Five hours later there we were holding our sweet little baby boy. 24 hours after that we were headed home and since then we've just been adjusting, recovering and managing a household of nine. That's just crazy to think about.

Speaker 1:

Over the last five days, as I've spent time with this little new one and I've watched the kids interact with Bram and watch my wife and her recovery and caring for Bram, my thoughts and my mind has really come around to attachment and attachment theory. This little child is just so completely dependent upon our care and I watch him trying to communicate his needs and I watch how we just try to guess what he's experiencing. I was kind of a guessing game like is it hunger, is it a burp? Is it gas? Even the kids are attuned to this. When Bram is upset or something's going on there, I was saying, hey, mom, you need to nurse him. But mom, as I was so aware of that, no, I think he just has a burp or has some gas. But it is sometimes hard to figure these things out, even for Kelsey or myself. Is he too hot, too cold, is he uncomfortable? Is it his clothing? The possibilities are endless.

Speaker 1:

This really is where attachment all begins. I watch how Kelsey's so attuned with this little child and it seems like she knows better than anyone else what's happening for little Bram. Her attunement is just so fine, finely tuned, and Bram's sense of security is being formed during this time and throughout the rest of his life. His personality, our parenting, his experiences with his siblings, experiences with his friends and experiences in his life beyond even these things will shape all of his, I guess will shape his sense of safety. And that really is what attachment is. Is it's our sense of safety within our relationships and if things have happened in our life that create this insecurity within us, that our sense of safety in relationships is unstable or insecure, we become more alert to danger, we get anxious and when we feel like our attachment figure is moving away from us or seems inaccessible or is unaware of our emotions, this anxiety heightens and we become dysregulated and we become fearful and worried.

Speaker 1:

Within our relationships and we can see it with really young children there's these primary attachment styles that children will have, where their sense of safety within their relationship is either very secure or very insecure and on that continuum these children will have different responses to even when their caregiver stands up. Someone, a young child who's secure in their safety within that relationship both physical and emotional, by the way will watch their caregiver get up and won't necessarily become dysregulated. But then we'll watch how a child who maybe is more insecure, more worried that their needs are inaccessible, that their caregiver isn't attuned to them, will become dysregulated even with the parent just standing up, because they worry that that caregiver maybe will move away from them, will be more inaccessible, and so they'll dysregulate to try draw that caregiver in towards them so that they stay close. And what we find is, especially as this child grows up, insecurity can breed insecurity. Our heightened sense of fear creates more fear. And an example that comes to mind, I guess, is I'm a wimp when it comes to being alone in the dark and I've felt how much my awareness increases at the slightest noises and movements when I am alone in the dark, and what happens is it only creates more anxiety. I can kind of freak myself out if I become very anxious when I'm alone in the dark, and this happens within our relationships. We have this anxiety and we become very alert to any sort of danger that might be happening in our relationship and we kind of freak ourselves out.

Speaker 1:

And I want to also note that when a child has this kind of insecure bond, it's not because the mother or the caregiver aren't loving this bond with the mother and caregiver, or the mother or caregiver and this child aren't necessarily tied to the amount of love that's present. And that's very important to remember because sometimes we feel like because you know we had very loving parents we can't have any sort of like attachment injury. But it's just not the case. If there's clear neglect in a relationship, that's one thing, but oftentimes what we find is that because of the child's inability to communicate in a clear and loving, in a clear way, a loving and caring parent can be misattuned to the child's needs. And when we look at like this child that's in our home I guess when I'm thinking of Bram coming home to our home there's so many variables happening. You know life circumstances, things happening in our life, in our relationships.

Speaker 1:

As a child grows up, they have their own perception and their own interpretation of things, their events that occur that are completely out of our control and that affect the child's life, that can leave the child feeling worried or insecure around their physical or emotional safety. So that is how we can have a very loving and caring parents and yet have attachment injuries and be insecurely attached. So I think that's a big hurdle for a lot of people to overcome. They think that if we're insecurely attached then we must have had a bad childhood, we must have had uncaring or unloving parents or it somehow is our parents fault. But it really isn't. It's just such a complex and nuanced and tender and fragile bond that's there. And the communication barriers are so great that even in some of the most loving, caring, attentive relationships between caregiver and child attachment injuries can take place.

Speaker 1:

And attachment theory in and of itself is so broad and so big but super fascinating, and it makes so much sense to me and there is a ton here that we could talk about, but I'll try to stay out of the lecture for the most part and let you dig into it if you're interested in learning more. And why I really start here or talk about this in this podcast is because attachment theory is. It really affects our, our relationships for the rest of our life. It affects our attachment style and our attachment lines which we find and I find in my work show up in adult relationships. And recognizing this within ourselves and in our own life and relationships can be so helpful. It's not something that is just tied to our primary relationships as a child, but these, these attachment styles, these attachment injuries, these relational longings come with us into our, into our adult relationships. And when we can see how our own attachment style has us focused on specific aspects of our relationship, we can begin to regulate those specific longings and and we can begin to regulate those injuries within our relationships so that they don't create so much anxiety within us, so they don't kind of freak us out in our own relationships.

Speaker 1:

And if you think about, like me one time, I remember I was, I was down as a child, I was down at our, at our sauna, which is maybe a hundred yards away from our house or something, and it was dark and I remember I was down there by myself and I got really anxious, I got really freaked out and I remember running as fast as I could up the stairs. And that's what happens in our relationships when we become very anxious, we move away, we move into like this fight, fight, freeze response. I remember just running as fast as I could. I was so like freaked out within myself and and that is what happens in our relationships when we, when we become that anxious, right, I felt the sense of danger when I was alone in the dark and really there wasn't any danger there. Right, it was just my own focus and my own anxiety that had me really aware of how dark it was, how spooky it was, how there was noises in the woods and and I just ran for my life and there's no need for it. But when we have this kind of anxiety in our relationships, we do the same thing when there's no need for it. And that's really what this is all about is just making sure that we can stay in the relationships where there is no danger so that we can have the connection that we want.

Speaker 1:

An example of how this really ties to our relationship would be, I guess, within myself. I grew up in a in a very loving, caring, attentive home, I would say, and I, yeah, I developed a longing to be desired. It was how, as a young boy, I felt the safest. I remember, like when my dad wanted to go fishing with me, wanted me to help him on a project, when my mom wanted me to be close with her, like on the couch, wanted to hug me. That was when I really remember feeling like I'm safe. I felt so good for me and that's what I longed to feel more of.

Speaker 1:

And it wasn't that somehow these things were lacking in my, in my life, and somehow my parents were lacking. It just wasn't the case. It was a quality that comes from our fundamental insecure nature as humans and and this for whatever reason, because of my personality some of the things that took place in my life and in those relationships, my brain decided like that's how I'm going to know if I'm safe, as if they really show me that I'm wanted. And and I think they really did want me, they really did care for me, but I had heightened my awareness of these things and as I heightened my awareness of these things, my brain really began to measure like was I getting enough of it? Was I not getting enough of it? Was I safe, was I not safe? And it really just stayed as this longing within me, something that, for me personally, really helps me feel safe in a relationship, and yet it doesn't necessarily define safety. It's independent of safety. Really, someone could really want me and not be a safe person for me. So these things aren't tied to each other, but our brain sees it that way and I have this insecurity that people don't want me. And if they do want me, then that relationship is safe. But it's kind of nuanced and maybe kind of hard to grasp.

Speaker 1:

But really what we want to see is that our attachment longings help us believe that we're safe, and those attachment longings don't necessarily mean that we're safe. An example that I share with my clients quite a bit here to help them see this is like flowers. Let's say, valentine's Day is coming up here in a couple weeks and two weeks from today, fyi, so all those husbands, especially out there, your wife probably really finds some, or has some attachment longings around Valentine's Day, so just put on your calendar and see what you can do. But with Valentine's Day coming up, this example kind of fits that if we have this attachment, longing to receive flowers, like that's how we know we're safe in our relationship. If our husband gets us flowers on Valentine's Day, then it feels good, it feels secure, it feels safe.

Speaker 1:

But I guess the question I have is is it possible that a loving, caring husband could remain loving and caring and not get his wife flowers on Valentine's Day? The answer to that is yes and could? A person, maybe a husband, who is not true in his relationship, maybe isn't safe within his relationship, isn't being honest, maybe he's missing the word here not being monogamous in his relationship, right, he's cheating, but he gets her flowers, right. It could create the sense of safety in the relationship even though that safety isn't there. And I want us to see that, that we can maybe not be getting flowers and our brain says, oh, we're not safe, but we could be getting flowers and our brain believes we're safe even though we aren't. So those things are independent and our security really is on a continuum as well.

Speaker 1:

So we want to keep that in mind too, that if we could be 100% insecure or 100% secure. Those are kind of the full and empty gauges on this continuum. We probably won't ever be 100% secure and we probably won't ever be 100% insecure, but all of us kind of land somewhere along this continuum and we can be more secure or less secure within these relational longings. So we might have a relational longing and we can be very insecure around this or we could be more secure and that insecurity or security on that continuum is going to affect how sensitive we are to these feelings of danger in our relationship or how regulated we can be, even with maybe some signs of danger. So it's some big stuff here that we're talking about, but things that I think we can really understand and learn and develop some knowledge and skills around that will help us in our relationship so that we can regulate ourselves, so we don't run out of our relationships.

Speaker 1:

Because I think that is really the danger that happens when we have insecurity within our relationships, when we kind of fundamentally are more insecure and more anxious in our relationships. We can like I ran so fast towards my home from that sauna we can run so fast away from our partners and it can look like either shutting down with drawing, pulling away, or it can look like attacking and criticizing and teaching and trying to fix the other person. Both of these are protective behaviors that we have when we feel anxious within our relationships and both of them really cause some confusion within our relationship. So we want to be aware of it and in my own life, as I recognized that it was my own relational longing that was flaring up in my relationship with Kelsey, I could see how this desire to be desired would leave me anxious and confused. Just because Kelsey wouldn't move towards me when I got home from work, I would get this big sense of like oh, something has gone wrong, when really nothing had gone wrong and I didn't really know why it was. Until I really slow down and recognize that it was this relational longing that was really unstable or insecure within me and I ended up feeling like I was in an emotionally unsafe relationship. When the reality was that I was and when I wasn't aware or recognize this, I reacted to this anxiety in a way that was really confusing for Kelsey. I would like shut down, I'd pull away, I'd go quiet, and it would leave her really confused and feeling equally emotionally unsafe, and it really helped me see how tender like this romantic relationship is within my own life and definitely, I would guess, within your life.

Speaker 1:

These important relationships are just so fragile and tender and it really is that inner child within us. As I look at Bram, he's so fragile, he's so tender and that dance between him and my wife, him and me, him and those caregivers around him, is so nuanced. And while we can see kind of that physical, really true relationship between a child and mother in physical form happening, it continues to happen in our relationships as adults. We don't necessarily see it in the same way as like a mother tending to her child, but we now are in these relationships where we still have these wants, these longings and these emotions and we just don't know how to always communicate them. And what we end up doing is we cry out, we pull away, we shut down, we attack, we become resentful, we become critical and those are ways that we cry out when these longings or wants within our relationships aren't being met and what happens is it leaves our spouse or our partner trying to figure out what exactly this means. And that's that dance that continues to happen where it's like oh okay, what is happening here and what's going on and what is gonna regulate this person, and maybe you can see how your relationship has these qualities present.

Speaker 1:

Even today, I have to spend so much time trying to figure out how to better communicate and regulate myself. You see, when I was a child, it was my parents' responsibility to regulate me, but today it's my responsibility to regulate me and it's not Kelsey's, and that's so important that sometimes we never really get the memo that, okay, now we're an adult and it is our responsibility to regulate us. We continue to look for that caregiver to regulate us, and it can cause a lot of confusion. Kelsey, in my relationship, has been amazingly supportive and she's definitely been someone who's shown me love when I felt unlovable, who supported me when I felt like I couldn't go forward. But if I were to expect that from her, and when I do expect those kinds of things from her, what ends up happening is I wait for her to regulate me, and that is when I have experienced the most pain in my life and my relationships, when I have given that responsibility to Kelsey to regulate me.

Speaker 1:

However, when I've taken on the responsibility to regulate these attachment wounds that I have, these longings that I have and I've been able to really recognize what they're all about. What has happened is I have been able to communicate to her in a more clear and a more mature way, as an adult rather than as this child kind of crying out. And I've been able to recognize that, even though sometimes I don't feel desired, love is present and that there is love and care and desire in this relationship, even though that inner child within me is worried and feels like those things are inaccessible. And as I've been able to better reach for these things, communicate these things, and I've been able to better regulate these things, it really has brought new life into my relationship. And I've watched how other spouses have been able to learn these same skills, recognize these same things, learn how to regulate themselves better, understand their spouses, learn how to move toward them, learn how to create a more regulating environment for their spouses, and they too have truly breathed new life into their relationship. And I really believe that this process can start with one. It can start with you. You make sense, you have a story, just like Bram will have a story.

Speaker 1:

Your worries and insecurities aren't and weren't necessarily your choice, but today you can make a choice to become more aware of them, so that those things don't keep you from the connection that is available to you in this relationship. What I find with so many individuals and couples that I work with is that the connection that they're longing for, the relationship that they're looking for, oftentimes is right there, next to them, in their spouse, in their partner. We just don't have the skills or the awareness yet to regulate ourselves and to learn how to show up in a regulating way for our partner. We just don't know how to attune to each other yet. And you can learn how to do this. You're here. You're learning how to really truly create an environment that gets you to the connection that you want in your life, and sometimes it's just the connection that is possible.

Speaker 1:

You know, I really caution on saying the connection that you want, because we all want like 100% connection and it's just maybe not possible here in this life. But I do think that there is more of a connection available to us in the relationships around us when we recognize how we are showing up from our attachment wounds, from these experiences that have happened in our past, and those things are preventing us from a better connection, from a more stable connection, from a more secure connection that is available to us in the relationships that are around us right now, here today. Have a great week, everybody. I will see you back here. I don't know why I say see you, but I'll be back here next week on the podcast next Monday. Bye-bye. This has been the Fighting for Connection podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast and want more content like this, check out my Connected Couples Campus, which can be found on my website, wwwpivotalapproachcom, and become the difference you need in your relationship.

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Brett Nikula, LMFT

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