Fighting for Connection - Creating a Secure Marriage
Want a close connected and secure relationship? Maybe you feel like something's not quite right in your relationship, even though there are a lot of good things. You and your partner love each other, but there are moments that hurt. It's normal for all relationships to experience conflict or worry. The difference between the couples that remain close and the couples that drift apart is their ability to work through conflict and moments of worry and insecurity within the relationship.
Listen in to discover new ways to stay close and connected even through the toughest moments life throws at you.. Learn how to deal with your patterns of conflict and make your connection stronger. Simply listen, learn, make changes, and see positive transformations in your relationship.
Brett Nikula is an LMFT and Relationship coach that works with couples that want to stay together, that really care about each other, learn to communicate in a way that reduces the pain in the relationship and increases the connection.
Fighting for Connection - Creating a Secure Marriage
The Strength of Consistency and Persistency
Struggling to keep up with life demands can feel like an uphill battle, especially when juggling the chaos of a travel-laden career and a growing family. My personal journey has taught me invaluable lessons about the significance of consistency and persistence, not just in the realm of relationships, but through all of life's experience as well. In this heartfelt conversation, I, Brett Nikula, peel back the layers of these twin traits that are so crucial to our lives, sharing how they've shaped my bond with my wife, Kelsey, and the surprising ways Emotionally Focused Therapy has brought us closer together.
The fabric of our connections with others, woven through communication and emotional vulnerability, can sometimes fray under the pressure of societal norms—especially for men. Within this episode, I discuss the delicate balance of expressing emotions and the transformative power of building secure relationships, which can turn misunderstandings into opportunities for deeper intimacy. As we shift to the business landscape, I reveal the inner workings of my enterprise, Pivotal Approach, underscoring that while there's no magic formula for triumph, the relentless pursuit of our dreams is built on the bedrock of persistence and consistence. Join me as we navigate these intertwined personal and professional paths, discovering the strength in our steadfastness and the courage in our perseverance.
Episode number 75 Consistency and Persistency. 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, everybody, hope you all are doing amazing this week.
Speaker 1:As I record this, I am really in the beginning of a pretty hectic spring. I was on my Southwest app the other day and I got five trips planned between now and May where I will be jumping on a plane and going somewhere. So it's like most of the weekends between now and May that I'll be headed out somewhere, which is a ton of fun for me. I enjoy traveling, but the truth is it also creates a little bit of chaos. So there is this ying and yang, I guess. So, yeah, it's a ton of fun. It's going, going, going, traveling and seeing new things and connecting with new people, but there's also some reality components to it where I have to be more efficient at work. It takes away from time with the kids and time around the home, and it does make for a life that has additional stresses. I'm excited. I'm going to enjoy it. It also is a busy time of life. Mom and baby continue to be doing well Tomorrow he will be four weeks old seems to be growing and plumping up and that is always a good thing and Kelsey continues to recover in a way that I would say is pretty well. I know all of you mothers out there know what recovery is way more than I do, and I can't stress enough that I think it's just amazing what that body goes through and how well mothers just kind of power through that recovery process and continue to show up for the baby and for themselves. Oftentimes they even go above and beyond and are showing up for other people. So kudos again to all you mothers out there.
Speaker 1:This week I just want to talk to you about a couple words that I was thinking about actually the other day when I was in the gym, and they were consistency and persistency. And these words are pretty similar. They sound the same, but they kind of have two elements to them that I want to discuss. Over the years I can't say that I've had this belief within me that I'm a very consistent and persistent person. In fact, I would say I can be somewhat inconsistent about many things. I like to jump around. You know if I'm going to shovel a driveway, it's going to take some hacks at this pile and bounce over here to take some hacks at that pile. And if I'm doing a puzzle it's like you know, work on the red and then work on the blue and then work on the green and then back to the blue and then over the red and back to the green, and that's for some reason. That's just kind of how I'm wired and I've watched other people like shovel the driveway and they just start in a corner and they just work out from that corner and they do a puzzle and they focus on the red and then they focus on the blue and then they focus on the green, and I've admired some of those qualities. Even when I'm talking, I can bounce around a lot and I remember last summer I was watching someone else give a presentation and I was just like wow, they had it all kind of outlined, kind of went through their outline and stayed right on task, didn't bounce around at all, and I was like man, that just is amazing, like that guy could in 10 years, pull up that slideshow and give the exact same presentation. And, for whatever reason, my brain just doesn't seem to operate naturally like that. So what ends up happening is, you know, I create a presentation, I give the presentation and honestly, I can't ever replicate it because most of the time I'm not talking about anything that is on the slide, it's just kind of whatever comes to me. So because of that, some of those qualities of I was felt like man.
Speaker 1:I would like to be more consistent, I'd like to be more persistent, and as I was at the gym the other day, I was kind of thinking about what I do in my life today. Some of these things that I do in my life and have in my life are the things that I started years ago. One of them was going to the gym. Now I'm not like a every day at the gym, I'm not like five days a week at the gym, but one thing is interesting is that I've kind of been showing up at the gym for, I would say, three to five years now and what I've found is that I've just kind of stuck with it and I've recommitted and I've re-upped and I've stayed consistent in showing up there for a number of years. And one thing that I would say as I think about this is I haven't been exactly persistent, like when things have gotten challenging at the gym or in my life, or my calendar has gotten busy, my persistence has dropped off and I haven't persisted through some of those more challenging moments to stay consistent at the gym. But there are some areas where I have been able to do that and I just want to share with you what I've noticed.
Speaker 1:First, when I start thinking about breaking my conflict cycle with Kelsey, I remember learning about it and it sounded so exciting to be able to interact with Kelsey in a way that didn't lead to the hurt and the pain that we were experiencing at that time. And sitting in that class learning about the conflict cycle, I was motivated, I was energized. I was like, yes, I want to figure out how to do this. Because when I was learning about that, I didn't think I had a bad marriage or I was in a bad relationship, but there'd be these moments that would just spiral into pain and disconnect. There was like distance and worry and hurt and confusion. And when I was sitting in that class and I was learning about this process of breaking our conflict cycles, it just made so much sense to me at that time.
Speaker 1:Eft, or Emotionally Focused Therapy, was the process that I was learning about and this idea that our emotional longings, if unmet, cause us to dysregulate and protect ourselves. And what ends up happening is we either tend to pursue that relationship, we become a pursuer, or we withdraw from that relationship, and those are both protective measures that we tend to see in our conflict cycles. And why those things happen is because we have these emotional longings that help us understand that we're safe within relationships, and when these emotional longings aren't met, our brain believes we're not safe in these relationships and moves to protect us. And that whole process just made sense, and my next podcast next week is going to be talking a little bit more about Emotionally Focused Therapy and Attachment Theory and how these things really work together and make sense in a way that was powerful for me. But what I was learning at that time was that I needed to figure out how to regulate myself in that process and show up in a way to help regulate Kelsey, and that could really change our dynamic. Now couples that come in, they're working with me to learn how to regulate themselves. That's part of my job is to help someone regulate themselves so they can break their conflict cycle, and so when I was learning about this.
Speaker 1:I was trying to do it on my own, I was trying to teach myself, but it just seemed like, no matter what, no matter how hard I tried, at that time, I couldn't do anything different than what I was currently doing, which was pulling away, shutting down, showing up in uncaring ways. That's how I'd protect myself. When it felt like I couldn't succeed or I couldn't keep Kelsey happy is I'd be like, okay, fine, forget it. That was my protective response. If Kelsey would say something or do something or show up in a way that activated me, it just felt like I lost all control and I would react in the way that was so familiar to me, so safe. That reaction really felt safe and what I would do is I'd pull away, I would shut down, I'd grow quiet, I'd try to flee from the pain that I was experiencing.
Speaker 1:And no matter how much I learned at that time and thought about changing that dynamic, it just kind of felt like if Kelsey wouldn't and didn't change the way that she was showing up, then I just simply couldn't. And that was five years ago. That was in like the days, weeks and months really following my postgraduate course that I took on Emotionally Focused Therapy. But I was so motivated and energized that I continued to learn about this process and I reached out to a guy by the name of Kurt Weichel who's kind of been my mentor around Emotionally Focused Therapy. I worked with him directly on the conflict cycle and understanding it and he worked with me to help me really see how I was thinking and how I was becoming dysregulated in that conflict cycle. And as I worked with him and as I learned more and studied more about this relationship dynamic, I began to experience a change that even in the middle of conflict I was beginning to recognize and see that conflict in a different way and I could kind of catch my brain getting activated.
Speaker 1:I could clearly see how it was a cycle, how I believed in that moment that maybe Kelsey didn't want me or wasn't happy with me and that felt emotionally unsafe. But the best way to move forward was, rather than protecting myself from that pain, it was to move into that pain, to move towards Kelsey and to express what was happening within me in a clear way and to really work to reassure her and to hold space for her so she would really see how I care and the ways in which I express care for her and help her see that at my core, I really do care about her and I want the best for her and I want to stay close and connected with her. What that allowed was that, eventually, there was this time, then, where Kelsey showed up in a way that typically activated me. I felt that activation come up, but then I was able to catch myself. I was able to manage my mind and, rather than going up into my protective space, I was able to drop down back into that caring, vulnerable space and that time, in our kitchen, I was able to move toward her. With this softened exterior, I dropped that hostile emotion, that protective emotion I was able to really express with tenderness, with care, with love, that I felt like we were confused. I felt like something was a little bit amiss and I just wanted her to know that I care about her and I want to figure out whatever it was that we were dealing with at that time. I wanted to figure it out together with her and I wanted to be on the other side of whatever that challenge was connected, close to her, and that was really the first time that I broken my side of the cycle, and it took some time to be able to do this. I know it was over a year after I learned about the conflict cycle that I was really able to do this on my own. While that one time was significant, it wasn't perfect from there on out by any means and we got stuck time and time again and we fell back into our old patterns often. But we were consistent in working on our cycle and we persisted through some of those really challenging times and we had little breakthroughs here and there.
Speaker 1:The way breaking our conflict cycle works is if we can do it once, we're more likely to do it twice. If we can do it twice, we're more likely to do it 10 times. If we can do it 10 times, we're more likely to be able to do it 100 or 1000 times. And breaking that conflict cycle is really coming out of those protective emotions and reassuring each other. The other piece of this is if we are able to break our conflict cycles, we have less conflict cycles. We become more secure in our relationship and because of that security in our relationship, we're less activated by things that were cycle starters in the past. The goal is never to get rid of the conflict cycle. The goal is always to reassure each other when the conflict cycle shows up, and if we can do that, then what we find is typically we experience less conflict cycles.
Speaker 1:Over this course of learning this and working with Kurt Weichel, my brain was changing, my beliefs were changing and I was able to break that conflict cycle that first time. Then there was a second time, and a third time, and a fifth time, and a tenth time, and now, a few years from that, it's so clear that the things that activated us way back in, like 2019, 2018, are things that we could handle in our relationship without getting activated in the same way. We can talk about them, we can kind of laugh about them, we can connect over some of those things that really were challenging. Don't get me wrong. We still have a relationship that requires us to choose each other in our imperfections. We are no means perfect, but as we have a secure bond, we are much more capable of choosing each other in each other's imperfections, and now we have learned how to reassure each other when these worries come up in a much more efficient and clear way than we had the ability to in the past. And who knows what our future has in front of us.
Speaker 1:Who knows what cycle starters we have in front of us, but what I do know is that we have kind of a roadmap back to each other and I've worked with all kinds of different situations and scenarios couples and I've found that even in the most difficult, challenging situations, if we have two people who care about each other, two people who want to stay together, two people who want to have a closer relationship, the EFT process is really relationship changing. And I have to say that even my own relationship, as we've been able to break that first cycle and we've done it time and time again feels so much more stable that I feel way more secure than I did at that point in our relationship. And it's an amazing feeling to have this sense of security that Kelsey does really want to be with me and, as hard as that is at times to believe we've had enough of these broken cycles that I really get the sense that that's true. And as we've broken those cycles, I've been able to reassure Kelsey too that she is someone that I choose, that I want to protect and serve her in the best way that I know how. That is what what we're going for when we're trying to break our cycles right. We want to be consistent in the process, we want to be consistently be learning and consistently be practicing and consistently be applying it to our relationship. And we want to be able to persist through those most difficult times so that, if we can stay consistent and persistent, we can have a more secure bond with our partner. And what does a secure bond look like? I want to give you an example of what that secure bond might look like, and here's what I share with some of my clients.
Speaker 1:Let's say you're early into a relationship with someone let's just go with like a friend and you've chatted here and there, but the relationship is still new and it's still a little bit awkward. But you send them a text and you say hey, you want to meet up for coffee and you don't get a reply. Many people at this point will feel rejected. They will feel embarrassed, they may assume that the other person doesn't want to go out for coffee. They won't even bring it up again and they might even pull away from that relationship and avoid it or feel offended. That's what happens in an insecure or unstable relationship. But now let's say that this is a friendship that's aged, you've been best friends for 20 years, things are good between you, and you send a text to them like hey, you want to meet up for coffee? No response.
Speaker 1:Since this bond is so much more secure than the other bond, it would be unlikely that the person sending the text would feel rejected. They wouldn't be worried about does this friend like me or not? Am I a problem? Maybe I'm misreading the cues here? They wouldn't have really any of those thoughts. Rather, they'd be worried about their friend. Maybe they would assume, like their phone must be dead or it's not working or something. But for sure, if time went on, they would try to get in contact again and if no contact could be made, they would start reaching out to others. They'd be like hey, have you heard from Sue? I'm trying to get in contact with her and this isn't typical for her and I'm worried something is wrong. They would take this non-response as a sign that something is happening to their friend or in their friend's life, and they wouldn't be so quick to assume that it was something about themselves, that they weren't wanted or accepted. What they would then do is they would move toward their friend to better understand why this text wasn't responded to. It would be a movement towards their friend, really from a place of love, from a place of concern, from a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1:This is the power of a secure bond in a relationship. We can see other people's behavior as information about them and often we can move towards them with concern, with care, with curiosity, rather than pulling away, feeling hurt or offended much like we do when there's insecurity or instability in the relationship. So how do we get there? Again? It's by learning the process of breaking our cycle, by dropping down into our vulnerable emotions when the cycle is present and pivoting back into the relationship by inviting our spouse into a closer relationship with us. And women tend to gravitate towards this stuff a little bit more than men.
Speaker 1:Men. We like to think that we're unemotional and this stuff really doesn't matter. But I'm telling you, especially the guys, you have emotions, you have relational longings. You want to feel something in this relationship that feels so good for you in an emotional sense, whether it's like being valued or appreciated or desired or wanted or cared for or loved or whatever that longing is for you. It's there within everybody I've ever worked with, if you can just study this enough and practice this enough and get language for it and be consistent and be persistent. I really think that you have the power to change the dynamic in your relationship and find that girl that was once so close to you and maybe you felt that there's some distance between you, there's some space between you and you don't know how to fix it.
Speaker 1:This is really something that is very logical, it makes sense to us and we can learn how to do this, even as men. It might feel a little bit mushy, gushy, a little bit awkward. You can put it into your own language, but I know that understanding this is going to help you regain control of your side of the cycle and oftentimes what we can find is a way back to communicating with our spouse in a way that draws her in, draws her closer, and, of course, it works the same way for the women that we can learn how to communicate in a new way. We can learn how to invite our partner in and move towards them with curiosity, with care, with compassion, and oftentimes we begin to understand each other in new ways. We begin to communicate in new ways, we begin to create a more secure bond, we feel more safe and when we feel more safe in our relationships, we have higher levels of emotional intimacy and, by the way, when we have higher levels of emotional intimacy, we have higher levels of sexual intimacy, or sexual intimacy becomes more natural within our relationship.
Speaker 1:These are skills and you guys, I think that this is important to really recognize that it's a skill. We can learn this, we can practice this. And why would we do it? Well, because we could have a phenomenal relationship with that person that's in our life, that spouse that we have. We can really do our part to make sure we have the best relationship possible with them, that we can invite them into spaces that are important for us and do it in a way that they're excited about and want to be a part of, and things like that. So we can see it as a skill. We can practice it, we can learn it. We can read the textbook and then practice it and apply it to our relationship. Right, you can't read a book and learn how to shoot a basketball. You can definitely read a book and learn some ways to approach it and some form and things like that. Still, got to go out onto the court, take that basketball and shoot it, applying what you learned in that textbook to see if it's working or not and figure out how to actually apply what you've learned.
Speaker 1:And always within this, we need to have space and grace for each other. There needs to be forgiveness, new promises within ourselves and to each other, and time Time is so important here. But, more importantly, we need to take 100% responsibility for our part and we need to do that consistently. And we need to persist on taking responsibility for our part of the cycle when it's the hardest, when it seems like nothing will change. Those are the moments that we have to kind of bear through. We have to persist through those really difficult moments in our relationship where it's easy to go back to our old patterns, it's easy to give up, it's easy to throw your hands up in the air and say they will never change. This isn't about changing them. This process is really about changing you, and when you can fundamentally change the way that you respond to these situations, you will fundamentally change your relationship. And you do it through the consistency and the ability to persist through some of the hardest moments and show up in a new way, a way that changes the experience for your spouse, that helps them see that you are there and that you care and that they are important to you and you want to be close to them. That type of new experience can change everything.
Speaker 1:It's a process and you may not be perfect at it overnight, and I guess I would say this that you won't ever be perfect at it. But by sticking with it, I know for myself. Five years later, I've witnessed the volatility in my own relationship reduce, the connection with my wife deepen and we're able to hold space for each other in some of our toughest days in a much better way. We're able to hold space for each other's imperfections and really break our cycle so that we can mutually move towards each other with love, care and really with this desire to understand each other and what's happening for each other, versus trying to be heard and trying to be understood and trying to convince and trying to explain and communicate and things like that. Breaking the cycle really changes that communication pattern and in this way we're continuing to strengthen our bond. And I know that you can do this too. Again, if there are two people who care about each other, who want to be together, they can work on securing their bond too. They can break their conflict cycles. If this is you, if you are a person who's distant, who's conflicted, who feels worried about your relationship, you can do it too. Let's do it, and I'd love to do it together with you. And to those relationships that have one person that truly isn't invested. This work applies to you too.
Speaker 1:I've worked with those couples where one has left the marriage or is leaving the marriage and the other one still wanted the marriage, still wants to be together. It's such a hard situation to witness. Those are some of the most difficult sessions that I have and it can bring up so many emotions rejection, unworthiness, shame, guilt and others that I probably don't even know or recognize. But they're deep, powerful emotions and we protect these vulnerable emotions with protective emotions. Anger, frustration, resentment, defensiveness those are protective emotions that we have to protect these vulnerable emotions. But the protective emotions don't serve the relationship. In these situations, a little bit more anger, a little bit more resentment, a little bit more frustration or defensiveness I've never really witnessed how they've helped If you want to know what's possible for the relationship that you have, even if one person isn't committed, isn't wanting to work on it, isn't willing to stay, the way we know what's possible in that relationship is.
Speaker 1:If we do our work, if we break our side of the cycle, if we can really communicate in a clear and a vulnerable way, then we can move towards a possibility of achieving the highest level of mutual wants for that relationship. And what does that look like exactly? If one person isn't invested in the relationship and you are and you truly want to know what the best relationship is that is possible for you to you have to learn how to regulate yourself so that you can move toward that person with love, with care, with curiosity. These are the emotions that serve relationships. If one of us doesn't want to live with the other but we still both want to care for each other, we can. If one of us doesn't want to work on developing emotional intimacy in our relationship, but we both want to treat each other with more kindness, we can do that. And we can't make someone care for us or love us in the way that we always like them to, but they can't keep us from communicating clearly, vulnerably, and inviting them into a secure connection that is possible for them to have with us. And this can happen no matter what the form of the relationship takes. It could be a coworker, a friend, a family, a spouse, a lover. So these skills are so important to all relationships and we can do them in any relationship. And, by the way, the conflict cycle shows up in so many of those relationships that are present in our life. Again, these skills don't come overnight. They're learned and they're developed over a period of time. We need to practice, practice and practice some more. Learn where we are missing, where we're getting stuck, where we are getting in the way of ourselves, and we can become as skilled as we can be so that we can truly discover the relationship that is possible in the partner that we have. Again, like this work doesn't just apply to our spouse, it applies to all relationships and this work doesn't just apply to relationships.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I think about, and I've mentioned here on the podcast, is that the business that I have Pivotal Approach, counseling and Coaching is a business that I've hoped would be blessed, prayed. This would be my calling in my life's work and I've really set my intentions around working on this business so that it could do just that. It could be somewhere that I could spend my time and put my energy and my efforts, because I enjoy this work. But to do that. It needs to be something that I can really support myself and family with.
Speaker 1:Close to five years ago now, I opened up this business and I was excited about the possibilities and I had such high expectations and the first year in business I lost money. I think I was $11,000 in the hole the first year I had my LLC open. The second year I barely made anything and I was wondering if this little business of mine was going to survive. I wasn't really sure, but I stayed consistent, I kept at it and after two years I sold my other business that I was owner of and working on that time as well, which was a painting contracting business, and I went all in on Pivotal Approach. I wanted to help people. I wanted to do this work that I'm doing now. To do that, I needed to support my family and at the time, pivotal Approach on its own wasn't doing that.
Speaker 1:I was going to go all in to try and make this work that I do, this business that I have, my full-time career and the means by which I support my family, and it required so much learning, so much trying and, honestly, it's had me so many times praying that if this was meant, it would happen, and I remember walking into the first office that I leased September 1, 2019, sitting in that office and thinking of what the future would look like from here on out, and I didn't see the next four and a half years. Clearly, I had no clue what it was actually going to look like, and maybe that's a good thing, because I might have just quit right then. But from that day forward, I showed up every day. I would say every single day. I've thought about this business. I've tried new things, I've prayed for this business. I've tried old things, weird things, uncomfortable things.
Speaker 1:I felt helpless and I've recognized that I've been given breaks that have allowed me to stay in business just one more day. It's been amazing how sometimes at those most critical time, something happens, something kind of gives, and I'm able to stay in business one more day by remaining consistent and remaining persistent through all of that. I look today at where this business is and I can see how it was so important that I was able to stay consistent and persistent through some of those most difficult times and I was able to continue to learn and continue to apply and continue to practice, and it's created something more than I could have ever even dreamed of at that time. So for many years it felt like my dreams were dashed, but now, four and a half years later, it feels like this is the dream that I thought I would have within six months. It just took a little bit longer than I expected.
Speaker 1:I had to apply these ingredients of consistency and persistency to do that, and I think it's important to note that they're simply just ingredients. There are other factors, other individuals, and there's always this element of life where there are certain things that are open to us, that are given to us, and certain things that just aren't. It could be a loving spouse, an engaged spouse, it could be a business, a hope or dream. Sometimes we stay consistent, we stay persistent and we can break through and get some of those things, and other times we can't. So consistency and persistency aren't a guarantee. They're just an important ingredient to figure out what's possible for our business, for our relationships, for the relationship that we have with our spouse and so on, and to know what is possible, we have to do our part, and that's the message for you today.
Speaker 1:Have a great week, everybody. And now, as I sign off, I've talked to you at the end of my podcast, like what do I say? Do I say see you next week, because I don't actually see any of you. But one of my listeners reached out and said you're going to be talking to us next week, so say that. So, with that, I will talk to you all next week. Bye-bye.
