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
A Secure Bond
Have you ever found yourself hesitating to reach out to someone because a voice inside your head whispered, "You're not good enough"? Our latest episode of Fighting for Connection is a journey through these common shadows of doubt and how they can cast a chill on our relationships. As I recount my own struggle with imposter syndrome and the longing to communicate more effectively, I reveal the universality of these insecurities and how they often serve as hidden barriers to intimacy.
It's a raw truth that our imperfections are the very essence of what makes us relatable, yet it's these same flaws that can sometimes make us feel unworthy of love. Through stories of personal loss and the use of faith as a compass, we explore the belief that acceptance doesn't require perfection. We discuss the dual responses to insecurity—retraction and overcompensation—and how they can lead us astray from the connections we yearn for. This conversation aims to light a path to embracing our true selves and the deeper emotional bonds that can result.
Wrapping up, the episode shifts to a broader canvas, painting the importance of human connections and how we can confront and dismantle the barriers that obstruct them. I touch upon the resources from my Connected Couples Campus, designed to help listeners like you fortify your relationship skills. Remember, it's not about pushing through fears to be someone others want in your life; it's about recognizing that you already are that person. Tune in for authentic insights into the art of nurturing the relationships that matter most.
Episode number 76, a Secure Bond. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Fighting for Connection podcast. I hope your week is off to a good start. Today on this podcast, I really just wanted to sit down and chat with all of you guys. I've been thinking quite a bit just about relationships and really just how special they are. I got back from my trip down to Utah and really just had a wonderful time down there reconnecting with so many people that I've had relationships with over the years friends and family and met some new friends. It was really just amazing to me that we can have these connections kind of sprinkled throughout our life, how meaningful and how special they really are.
Speaker 1:In my work I see so many moments of connection and so many different relationships and how special these relationships are. I also witness and experience the pain that is in so many relationships and these moments of loss that are present in so many relationships. I've thought and reflected on how my work has shaped me Likely many of you guys have experienced this as well how your work has shaped how you think and how you see the world, whether you're in the trades or you're in the professional world or whatever it might be those of you that work in the home, and whether you're retired or whatever those situations might be. I'm sure those places have really shaped how you see your relationships and how you see your life, and so on. These experiences that I've had, whether it's on a Zoom connection or with people here in my office, have profoundly affected me and have given me a deeper meaning to relationships and to life. The place that I often arrive at as I'm thinking about these things is just how tender and how fragile our relationships are. If we have one person, if one relationship where we are seen, we are accepted and we are loved as we are, it truly, truly, is a lucky thing and we can really work on expanding our gratitude and our feeling of fortune when we have even the smallest connections in our life.
Speaker 1:Now, in my own life, I feel like I have abundant blessings and some amazing relationships and yet maybe, like you, I worry. I worry about the security of those relationships, I worry about me and my own selfish part is worried about these connections, and I worry about what type of a relationship is it? Well, I give more than I receive. Am I really cared for as much as I care about them? I get anxious when it seems like other people are cared for more than I'm cared for, where it seems like maybe they're getting more attention from people that are important to me than I am getting attention from those people.
Speaker 1:And throughout my life I've had to fight my own inner dialogue, these worries that are within me. They're deep and they're hard to throw off. They're worries that so many of us have. They come from my own life experiences, just like those things that are close and deep to you come from your life experiences and things that you perceive and things that you've wondered and worried about. But even in my work I see how these things are present in so many people. For me they're things like I'm so immature, I worry that I'm too fat, or I worry that I'm not intelligent enough to do the work that I do. I think they call it imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1:And even when I come onto these podcasts, I worry that I'm not well spoken enough, that I don't know how to deliver a point, that I don't know how to really help other people in their relationships, and these things kind of happen in the back of my mind and they create the person that I am and they influence how I show up. While there are moments where I can manage these thoughts and they're not as loud or as pressing, there are definitely times in my life where these things are close to me, and there's many more than I listed off here, but, just as an example, those things become barriers to connection for me because I worry that those are the things that are preventing people from liking me and they put me in this protective space where I don't want to reach out because I feel like those things will be seen in me or judged, and I really don't know the experiences that you have. I've talked to many people who share similar feelings or similar worries For me. In my experience, it's been these worries that have left me anxious that I wouldn't be accepted, that these would be the things that would cause people to reject me, and what I've also witnessed in people that I've worked with and within myself is that many of the things that I wish for, at least in my life, are the things that I feel like would be the antidote to these worries or insecurities, the things that would allow these worries to disappear so that I could feel more confident that people would like me and accept me. So I feel like I'm not a very smooth talker and oftentimes I long to have a smooth speech and I'd be able to articulate a thought very concisely and efficiently, without lots of ums and ahs and things like that. And the reason for this is because I think if I could do that, then people would like me more. And so we have like these longings that are antidotes to some of the insecurities that we have.
Speaker 1:And this is a part of me that is true, that these things happen within me, and I've had to practice seeing every human is equal, being able to recognize that we all have our own unique gifts, our own unique talents, and recognize that there are parts of each of us that make who we are, these parts that we're anxious or insecure about our quirks and qualities, that maybe we're not proud of. They're the things that round out our humanness, and these things that are so close to us also shape our personality. And what's amazing about it when I've seen this in other people, like sometimes, you know, the people that have like the deepest struggles have the ability or the perspective to help other people in a way that no one else can, because they can see things in a different way because of their own experience with struggles. So these things that are close to us also shape who we are and how we are and they also create these protective responses that we have and those shape our personalities and our emotions and all of those things. So it really is the whole pie. You know, these gifts that we have and these drawbacks that we have really shape who we are and that's just how we, as humans, really are.
Speaker 1:And because of this it's felt important to me that even here on this podcast, I've had to come to you as an equal. I've shared with you the experiences that I have, because I do believe that all of us are in this struggle of relationships together. My hope is that by sharing my experience, we all will share our experience and we can all see that we are more alike than we are different. We can share with each other what has worked for us and what hasn't. We can help each other in these universal struggles that we all have. I think even about this marriage relationship so many of us are challenged in talking about those things that are really difficult for us in that relationship. It just seems like it makes so much sense to me that we would kind of lift off the cover and recognize that these marriage relationships are difficult.
Speaker 1:There are things that we can utilize that do help. This doesn't happen, it's not shared or it's not understood by everybody, until we all start talking about it, when we can begin to share with each other. What I think is amazing is we can help each other. Help each other in our relationships, because I think that is the magic of relationships is that we are in a relationship so we can serve each other. If we don't know how to serve the person that we are in a relationship with, can we turn to other people to learn how to show up in that way within their relationship? Because that is that process of helping each other help each other, even when it feels like we have everything we could ever have wanted in our life.
Speaker 1:I've seen firsthand in the people that I work with, people that I've met my own personal relationships, how quickly everything can be taken away from us. I've sat with those people who, in a flash of an eye, have lost their best friend, their lifelong companion, their child and their parent, the person that saw them and accepted them as they are, and that place of safety and security, that relationship that felt so good is gone, their secure foundation and sense of connection taken away in an instant. So to everyone out there, I feel like I get it. I can see how it's so easy to worry about our own standing in relationships, but I also believe that we don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be perfect. There's nothing I can do to make everybody like me. There's nothing I can do that will make me a better person, because I'm human and the more I can come to peace with that, the more I can understand I don't need to become anybody. I can be me, and the more I can be comfortable with how I am and who I am, the more I can give myself, the more I can share myself with others. It really is not from a place of I'm better than you, but from a place that I'm like you.
Speaker 1:Personally, for me, I've really leaned on my own faith, my own religious background, to help me get to this kind of a place where I really see that I don't need to become anybody. I can be just as I am and in my imperfection I can be accepting of myself. It's a difficult thing to stay in, but some place that I think we can also get to. I feel like there's two sides of this coin. Sometimes I feel so inadequate that I pull away, that I withdraw from relationships, that I become closed off and I prevent others from being in a relationship with me I don't share, I don't have that emotional intimacy with others, and other times, because of these same insecurities that I have, I can puff myself up and I have pride and I can boast and I can try to show others that I am somehow more than I really am. What I'm talking about here is neither of those things. Both of those ways of showing up around. Our insecurities can keep us from the connections that we really want. They keep me from the connections that I really want, those connections where people see us for who we are, as we are, and they love us anyways. It's those places where a secure bond can form, and the way that we can do this is by becoming accepting of who we are as we are.
Speaker 1:First. You might wonder how you can tell if you have a secure bond or not. A secure bond really is measured in terms of a continuum. You can be completely insecure or you can be completely secure, and I don't think anyone in this life lands on those polarities, and I'll share with you a story of what I feel like really illustrates what happens when we have an insecure bond versus a secure bond, what happens when our relationship is unstable versus stable. I recently shared this story on my social media. It's one that I share with my clients and oftentimes it helps them kind of see what we're talking about here. And the story goes like this there's two scenarios.
Speaker 1:First scenario Betty gets to know Sue. They meet each other at a office party, they see each other in the hallway and Betty is fond of Sue. She thinks that she'd be a wonderful friend and someone that she's interested in getting to know more. And so what Betty does is Betty reaches out one evening to Sue and she says hey, would you like to go out for coffee to just hang out? And Sue doesn't respond. And what happens for Betty is she becomes instantly embarrassed. She becomes even ashamed that she would reach out mortified, maybe is a better word there and right away her brain's like yeah, why'd you even do that? Of course Sue doesn't want to hang out with you. Why would you put her in that position? And so on. And so what Betty does is she withdraws. She never follows up with Sue again and in fact at the office now Betty looks to avoid Sue because she feels so embarrassed by Sue.
Speaker 1:Now in the second scenario, betty and Sue have been lifelong friends and for 20 plus years they've hung out together. They've shared good times and bad times together and the relationship is in a really good spot. And Betty reaches out to Sue, says hey, do you want to go out for coffee? And there's no response. Betty, in this scenario, texts her again hey, did you get my message? No response. Betty calls her, leaves her voicemail no response. Betty becomes worried. Right, she calls some of Sue's friends. Nobody's heard from Sue. Betty goes to Sue's house and is so worried that something has happened to Sue. Not once does she ever think that Sue is somehow avoiding her. Sue somehow doesn't like her. Sue somehow sees some problem within her that is making her not respond to her. She always is able to see that this must mean something about Sue.
Speaker 1:And the first scenario is what happens when we have an unstable or insecure bond. The second scenario is what happens when we have a secure or stable bond. We're able to see that the information that we're getting in our relationship is giving us information about them when we have reactions or responses or actions within that relationship that we take. It really informs us of us, not about the other person. When we're angry, it doesn't necessarily mean that that other person is mean. It just tells us how we respond to certain behaviors within relationships and always, always, always. Your behavior informs you of you and their behavior informs you of them. When we're in a secure or stable relationship, we have a much easier time seeing this and the small things don't escalate into big relational conflicts.
Speaker 1:When we are in an insecure or unstable relationship, the small little things that happen in every relationship activate our insecurities. They bring up our insecurities, our worries that are more about do they care about us? And when we have insecure or unstable relationships, oftentimes what happens is the smallest things bring up our insecurities. And when little things happen or big things happen even within the relationship, we become worried that these things mean something about us and we aren't able to see how they mean something about the relationship and they mean something about the other person. And really the travesty in this is oftentimes people are hurting and we experience their actions, their behaviors, their words as meaning something about us and we aren't able to stay curious enough to uncover the insecurity and the hurt and the pain that is driving some of those things and to overcome this. Oftentimes, we want other people to help us to get over this. To overcome this. We want other people to make it so we don't believe the things that we're worried about in this relationship, these things that we're anxious or insecure about within ourselves.
Speaker 1:The work that I do is work that we all can do. We can recognize how these insecurities, these vulnerabilities are within us and how these things activate us in a way that prevent us from the relationships that are possible. And we can see that, no matter how we change or how we develop, there are going to be people who like us and people who don't have capacity for us. What we can do to change this kind of a dynamics, to get to a place where you can have capacity for yourself. And for me, this is really about intentionally becoming accepting of myself as imperfect. The way that I do this is not through myself, lying to myself or anything like that, but I really lean up on my own religious background, my own faith, and that's been the tool that I've been able to use to become accepting of myself as imperfect. I really can believe that I don't need to be anything more than I am to be worthy and in that way I also do believe that I am worthy of relationship if I could be fortunate enough to receive that. I guess I see myself as someone who does struggle in many ways, but I also am able to know and believe that others struggle in their ways, and that's a perspective that I've deepened in my work.
Speaker 1:I can see how so many of us are in our own pain and I really believe all of us are and that we all are seeking for connection. And I really believe this that I can be a source of connection for someone else, because I know firsthand how some of the smallest interactions, some of the smallest gestures have meant so much to me. And while I reach out to some other people it might not mean so much to them. There will be some that I reach out to that don't really need my connection, don't really need my kindness, my gesture of care and compassion. But I also know that if I do this with everybody that I come in contact with, I'm almost certain that I will reach those that are looking for a connection from even someone like me, not because I'm an amazing person, but because I am a human, and that is how it is.
Speaker 1:As humans, we long for human connection and it doesn't matter who this connection is with. At times, when we're feeling the lowest, when we're feeling the smallest, when we're feeling the most alone, we're not looking for some high placed person, it just matters that someone is there. When we are looking for a secure bond, if you're like me, sometimes we're looking for someone to be interested in a relationship with us. I can be looking for someone to be interested in being a friend and having a companionship with me. But sometimes I think we have this backwards that we can flip that and we can be looking at others, wondering how we can be a companion to them, how we can be a friend to do them.
Speaker 1:And I think with this podcast we can really slow down and reflect on how sometimes we are sitting here wondering why people won't connect with us, but when we can look at ourself in the mirror and say to ourself that we are enough, that these insecurities that are close to us, these worries that we have that we're not maybe going to get the connections that we want, are really the things that are preventing us from having the connections that we could have.
Speaker 1:They're preventing us from connecting with others.
Speaker 1:We can begin to do the work to really get over ourselves, to be able to push through these worries and anxieties and to be able to be the person that connects with others, because you, my friend, are someone that someone wants in their life, and when you can be that person that someone has in their life and you can be open to that connection, that person connects with you and in that way we form a secure bond, a bond where we were there for someone to connect with, and when we're in that position, they become someone that we can connect with.
Speaker 1:When we have two people who mutually want to connect with each other, who, mutually, are serving each other. In these ways, we have an opportunity to experience that thing in relationships that can sometimes feel elusive, which is a secure bond. So that's what I have here for today. I will talk to you all next week. 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, wwwpivotillapproachcom, and become the difference you need in your relationship.
