00:00 

Well, hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 405, "How to Create a Partnership." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Alright, hello, my friends. Hello, hello, hello. Gosh, just happy to have you here. And I love being here. I love getting to do this podcast. It just really brings me a lot of joy to create content, to put together concepts, to have ideas and spiritual enlightenment come to me when I'm preparing this. I just love it all so much. And I love the work that I do. Getting to be a part of your journey is a sacred responsibility to me. And I just appreciate you being here. And I literally pray that the things that I prepare make a positive impact in your life and help you to see and understand how you can live a better, more connected life with yourself, with your partner, with God. Or if you don't have a partner with who you're going to partner up with at some point or not, or with just your children or with friends. This content works across the board. I just love it so much. 

01:27 

Really quick, just want to remind you, next Talk with Tanya is April 14th, just an open day. You have to sign up for it, though. Go to tanyahale.com, go to the group coaching tab, and you're able to get signed up for that. And you'll get an email with a link in it. Just such good stuff there. We have the best conversations. 

01:47 

So we're going to jump right in today. Oh, let me remind you one more thing before we do. If you love this content, about, I think it's been about a year and a half now that I've been doing this, you can scroll down to the notes section wherever you listen to your podcast. And down under there, I will have several other podcasts. Usually I go a little bit overboard because I just can't help myself. But there are lots of podcasts down there that have to do with the same topic or elements of what we talked about. Scroll through the links, there's a podcast link for my website where you can also get the transcript, or there's an Apple link and there's a Spotify link. If you listen somewhere else, you're just going to have to figure that out. But go and find these other podcasts. They're great. 

02:32 

Okay, so today we are talking about how to create a partnership. So here's an interesting insight that I have made lately that I think is just intriguing. Humans, we are created for connection. Our souls crave to be connected to another person, to be understood, to be seen and heard by another person. And we crave the capacity to love another person. We just want people in our lives. We need that. It is embedded in our DNA, in our spirit, in our whatever. It's all part of who we are. 

03:13 

On the flip side, we are also created to be fiercely protective of ourselves. And this is our primitive brain, right? This is the part of us that wants to protect us from anything uncomfortable, anything difficult, anything painful. Are you seeing what's going on here? These two things, this drive for connection and this drive to be fiercely protective, they work against each other. We cannot step into connection if we are hyper protective of ourselves, if we are scared, if we refuse to feel difficult emotions. We have to manage our primitive brain's protective response and see what's going on if we are to create the connection. Even if we are to create the connection, we have to step into vulnerability, into openness, into self-growth, right? We seek connection, but as many of you, probably every single one of you in any kind of relationship knows, any little thing can set us off into defensiveness where we start to protect ourselves. 

04:37 

And here's the thing, humans are so different. Nature and nurture, genetics and social conditioning, family life, different religious teachings, different exposures to ideas and political stances and societal norms, right and wrong ways, different perspectives on how to live and how to view the world from positive or negative or all that kind of stuff. All of these create so  much differences, so many differences between all the humans. And when you find one person or whether it's a relationship with a child or a spouse or someone you're dating or whoever, we all are completely different. 

05:22 

And we have all developed different coping mechanisms for how to deal with challenging and, using this term very broadly, traumatic experiences in our lives. Every one of us was raised by imperfect parents. Parents who made a lot of mistakes. They probably did a lot of really great, great, great things. And they made a lot of mistakes. And those things made our lives difficult. Okay, so are we independent or are we highly attached? Are we avoidant or are we anxious and are we a pursuer? Are we a peacekeeper or are we combative? Right? We all develop different coping mechanisms depending on how we were raised. And these coping mechanisms are just part of who each one of us are. 

06:17 

And I love that Terrence Real talks about these coping mechanisms as being our adaptive child. And it is what we do, as a child, to adapt to our particular difficult situations. Okay, so for it, let me give you an example. I've given this one before, but I was the third of eight children and the children were spread out over 21 years. And my parents were busy. My dad was a school teacher, which means he didn't make a lot of money. We were pretty poor. And so he always had like two, three, four jobs going on at the same time. My mom was sometimes a stay-at-home mom, but a lot of times she was working to help make ends meet. And then having eight kids, having them, I mean, we weren't as busy as we are now with our kids in every opportunity under the sun, but there was a lot going on and my parents were very busy. 

07:14 

And my coping mechanism for that was that I became kind of hyper-independent. I kind of got to a point where, it's not that I was dismissive of my parents, but I was like, "it's okay. I can do just fine without them. It's not a big deal," right? I learned to adapt by doing that. Well, that was brilliant when I was a child. And it really helped me, I feel, to be in a healthy emotional space when difficult things came up in my life because I was like, well, listen, of course my parents couldn't come to this, whatever it was. You know, so I'll just figure out how to do this on my own because my parents are not available to help me. And it's not that they didn't want to be. It's that life situations did not allow them to be. But my adaptive child learned to be really independent. Well, that was great when I was a child. 

08:05 

But as I became an adult in my adult relationship, specifically as I look at my previous marriage, that became a very dysfunctional adaptation. It became maladaptive. Because then I hit this point when my ex-husband was busy or dismissive or wasn't around where I would go, "that's fine. I don't need him. I got this all on my own. I can take care of things." And I wasn't trying to be mean or hurtful or dismissive of him. I was just reverting to a behavior that had become part of my nature, in essence. It had become part of what I did without even thinking about it. 

08:56 

And that's just what we do. So there are other people who, in a very similar situation as mine, would not have become hyper independent. They would have become more dependent. They may have found that the more noise, for lack of a better word, that they made, the more attention that they got from their parents. And so they became "needy." I don't really love that word, but they became more like that. They made more bids for connection. They asked for more. They did more of that kind of stuff. And that's great. It got them through their life as a child. But when they moved into their adult relationships, they find that that behavior becomes dysfunctional. It doesn't work as an adult. 

09:49 

I want you to think about this in terms of those new tennis shoes that you got when you were in third grade. They were fabulous. They were stylish. You could run faster, jump higher, skip quicker. All the things. Those tennis shoes were so great and you loved them. But if today in your closet you still had those tennis shoes and you tried to put them on, you would not be running faster and jumping higher and skipping quicker. You would be cramped. You would be crippled. You would not be able to perform well at all. 

10:31 

And this is how these adaptive childhood behaviors become maladaptive when we become adults. So here's the thing. These adaptations become our story of what our life means. Those are part of it, as well as we just all have the story about what makes life work. What's important? What's not important? What are our priorities? What are not our priorities? What do we think is right? What do we think is wrong? What do we think is moral? What do we think is immoral? We each have our own  story. And to us individually, it is familiar and it is unquestionable. Your story is to you. And your spouse's story or your child's story, whoever else we're going to, I'm going to say it in spouse mostly in this context today, but your spouse, their story is also familiar and unquestionable. Not saying that they won't ever question them, but that we don't question it until we have a reason to question it. 

11:36 

And here's the thing about our stories: it's all made up. My story about me and how things went and how I interpreted it and what it meant and all that stuff, it is all made up in my own brain. It's all from my own perspective and my brain has changed that story over time to adapt again to my current life. 

12:06 

So I might have the story that I'm difficult to love. I might have a story that says nobody gets to hurt me. Nobody gets to control me. I might have a story that says, I don't need anybody else. Whatever your particular story is, it's really important that you come to understand what your story is. And this is where we talk about the thoughts in the thought model. Your thoughts about yourself, about your life, about what's important to you, what's not important to you, that is all your story. And giving up the story can be hard when we start to realize these little bits of it because we have organized our whole world around our story. Everything that we think and do and believe is based around our story, and yet our story is all made up, and so much of that story is not even true. 

13:08 

And here's the other piece. So many of our stories or parts of our stories are making us miserable. They keep us stuck and they work against the connection that we crave and desire as humans. For example, the belief, the story that says, "I'm difficult to love," that might have a showing up defensive. It might have a showing up with an anxious attachment, being a chaser, seeking validation, et cetera, right? These kinds of things. The story may make us miserable, but it is more comfortable than the risk necessary to move into a different story. 

14:02 

Remember, your primitive brain will choose familiar over new any day of the week, even if new is a better option for us. Even if new would put us on a path to greater happiness and greater success. Your brain will choose familiar. It wants what it's comfortable with. And here's the thing. We probably are not even aware that we have a story. We just see everything in our story as a fact. And I know you've heard me say this before, but there was research done that shows that when we look at our past memories, after nine months, 60% of our memories are false. Is that a fascinating number? Fascinating statistic? Right? So we don't even realize that we have a made-up story. We think it's all true. 

15:06 

I found this quote today from a poem called The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden. And this quote just was fascinating to me. It says, "we would rather be ruined than changed." That's just one line from the poem, but isn't that fascinating? It talks about the human tendency to prefer familiar destruction or discomfort over the fear and the uncertainty and the effort required to change. 

15:40 

So a couple of things that come up for that. This quote highlights that people will often choose to remain miserable or in detrimental situations, which is the ruin part, because the process of transformation, the capital W work necessary to create something different, the change part, feels too uncomfortable or threatening. And primitive brain does not like that. Okay, so if you've ever heard the phrase, and I don't know who said this, but "what you're not changing, you're choosing." I love that quote as well because it suggests that avoiding change is an active choice to stay stuck in our current situation. 

16:35 

We have this place that wants to keep us stuck, the primitive part of our brain, but that stuck part is keeping us from creating the connection. And so when we start stepping into the responsibility of creating something greater in my life, something more that I want to create a partnership with a person, we have to start questioning our primitive brain because the protective part works in opposition to the connected part. 

17:18 

I've shared this quote with you several times. Just a couple of weeks, I did as well. But it's that Glennon Doyle quote where she says, "what is the truest, most beautiful story about your life that you can imagine?" This is questioning the primitive brain. This is putting us in that uncomfortable place of change. We are risking something. We're risking our previous story to create a new, beautiful story that would have us living a different life. This is the concept of faith over fear, right? We have faith in our ability to change, faith that we will be supported in our change. The fear is our primitive brain going, nope, nope, too uncomfortable. I don't like this. I don't understand this. This doesn't make sense to me. But the faith says, it's all right, I'll figure it out. There is something better here for me. I can do this. And it is the courage to challenge our current story, to surrender scripts that no longer serve us. 

18:35 

And this is one way you can tell. Does your story energize you or does your story drain you? When you catch yourself in the story, in your head, does that create excitement and energy? Or does it drain you and make you despondent? But understanding your story is only half of what's going on in a marriage partnership. What about your partner's story? Okay, so the more we come to understand them, we come to understand their story. And this is a huge part of partnership is working to understand their story and to understand your story, because both of your stories are determining how you are showing up in the relationship circle. And when we can seek to understand the stories, what's behind the story, this helps us to create compassion and grace for where the hang-ups and the struggles are. So does our story strengthen our relationship or does it detract from our relationship? And what about your partner's story? 

20:03 

Now, the trick with partnerships is that it takes two people and you only get to control one of those people. But if we want a great relationship, if we want this beautiful partnership, it takes two people willing to look at, understand, and clean up their own story. It takes two people willing to support the other and not judge the other as they do the lifelong work of cleaning up their traumatic responses, their buttons, right? Their triggers. It takes two people willing to offer grace before the story is even fully understood, and that takes a lifetime. 

20:46 

It takes two people willing to accept the other in their imperfect form, in their unique humanness. And this is a challenge because we all grow and progress at different times and at different rates. And this means that we get to learn how to provide grace for our partner to have their own journey. And that's challenging because what if their path takes them far away from your original partnership plan? Maybe religiously or spiritually, your paths have diverged. What if your partner is not interested in growing and developing and progressing and you're doing all of this work that I talk about and you're on the fast track? 

21:42 

Sometimes I work with clients and they are in this exact place. They are trying to decide if they want to stay married when they and their partner have become such different people. Sometimes they want to stay knowing that their partner doesn't want to have a really true, intimate, connected partnership. And some things are non-negotiable and other things we can make space for. So some of us are okay with a partner who is disengaged emotionally and others of us crave that intimacy like it's heir and it feels necessary to leave the marriage to seek to obtain it elsewhere. 

22:28 

And this is the struggle of true intimate partnership. It takes two people who are in alignment with their desires and their growth. Now, that doesn't mean that we want all the same things, but our growth game is similar. 

22:43 

So considering marriage, I believe personally that wanting growth and progression at similar levels is a key element to creating a successful partnership. If both of us are wanting to grow, wanting to learn and understand life and ourselves better, both are moving forward. However, when one partner wants to grow and go and do and be courageous and push themselves, and the other partner wants to rocket out on the front porch playing Sudoku every day, that's a tough match. It's really hard to partner when life goals and desires and aspirations and just your basic idea about how you want to be when they don't align. 

23:37 

Now, this doesn't mean that in our partnerships, in our marriages, we have to want all of the same things or like to do all of the same activities, but the underlying desire to grow, to progress, to move forward is important, I believe. If we're not the same, which we are not, it can be easy to let resentment creep in. We may be married with someone with whom we have the same growth desires. But if there are enough differences and we think, here's the key, and we think there shouldn't be these differences, then we will start to create resentment. 

24:19 

Because thinking that there shouldn't be differences is what creates so much angst in us. Being frustrated that our partner's story doesn't match ours creates resentment. But when we can really embrace and lean into the idea that we aren't supposed to be the same, that the purpose of relationship and partnership isn't that we're the same. We are supposed to have different perspectives, personalities, priorities, and preferences. That is built into the system when we have two completely different people coming together. And sometimes all of these perspectives and personalities and priorities and preferences, they require patience and really seeking to understand and accept those differences. Fascinating. 

25:14 

Gottman research says that 69% of the problems or differences or difficulties in our marriages, 69% are unresolvable. There will be differences. What makes the difference between angst and acceptance is believing that the differences aren't a problem. Of course, there are differences. That is part of the plan of partnership. And what if the plan of partnership includes learning to accept the other person's humanity and their differences? What if the reason we get married isn't to be loved, but rather so that we can have someone to love, so that we can really learn to accept and love another person, so that we put ourselves in an environment that best facilitates this growth and development into helping us to become a more loving, more compassionate, more Christlike person. This, I believe, is the purpose of partnership, to provide us with a brilliant opportunity to grow in our ability to love others better. 

26:39 

And that is the law. When Christ was asked, what is the greatest commandment? What was his answer? To love God, to love others as we love ourselves. The law is to love, not to be loved. Now, I am not saying that it isn't great to have somebody love us. That helps to fulfill the connected peace that we all desire. But in a marriage partnership, when both people show up ready and willing to learn how to love better, even when it can be challenging because of the differences, it is a beautiful place to be. When our sense of self is strong enough that we don't feel insecure and desperate for someone else's love, because we are confident and strong even without somebody else's love and validation, then we are capable of showing up to love rather than to be loved. 

27:46 

When we can truly learn to appreciate another's viewpoint, another's story, another person's experience, and give them a safe space to work through their story, we are doing the work of partnership. And it's vital that we come to understand our partner's story as much as possible and that we come to understand our own story and choose to work through it and don't allow these dysfunctional patterns of behavior and these maladaptive behaviors to tyrannize our partner. 

28:25 

We have to clean up our own story. We have to be able to see what's not working, to see what's not true, to see what's hurtful, and work to clean it up. Each of our stories is a response to our own personal trauma, if you will. Our story is our adaptive behaviors coming to life. And when we bring those maladaptive behaviors into our adult relationships, they are hurtful and harmful. And they work against the connection that we desire. It is our primitive brain going into full-on protective mode and working against the connection we are wired for and so desperately crave. 

29:14 

The more we can come to understand both our story and our partner's story, the more grace we can offer for mistakes and missteps and the safer a place it is to rewrite our story. We as humans will bump into each other because of all of our differences. And there isn't a place in the world that there is more bumping going on than in a marriage partnership. Different ideas, different understandings, different perspectives, different ways that we think things should be done. We're just bumping into each other because we see the world differently. 

29:57 

And the more that we can come to understand our partner's story, the easier it is to offer grace for how they are showing up. The more we can come to understand our story, the easier it is to offer ourselves grace for how we're showing up. All of this allows us to understand perspectives better, and then we are able to blame less and criticize less. So then when discussions need to happen, we have a greater capacity to explain and describe the circumstance in factual terms rather than highly emotional thoughts. 

30:41 

And this is the first step in the own your own. If you remember, the own your own starts off with here are the facts, here is  the circumstance. Okay, that podcast is going to be down in the notes if you are new and you don't know that concept yet. Go, please go listen to it. Right. But when we start having these difficult conversations with spouses, we have to be able to explain and describe the circumstance in factual terms. When we can understand the how and the why of the differences in our partnerships, we can learn to appreciate rather than resent. We can see the differences as expected and necessary rather than as an affront to our happiness or an intentional move to make us unhappy. There is nothing wrong with our partner or their perspective at all. It's just different. Different is normal. It's expected. And we can even get to the point where it's even desired. 

31:53 

Okay, so just this morning I was exercising with a friend and this is what she shared with me that just had me cracking up. She was saying that they just finished remodeling their kitchen and she'd gone into the pantry and she had organized the whole thing and she was feeling pretty darn good about it. And then her husband went in and started moving things around and she was like, I just couldn't. I had to leave and I had to go into the basement because I just couldn't. I couldn't watch him doing it so different than how I had done it. Okay. And then when he finished and later on when she came upstairs and went in the pantry, she was like, "oh my gosh, this is actually so much better than what I had done." 

32:36 

And the whole story, I was like, can I use that story in a podcast? Because I love the concept that she thought that she had cornered the market on how to organize the pantry. She gave him the space to see the pantry different. Now, it was super uncomfortable for her. Uncomfortable enough that she had to leave and go down to the basement. But she sat with her discomfort. She didn't get on his case about changing things. She was just like, "okay, I'm going to let him do what he feels he needs to do." She sat with her discomfort and she realized later that his different actually made her life better. 

33:23 

And this is what we get to start coming to understand in partnerships. More perspectives create better solutions when we view them with curiosity rather than contempt, with patience and safe space rather than impatience and judgment. When we can learn to monitor and regulate ourselves around the differences of our partners, when we can create a safe space for their differences to exist in our relationship circle, to safely exist, we start to create true partnership. 

33:58 

When we look at the word partnership, we are looking at the suffix "ship." So we have partner and then ship. And ship has several meanings, all of which give us insight into what it means to be in a partnership with someone. My favorite is ship often relates to technical proficiency or expertise. So the expertise of being a part of something, a partner, of knowing how to be a part of an organization, in the context that we're talking about, how to be a part of a relationship. 

34:36 

We are not responsible, by the way, for fixing our partner. They are not our project. And their limitations are not our project. We are responsible to our partner for our own behavior, not for our partner. We're not responsible for their behavior. We're responsible to our partner for our own. We are responsible to them in offering them a safe space to look at their story, to be in a messy story, to work to clean up said messy story. 

35:14 

Because here's the deal. If we're in the relationship circle and if it is not safe, they will not put their story on the table. And if they don't put their story on the table, they don't see it in the context of the relationship. And neither of us benefit from the vulnerability of that process. Because when either partner has the courage to step into vulnerability, we are increasing our capacity for intimacy. So remember that your partner is not your project. They are their own project and you are your own project. 

35:59 

Your only responsibility is to create a safe space for your partner and to clean up your own story. Learn to love and honor your partner, even knowing that they have a story that is complicated and dysfunctional at times, because guess what? If you look close enough, your story is also complicated and dysfunctional. When we are in the relationship circle, when we are in a partnership, it means that two very different people with two very different stories are creating a safe space for each person to work through and to their stories and to know that each one is doing their best to clean up their own story. 

36:53 

When two people are striving for true, equal, and intimate partnership, and when both are willing to do the work to understand and clean up their own story while also offering a safe space for their partner to do the same, then we create a beautiful partnership, a relationship that feels miraculous and magical. In relationships, this is the capital W work. It is not easy, but I promise you, it is the most rewarding thing that you will do because it will create that connection that your soul craves. And all of these concepts apply to every other relationship in our life, to our adult children, to our parents, to other people. 

37:49 

So here's the deal. Stay in your own lane. Learn to show up with love and seeking understanding of the other person's story and experiences and clean up your own stuff. You absolutely can do this. This is the work that I do with you. This working with me one-on-one will fast track your experience and clean up your story and allow you the capacity to create space for the other person to work through their story. One-on-one will help you do that faster than anything else. Because I will see things that you absolutely just won't be able to see. And I have the tools to help you learn how to create this in your own life. I can teach you the tools to learn how to do this. 

38:49 

So if you want to next level and move up and create something, a partnership that is completely different than what you've ever had, please get in touch with me. Let's do some work together. Be willing to invest in your relationship to do something that achieves this connected space that you desire. You can do that by going to tanyahale.com. Go to the free consultation button at the top. Okay, my friends, know this one was a little bit longer, but it is so vital. We can create these partnerships, but it oftentimes takes a complete shift in how we see relationships and the purpose of relationships, not to be loved, but rather to learn how to truly love. Have an awesome, awesome week, and I'll see you next time. Bye. 

39:51 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.