01 – Welcome to Couples Coaching

Most people in the world have heard about couples counseling and a lot of people have been through it with varying degrees of success.

So what is the difference between that and coaching that we’re going to talk about today?

This is couples coaching and I’m Natalie clay.

What I hear over and over from people who find me after being in counseling for years is that they’ve spent a lot of time talking through their problems in their marriage. Sometimes they feel justified in being hurt by their spouse, but often they don’t make a lot of headway towards figuring out how to enjoy being married to each other. 

I often hear that they’re told to write down a list of the things they need from their spouse in their marriage.  Often, that list will include things like the love languages. Then, they’ll swap lists to kind of see what’s going to happen. 

“Okay, here’s my list. Here’s what I need to be happy in my marriage. Ready, set, go.”

But the problem with that is we’re really lousy at taking care of each other. We’d like to think that we’re really good at it. In fact, some people pride themselves on being good at taking care of their spouse and thinking that is what marriage is all about.

“This is me taking care of my spouse” sounds so noble and so good. But when it comes down to it, being responsible for another person’s emotions is exhausting and doesn’t really work. 

On the flip side of that, is what I like to call emotional self-reliance.

So, what I teach my clients is how to have the experience you want to have in your marriage, regardless of whatever your spouse does. Regardless of if they change or they listen to the numerous requests you make. Or, if they look at your list and they lose that list and they forget what your love language is — and they just end up being themself.

When you feel comfortable being your true self in your marriage and your spouse feels the same, that’s where your marriage becomes a lot of fun.

That’s why I love coaching. It’s all about looking forward. It’s not focusing on the past and who did what to whom.

Instead, it’s just this is where we are right now. How do we want to move forward? How do I want to move forward to experience my marriage differently than I have before?

I’ve seen so many wonderful changes through working with my clients, which makes me even more excited by all these tools.

So even if your wife is convinced that your lack of income is ruining the holidays for her, and even if your husband is convinced that your sporadic sex life is causing his bad mood, it simply isn’t so.

Through this podcast, my courses and my one-on-one coaching, I share the tools that give you the power to improve your marriage. Even if your spouse isn’t open to this process.

The thing I’m most excited about in this podcast is to share with you the experiences and insights of both partners. So, you’re not just going to be hearing from me, but I’m going to be bringing on real life couples who are learning these tools right along with you.

And of course, the way I’ve learned this best is in my own marriage. I’m going to drag my husband Joseph on from time to time so that you can learn from his perspective as well. Get ready for us to air some dirty laundry. Get ready to take sides because there’s definitely going to be a poll and lots of chances to hit “like” and “who wore it best” and everything else.

So, having said that, let’s go ahead and meet Joseph.

Say hello, Joseph Louis.

Hi Natalie.

When we were first married, we would tend to take on each other’s moods. He would get in a bad mood, and I would get in a bad mood.

I never got in bad moods, right? OK, one of us would get in a bad mood. And the other one would tend to take on the other’s mood. Then, we would just be really crusty at each other for making each other miserable for the next few days.

I remember that would go on for a while. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable since we lived in a teeny tiny apartment in Brooklyn where there was no escape.

Yes. 700 square feet never felt smaller!

I decided to go to a therapist who was highly recommended. She was very expensive on the Upper East Side of New York. I’ll never forget her advice to me because it just made such good sense.  

She said, “You know, I think maybe your husband is not doing a good job making you feel special and appreciated in your marriage.”

Now, how is that information not going to sound just right? And it really did.

It’s like, “Honey, I’ve got it figured out.” Do you remember this? 

Oh yeah, yeah. Just kicking your feet up on the ottoman saying, “make me feel special.”

Yeah, I just remember coming home and saying, “You know, you’re really not doing a great job making me feel special and appreciated. So, can you step it up a little bit?”

And do you remember your response to that?

I tend to internalize stuff, so I initially was like, “That’s probably true. How do I need to change?”

See what a good husband I have you guys?

But I remember that not really feeling right to me either because he did feel bad and his initial response was,” Oh my gosh, no! I think you’re so special and I totally appreciate you!”

Somehow, I didn’t really believe it in that moment. I also felt like, yeah, that’s not really answering this need for me. Needless to say, that didn’t solve all of our marital problems because Joseph was not able to make me feel any of those things.

The way I feel comes from the thoughts that I have in my head. So, if I’m not feeling special or appreciated, then I’m viewing everything that Joseph does through that lens. Anything he might even try to do I’m going to be less likely to notice. At least, that’s tended to be the case for us.

Do you agree?

I don’t remember. Maybe you suddenly did make me feel special, and from there…problems just went away.

No, I think we still had plenty.

We got them solved by the next year, though, for sure.

Yeah no.

It took like four months and then it was…just smooth sailing, right?

Something like that.

It took a while and, don’t get me wrong, there were tons of great times. But I think, like a lot of marriages, it took us quite a while to kind of figure out what our style of communication is.

And even then, when I felt like we got pretty good at that… we realized that we shouldn’t be talking about things when we’re both just trying to justify our point. The only time we should be talking about our “grievances” is when we’re both wanting to find solutions. But man, it took us a lot of years to get to that point.

Right, and honestly, it did take some time for my own ego and pride to recognize that time is finite, rather than wanting time to pass just so that I could be upset and justify my feelings. But I kind of took quite a while to get to that point.

Yeah, because feeling justified feels so good, in a way. It’s such a powerful thing to feel when you know you’re right and you sit there stewing. You can come up with a lot more reasons why you’re right and that person is wrong.

It is a delicious stew.

You can edit that part out.

It’s a delicious stew. Feeling justified just leaves you feeling justified for being mad. It doesn’t do anything to help you feel more love towards your spouse.

Fast forward a few years later and I was talking to my sister, Jody Moore, who is also a certified life coach and her insights made so much more sense to me. Her approach is being responsible for your own emotions: “Why are you looking to him to feel something that you want to feel?” 

That was a fairly new concept to me because all along I thought, well, you get married and then your experience in your marriage has pretty much everything to do with your spouse.

That was something new for me to consider. The idea that the experience I have in my marriage is 100% my responsibility. I loved learning that because, even though it required a lot more of me, it’s so much more empowering to get to determine how I want to feel on a day-to-day basis and how much I want to enjoy my marriage.

Or, if I want to be pissed off in my marriage, that’s fine, too. But all of it is up to me and I don’t have to look to him to feel anything.

I will say that took some practice because it felt like a much different way of doing things. 

Do you remember I mentioned to you, “Okay, the next time you’re in a bad mood I’m just going to let you be in one. Instead of me also getting in a bad mood, I’m going to do whatever I want to do that night. Like, I might go watch TV or I might go out with some girlfriends, but I’m not going to sit home. I’m not going to just play off your mood.” 

And do you remember what you said? You were like, “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted you to do this whole time. It’s actually really annoying when I have a bad day and, all of a sudden, you’re the one taking over and having the bad day.”

And I was like, “Oh, right.”

But it seems right. It’s funny, because I did think that it didn’t feel as compassionate as me thinking “Okay, my husband is in a bad mood. He’s having a bad day, and so I shouldn’t be in a good mood.” It almost felt like I was not being as kind. But I noticed, that when he’s in a bad mood, and then I’m in a bad mood, that I’m upset with him for making me be in a bad mood.

That’s not actually very compassionate, is it? It took me some time to pick up on that. But since we have practiced doing that, I feel much more autonomy in our marriage. I feel more like I know how to be myself, and I know how to feel what I want to feel. And it actually makes it so much easier to just love you. Because I’m no longer looking to you as someone who has control over how I feel. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

OK, so I have a question for you. Something that comes up a lot with my clients is fear. One woman in particular said, “This makes me really nervous because I feel like if I’m not trying to solve my husband’s mood, then what if he thinks I don’t care? What if, then, he decides that he doesn’t care, and he decides he wants to leave me one day?”

A lot of people fear that when you decide to take control of your own emotions, it will get interpreted as not caring — or just kind of being ambivalent towards your spouse. Was that your experience at all when we went through this?

Certainly, I can’t speak for anyone else, but that was not my experience at all. I appreciated that I could feel less stress about having to feel anything besides what I was feeling. I didn’t feel responsible for how I was impacting you, which I think also helped me get out of my funk.

And now what would you say to the reverse? Like, when I am in a bad mood, which I know happens so infrequently, right?

Never.

Because I’m so good at managing my mind. But on the rare occasion that it does happen and I’m having an off day, do you feel okay about not solving that for me? Because that’s something else that I hear. A lot of men that I work with feel like, “No, but my job in this marriage is to make my wife happy.” That feels like this noble and good thing to try to do, which again, I think is very well intentioned. Can you relate to that at all?

Yeah, I think from my own experience, no matter how well intentioned I may have been in the past to try to fix things, it’s sort of a fool’s errand. Actually, I can do a lot more for the situation by not doing anything. I try to just separate myself from it and keep myself as cheerful as possible. At least in your case, Natalie, you often use that as something you’re able to look at and say, “Wait a minute. There’s not really a big problem here. Clearly, because he’s not reacting like it’s a big problem.”

Right, so you don’t feel like it affects your manhood at all, to not be in charge of my emotions? We laugh, but I do think some people feel like this is their responsibility. 

Yeah, no. I mean, I think speaking really generally, men like to fix things. Maybe there is some of that. But, in my case, trying to fix something means taking a step back and letting you know that I’m there to support you, but that I’m not going on the same journey. 

Uh huh.

Because if you’re upset at me, either we have poor communication because we’re trying to prove why our position is right or something is going on that’s totally independent of me. Again, I could just be there as a support, but there’s nothing I can do to be like, “Fix it. Be good right now. Let’s go.”

Yeah. But I will say you’ve always had a better innate understanding of this concept than I have. I think I came into the marriage feeling like a lot more things were your responsibility…although you’ve had your things as well, let’s be honest. But I know a lot of women say, “I don’t want you to fix me. When I’m complaining, I don’t want you to fix the problem, I just want you to listen.” 

But I have always been the type that’s like, “I want to tell you my problem and I just want you to fix it.” So, I don’t totally relate to that, but I know that there are a lot of women that do. At the same time, when I’m looking to you to fix a problem for me, you’re just not able to. Because when I’m not happy or I’m not feeling special or appreciated, that’s something that’s coming only internally. That’s something that no circumstance, no outside person, no thing can change for you until you decide to recognize it inside.

Alright, well thank you so much for your perspective, Joseph. That was really helpful to hear the husband’s perspective. We’re going to be bringing in lots of that, so we’ll just go ahead and say goodbye to you.

And now, if you really want to make me feel better, go do the dishes, alright? Ha.

I love what I do. I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of people and teach them the tools that have helped me so much in my marriage. When I’ve seen people take these tools that are fairly basic and make tons of sense and appeal to your logic, people have been able to see great results in their marriage. 

So many people come to me after having been in couples counseling for years and tell me that they’re just tired of feeling justified for being upset. They just want to know what to do to move forward.

They’re tired of being mad, they’re tired or feeling victimized, and they’re left with little information on what to do to move past it.

These tools are the answer to that. 

I’m so excited to be able to share these with you through this podcast. I would also invite you to come to my website www.natalieclay.com, where you can get on my email list and hear about all the exciting things I have coming up this year. I’ll have lots of fun things, lots of surprises coming up in this podcast that I’m really excited to share with you guys.

I will be here every week and I hope that you will subscribe so we can all move forward on this great journey together.

Just remember that of all the emotions you can choose to feel…love feels the very best. 

Until next week, friends.