When your partner is going through a tough time, your relationship can be stressed and strained.
Join Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com as they share ideas and suggestions.
Cathy: We have another comment from someone asking for help.
Reid: Okay.
Cathy: His wife is going through some family stuff, and she’s been really depressed. Every time he tries to talk to her about it, because their relationship is being … Is not going really well. She just kind of shuts down and he’s really frustrated, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Reid: First off, we are not therapists, we are not doctors, or psychologists or a psychiatrists.
Cathy: And we don’t play one on TV.
Reid: Nor do we play any on TV. My advice is go get one of those people we just mentioned, get some professional counseling, find somebody who’s trained and who will probably be able to give you some amazing insights and some support. Ideally you and your partner go and see that person together.
Cathy: This is Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: That’s Cathy Vartuli from the TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: It is really hard when you want to communicate you want to work through things and your partner may be overwhelmed or have a lot of things going on. It does happen, life happens sometimes.
Reid: Yeah, like our parents, knock on wood. Not that they don’t. People get ill, hardships happen, people lose their jobs, children get sick. Life happens. Sometimes it just pals on you all at once, or trigger some other unfinished business that you have, from your childhood or earlier on in life, and then you just get coward and then you’re not able as resilient or present, or have the same access to your own resources as you do on a day to day basis.
Then if you are partner to somebody like that, you’re freaking out because you’re like “I want to help them” but you don’t know what to do, and they don’t have the resources to accept your help. That situation sucks.
Cathy: It really does.
Reid: Best things to do, what you need to do to take care of yourself because you need to make sure that you have the resources and the nourishment and the where with all. That you’re not completely depleted, if you’re completely depleted you’ll not be able to help your partner who’s going through stuff. This is the classic you put the oxygen mask on first, and then help the person sitting next to you.
Cathy: You can source those needs from people outside your relationship, a lot of us were thought that if you’re in monogamous relationship you get all your needs met, within that relationship. In this case especially that’s not going to work. Turning to friends, family, counselor to get some support and nourishment can be really good.
Reid: Doing the same thing for your partners too. What you guys end up doing is creating some sort of teamwork, and you get to support your partner in getting their resources and needs met, so they get to come home to you being their cheerleader rather than you’re being like their psychiatrist. Which is probably over the long run, even if you are a psychologist. Not the thing you should be doing in your personal life.
Cathy: You can also look at what your bottom line is. How long are you willing to stay and work through this. Identifying…a lot of us go day by day going, maybe they’ll get better. Sitting them down, and saying “okay I love this person”, and if they’re not doing something to get help, or they’re not willing to, for me it would be … I would have to see how much value they added to my life and how long I was willing. I could sit down and say okay I really love them, they’ve been wonderful I’m going to give them three months to get this thing handle.
Depending on where they’re at, I would hope you wanted to communicate that with them which might help them take action.
Reid: Also, that three month window or whatever you end up deciding, doesn’t mean you guys breakup, it means you guys take a break so that they can go take care of what they need to take care of, you can take care of what you need to take care of and you guys can get back together. Most of us think, whenever we have to like I’m creating a bottom line. The bottom line is you are dead to me, we will never ever talk to each other again.
Versus I can’t go any further than this, you need to go on your own and we’ll meet back up together again when things have leveled out. That’s all, there’s lots of different perspective and approaches. Most of which popular culture is not telling you on the Good Morning America show, or Dr. Phil or anything like that. Another reason to go, and get some professional perspectives as well.
Cathy: We hope this helped.
Reid: Leave your comments below.
Cathy: Let us know what you think, and what’s coming up for you.
Reid: For the person who wrote in that comment, thank you, and we hope this information helped. Bye.