Why Does My Partner

Relationships can be hard, even healthy ones.  They take work.  So, what does it mean when one partner doesn’t want to work on the relationship and the other does? Is it a sign that they care less than the other partner?  Does it mean their efforts are being overlooked?  How much effort and energy should a relationship take anyway?  Putting forth extra effort to take a rel...

Have you ever been stuck in a place of indecision over what to do in a relationship?  So many of us have.  And for living in such a relational culture as we do, we aren’t offered much modeling or wise guidance.  Often, we absorb messages like “when they’re the one, you just know” and “when they’re the right person, even the hard stuff is easy.”  We beg to differ!  These ad...

When we think of the concept of cheating, typically a sexual affair comes to mind.  But that is only one form of cheating out of a myriad of ways.  Ultimately, cheating is a betrayal, a breach of agreement.  And too often, our agreements aren’t well communicated.  The risk then is that there are differing ideas of the agreements in place–in other words, an unspoken disagreement...

We all have had the experience of being corrected by someone else.  Often, it doesn’t feel so great.  It can make us wonder what’s inherently wrong with us or why they can’t just let us own our thoughts and feelings.  It’s also very likely that we’ve been the one correcting another before and might not have even noticed that we’d done it.  Why do we correct others?  And wh...

Last week, in this miniseries on shutdowns, we talked about shutting down in the middle of an argument. This week, we’re talking about shutting down from a slightly different angle: When one of us in the relationship is having big, vulnerable feelings. It can feel scary or vulnerable to express a need or emotion we have, even outside of conflict. So, let’s dig deeper.  In this...

If your partner tends to shut down in the middle of an argument, the reason why is simple.  However, often the simplest things are also the most complicated. This week, let’s dig into the varied reasons underneath the simple surface layer and discuss what can be done about it.  Shutting down can become embedded in the relational dance between us and our partners, a spiraling chain of eve...

Shutdowns can look and feel different for each of us.  Sometimes deep and immediate, sometimes a slow drip toward isolation. Numbness, wordlessness, sometimes seething, sometimes out-of-body.  We all shut down sometimes, even if it isn’t our usual modus operandi.  But why do they happen in the first place?  And what can we do about them?  It all starts with noticing. ...

Dear listeners, we have a little surprise for you while we’re in between seasons.  We have created a 3-part series on “shut-downs” in relationships and will roll out segments of the series over the course of the next few weeks.   To start, this week, we have an introduction for you on shut-downs:  We discuss why shutting down during hard conversations might be the worst thing y...

Don’t we all just want to hear a little good news, a little “thank you”, or get a high-five once in a while? Why do so many of us focus on what's not working, rather than what is? Rounding out season two, Rebecca, Vickey and Jules discuss one of their most favorite relational skills—cherishing. In this episode, you'll learn how to do it, when to do it (hint: often and in the moment!), and why it's...

Asking your partner about what happened in their therapy session is, regardless of their reason, basically an ask for more vulnerability.  It’s normal for partners to be interested in what’s going on for the other.  Often we just want to know that one of us isn’t outgrowing the other.  The potential for boundary crossings is great here, but so is the potential for relational growth...

If you’ve been with your partner for a while, you’ve probably already noticed that they’re not quite the same person they were when you first fell for them.  They might even seem like a completely different person from the one you met so long ago.  So where did they go?  Because you know them so intimately, you can still kind of track remnants in their face or get a brief flicker of...

This week’s episode is a companion to last week’s conversation, where we talked about why our partners might not share when they’re upset.  This week, a listener asks: Why doesn’t my partner try to understand when I’m upset?  What it ultimately boils down to is listening, really listening, is actually really hard! Vickey, Rebecca and Jules break this all down for you to explain what the...

The thing about conflict is that very few of us were given a model of how to work through it in an effective or healthy way.  Some of us grew up in a home where conflict just didn’t happen, and so we grow up at a loss for what to do or assume that any conflict means a relationship is doomed.  Some of us grew up in homes where there was a lot of conflict and it wasn’t handled in healthy w...

Is adult love conditional?  This is one of those deeper questions we all encounter at some point in our lives.  It’s one that we all might have our own answer to, but we don’t have to agree on a shared answer in order to be in relationship with each other.  This week, our asker wants to know, “Why does my partner’s love seem conditional?” Jules, Vickey and Rebecca respond to this qu...

Perhaps one of the loneliest existential questions we can ask is whether or not we can ever truly be known by someone.  There’s grief in there, when we realize that this desire can never be fully met.  Sometimes we avoid or deny this truth, which is what this week’s question touches on:  “Why doesn’t my partner accept our differences?”  Certainly, we can bond over our similarit...

This week, a listener asks, “When we fight, why does my partner think I’m useless, no good, unhealthy?”   When you and your partner fight, you might have your own list of adjectives that come to mind. Whatever they are, the answer to this question applies to all of them.  The response is hefty but so worth it, because when we are able to upend this with a new skill, the results are so in...

We’ve all likely said something hurtful out of anger to someone we love at some point in our lives.  There’s a slew of reasons why we do it, but “because it’s the truth” is only sometimes one of them.  Being on the receiving end of a hurtful comment, the sting can make it hard to respond well.  But if we can pause just enough before responding to check in on our psychological bounda...

We believe everyone who's ever been in a relationship has experienced this question! Maybe it's a lack of observation about the dynamics between you. Maybe they do know, but you don't know that they know. Really though, it’s probably just that you have different connection styles and haven't yet decoded the different ways each of you experience what connection is. Jules takes us deep into brain sc...

When it comes to the topic of interjecting or cutting someone off in a conversation, we all know which side we tend to fall on.  Some of us are serial cutter-offers.  Some of us are the ones getting cut off.  For those in the latter group, it can be incredibly frustrating at times.  We might feel like we aren’t being listened to or that we are being dismissed.  But for tho...

This week’s question “Why does my partner refuse to apologize?” is a big one.  Partly because we’ve all found ourselves in the position of not wanting or outright refusing to apologize to someone.  We’ve all been that person, probably more than once.  And we’ve all been the person on the receiving end of an apology—or the absence of an apology.  We’ve felt that vulnerability in...

Why is it so hard to see when we are being hypocritical about something?  Some say that humans are contradictory by nature, so perhaps we are all hypocritical from time to time.  It’s just hard to see outside of our personal vantage point.  It takes a little imagination, curiosity and maybe even a little effort toward trying a different approach.  And when we are calling out th...

Sometimes in a relationship, one of us thinks we need to fix the other.  There are a few moving parts here.  In terms of social conditioning, often women learn that this is how they get what they need in a relationship.  But it’s not always or only that.  There’s also a piece around how we deal with trauma and a piece around the partner’s response to being fixed.  What oft...

This week, find out what we mean when we say sometimes you just “can’t magic the milk”.  Comfort means different things to different people.  In this episode, we discuss the many nuanced reasons why we might not get what we need when we are stressed and in need of comfort and what we’ve come to expect from others in those moments.  There’s a bit of attachment theory in here, but for...

This week, Jules, Vickey and Rebecca talk about what’s really going on when we or our partners can’t admit wrongdoing.  It turns out that we all have unique, complex personal histories with what happens when someone admits they made a mistake and why we might refuse or withhold that admission.  This succinct yet powerful conversation offers a U-turn for both parties in a relationship tha...

What is sex about?  What is it for?  Many things, of course—pleasure and connection just being two of them.  So what happens when there is an expectation or a mismatch in preferences?  Can we talk about it with openness and curiosity? Or do we get pouty, irritable or retaliatory?  It is inevitable that there will be times when our partners want sex when we are not in the m...