The Repair Your Relationship Podcast

When couples ask how to deal with conflicting priorities in a relationship, they often want a concrete answer. Should they have the baby, take the job, move, stay, spend, save, travel, or wait? Yet the quality of the solution depends on the quality of the conversation that comes before it. In this final part of the series, Cheryl and Ajax move toward a solution that's both realistic and mutually s...

When couples are dealing with conflicting priorities in a relationship, understanding the deeper need is only the beginning. The next challenge is staying open while your partner describes a concern that may threaten something deeply important to you. This is where many conversations break down, even when both people genuinely want to communicate well. In the last episode, Cheryl and Ajax identifi...

When couples search for help with conflicting priorities in a relationship, they’re often hoping to find the right compromise. They may be arguing about having another child, managing money, moving, work, parenting, sex, or how much time to spend together. Yet the practical disagreement is usually only one part of the problem. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Lice...

There’s a particular kind of despair that can show up in long-term relationships. It’s not always loud at first. Sometimes it arrives as anger, sometimes as resentment, sometimes as hopelessness, and sometimes as despair – the flat, heavy feeling of exhaustion and, “I can’t keep doing this.” Underneath it, there is often a much younger pain. The pain of not being seen. The pain of not being held....

Not every answer can meet the ask. Still the answer could reveal willingness, care, and a path forward. Other times the answer can reveal avoidance, entitlement, or an unwillingness to share power. No matter what, the answer is information. And for anyone who grew up with confusion around money, information itself can be profoundly stabilizing. Clarity may hurt, but confusion keeps us trapped. The...

One of the most healing things we can learn to say to our children and to our partner, is, “I hear this is important to you and I’m glad you asked.” It doesn’t mean the answer has to be yes. It means the request is welcome and the person is not wrong for asking. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist,...

There are few things more emotionally charged in a love relationship than money. Money is never just money. It’s power, control, safety, freedom, protection, choice, and care all tangled together in one tender subject. This is why couples can talk about  any  money subject and suddenly find themselves in a much deeper emotional and vulnerable conversation. On the surface, they may be talking about...

There’s a tender and complicated truth in relationship work: sometimes the very thing that protects one person is the thing that wounds the other. One partner’s distance may make perfect sense when we understand their history, nervous system, shame, fear, trauma, addiction, or old attachment injuries. Their avoidance is protection. And still, for their partner, it may hurt too much. The Repair You...

The “No” matters in therapy and it also matters in families, partnerships, parenting, and repair work. When a partner turns away, we may see rejection. When a child refuses, we may see defiance. When a teen shuts down, we may see disrespect. When someone says, “I don’t want to talk about it,” we may hear, “I don’t care.” But sometimes the no isn’t the enemy. Sometimes the no is the beginning of sa...

There are some behaviors that are easy to misunderstand: avoidance, flat affect, shutting down, intellectualizing, dissociation, “not caring,” staying busy, staying distant, acting like everything is fine, refusing to repair, refusing to need, or refusing to let anyone matter too much. From the outside, these behaviors can look cold, oppositional, immature, manipulative, or disconnected. They can...

Human beings are biologically wired for attachment. We’re meant to be soothed, comforted, mirrored, protected, delighted in, and emotionally held by other people. Every infant arrives in the world needing exactly that. Yet so few of us consistently receive it. So people adapt. They become hyper independent. Overfunctioning. Accommodating. Helpful. Quiet. Easygoing. Productive. High achieving. Endl...

We often think the goal is to eliminate conflict or to communicate perfectly. But what I see is that the goal is to change what happens inside each person when conflict arises. If a moment of tension can become a moment of curiosity, and if a moment of defensiveness can become a moment of reflection, then something fundamentally different begins to take shape. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast...

I often invite couples to imagine that they have both just been wheeled into the ER. They’re not there because they injured each other, but because they’re finally at a point where the pain can no longer be ignored. The injuries are real, even when they didn’t originate in this relationship, and both people are in need of care. In that space, the question shifts away from blame and toward understa...

For the past ten years, I’ve been climbing a mountain. Not literally, but professionally, in a way that has required persistence, patience, and a willingness to keep going without any guarantee of arrival. I’ve been working toward publishing a book with a traditional publisher for over a decade, refining my ideas, building my voice, and staying committed even when the path felt unclear. It has bee...

Lately I’ve been noticing something shifting in me that feels both subtle and profound. It’s not a dramatic, overnight change, but more of a quiet reorganization happening from the inside out. The way I experience anger, in particular, is beginning to feel different. And that difference is changing how I show up in my relationship with my husband, Doug. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is host...

For most of my clinical life I’ve understood anger through the familiar EFT lens: anger is often a secondary emotion. Beneath it is usually something more primary – fear, hurt, overwhelm, sadness, or longing. That framework has been profoundly helpful to me because so often what looks like criticism on the surface is really a protest rising from a much more tender place underneath. Lately, though,...

For most of my clinical life, I’ve understood anger through the familiar EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) lens: anger is conceptualized as a “secondary” emotion. The “primary” emotion is something like fear, inferiority, guilt, hurt, or sadness – usually based on some early attachment wound. That framework has been enormously helpful to me, both personally and professionally, because so often wha...

In the last couple of episodes, I’ve reflected on the experience of being the person who ends up carrying too much in a relationship. As I continued thinking about these patterns, I found myself wondering about the other side of the system. In today’s language, this dynamic is often described as overfunctioning and underfunctioning. One partner becomes highly activated around solving problems, ant...

Anger is often considered a secondary emotion. This means that anger frequently shows up as a protector response when more vulnerable emotions are activated underneath. When someone feels scared, hurt, rejected, or alone, anger can step forward to defend against those painful feelings. From the outside it may look like anger is the main issue, but underneath there’s always something more tender. T...

Recently in supervision I came in talking about anger. I thought the work I needed to do was learning how to help my clients express anger and frustration without it coming out as criticism or blame. Within a few minutes my supervisor took me somewhere I didn’t expect. She introduced an image from the animal world that stopped me in my tracks. She called it the gazelle collapse. The metaphor descr...

I recently did something that felt vulnerable in a way I didn’t quite expect. I brought a recording of a couples session to my case consultation group. I had transcribed it carefully, read it over more than once, thought about it endlessly, and came in ready to dissect what I had done wrong. As I presented the case to my colleagues I let them know I felt embarrassed by what I was going to share. D...

Learning to Trust in a World That's Taught Us Not To In my work with clients, I’ve started noticing a certain pattern, one that shows up again and again, even in our therapeutic relationship. It’s a dynamic that reveals itself subtly at first. Maybe in the hesitation to make eye contact, or the long pause before sharing something vulnerable, or the deflection when asked to go deeper. Sometimes it’...

There are seasons in life when nothing feels clear or straightforward, no matter how much you think, pray, journal, or talk things through. This is especially true when you’re in a challenging relationship. It’s not because there’s something wrong with you, but because every possible path forward involves some kind of loss. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a License...

Medical events, aging, illness, and loss have a way of touching our deepest attachment wounds, which awaken very difficult questions within a committed love relationship. Will you come for me when I’m feeling alone? Will you stay with me when I’m feeling scared? Can I rest in your arms, or do I have to keep holding everything together on my own? The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by St...

What looks like “bad behavior” is often a nervous system asking for help. The parents learned that curiosity opens doors that control never will. And they learned that addressing the real problem, not just the visible behavior, changes everything. This is what the CPS model does so well. It doesn’t ask families to choose between safety and growth. It builds a bridge between them. It honors a child...