Going Solo

Okay. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Marriage Therapy Radio. My name is Zach Brittle, and I'm here without Laura Heck. Who has retired? And here we are. Welcome to a new era of Marriage Therapy Radio. Happy new year. I don't really know how this is going to go. But I'm excited about it. We have a bunch of things where I have a bunch of things lined up for the next three months or so that I'm kind of excited about toying with. And I hope that you will stay along for the ride. I know that a lot of you listen to Marriage Therapy Radio because you love Laura, and, maybe I'm not talking to you anymore. Or maybe you're not even here. Which is fine if you are still here. Thanks for coming back. I hope that I can, deliver on the promise of two things that we've always said.

We wanted Marriage Therapy Radio to be about. Number one was, we want people to listen to the podcast and have this experience, which is. I never thought about it like that before. I recently found out there's actually a book of that nature out there somewhere. Some clients repeated it back to me the other day when they said, oh yeah, we read this book called.

I never thought about it like that before or something. And I said, that's exactly what I want people to do. I want people to have an experience of thinking about and through relationship themes or topics or ideas and having them, occur to them in new ways and new ways that they had never considered. I think we get, trapped in tunnel vision sometimes, and that's why we end up saying things like, we just feel like roommates, or we feel like we were just living parallel lives, or we're really good at co-parenting or running a business together, but we're not that good at intimacy or connection or fun even.

And I want to, create a context where my clients and my listeners, are thinking outside the box or thinking about things and new and different and exciting ways. I just finished this weekend a marathon session with a couple. A marathon session is when they come in for some time on Friday night. We spent, I think, three four hours together on a Friday night, and we spent a long day together on Saturday, so we started at 9:00. We finished about 330, and then today we kind of wrapped it up with a few hours this morning. And, you know, those marathons are kind of hard because people come in for different reasons and they're looking for different things. And in this case, it was really just the need for a reframe. So I'm inclined and want to put practical tools in people's hands and have them, walk away with something that they can touch and feel and kind of plan on doing.

But in this case, it really was, you know, three days of saying, I never thought about it like that before. And, both of them had, I think, opportunities to open their eyes to different ways of thinking and being in this particular relationship. What's cool about a marriage or any marriage is, you know, I've been married for 28 years or something. In fact, it's it's January of 2025. Our first date was in January of 2000, and. No. A January of 1996. You might remember, if you listen to the podcast that, typically in January, we go on our anniversary date. We go to the Olive garden and we watch the movie called The American President. And we've done that now for, I guess almost 30 years, with just a few exceptions.

This next weekend, we're going out to the Olive garden, and we'll watch the American president. And I'm sure. But I was I veered off my path. My path was I want people to have an experience of saying, I've never thought about it like that before. And the second one I've already just mentioned to you is I want people to have, practical, actionable tools that they can put in place to help them think, or to help them actually change the way they behave in their relationship. So I'm going to keep doing that. I'm going to keep trying to make sure that you have opportunities to think in new ways about your relationship. And I'm going to try and put, you know, practical resources in place for you. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be releasing the interviews that we did with relationship experts.

So that'll be Dr. Harville Hendrix, Emily Nagoski, Terry Real, all of whom sat down with us and their partners. So if you are a Patreon subscriber, you may have already heard those interviews. I think they're fantastic. It's always fun to listen to how people put it together. And, you know, people ask me sometimes when they meet me on a plane or on vacation or just in the wild about my marriage, and they'll say something sometimes like, oh, you must have a perfect marriage because you're a marriage therapist.

And I say, I don't have a perfect marriage, but what I don't but I also don't have excuses. I don't have the ability to go. I don't know how to do that, or I don't know what to say or I don't. I never learned that because I have and I and I do, and it was really cool listening to people who have dedicated their lives to being, relationship experts and figuring out how they make it work, not just in their work, but also in their actual relationships. In three of the cases, these folks were married to, also married to therapists in one, they were not. And listen, I just sat down at the microphone today and started talking. I don't know how long it's going to take. I don't even know really what I have to say. But I do want to say this this morning I got an email from Patreon, informing us about, informing me about our payout for January, which is always great.

Every time I get that, I think, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Thank you so much. To those of you who are giving us, money to support Marriage Therapy Radio and but this morning's payout was about $100 less than December's payout. And that makes sense to me, particularly for those of you who may be on board because of Laura. And you're like, Laura's leaving. I can, I'm going to leave, too. And then this. It's a good time. I think people ought to do that. So many times I've subscribed to stuff and forgotten that I did it. And I ended up paying, you know, Patreon into the forever millions. Not forever millions. But, you know, I ended up spending money because I just lost track of it.

But I did take it a little bit personally. It was a little bit of a jab. Actually, that's not true. I didn't take it personally. I took it as. I never thought about it like that before. I never thought that we would, make less money as we continue to grow the podcast. All I'm saying is, over the next 90 days, 60 days, 30 days, I'm going to be paying attention to my energy, my capacity to deliver on a promise. Just my motivation. Because, you know, I'm I want to I want to keep doing the podcast, and I want to make sure that I'm not doing it just just because I want to know that I'm actually adding value. And so for those of you who, you know, decided to not continue with Patreon. Amen. God bless you. You go.

I hope you turn that money into something else. I recently subscribed to something that I realized I was not going to use and didn't want to use, and I called all. I wrote them and said, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to terminate my subscription. I would like a refund. And when they send it to me, I promised them that I would redirect the money to something worthwhile. In this case, it was a buddy of mine who's raising money for his, for a wrestling team. That girls are wrestling in. So he was raising money for girls to learn how to wrestle. And I told him, I said, I'm going to take this money, and I'm going to send it to this other good cause, which, is near and dear to my heart.

And it's the idea of teaching, girls and empowering women, empowering girls and helping them get opportunities to compete on a level playing field. And, wrestling is a really good example of where that kind of doesn't happen. Because when girls wrestle boys, boys honor, in most cases, they honor their opponent and they treat them just like anybody else, and they end up, more often not being stronger and faster. And it's harder for girls to compete in that environment. So funding women's sport means finding girls wrestling in particular. It was a cool thing that I am excited about. And, so that more girls can kind of take each other on, without having to worry about the odds being stacked against them physically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever. So if you've decided to not send your money to Marriage Therapy Radio, Imma go take it.

I hope you deliver it on something good. If you are, interested in continuing to see this platform grow and, make a difference, without Laura, then I would invite and encourage you to roll over to Patreon, Marriage Therapy Radio and just subscribe at one of the tiers that just helps us, pay our editors and our marketing people. I'm not trying to make any money here. I just want to make sure that we are delivering on a promise and that that promises actually a landing for you. And one way to let us know is to support us to Patreon. It's also to support us on, the socials. Really, we're only on, Instagram as far as I know.

And then, of course, you can email me anytime. I'll be checking the email and looking forward to seeing what's what. So that's my just kind of mini sincere plug to, continue to invest in messages across the world. And, by chipping in a little bit, on our Patreon page. Okay. So I talked a little bit about my goals, which are to have people say, I never thought about it like that before. And also the idea of giving people practical tools. I gave you a little bit of a heads up about what's coming down the pike, and that's these four interviews that, will be rolling out in January be our last opportunity to hear from Laura, as a regular member of Marriage Therapy Radio. And we recorded those over the summer.

After that, I, have a few interviews lined up with some authors of books that are intriguing to me, that have reached out to us and asked us to do an interview. So I'm taking those on. I also have three different couples lined up, to interview them about, you know, just how do they do marriage? How do they make it work? What is their, what are the tips and tricks? What's the secret that they bring to the table? So, there's two more things that I have. Lined up for you. One is you may have heard us talk about, the idea that I have a couple of friends with which I do boat night and boat night is when the three of us get together and we talk about our wives and girlfriends.

It's kind of a joke. We have two wives among us and one girlfriend, so we just, we talk about what it's like for us to be in a relationship right now. What's going well? What's her, what's having? What's more challenging. And, we're going to get together. We're going to do a boat night on the podcast. We're going to just have, the three of us, two of my closest friends. And we're just going to talk about kind of how they and we are all thinking about relationships right now. You get a little sneak peek into my, my private social life, which could include the two of them, enjoying rum or bourbon or whatever it is that they are into at the moment.

Usually our boat nights are actually on a boat on a sailboat, and, it includes, the emptying of a bottle or two of something. So conversations can get lively and they can get, they can go in some weird directions. I'm excited to share that with you. I'm sure it will be a little bit tempered, but, I don't know. I'm looking forward to it. And then, I have a three week arc planned with another one of my closest friends who is probably the wisest person I know. She's a therapist, one of my oldest friends who, again, you may have heard us talk about on the podcast. I visit her often when I go back east. And it's going to kind of be her coming out party.

She hasn't ever taken her wisdom to the marketplace or to the to the masses. And so she and I are going to sit down. We're going to do three weeks. It's not quite a co-host, interview with regard to replacing Laura, it won't be that I don't really think this is the right fit, but, I am sure it will be a, provocative conversation and we will explore some topics. One of the areas that she is really sharp in is the idea of, complex trauma and how complex trauma affects relationships and people. So I'm excited to learn a lot and see what's what. And, just go from there. All that to say, I got about 90 days of content lined up for you guys. And then I have some decisions to make.

We got to see kind of what was working and what's not. If you are interested in being interviewed, alongside your partner, let me know. I'll be happy to talk to you. I think that, often the advantage I have in my life is that I get to talk to couples every single day about what they're doing. I get I have so many stories, so many collected stories of how people are making it work over and over again, in different settings and in different contexts. And, you know, I, I feel really honored that I get to get to hear these and I, I'm sort of thinking like, it would be cool for other people to get to hear normal couples talk about their relationship in normal ways.

And with me, won't be therapy, won't sound like therapy. It'll just be an exploration. I have this, this dream that I've been working on, which is if you've ever watched a show called Inside the Actors Studio. There's a the host, James Lipton. He interviews actors and, as the interview was ending, he always asks them the same ten questions. Stephen Colbert has a similar thing. It's actually called the questionnaire. But he spells it like Colbert. So it's a questionnaire, but it's the end. Is it, where he asks celebrities and guests the same questions, and I kind of want to do that. I'm kind of gonna I'm going to come up with a little questionnaire or maybe, just maybe, maybe a questionnaire to ask couples.

And I'm sort of building that out right now if you have cool questions that you think would be good, they can really be of any sort. Stephen Colbert, in his, questionnaire, it says one of his questions is what happens after we die? I think is the way that the question is raised. And, one of the coolest answers I've ever heard is, from Keanu Reeves. So, I'm not going to I'm not going to tip it for you. Maybe you go to maybe go, no, I'll tell you what he said. Keanu Reeves was sitting there and he was asked this question, what happens to us when we die? And he says, the people who love us will miss us. I thought that was the coolest answer, because it's not really speculative about what happens to us after we die.

It's sort of what happens after we die. Anyway. I want to have, questions that I'm asking people. Maybe I'll collect them all. We'll have a little, little library of, Marriage Therapy Radio questionnaire questions and answers. By the way, I found a new gal on the internet that I am obsessed with. Her name is Amelia Dimoldenberg. I think, but she is, British gal. She's about 30 years old, and she does interviews in a chicken shop in London. I think they're called chicken shop dates. But she has people come in and she's like, on a date with them doing an interview. And just asking them really great questions, I think. Cool. I think good interviewers are amazing. It's really fun to watch people who have perfected the art of probing questions and interesting responses that guide and move conversations forward, which again, I feel like I do pretty well in my therapy office.

But I'm not as practiced one on one in the podcast setting. That was never quite what Laura and I were doing. And even when we did interview people, sometimes it it wasn't as, maybe as thorough as I would have liked. I saw a lot of stuff that's kind of going on as we reset, into the new year. What I did, I was thinking about, like, what am I supposed to do today? Am I supposed to just sit down and start talking? Which again, I guess I've done. But I realized I wanted to kind of reset the tone a little bit, acknowledge where we're at, give you a heads up, but then also, you know, if you are listening to Marriage Therapy Radio for the first time, welcome to the meet the content, the meat of it, which is, about 15 minutes into the episode.

That's kind of how it goes sometimes, but I wanted to give you three things that I've been thinking about that I think are the secret, the secret to a happy, healthy relationship. I have discovered it. I give it away to clients. Now I'm going to give it away to you for, for free here on the podcast. But it's just maybe ways to, organize your relationship. Thinking as you head into the new year. I think, you know, often when couples come in to me and they're here for the first time, one of the things I try to recruit them into is the idea that that that coming into therapy for the first time or coming into therapy with me anyway, is, signify it before and after a moment.

It is. It is a moment where things are meant to turn. And this happened naturally for a lot of people. Right. They met. They have a before and after a moment when they have a baby or they, they have a before and after a moment when they move to a new town or even when maybe when they get married or when the something tragic has happened, when there's been a death in the family or there's been an affair that's been discovered or something, these punctuate and turn the heels of a relationship, that invites kind of a new phase, right?

Like I said, I think I started this sentence a while back, but I've been on and with Rebecca for almost 30 years, and we've probably been in four different marriages. At a minimum, I think there's four really distinct stages of our relationship. And we're in a new one. You've maybe heard us talk a little bit about how, you know, some relational anthropologist will have concluded that the natural life cycle is three years.

So, you know, for those of us who have been in relationship, those of us who have opened, who have been in relationships for 30 years or so, that's ten cycles of three. So we've been married somewhere between 4 and 10 times, in terms of the phases of our relationship. So here, if you're sitting at the top of the year and you're listening to a Marriage Therapy Radio podcast, or you're listening to a relationship podcast, maybe for the first time, or even if you've been hanging around for a while, you're trying to figure out like, what's the next step for you?

And so I thought I would check out what Zach has to say. Here's what I have to say. Okay, here's the secret number one. Secret number one to a happy, healthy relationship is do more things that your partner likes and fewer things that your partner doesn't like. That's it. That's the whole secret. You get to do whatever you want.

You're an adult. You have personality. You have preferences. You have styles of relating. You have hopes and dreams of your own, and you are allowed to pursue them. If pursuing them, puts your partner in a position to feel defensive or resentful or lonely or sad, then you shouldn't expect it to be good for the relationship. If you do want to stay in a happy, healthy relationship, you need to take your dreams and your hopes and your your personality quirks and styles and hold them up next to your partner and the two of you need to negotiate, how you're going to do that together, that is that's it.

And if it's going to go well, you guys are going to agree that we're going to try and do more things that you like, and I'm going to try and do fewer things that you don't like. So if you're looking for a quick, quirky way to orient yourself to the new year, that is step number one that I am going to offer you. And you can take that to the bank. Here's number two. Number two is, in order to be, in a relationship that is mutually edifying, it is essential that you learn how to ask for what you want. There actually is no way for your partner to do more things that you like, and fewer things that you don't like unless you surface that.

And you and you ask for what you want. Upon asking for what you want, you need to either be grateful for when you get it or adaptable when you don't. That's it. That's the whole secret. Learn how to ask for what you want. When you get what you want. Lean into gratitude. When you don't get what you want, lean into that to being. Adapt to adapting, to the new status quo. It's really important that when you do learn how to ask what you want, you focus on desire more than demand. Asking is is, you know, it is a it's a vulnerable thing to do, because you open yourself up to the possibility that you may not get the thing that you're asking for.

Demand is not a vulnerable thing to do, because you are putting all of the responsibility on someone else. And you're actually giving yourself permission to be upset if they don't meet you where you need to be. I'm not talking, by the way, about boundaries or limits. I'm talking about trying to figure out how to get closer to the thing that makes you feel safe and sane in a relationship. And, in order to do that, you got to ask for the thing that you want. And when you get it, you gotta be grateful. And when you don't get it, you have to adapt. Okay, that's practical thing number two that I was hoping to give you this, evening as I sat down to record, the podcast.

Here's the third one. The third one is, a conviction that I have shared over and over and over again, in this context. And it is I am absolutely convinced that the best thing that you can do for your relationship is take care of your side of the street. The best thing that you can do to protect the relationship itself from, contempt, from anger, from disappointment, from disillusion, from disconnection, is to show up in your best brain, in your best skin, as the best version of yourself. A little bit earlier, I used, I don't want to say the wrong word, but I used the word in a different context that I'm going to use it right now. A little bit earlier, I said, if you don't get what you want, you got to learn how to adapt. What I'm going to say right now is about the notion of the adaptive child versus the wise adult.

This is a big concept in relational life therapy that, you know, I've been studying lately, but, you know, it's the wise adult, who makes the relationship better. The adaptive child, the part of us that is using poor or, immature strategies to, make relationships work. These are typically fight, flight or fix. Those are adaptations. So again, I apologize for confusing you about using two different words, but we want the number one thing you can do for your relationship is show up as a wise adult. Which means you gotta examine the parts of you that are operating out of fear, out of, fight or flight or fix all of what? Your fear responses and try and, corral those into a different, different strategy. Look, I, I don't I know that people issues come from all over the map, but I think the things that I tend to say most often are, exactly that.

And I'll go in reverse order. One is you gotta show up as a wise adult in a relationship, do whatever work it takes to do that journal, go to therapy, learn how to meditate, join a 12 step group, attend a yoga retreat, exercise, you know, whatever it takes. Show up as a wise adult in the relationship so that you can ask for what you want. Asking for what you want needs to come from desire, not to me. And when you get it, lean into gratitude. When you don't get it figured out how to adjust, figure out how to pivot and, and maybe, maybe get curious and explore that next thing so that you can get more information, and give more information in a generous way.

And then at that point, you're able to do more things that your partner likes, fewer things that your partner doesn't like. Ideally, they are doing the same thing. More things that you do like, fewer things that you don't like. So, that is my New Year's new era, new marriage therapy radio mentality. For those of you who are trying to figure out how to kick off the new year with a different, mindset, I am really looking forward to seeing how the podcast grows, changes, morphs into something. But I really, really, really want it to be valuable to you. And if it's not, then, you know, maybe we can all agree that it's time to move on and do different things, with our time and our energy. For now, I will thank you for showing up today. For listening, hanging in there with me.

I will invite you to, check out the interviews that are coming up in the next month. And then, you'll get to come along a boat night. You'll hear from a few other couples who are trying to make their way to the world. Good start. To me and my friend Annie, who is again, one of the sharpest people I know. And then we'll be in April and we'll figure it out. Kind of, what the next steps are. I am grateful for you. I want to hear from you. I want to be supported by you. And I want to know, how to make sure that we, continue to deliver on this promise of making you think about. I never thought about it that way before. And also giving you something practical that you can sink your teeth into on a daily basis. Yeah. And I guess I gotta figure out some other stuff, like how I'm going to sign on and how I'm going to sign off. Laura and I have been in a debate for a while about who invented.

Thank you for the time and attention that you put into making your relationship better today than it was yesterday. Unlike, I'm pretty sure it's me, but it's been her thing to say for the last seven years, so maybe I'll say it, maybe I won't. But I do want to, acknowledge the thing I always acknowledge, which is that you are doing something that most people aren't doing, which is taking your valuable resources, the resources of your time and your attention, and using it to, become more astute in the world, in your relationships. And the world needs people who are doing that. So I will thank you. I will celebrate you. I wish you a happy New Year, and I will look forward to connecting with you. Here in as we move into, this next phase of Marriage Therapy Radio 3.0 or 5.0 or 8.0 or whatever it is. Okay. That's it. I'm gonna go.