--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to what will be a brutally honest episode of the Mel Robbins podcast. So first off, I'm super, super excited that you're here. My name is Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on change and motivation. Since we started this podcast, I have been flooded with questions. I love getting all of your questions, but this one right here has stuck with me.
--:-- Jennifer: [Listener voicemail] Hey, Mel, it's Jennifer. Can you do a podcast not on marriage advice, but something about how marriage is so wacky hard and unusual and worth staying the course? I went back and listened to your opening podcast and was so blown away by the exposure of what you've gone through, but also of the impact upon your marriage. So I'm kind of blown away that your marriage existed through all of that. I feel a lot of cultural pressure and voices about leaving marriage, but not so much about staying. Like maybe the pendulum has shifted generationally from "stay for the kids" to "leave to make yourself happy." But isn't there another way, another kind of perspective on the why of staying? I love the show, your vibe, your honesty. It really helps. Thank you so much, Mel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you for this question. I love your vibe and I love the question itself. I also want to thank you for distinguishing between asking for advice about marriage and relationships versus just talking about my experience. The truth is, I don't talk about this topic of relationships and marriage and giving advice about it all that much. Because the fact is, I don't think I do know the secret to marriage. I've been married for 26 years, but I feel like my husband, Chris, and I are still figuring out the secret to marriage.
--:-- I also worry that if Chris and I started giving relationship and marriage advice, and we somehow held ourselves out there as the model for a marriage that works, it would blow up our own marriage. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it seems like every other day there is some author or influencer that has been giving relationship advice who then announces that they're getting divorced. I personally do not want to get divorced, but I can't stop thinking about your question. You're not the only one who has been asking me to talk about some of the things that Chris and I have learned along the way after being together for 28 years and being married for 26 years.
--:-- So Jennifer, after much trepidation, I decided, fuck it. I'm going to answer this. But I want to be open with you. I see what you're writing to me. You're turning to me because you've heard me and Chris on the podcast. You've heard our family sharing a lot on the podcast. You see pictures of us online and we're smiling and we're happy. But I want to tell you something. It hasn't been easy.
--:-- For example, we just had our 25th wedding anniversary about 18 months ago. And we didn't celebrate it. We didn't celebrate it because we were in a really hard spot with one another. We were deep in therapy. There was a lot of stuff that we were working through because, as we're going to talk about, I promised a brutally honest conversation with you today. Over the course of 25 years, whether it's a friendship or a marriage or family relationship, shit builds up. There were a lot of things that had built up between Chris and I—resentments, pain, shame, all kinds of crap that happens in every single marriage that we were plowing through. Frankly, neither one of us felt like celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. That was 18 months ago.
--:-- I've done a tremendous amount of work with Chris since then. We are now in a better place and a more connected, profound place with one another than we've ever been. So Jennifer, I'm going to give you six things that I've learned in recent years. The years where Chris and I have been working with Dr. Cooper, a psychotherapist, as our therapist as a couple. These are six things that have really helped me and helped Chris in terms of changing how we show up in our marriage, changing the dynamic, clearing out the crap that has built up, and forging something stronger in this next phase of our marriage. These are universal enough observations that they apply to every one of us, whether you're really struggling in your marriage or you're struggling in a friendship.
--:-- With that context, let me address your question, Jennifer. I want to start with your observation of the pendulum of advice around marriage shifting generationally when it comes to advice about marriage, and in particular when marriage gets hard. I agree with you. For somebody our age—and for those of you that may be new to listening to this podcast, I am 54 years old. My husband is 53 years old. We have three children who are 24, 22, and our son is about to be 18 years old. Chris and I have been through a lot of ups and downs.
--:-- Growing up, the advice was always, you have to stay together for the kids. I personally think that is the world's worst advice. A lot of the research bears out the fact that your kids know when you're miserable. If you're staying only to tough it out for the kids, your kids are now seeing a model of a relationship that is profoundly dysfunctional. By the way, what we also know based on the research is your kids then feel responsible for the fact that you stayed in something that was broken because you stayed for them. So I don't think you should stay for your kids. I think that is lousy advice. A lot of us have heard that advice for a long time.
--:-- What I believe is that if you do decide that you're going to stay in a relationship, you have to do that for yourself. When you consider the reasons why you want to stay in a relationship, if you put yourself first, it may be that it matters to you based on your values to keep your family intact. So if you see value in what you've created to date, that's a really valid and important reason to work on your marriage and relationship and try to work through the challenges that have come up. But that right there is very different than staying for the kids out of guilt and shame. So stay because you want to stay. Work on it because you want to work on it based on your values and based on what you feel in your heart.
--:-- I also agree with you, Jennifer, that there has been a big swing. You see it all over social media: leave to make yourself happy. If you're unhappy in that marriage, you just walk right out that door. I would extend this conversation that you and I are going to have today beyond marriage. I think that the same things that make a marriage healthy and happy and go the distance are the exact same things that make a friendship happy and healthy and go the distance. We live in this world, and I worry a lot about this, where people are really quick to just X people out, to ghost somebody. People love to just talk about other people being toxic. I worry about the fact that we have gotten to a point where the pendulum has swung and people are starting to feel like when things get tough, I just leave. When somebody's a jerk, I just walk out. They're the problem.
--:-- The fact is, the exit door is usually not where you find the best answers. That's typically the easy out. I have found over and over and over again that the answers to a better relationship are usually in the mirror. So what I want to say about that is this. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's abusive, leave. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's narcissistic, leave. If you're in a relationship that makes you absolutely miserable and you have tried to work through everything, you should leave and that will make you happy. But if you're leaving because you don't want to do the work, that's a problem. That habit of bailing when things get tough, you're just going to take that right into the next relationship. That's why I am saying it's not necessarily the answer that's going to make you happy.
--:-- The reason why I think it is important in a friendship or in a marriage or a relationship to stop yourself from walking out the door and just pause long enough to do the work to stay is I don't know a single person who has truly put in the work to repair a marriage or a friendship who regretted it. But I do know a ton of people who just got frustrated and got divorced and they now regret that they didn't try harder, or that they now miss friends that they ghosted or stopped talking to years ago over something stupid because they were too afraid to have the hard conversation. Based on the 28 years that I have been in a relationship with my husband, I have seen this over and over and over again. So if you are willing to put yourself in pause and attempt to repair the marriage or the friendship, you're not going to regret that effort.
--:-- A marriage isn't just a relationship that you have with your partner. It's the community. It's the friendships and the networks that you've built. It's the history that you have together. When you end a marriage or a friendship, the truth is you basically blow apart all of those things. That's another reason why it's worth trying to work on it if you still see something for yourself inside this relationship or friendship. I think a lot about the fact that when people get divorced, I would love to think that everybody can have a modern divorce. You can blend families and ex-spouses can be partners and everybody can be with their new partners and blended families and have holidays together. That's how it should be if you're going to end a marriage, but that's not the norm.
--:-- I just want to be honest, because I don't think we think through these things. You won't have the same relationship with the sister-in-law that you love. You will not be going to your old in-laws if you adore them for the holidays anymore. Friends are going to feel funky because they're going to feel like they got to go with the one or the other in terms of your relationship. That just is how it is right now. I wish it were different, but I promised you I'd tell you the truth.
--:-- Now I want to deliver even tougher love about whether or not you decide to end this marriage. The fact is, let's just say that you end this thing, right? What are you going to do? Oh, I know exactly what you're going to do because you've also seen this a million times. Once you get out of this marriage, you're going to be highly motivated to get in the best shape of your life, to get back out there, to get healthier, to be more vibrant. Why? So that you can attract somebody better. What if you were to just do that now?
--:-- Again, I want to say, don't stay with somebody who's abusive. But if you're sitting there bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends or just your friends in general and your family that you've become roommates and that your spouse is no more fun and you don't know who you're married to anymore, but underneath all that, you just wish it were better—you still love this person—don't just throw in the towel because you're frustrated.
--:-- In some of the beginning episodes, I shared a little bit about our story. For those of you who are new who are listening to the podcast, back in 2008, I had lost my job. We were 800 grand in debt because my husband's restaurant business was really struggling. He hadn't been paid in months. We were just—ugh—leans on the house, drinking ourselves into the ground. I got to a point where it was easier to be angry at Chris and be resentful of him. To be like, I don't like you. I don't want to be with you. Like you fucked this up. As if it wasn't partially my fault too.
--:-- I want to say something to you if you're sitting there thinking that the grass is greener. Look, maybe the grass is. But I want you to stop and consider something. If I ever get pissed off at my husband and I'm like, you know what, Chris is annoying. I just can't stand this about him or that about him. Or he's always thinking about something, he doesn't talk, he's not that fun, and he doesn't make me laugh, or whatever you may bitch about—I stop and say to myself, what's the average 50-year-old guy like? Anybody my age—sorry, dudes—but any one of you that gets to the age of 50, you got shit in the closet. You got stuff that you have lied about. You got things that you are ashamed of. You got things that you haven't worked through.
--:-- So here I got two options. I can either turn toward the person that I was once in love with and do the work to make it better, to grow together. Or I could roll the dice and I could end something because I'm frustrated or pissed off or things got challenging or whatever the situation may be. I could literally go try to create a relationship with somebody else who, by the way, I have not seen what this person has been doing for the last 28 years. So I don't know what the hell they're telling me, whether it's the truth or not. I don't know what trauma they have buried beneath their skin. I don't know what kind of bullshit they did in their prior marriage. But if you're willing to turn toward the person that you're with now, at least you know part of the story.
--:-- For me, it has always seemed worth it. No matter how hard things got with Chris, no matter how scary things got, no matter how much we resented and hated one another, no matter how much we were drinking, I never got to the point where I thought it's way better to roll the dice and try to meet someone new than to try to work it through with this person right here.
--:-- The truth is, and I'm sure this is true about you—I've talked about juicy peaches and embracing your juicy peachiness on this podcast, but there are days I am not a peach at all. When a marriage goes off the rails, when you get to the point where you're roommates, it's not just your partner's fault. That gets to this concern I have, that we are so quick to just cut people out of our lives, to call people toxic, to end something because we're sick of it. And we haven't even done the work to try to fix it. Frankly, you haven't done the work to work on yourself, to make yourself better.
--:-- I personally feel like it is always worth working on it because even if it doesn't work out, you will have a chance to have a much healthier separation and divorce or breakup. If you have kids, let me just state the obvious. If you decide not to be together in terms of a couple, you're going to be with this person for the rest of your life because of your children. So it is also worth it to work on it because even if you're going to end it, the work that you do now to try to save the marriage might actually create the boundaries and the healing that you need to just be able to co-parent after you break up.
--:-- If you're struggling in your relationship or you're struggling in a friendship, hit the pause button. Do not spend another second bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends about the situation. Put your time and energy into working to make it better. I guarantee you, you have not communicated what you're feeling clearly. You have not made requests about what you want. You have not started unpacking where things went off the rails. The truth is, if you're willing to work on it, you can make it better. I think that is the secret to a long-lasting marriage, relationship, friendship. It lasts because you're willing to work on it.
--:-- That brings me to the most important caveat of all of this. I'm going to share that with you after the break.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's Mel. We're talking today about lessons that I've learned after being married for 26 years. I'm answering listeners' questions and I promised that I would share a huge rule about relationships. I think this is the biggest single truth about relationships. Here it is: relationships only work if both of you are willing to work on the relationship together. This is not a one-way street. There is no halfway on this. There is no "I'm going to fix myself and that fixes my marriage." You will never change your marriage on your end, on your own. Period. Full stop.
--:-- I need you to listen to the takeaways that I'm about to give you. The lessons that I've learned actually very recently after being married to the same person for over 26 years. These are lessons that I have learned very recently after Chris and I have been in marriage therapy for two years. Even saying "marriage therapy" is kind of weird because I think about going to therapy like going to the gym—it's a way to make something better. At this point, I have benefited so much and learned so much about my husband that I didn't even know having been married to him for the first 24 years. It's so incredible to have a third person who is not living with you guys to weigh in on what they observe. It has been one of the greatest things that we have ever done for our relationship. I'm kicking myself for not having done it sooner.
--:-- What I want to do is share with you because I'm getting so many questions: how did you guys go the distance? How did you make it through the challenging times? How did you do it? The way we did it is that we were both willing to do the work. No matter how far apart Chris and I felt or were, or how much we were struggling in our lives or our careers or financially or with addiction or whatever it may have been, the one thing that I can say is that we were always willing to work on it. No matter how pissed off we got with one another or frustrated or isolated from one another, I knew deep down that he did love me and that I loved him.
--:-- Having faced bankruptcy and having been unemployed and having struggled to pay for groceries with three kids under the age of 10, back when the restaurant business was really struggling, I was so pissed at Chris. I was just resentful. I was resentful that he wasn't successful. He knew it. He could feel it. That only contributed to the shame that he felt. The fact is, there are going to be years in your relationships when it goes the distance that are amazing and years that completely blow. Years where you feel very connected and years where you feel like you're in your own corners. The past couple years, going through the craziness that happened during the pandemic, it's been really painful. It did some real damage to our relationship.
--:-- This is why, Jennifer, I'm so happy that you did not ask for marriage advice. I am not the expert in what your marriage should look like. I like to keep my marriage between Chris and I. There are things that Chris and I talk about with our therapists that our kids don't know. You want to know why? Because it's not their fucking business. They shouldn't know. Your kids are not your therapist. They're not involved in your marriage. You shouldn't be talking to them about the stuff that you're mad about related to your partner. It's terrible to do that. Work on it with your partner. The more time you spend complaining and griping about your partner to your friends or your family—and dear God, do not do it with your kids—you need to be spending twice that amount of time talking to your spouse. See, that's why you're not connected. That's why you have problems, because you're not actually talking to your spouse.
--:-- When we first started seeing a therapist, it was in 2020. We decided to go to therapy because we had some major things going on and we were fighting a lot. Here's one of the first things that our therapist said to us, and it really has stuck with me. I think that this framework will be really helpful for you too. He observed that Chris and I are excellent at the transactional aspects of life. We can cook dinner together. We can sync up our calendars. We can run errands. We can do projects around the house. But here's what happened. Somewhere during the past probably five to eight years, we got so swept up in the doing that we stopped being connected.
--:-- The fact is, I was very resentful that he wasn't successful in his career. At least in the beginning, I was really resentful. I can see that my resentment made me turn on him. It made me turn on him when he needed me most. I stopped believing that he would be able to save that business. I can see, and I will admit—this is kind of one of those episodes where I'm the asshole and I'm just going to admit all the things that I did wrong in the hopes that you don't repeat the mistakes that I made—I can see that I was engaged in what I've seen people call the quiet quitting. For me, it was the quiet quitting of a marriage.
--:-- You might not even be conscious to this. You might be doing this in your job. You might be doing this in your family. When people use the term "we've become roommates," I think that what you're talking about is that you're in a relationship where one of you is quietly quitting. You're doing the bare minimum. Your resentment and griping is building. Maybe you saw your parents doing it, enduring something. For Chris and I, in all of the doing, we lost that deep emotional connection to one another that we had worked so hard to build over the years. Resentment for me had started to really come in and he could feel it. The emotional connection that you have, that's the glue for your relationship. When it becomes really transactional, there will be resentment. There was resentment on Chris's side too. That emotional connection is what was missing for Chris and I. The love was there underneath it all, but there was this mid layer that had built up.
--:-- I remember this particular moment. It was right before we went to therapy. A really close friend of ours saw us at a dinner that friends of ours had invited a bunch of us over for a barbecue. She called me the next day. She said, "Is Chris okay?" I said, "Yeah, I think Chris is fine. Why?" She said, "Something's wrong with him, Mel." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "There's just something missing. The light behind his eyes is gone. There's normally this magnetic connection between the two of you. I haven't seen the two of you in a couple of years, but it's just something's wrong." She was right. We were missing the connection. We were disconnected. There were a lot of other things wrong too. One of which I would come to learn is that Chris was really struggling with depression.
--:-- That brings me to, well, what do you do? How do you get the connection back? Mel, if I'm going to hit the pause button, and before I just shove the middle finger in the air and say, "You're the problem, I'm out of here, I'm going to be happy, I'm leaving, I'm done," what do I want you to stop and think about before you do that? There are six things that you got to do, in my personal opinion, that you can do and that do work if both of you are willing to work on it.
--:-- Okay, I got to take a quick pause for a word from our sponsors. When we come back, we're going to go step by step through these six things that I did in my marriage that I know will probably help you in your marriage and friendships too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's Mel. We're talking about what I've learned in the last couple of years about marriage. My husband, Chris, and I, as you now know, we've been married for 26 years. About two years ago, we started seeing a marriage counselor, a therapist. I think he's actually a psychotherapist, whatever it is that you would call somebody that you go to see. I love the man. He's amazing. His name is Dr. Cooper. Shout out to Dr. Cooper. I love you. You have made a huge difference in our life. Chris and I have talked to Dr. Cooper every week for the last two years. If you're listening, Dr. Cooper, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for just helping us really dig through the shit and to learn after 26 years how to really understand one another.
--:-- I want to share six observations with you from my personal experience about why it matters, why it's important to work on your relationships, and what you need to do if you want to repair a relationship that's broken or you want to improve and continue to grow together.
--:-- I want to share one thing. What's interesting after being in therapy for two years is I'm willing to bet that if you were to make a list of all the things that you would love to fix about your partner—you wish they were more fun, you wish they took better care of themselves, you wish that they were more interested in what you're doing or more proactive or that they cared more or helped more—make that list and first do those things yourself. I think we often put the burden on our partners to change when oftentimes those things that you want in your relationship are things that you can work on first. That's just a general rule. So try that.
--:-- But now let's talk about these six observations.
--:-- The first thing is you have to be intentional. You must say to yourself, "I'm going to turn this relationship around. I'm going to make it better." There is no half-assing your marriage or a committed partnership. You must decide that you're going to make it better. Wishing your marriage was better, wishing that your partnership was better—that's what you're already doing. That's very different than committing to making it better. Nothing in your life is going to change until you make a decision to change it. Then you have to schedule it in.
--:-- I'm going to tell you one other thing. I was just gushing about Dr. Cooper. I have a confession. Every single Friday at about 9:30, when I realize we have therapy at 9:45, my first reaction isn't, "I can't wait." It's, "Oh, seriously." Then by the time our session is over—it's 45 minutes—I feel freaking fantastic. I feel connected to Chris. I have something that we've unpacked. I've got something to work on in the next week. It's amazing. But I'm sharing the honest feelings that I have about it because you're probably going to feel that way too.
--:-- I look at marriage as this sort of living thing. It's like a container in which you and your partner either grow or you wither and die. I know that sounds brutal and dramatic, but it's true. If your marriage or your friendship matters to you, make it a fucking priority. It's really simple. If you want anything to grow—this is common sense—you got to care for it. You have to tend to it. You got to water it with kindness, with interest, with support. You have to tend to both your and your partner's growth.
--:-- I want you to view the painful stuff in a relationship like weeds in a garden. Over time, if you're not careful, those weeds fucking take over. So do not ignore the little shitty stuff because weeds start out as tiny little things. Have you ever noticed you go away from your garden for a couple of days and it rains and then the sun comes out and these teeny little weeds are like five feet tall? That's the little shitty, irritating stuff. Talk about it. Ask for what you need. Clear the air. Do not harbor resentment.
--:-- I'm telling you, therapy—if you can afford it—get yourself to therapy. It is a gift. Hitting the pause button every other week to truly unpack something that happened, to learn about one another—this is better than any damn date night could ever be. We're not just going out and having time alone; we're actually investing in our growth. That's very different than having a steak and a bottle of wine. We're digging out the weeds in our relationships so that things can blossom and bloom. When we do go out for that meal and that night out, it's actually more than just a dinner date. It's something that has real depth to it.
--:-- For you, if you can't afford therapy, I totally understand. I have been in that place in my life. There are online courses you can take together. There are books that you could read together. The episode that we just released with Dr. Nicola Perra, her brand new workbook "How to Meet Yourself" is a guided journey through knowing yourself better. You could use that. $25. Use that to make your marriage better. There are things that you can do if you get intentional. So that's the first one.
--:-- The second observation that I have to share with you of these six things, these lessons learned after 26 years: you got to develop a genuine sense of interest again in the person. You were interested when you first met them. Remember that?
--:-- Mel Robbins: But I bet along the way you started to decide, "Oh, I know everything I know about this stupid person. Oh, there they go again." I roll. In therapy, I learned a lot about my husband that I didn't know. And I'm talking 24 years into marriage, things that I didn't know. I'm not talking about deep, dark secrets. I'm talking about the way that his thoughts and his feelings impact him.
--:-- Like, for example, I had no idea how traumatized Chris was by his childhood because it wasn't like anything horrific happened to him. And his mom is one of my closest friends, but he was a latchkey kid. His parents were always working. His brothers were way older. Nobody was ever around. And so it was this sort of slow death march of isolation and feeling constantly alone. His experience was: when I get home, nobody's there. When I play baseball, nobody shows up. If I ask for something, I get teased. Nobody listens. So he stopped asking.
--:-- He stopped asking to such a degree that he used to have a nickname in his family. When he was little, you know what they called my husband? "The monument." You want to know why? Because he didn't talk for two years. And everybody laughs about it. It was like some big joke. It's actually really sad. I mean, they laughed about it because nobody knew any better. And because he was just a little kid that felt like he was unseen and wasn't worthy of love, his needs didn't matter. He didn't know how to ask, or he just shut down even more.
--:-- And so I learned that part of the reason why he never asked for anything is because his experience growing up is that nobody gave a shit. And that helped me go from being annoyed at how quiet he is to really wanting to help support him. Because the fact is, he isn't the most effusive person. He's not the hardy, hard, hard guy. He's a deep thinker. And being interested—yes, it means be interested in somebody's hobbies, be interested in what happened to them, be interested in what they're saying. But it also means be interested in learning more about them as a human being.
--:-- And we're all guilty of assuming we know someone just because we've known them for a long time. So starting today, here's how you can apply this. Assume that you don't know a lot about the person, whether it's your partner or your friend or a family member—that there is a whole new part of them to discover. And just think about what an opportunity that is. What if on the road ahead, it's the best part of your relationship because you learn a whole new dimension to this person that has been a part of your life for a long time? And wouldn't you love it if the people in your life approached their relationship with you like that too? That there was something about you that they had yet to discover, that the best part of their relationship with you was on the road ahead? I mean, how cool is that?
--:-- Just think about yourself for a minute. When I think about how much I've changed—my God, in the last four years, emotionally, spiritually, mentally—I've lived that in my own mind and body. Unless you talk about it and listen to each other, you're not going to know that.
--:-- I can give you another example of how little we know about each other. So when I was hosting this daytime talk show, we did an episode where Chris was on, and there was this marriage expert, relationship person, and Chris revealed on national television that when it comes to being intimate, he prefers to have sex in the morning. I had been married to the guy for 22 years. I had no idea that's what he preferred. So you're not going to really get connected to someone unless you're interested in learning more about them. So ask more questions, be more curious.
--:-- And that interest also means be loud and celebratory. I've been working on this. I mean, Chris, as he's leading his men's retreat called Soul Degree, I'm cheering for him as he is studying and getting a certificate to be a death doula. I am like clearing the schedule, making sure he's got time to do that. That makes him know that I'm not only interested, but that I love him enough to be supportive in the things that he wants to do. And of course, he is cheering loud for me.
--:-- You need to start pointing out what's going right instead of griping about the shit that's going wrong. Researchers from UCLA discovered that the single most crucial factor in tightening or destroying a bond that you have with your partner is how you react to good news in one another's lives. How you react to good news—based on research—is way more important than how you react to any bad news. And here's why. Researchers found that celebrating your partner gives your partner an emotional lift. Whereas playing down big news—like, "Oh, that's okay. That's okay"—it leaves a lasting chill.
--:-- And so you can start implementing that practice immediately. The next time your partner has something good happen, big or small, celebrate that shit. Show them how proud you are. Give them a high five. Hug them. And if they don't have something amazing going on, freaking call it out. "Thank you for taking the dog out. Thank you for doing this." The small things really matter because when they're ignored, those small things become weeds and resentment that grow and that separate the two of you.
--:-- And now, lesson number three: get on the fun bus. And by the way, we did an entire episode about this—having more fun with your family right before the holidays. In therapy, one thing that I said over and over to Chris is this: our life is too serious, man. I am so sick and tired of talking about all this serious shit. I am tired of the problems. I am tired of just feeling like life is a grind. We need to have more fucking fun.
--:-- And the thing about fun—and we talked about this on the episode about having fun with your family around the holidays—is you're not having fun unless you plan to have fun. I think we all make the mistake of thinking that fun has to be spontaneous. No. When you were little, your parents planned all the fun shit you did. And so you got to get serious about inserting fun again. The simple concept infuses a dead relationship with new energy. Instead of that slow quitting, you can pick up the fun again and start to reinvest in each other. The more that you can bring fun back into your relationship, just like you did when you were dating in the beginning. Remember those days? There's a reason why dating is fun—because you're planning fun things to do.
--:-- In fact, Chris and I, just this past weekend, we had flown from Southern Vermont to Northern California to go to a business meeting. And we had 90 minutes before we had to get to the start of this business meeting. As we're driving from the San Francisco airport, I'm like, "Oh my God, have you ever seen the Redwood Forest? I think Mirror Woods is right here." Neither one of us had ever been there. So we pull off the highway. It is 4:15 at night. The Mirror Woods National Forest is closing in 45 minutes. There is a dark looming rain cloud coming, and it looks like it's about to rain horizontally. We drive straight to Mirror Woods with 30 minutes to spare. We were the only ones there. It was so fun. And there was this dark cloudy sky, so it felt like we were in a Hobbit movie. It was so fun. And it reminded me: we need to do more of that.
--:-- Go see a great movie, go exercise or hike together, take dancing lessons, cook something new, check out a concert, go skinny dipping. It doesn't matter what you do. Do something that you used to do when you were dating. Just make it fun.
--:-- Now I want to address a question that I am getting a lot. And this one comes from a listener named Jen.
--:-- Jennifer: [recorded message] Hey, Mel, it's Jen. How do we continue to move forward through the change process with a partner who's not willing to move forward to, or at least encourage you? There's a huge gap coming and it's really scary.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, I can kind of hear the fear in your voice, Jen. It is scary when you get to a point where you realize that you've grown apart from somebody that you used to know. But first, remember: if underneath all that, you still truly love this person and you're willing to work on it, you can absolutely make it better. And it's worth doing the work on.
--:-- But your question is something that I get a lot. Your partner's not encouraging you, and your partner sounds like doesn't want to do the work. So I'm going to address this, and I want to just make sure that there are two aspects to this question of your partner not wanting to move forward, not wanting to join you, not encouraging you. There are two situations where that's true, and one of them is not that big of a deal, and one of them is a really big deal.
--:-- It's very different to say that your partner doesn't want to be the plus one in your professional dancing career, or they don't want to be the plus one in your desire to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. That's cool. You should have goals and hobbies that are yours alone. But I don't think that's what you're asking. I think what you're asking is: what do I do if I want to work on this, but my husband will not go to therapy? My husband will not address the problems. My partner or wife will not do the work.
--:-- If you're in that situation where you're willing and you love this person and they refuse to go to therapy, it's not going to work. You can go to therapy alone, but you will not be working on your marriage. You'll be working on yourself. And yes, therapy will change you for the better. And it might just change some of your habits and your mindset, so that changes the dynamic. But to me, that's really a marriage of enduring. It's a marriage that you're surviving because you're with somebody that's not willing to meet you halfway.
--:-- And when you're in a relationship and the other person won't work on it, what's going to happen is—and I've seen this happen over and over and over again—the one person who's willing to go to therapy, who's willing to look in the mirror, who's willing to work on themselves, you know what they tend to do? They work themselves to a new level and right on out of that marriage. That's what happens. Because if you don't continue to grow with somebody, you're going to grow to resent them. And that is a scary place.
--:-- But my only recommendation is: you got to keep asking. You got to work on yourself. And at some point, there will become a time where you're going to say, "It's not negotiable. In order for me to stay in this relationship, you have to be able to do X, Y, Z. And if you can't do those things, then I can't stay in this because you're not willing to work on it." And I hope it doesn't come to that.
--:-- Now, another thing that I learned in therapy these past couple of years is number four: how important it is to reverse roles in your marriage. So this is not some sort of thing you're going to do in the bedroom, although you can. This is not the thing that I'm referring to, although maybe Chris and I should try that. But what I'm talking about is sort of the default roles that you both play in your relationship.
--:-- So I used to be the person—and this is probably due to my anxiety—where I was the one that was always planning everything. I would pick the restaurants, I'd set the agenda. I would bulldoze the path forward. And here's what I learned in therapy: that in me moving so fast all the time and always taking control, it created two major problems.
--:-- Problem number one: Chris had zero room to step in and take the lead and take care of me. And the more I just did it—I just took care of it, I just picked the restaurant—the more I made Chris feel that if he tried to do those things, I wouldn't like what he did. And so my busyness, my proactiveness, my anxiety about it, my just "get it done, get it done, get it done"—it literally made his silence and his thinking worse because there was no room for him to do anything.
--:-- And second, and here's where the real kicker came: I started to feel like everything was always up to me, and that if I didn't do it, nobody would do it. And you know, it's funny because this dynamic that I created was the reason why this happened. I would do everything and then be like, "Why the hell aren't you doing something? Why is it always me doing something?" And then Chris would go, "Well, because you're always doing something, and I never have time to do something, and I would like to do something, but you've already done that thing." And so we were just locked in this. We were physically together, but having a massive disconnection in our emotional experience of being together.
--:-- So how are we changing that? Well, there's a lot of slowing down I'm learning when you are changing a relationship for the better. Because what you're really changing in your relationship when you change it for the better is you are breaking apart the old patterns and you are replacing them with new ways of showing up. And so me personally, I'm working on stepping back instead of just racing ahead full throttle. And I am giving Chris the lead on planning and organizing. I mean, the man does design and lead men's retreats for crying out loud.
--:-- So for example, when our anniversary came up, normally I would pick what we're going to do. I would do all this kind of stuff. And you know, I also noticed that I have this propensity to be like, "Oh no, that's okay. You don't have to get anything. Oh no, no, no, I don't need anything. Let's not do presents this year." And then I'd be pissed off that there were no presents. So the poor guy couldn't win. I told you I was the asshole in this relationship.
--:-- So I said to Chris, "Why don't you just take the reins? Don't even tell me what we're doing." And it was incredible. He surprised me and booked this place that was literally less than an hour away from us in Southern Vermont. We took a few days off to just unplug and eat phenomenal food and sleep without the dog waking us up at 5:30 in the morning. And Chris surprised me. It was on our 26th wedding anniversary. On that first night, with this stunning ring and vows that he had written out—Chris had not given me a piece of jewelry that he had picked out and bought for me since our engagement ring. Now, I, of course, had nothing to give to him, but it was incredible.
--:-- And you know, after that experience, I nicknamed him "the trip leader" because I realized that the moments in life that I feel the safest and the most in love with him, it's when he's the leader. He's blazing the trail when we're hiking. He's setting up camp when we're camping. He is really doing what he does best, which ironically is planning. In fact, he's so good at it, I might never, ever plan a thing again.
--:-- And I know I mentioned this at the top, but I just want to put this in proper context for you. Because this whole ring and new vows thing happened on our 26th anniversary. But as I shared at the beginning of the episode, just a year prior to that, the 25th anniversary, we didn't even celebrate it. I mean, imagine making it to 25 years and being in a state in your marriage where you're like, "I don't even feel like celebrating." We just let the day come and we let the day go. And so for us to get to a point a year later where he and I have been working hard to truly address the things that went sideways and to hear one another and to be interested in one another's experience and feelings and be interested in showing up and changing—that's what we were actually celebrating. That's why there were new vows. And that's what's possible when both of you are willing to do the work.
--:-- And so the fifth thing is: you got to ask for what you need. It's taken me 20-some years to just ask for what I need. This is a novel idea, but instead of being pissed off at your partner, why not just ask for what you need? It's a lot easier than being angry and annoyed all the time. And I think a lot of us get into trouble—this is that sort of slow, quiet quitting that I was talking about—because we show up in a relationship and we expect our partner to behave the same way we wish they would. And we don't ever fully communicate what we actually need. And they don't ever fully communicate what they need.
--:-- You know, I gave you the example of us being married for 20 years and me not even knowing that Chris prefers to be intimate in the morning. Never talked about it. Like, that's dumb. Why not just talk about it? It just is so obvious.
--:-- I'll give you another example. I just love having fresh flowers in my house. And so one day I said to Chris, "You know, it would mean a lot to me if when I come home from a business trip, or hell, whenever you go to the grocery store, if you just picked up flowers. Because when I see a little bundle of tulips sitting in a plastic vase on the counter, it makes me know that you're thinking of me." That's all it took. Every time the man goes to the grocery store, he returns with flowers, and it puts the biggest freaking smile on my face.
--:-- So ask. Instead of punishing somebody, instead of quietly quitting, get loud about what you want. And in return, ask your partner to get loud about what they need from you. Don't assume that you know your partner's love language or what they wish that you were doing. Just ask them and start doing it.
--:-- And finally, this is a big one: assume good intent. One of the things that I've learned about my husband, Chris—it's been a reminder really. And this is one of those things that happens when you really slow down and you get present, whether it's your spouse or your partner or a friend—is that my husband's just like, he's just like a really nice guy. There's not a mean bone in Christopher Robin's body. And I get so worked up in my own shit that I forget that. I just forget that he's not out to be an asshole. He's not trying to screw me over. He's not some dickhead. He's just a nice guy who's doing his best.
--:-- And see, I think we forget that. If you deep down still love the person that you're with, but there's all this crap that's built up, anchor there. Assume good intent. Assume that they didn't mean to frustrate you, that they didn't mean to fail at whatever they failed at, that they didn't mean to. Assume good intent. Remember the person that you fell in love with, because I believe that person is still deep down in there. But any relationship—whether it's a friendship or a family relationship or a love relationship that goes the distance—there's shit that builds up. But the person who they are at their core, that doesn't change. That doesn't change.
--:-- And so if your response to me saying "assume good intent" is, "Oh Christ, Mel, I mean, you should—" and you're starting to make a case about the person you're with, there's your answer. Get out. If you can't even admit that at their core, this is a good person, this is a nice person, then get out. You're more committed to making your case and being right about this than you are about seeing something deeper that's worth working for.
--:-- And to me, that's the bottom line, because that's what I've learned through these past challenging years and at times very painful changes that we've been through: that if you're both willing to look a little deeper and remind yourself of why you loved them in the first place, if you're both willing to look in the mirror and work on yourselves and your relationship, you can work through anything. You really can. You can get through some horrific things. You can get through things that seem insurmountable, whether it is addiction or the death of a loved one or cheating or bankruptcy. You can get through all kinds of things if you're both willing to work on yourselves and your relationship.
--:-- And please, dear God, can we start having some fucking fun? I mean, let's just stop waiting for another couple to invite you over and start throwing some dinner parties and some dance parties and have some fun. Like maybe it's that we've all gotten a little too serious. Save the serious talk for your therapy sessions and bring the fun to the rest of your life. Bring your inner life to the surface. And I'm telling you, your connection will not only grow, but it will also grow strong.
--:-- And in case no one else tells you today—I hope that your partner or your friend tells you this, but in case they don't—I'm going to tell you: I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life and better relationships. And how about you start putting what I just shared with you to work right now? I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
