#83 Capacity Discrepancy: When "I Would" Becomes "You Should"

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Hello and welcome to the When Depression is in Your Bed podcast.
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Have you ever looked at your partner and thought something like, but I would never handle it that way?
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Or maybe, if I can do this, why can't you?
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I think this happens in relationships so frequently.
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Something that feels so completely obvious to us.
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Of course I wouldn't have done that.
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Of course I would have remembered that.
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Of course I wouldn't have waited that long.
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Of course I would have asked for help.
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And without even realizing it, we can make a really big leap from this is what would be available to me to this is what should be available for you.
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I had this kind of experience with Ben this week, and it got me thinking about something that I'm calling capacity discrepancy.
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The idea that especially in our closest relationships, what is genuinely available for one person in any given moment may be very different from what is available for the other.
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And learning to recognize that difference and perhaps how to respond to it differently may completely change how we understand ourselves and our partners.
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I'm your host, Trish Sanders.
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I'm a licensed clinical social worker, a certified Imago relationship therapist, relationship coach, and the creator of the Road to Reconnection.
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And I am delighted that you are here.
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So let's get started.
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So this past weekend, Ben had a work situation that required him to work overnight.
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He was originally scheduled to work from about 10 p.m.
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to 3 a.m.
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He hasn't had to do something like this in quite a while.
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But when we first started dating more than 20 years ago, this kind of schedule was pretty frequent for him.
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And 20 years ago, that used to really upset me.
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Because the hours he ended up working used to extend far beyond the hours that were scheduled.
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He wouldn't sleep, he wouldn't eat, and no matter what, he would just keep working until the job was done.
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And then eventually he would come home completely depleted.
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And understandably, he would spend the next several days recovering physically.
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And he was often grumpy and irritable and exhausted for our regular day-to-day life in the several days that followed.
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And back then, I had a lot of resentment about that.
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Because the narrative that I held was basically you chose not to take care of yourself, and now I have to suffer because of it.
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So when a similar situation came up this past weekend, while I didn't fall into exactly the same old narrative that I used to have, a lot of familiar feelings started bubbling to the surface.
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And once again, I found myself thinking all the things I thought that Ben should have been doing.
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Because the work did not end at 3 a.m.
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It just kept going and going and going.
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When he thought he was almost done, something else would break and he'd have to stay longer to fix it.
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And what was originally scheduled as an overnight eventually became 24 plus hours of working non-stop.
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And part of me was thinking, if this were me, I would have figured out how to take a nap.
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I would have had food delivered, or I would have driven down the block to grab something for myself to eat.
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I would have taken care of myself in some way.
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And I found myself starting to get really upset and frustrated that Ben wasn't doing those same kinds of things.
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And as soon as I started to realize that the feelings I was experiencing were very familiar and also very old, I started trying to think about things in a new way.
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Because yes, I would do those kinds of things.
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And apparently, right then at that moment, Ben either wasn't or couldn't.
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And instead of immediately moving to judging him about what that meant, I got curious about the difference.
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In the sex therapy world, there's a concept called desire discrepancy.
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Essentially, it means that two people in a relationship don't experience the same level of desire.
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One may be described as high desire, and one partner may be described as having low desire.
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And it's a very interesting concept, and maybe I'll talk more about that another day.
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But as I was thinking about that, and what was happening for Ben and I, I started thinking that maybe there was some sort of care discrepancy.
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But then I started thinking that maybe it's broader than that.
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And I started thinking of it as a capacity discrepancy.
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Because in a relationship, two people are not likely to have exactly the same things genuinely available to them in the exact same moment, in the exact same way.
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And I want to be very careful and very clear here.
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I'm not saying that one person in a relationship is high capacity and the other person is low capacity.
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Capacity is something that changes.
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It fluctuates, it expands, it narrows, and everyone has this experience because capacity is influenced by what's happening within us, outside of us, and between us.
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There are absolutely situations where something is available for Ben in a particular moment that isn't available for me.
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But in this particular situation, I was looking through a lens of what I would imagine would be available to me if I was in the situation that he was in.
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And I think that that way of thinking can sometimes get us into a bit of trouble in relationships.
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Because I would do this can very easily become you should do this.
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And then you should do this can also pretty easily become what's wrong with you for not doing this.
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And that can turn into narratives like you're irresponsible, you don't care enough about yourself or about me or how this affects me.
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And suddenly a difference in capacity has become a judgment about someone's character, their intentions, or how much they care.
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I even found myself spitting narratives, wondering if Ben wasn't taking care of himself because he didn't feel like he deserved care.
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And all of this was happening inside my head without ever talking to Ben about his actual experience.
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And luckily, I realized that I actually don't know if any of this was true for him.
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The narratives that I had in my head were just my interpretations.
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They were the stories that I was telling myself about what his behavior meant, and they absolutely were in part based on experiences that I had 20 years ago.
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And I don't think it's a very good idea to try to decide what's happening to Ben based on me looking through my own lens instead of asking him about his actual experience.
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And I definitely don't want to base it on things that happened two decades ago.
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I realized that I actually wanted to ask him, but I also realized that it probably wasn't such a good idea to ask him when he'd been working for 24 hours straight.
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And instead of being so overly focused on the care I wanted him to take of himself, I started focusing on myself and my own reaction because I was definitely activated.
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As I'm telling the story now, I don't want you to think that I was sitting there calm and grounded thinking, ah, this is so interesting.
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We seem to be having a capacity discrepancy.
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That was not how it was at all.
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I was upset, I was worried, I was frustrated, and I was actually even a little bit sad.
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And my vision was definitely at least partially clouded by my dysregulation.
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And there was also more available to me in that moment than there was for me 20 years ago.
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At one point, instead of just sitting there frustrated that he wasn't eating, I called him and I asked him if he wanted me to drop him off some food.
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And I just want to highlight that for some people, offering him food would seem like a very obvious thing to do.
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But it was just evidence that I really wasn't seeing completely clearly.
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Because doing that hadn't occurred to me earlier.
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He ended up saying no and he actually got home not too long after I had called.
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And slowing myself down long enough to see how to respond differently was a really big moment for me.
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And even though he said no to me bringing him food, I was already in the process of regulating myself enough so that when he finally walked in the door, instead of meeting him with frustration, which certainly wouldn't have been very welcome for him after being so exhausted and working for so long, instead, I was able to greet him with a hug.
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I genuinely tried to be welcoming.
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Now to be fair, I was still frustrated, and I did try to communicate to him that I did feel a bit sad that he didn't prioritize his self-care.
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And in response, Ben said something like, Okay, okay, I just got home.
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And pretty immediately, I got it.
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He was depleted.
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It was not the right time for a conversation.
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He was exhausted, and talking about this in this way was not genuinely available to him in that moment.
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And I was actually really appreciative about how gently and directly he had set that boundary.
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And so I tried to be responsive and respectful of it.
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And I tried to respond to it with a bit of humor, saying something like, believe it or not, this is gentle given how frustrated I have felt for the last 24 hours.
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And because I had done some work to get myself regulated before he got home, when I made that joke, it actually landed as funny for both of us.
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And we were able to share a little moment of humor, which I think is really important.
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Having more capacity didn't mean that I didn't have a reaction, and it certainly didn't mean that I felt fine about everything, or that I thought everything could just be wiped away with a joke.
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But it did mean that my reaction wasn't overwhelming to me, and I had other resources available to me in that moment.
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Humor being one of them.
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And as I've been thinking about honoring capacity discrepancy, I started to notice that there's a lot of nuance to this concept.
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Because honoring Ben's capacity didn't mean thinking, well, he's exhausted, so I guess I just have to accept however he shows up.
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His choices still actually did affect me and the kids.
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So it's important to note that honoring someone else's capacity doesn't mean abandoning the impact or our own experience.
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I could recognize and respect that Ben did not have capacity for that conversation in that moment.
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And I could certainly recognize that what he actually needed in that moment was some food and some sleep.
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And I was also able to recognize that that experience had affected me.
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And I was able to tell him that we could talk about it later once he had recovered.
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And I also shared as gently as I possibly could that I really didn't want his recovery experience over the next few days to end up being something that negatively impacted me and our kids.
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And interestingly, I think because I was regulated enough that I was communicating in a way that was able to be received, he was able to hear my boundary and my request.
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Neither one of us had to disappear, hide, or give up our needs.
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I didn't need him to process and talk about everything that was happening in that exact moment in order to validate that my experience was true and real.
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And I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't affected in order to respect how depleted I knew he was.
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I could recognize where he was and appreciate it, even if it was different than where I imagined I would be in a similar situation.
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And I could offer support without taking responsibility for his self-care.
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I found a way to honor both his experience and my experience and the capacity that he had available to him in that moment without feeling the need to have to resolve everything all at once.
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And that was incredibly different than how I felt 20 years ago.
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And he got food and he went to sleep and we didn't resolve anything in full that night.
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And he hasn't fully recovered yet, so we haven't had a chance to sit down and have a full conversation.
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So honestly, I still don't fully understand what was happening for him.
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And I don't know how he imagines it could be different next time, but I'm curious to find out.
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But it just didn't make sense for us to push forward that night.
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We just paused there, still feeling connected, still sitting with our individual experiences and both feeling different feelings and me still sitting with some level of frustration.
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But the frustration wasn't overwhelming in the way it used to be.
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As a matter of fact, when I eventually got into bed later that night, I went over and cuddled Ben while he was sleeping, which is something I absolutely would not have done 20 years ago.
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My frustration and anger would have absolutely kept me on the other side of the bed.
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But I realized that even though the situation wasn't resolved, it didn't feel like our relationship was broken.
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There was enough safety for us to both remain connected.
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We both had the experience of being heard enough in a way that honor the capacity that we had available in the moment.
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And I think we both trusted that we'll be able to deal with this later when there's more capacity available for both of us.
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And I think that that's a really important part of relational safety that we don't always think about.
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Sometimes something that contributes to relational safety is knowing that you can actually leave a conversation unfinished without feeling like what's left unresolved is creating a rupture in the relationship.
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We could essentially say to each other, I hear you, you hear me, we just don't have the capacity to resolve this right now.
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And we trust our relationship enough at this point to know that we'll come back to it.
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And that's a very different experience than needing resolution right now to feel okay with each other.
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And eventually we will come back to it in one way or another once Ben is rested and fully recovered.
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And when I'm in a state when I'm not actively reacting to what just happened, when more is genuinely available for both of us.
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I can get curious.
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What was that experience actually like for him?
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What was it like for him as the hours kept passing by and he needed to work longer and longer and longer?
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What did he need?
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What would he like it to look like next time?
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I look forward to talking about all of this with him so that we can come up with a plan about how to do things differently in the future.
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Maybe we'll plan to bring him food, or maybe we'll plan to send him in with lunch, or maybe he'll end up choosing different hours to work.
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I'm not sure what the plan is yet.
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And that's the point.
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I don't need to know and I don't need to figure it out by myself.
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He and I can figure it out together.
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And honestly, I think that's probably the best way.
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And I actually think that there are three different kinds of moments here.
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In the present moment, we can honor what's happening, even if we don't like it, but we can try to work with where each person genuinely is instead of trying to demand or push somebody to a different place than where they actually are.
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And then there's the moments afterward where we both have more capacity and we can both be curious and work towards a shared understanding.
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What happened for you?
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What happened for me?
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What did we each need?
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And then there's future moments when we can actually use what we've learned from this experience.
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And then we can intentionally create conditions that support both of us better.
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It's not about one of us managing the other's nervous system or life choices.
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It's about recognizing this is where I am and this is where you are.
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How can we figure out something that works for both of us?
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And the more I've thought about this experience, the more I think that something that's really hard about being in relationship is sometimes remembering that the other person is not us.
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Something that feels incredibly obvious to me may not be obvious, available, or even on the table of consideration for my partner.
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And I can think I would, dot dot dot, without turning that into you should.
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Instead, I can try to move towards curiosity.
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I would, and apparently, right now, you aren't or can't.
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And I want to understand that difference rather than deciding what it means about you or me or us.
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And being curious allows me to honor what's happening for Ben without abandoning what's happening for me.
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And sometimes we'll be able to understand the difference right away, and other times we won't.
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And either way can be okay because we don't actually need to resolve everything immediately in order to feel okay and be connected.
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Sometimes we can pause or rest or get a bite to eat.
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Sometimes it's actually helpful to leave an unfinished conversation unfinished for a little while longer, knowing that eventually we'll come back.
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And it can be a real gift to honor that two different people are in two different places in any given moment.
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And we don't have to force our partners or ourselves to have capacities that we just don't quite have available in a particular moment.
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And we don't have to reject our own experience to make room for theirs.
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We can meet each other where we actually are.
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We can remain curious about the difference.
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We can learn from the impact.
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And when greater capacity becomes genuinely available, we can decide together what we want to do with what we've learned.
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Because sometimes relational safety isn't created by knowing that every conversation is going to reach a resolution as fast as possible.
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Sometimes it's even more important to know that an unfinished conversation doesn't actually have to break a relationship or the experience of connection.
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And I think that there's something incredibly hopeful about that.
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And I hope that there's something in today's conversation that was hopeful for you too.
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As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments.
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Because I want to thank you for showing up today.
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And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey.
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In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown.
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And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay.
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Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once.
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We don't travel a whole journey in one stride.
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And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one.
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Any type, any size, in any direction.
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It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind.
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It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you.
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I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed.
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If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released.
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I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw.
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Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you.
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Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared.
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Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.