Episode 61: The Relationship You’ve Always Wanted

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think and that my friends is 100% Awesome.

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 61 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to send to one of you a virtual hug, a little love over the podcast airwaves. I want to tell you that you are doing great. You are exactly where you need to be right now, physically, spiritually, emotionally. You are awesome, you are amazing, and I know it's easy to forget that I know that the problems in your life right now feel overwhelming. I know that the troubles in the world seem unrelenting, and utterly daunting, and I know that your own faults feel unconquerable at times, but this is just what your brain thinks. It's not the truth. The truth is you are an eternal being with unlimited potential to love others, to solve problems, and to make progress, and you are doing amazing work navigating Earth's life. It isn't easy, but you are not failing, you are 100% awesome!

Okay, so last week David and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, which is like totally crazy, because my parents were old when they celebrated their 25th anniversary! When did I get old? But believe it or not we have been married for twenty-five years. And clearly if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time you know that that milestone has only been made possible because of David, and because of his unending patience, and long suffering. My mom told me once that if we ever got divorced she would be on David's side, and I was like me too, because he is clearly the best part of our union.

But I thought this would be a really great time to talk about relationships and some thoughts and tools that I think changed the way that I saw David, and my marriage, and how changing my thoughts has allowed me to feel more secure, and happy, and better, about my marriage than ever before. And I know that there are big things happening out in the world right now, there are difficult problems that we are facing. But we also live in families, right? We are up close and personal with real live amazing flawed 50/50 humans, right? And while there are big problems globally happening on a grand scale, life is lived on the small scale. Life is lived in our personal relationship, and the more love, and compassion, and understanding, and responsibility that we can feel on a small scale, in our regular lives, in our individual personal relationships, more love and compassion, and understanding, is available on a large scale. There is a saying that says "How we do anything is how we do everything, and how we love intimately with our families is how we love globally." And so, it's work that is worth doing for each of us.

And since I found thought work, I have learned so much about my own brain that has made an enormous impact on all of my personal relationships, and I just want to share some of these things with you today. Like I always kind of knew that I was the problem in my relationships, but coaching helped me see why I was only really a problem to myself, and how to change that if I wanted to, so that I could get different results. and I could feel amazing about any relationship I had.

4:09
So, I want to start by talking about the idea that every relationship we have happens in our own head. Now, I know that it doesn't feel like that, right? It feels like there's another person involved, and that other person has something to do with it. But stay with me for a minute as I explain this. Your experience of your relationship, your experience with another person, happens entirely in your own head, and how you feel about your relationship with that other person is completely dependent on what you think, and it's actually dependent on what you think about three things. So, those three things are number one what you think they think about you. Number two what you think of them. And number three what you think about yourself in relation to that. So, today I'm going to talk about all of this in terms of the marriage relationship, and I'm going to use examples from that relationship in my life, but these ideas apply to any relationship that you're in, it works in your relationship with your child, with your boss, with your neighbor, with anyone.

Okay, so the premise that I want to offer you is that your relationship is created by what is happening in your head. A relationship is just an idea, it's not like a tangible thing, you can't go to Target, and pick up a relationship. Like people will say I have a really bad relationship with my husband, or I have a bad relationship with my mother in law. Like it's a watermelon or something, and it's either good or bad. But if you have a relationship good, or bad, it is only because of what you think about it. A relationship doesn't exist anywhere outside of our own heads. It's like a construct created by the way we think, what you think the other person thinks, about you what you think of the other person, and what you think of yourself in relation to that other person. These thoughts, and only these thoughts are what my relationship is made up of. It's all an interpretation created by my brain, and this is really good news, because it means that any relationship work, we do, is just individual work. It's just the work that we need to do on our own thoughts, and any individual work we do is going to improve our relationships. So, what I want to do is take these one at a time and see how our thoughts in each of these areas are creating the experience we're having with our loved one, and how to change these thoughts if we want to have a different experience.

Okay, so, first let's talk about what they think of you now. We never really know what someone else thinks of us, right? Even if they tell us we think we do, we think we know what they think, but what they think of us is just really what we think, they think of us. We've made it up, right? We think they like us, or we think they don't like us. But we've made that all up in our head, and lots of times since we don't have a printout of what our spouse thinks of us at any moment, right? Like, there's no closed captioning coming out of their head telling us what they're thinking, we make it up by interpreting their actions. We look at what they do, or what they say, and then we decide that we know what they must be thinking about us. We make the way they say hello, or the way they call, or don't call, or whether or not they text us back, or the speed at which they text us back, or the way they help around the house, or the way they express physical affection, or the way that they talk to us, or the things that they say.

7:42
We make all of the things they do mean something about how they think about us, how they feel about us. We make it mean things about what they think about us. For example, when David comes home and then he spends the next two hours on his phone, returning phone calls, and texts, and looking things up, and answering emails, right? I sometimes make that mean that he doesn't care about me. I mean obviously, right? And in that moment, I interpret his actions to mean that he doesn't care about me. Now, remember my relationship is made up of three things. And one of those things is what he thinks about me. And so, if I think that he doesn't care, or he doesn't like me enough to put down his phone, then that is going to affect how I feel about him, and my relationship with him. And it seems like I'm feeling this way about my relationship, because of the way he's acting, because of what he's doing with his phone, but that isn't the case.

I'm feeling this way about my relationship, because of what I'm thinking about what he's doing. And I want to point out that when David is on his phone it's not being on the phone that makes me feel bad about my relationship, it's how I interpret it. It's what I make it mean about what he thinks about me. And I know this, because it's never the action that the other person is taking that creates my feelings, it's always my thoughts about those actions that is creating my feelings.

We know this because it's impossible for someone else to create feelings inside of us. We are the only ones that can do that, our spouse can never do anything to create our feelings. When my husband takes out the garbage, feelings don't just come over me automatically, right? When my husband loses his car keys, feelings just don't overtake me without my say so. No feeling can just happen to us. They can't be created by our spouse, our thoughts create our feelings and that's so important to know, because I get to choose how I think about my husband's actions, and that choice will create my feelings.

And this is proof right. Maybe so if you've had this experience, right? Sometimes, David will even say to me I love you, and you would think that that would be like a reasonable assumption for me to think, "Okay, he loves me," but my brain will still say no. No, he doesn't. He doesn't really love me, because if he did he would do this, and this, and this, right? And it has a whole laundry list of things to prove what I think David really thinks. So, even when David's actions are loving, or his words are loving, it's only ever my interpretation that creates my feeling. Unless I think loving thoughts, I can't feel love.

10:31
Now why is this good news? Well actually you might be thinking that this isn't good news for David, because my brain is going to impugn him, and question his love, and no matter what he does. But it is incredible news for me and for you, because it means that if I want to feel better about my relationship, it is going to happen in the chambers of my own mind, and not in the actions that my husband takes. And it is the same for you, your spouse doesn't have to do anything different for you to change how you feel, because your feelings are a result of what you think, and not what they do. And this is really good news, because we don't have to change them at all to feel better.

So, many of us are waiting for our spouse to be different for us to feel good about our relationship, and this just leaves us waiting around to feel good. We don't have to wait for them to get off their phone, or stop playing video games, or help around the house, or remember your anniversary, or stop criticizing you, right? Your spouse can do what they do, they can be who they are, and you can think about it, and what it means about how they feel about you, in any way you want.

So, I have clients tell me all the time, "If he loved me he would do this thing, or I have asked him, or her, and they refuse they must not love me." They have decided what their spouse thinks about them, by what their spouse does, or doesn't do, and we all do this. And I want you to understand that we are making this decision about how our spouse feels about us, with a human brain, that is designed to notice problems, it is designed to look for rejection, and look for ways that we might be getting kicked out of this tribe, right, where we could die. Meaning you have made the decision of what your spouse thinks, with a brain that is programmed to notice threats. It is it's, job to notice how you aren't loved, and you aren't accepted, because like for your brain the next step is death, and your brain is desperately trying to avoid that scenario. And this means that our story about our relationship is created with a bias towards the premise that you aren't loved, and you aren't safe. It's skewed toward watching for all the ways that you are not loved, and that's what it finds every time.

12:55
So, I don't know if you remember last year when David didn't buy me a birthday cake. And my brain told me that he didn't care that I was born, which is just a version of he doesn't love me, right? But notice that if he had bought the cake. Now, at the time I was trying to hit certain health goals, and I was limiting how much fat, and carbs I was eating. So, if he had bought the cake for me my brain would have made it mean, he doesn't even know what's going on in my life, he doesn't even care about my goals, right? He doesn't love me. So, you see regardless of the action he took, my brain, which is skewed to find danger, is going to reach the same conclusion.

And my point is not that it's hard to be my husband. Though that is a valid point. My point is that this is what brains do, they are skewed to see where we might not be loved. And it tells the story protectively from that perspective. However, ultimately, it's not protective, this interpretation hurts our own feelings, and it hurts our relationship. Now, you get to think about your spouse's actions any way that you want, and you might think that you have a lot more evidence, a lot worse evidence than missing birthday cake, right? You might want to think that they don't love you, and that might feel really true to you. But notice when you think that, what that thought creates for you, it creates distance in your relationship. Ultimately the reason your brain offers you the thought that you aren't loved, is because it's scared of losing connection. It's scared of losing intimacy, and so it offers you thoughts that create distance, and disconnection, ahead of time. The result is disconnection. Exactly what your brain was trying to avoid by alerting you to the ways your spouse doesn't love you in the first place. So you have to recognize that your thoughts about what the other person thinks, are just your thoughts. Your thoughts about how they feel, are just your thoughts. You are in charge of them

And you have to notice the ones that don't serve you, and question them, and then choose different thoughts to create the feelings you want on purpose. It's hard to see another way to think about your spouse's actions, and what that means about you, and coaching can be really helpful here. So, if you're struggling with any of your thoughts, in your relationship, come and get some coaching, and I'll help you. But one thing that might help is asking the question what else is true? Like if your brain just really really believes that their actions mean that they don't love you, I want you to try asking well, what else is true? What else do I know about my husband or my wife? What else is true about their actions? What else is true, is that I don't know what they're thinking. Not really. So, if we go back to my example of being on the phone after work, what else is true? What else is true is that David has a lot of responsibilities, he has a lot to juggle, and it's true that he is standing here in our kitchen answering texts after he came home to me.

What's true is he wants to be here with me or he wouldn't be, right? What is true, is that if I'm being honest he demonstrates his love in a million ways that my brain doesn't even notice, because it is only programmed to find possible ways where he doesn't love me. What else is true, is that what I think about what he thinks of me, has nothing to do with his actions, and everything to do with my interpretation. What else is true, is that I get to think about him, and his love any way I want, and I can see all of it as evidence that he loves me, if I choose to.

16:46
Okay, so another thought that I find really helpful, is the reminder that how I feel about my relationship is 100% up to me. What if what I think David feels about me is all up to me, because P.S. It is all happening in my head. And if it's all up to me, what do I want to choose to think on purpose, just because it feels better? Did you know that you don't have to have evidence for what you believe? You can just believe things because it feels better, right? You can just choose to believe that your spouse loves you. If you thought that how would it change how you feel in your relationship? How would it change things for you if you knew that your feelings don't have anything to do with their actions? Your feelings are 100% because of your thoughts. What would you decide to think if your feelings were 100% up to you? Because remember, they are.

Your feelings are 100% up to you, and no matter what your spouse does, you get to make it mean anything you want about you. You get to interpret what they think about you any way you want, and decide what you want to think they think of you. No matter what, and what you think they think of you will impact how you feel about your relationship.

Okay, the next component of any relationship is what you think of them, what you think of your spouse. All the thoughts that you have about them. So, what do you think about your husband or your wife? When I ask my clients this most often, I get an answer like, "Well I love them, but..." Like they're great except for these things, right? If they could just change in these certain ways, then I could love them. Or if they would just stop doing these certain things, then I could totally love them. And when we have thoughts that it would be easier to love our spouse if they were different, this is just a clever disguise for some negative thoughts. Like the overall feeling is dislike, for the spouse that is in front of us, right? We kind of want a different version of them, and we kind of don't like the spouse in front of us when we have these conditions. And we think we just don't like certain things and that's just the way it is, but dislike, remember, is a feeling just like any other.

Meaning it's caused by our thoughts, and not their action. So, if I have a thought that David is awesome except, he's always distracted, he's always somewhere else mentally. Then I am waiting to love David, until this undistracted version of shows up, and the result is that I feel negatively towards the version that I actually live with. And what I want to point out to you is that this is only bad for me, because when I choose to withhold love until a different version of my husband shows up, then I am withholding the feeling of love from myself. And we do this in so many relationships, right? We don't fully love, because we want people to be different versions of themselves. In this way, we are kind of like cheating on our spouse with their potential, with the other version that we prefer. And we say things like "Well I could love them if they weren't so critical, or I could love them if they would just listen to me. I could love them if they would see me, and what I'm going through. I could love them if they would make me a priority. I could love them if they would help me."

And what we're essentially saying is that I could have a feeling, right? The feeling of love, if they acted differently. But that's not true. Remember feelings aren't created by their actions, they're created by our thoughts. So, the truth is I can have a feeling of love only when I choose to think thoughts that create that. So, in other words we think our feeling of love is dependent on them, but again this is a totally powerless position to be in. You get all your power back to have the relationship you want, when you realize my feelings about someone else are always created by me, by my thoughts about them. So, we all have ideas about how our spouse should be. A list, at least in our minds, and this list is like things that would make our spouse better. Things to do, things to not do, things that would make them easier to love, things that make it harder for us to love them. But we are held hostage by our own lives, it's the idea that they should be different than they are that keeps us from loving them. Which is just a bummer for us, because we don't get to feel love, until they meet these conditions on the list, and they never seem to be able to do it. So, when you know that your feeling of love is completely, 100% contingent on your thoughts, and not whether or not they complete the list, then you suddenly become in charge of your lives, in charge of your relationship, in charge of your feelings. You are in charge of how you feel.

21:54
So, I like reminding myself that everyone is 100% lovable, and I ask myself what conditions have I put on loving them? What conditions have I put on them that are preventing me from feeling love? It's not them preventing the feeling of love, it's my conditions, my thoughts that they should be different. Now, notice how if there were no requirements, no conditions, no list of what they needed to do, then you could just be free to love them. And sometimes I want to warn you the conditions seem so reasonable, right? You should be interested in me, she should ask me questions about my day, you should listen, he should provide, she should want kids, or she should make me feel better, he should encourage me, or support me. This sounds so reasonable, like that's what spouses do, right? And you can hold onto those conditions if you want, but holding onto them will only prevent you from feeling love. So, try that question out, curiously ask yourself what conditions have I put on loving them? Then just notice your list, and ask yourself what if I believe that their only job was to be there for me to love?

How would it change my feelings if I believed that all they had to do was be there for me to love? And this is ongoing work that I do all the time, I find expectations and conditions just keep showing up in my brain. Just recently I went to my grandfather's funeral, and they were talking about my grandpa, and what good care he took of all his stuff. Like what good care he took off his cars, and his lawn mower, and his boat. And my brain was like, "Hey husband's not like that! David is not like that, his car is always a mess, right?" In our marriage, I think he has purchased no less than ten lawnmowers, because he doesn't take care of them and they all just break. And so, my brain is like saying, well maybe that should be a condition to loving him, right? He should be different in this way. And I just have to watch my brain offer me these conditions, and I have to choose to let them go, they aren't going to create love for me.

So, for example, my brain also often thinks that it's David's job to make me feel better, or to make my life easier, to pay attention to me, right? I find myself in resentment, and frustration whenever these expectations, or conditions get in the way. When I feel resentment, it's like a sure sign to me that I have set up a condition somewhere. That I have a list of things that I need him to do before I can love him. And this never ever feels good to me, it always hurts me, hurts my relationship. But asking how would it change my feelings, if I knew all he had to do was be there for me to love? That question helps me every time, and what if I didn't want to change him at all? My coach always asks "What if you just wanted him to be the Davidest David he could be? And you didn't want to change anything?" And I think this is a really good question for all of us. What if I just wanted him to be the Davidest David he could be, and totally love that?

25:07
Okay, the last part of the relationship that I want to talk about is what you think of you in relation to the other person. So, this is something that we don't really think a lot about, but I think it can impact our relationship so much. So, a few years ago before I found thought work, and coaching, I had thoughts that David didn't really love me, right? That's what I thought he thought about me. And I had thoughts that he should be different. And those were the thoughts that I had about him, and all of these thoughts were creating a very negative experience for me, right?

Lots of negative emotion, frustration, resentment, anger, all this stuff, but even more painful were the thoughts that I had about myself in relation to him. I didn't like who I was when I was around him, and when I thought these kinds of thoughts. I didn't like the me that was critical and unkind. I didn't like the me that noticed his faults, and picked fights. I didn't like the me that was cold, and unkind, and insecure, and mean. The part of me that kept score, and held grudges, right? I didn't like me in the way that I was showing up as his wife, and as painful as my thoughts about David were, these thoughts about myself in the relationship were even worse. I hated myself, and who I was, and how I was showing up in my relationship, and then I blamed him for all of it.

I thought if he was different, or if he loved me better, then I could be nice and show up the way I wanted, and I could like being with myself. But the truth is, the way that I think about myself, and whether or not I like myself, is always up to me. Now, notice how I was giving him all the credit for all my thoughts for the entire relationship, right? I gave him, and his actions, all the credit for what I thought he thought about me. For what I thought about him, and for what I thought about myself. I blamed him for all of it, and this created a lot of negative emotion, a lot of pain in my life, and in my relationship. And we'd have these fights, and go round, and round, and round, and I'd say I need you to do these things, and he'd say well I need you to do these things, and I'd say well I can't do that until you do these. Round, and round, and round, we go. Like this fight we'd have all the time about like, I need you to show me that you love me. Now, notice I'm wanting him to change my own thoughts about what he thinks about me. Like prove it to my brain, right? So that I can believe it.

Anyway, I'd say "Okay I need you to show me that you love me." And he'd say, "Well you're mad at me, I can't talk to you when you're mad at me." And I'd say, "Well I'm mad at you because you won't talk to me, and show me that you love me." Like it's a problem with no solution. And what I learned that changed my life and my relationship, is that I didn't need David to do anything for me to be able to have the relationship I wanted. It was all up to me. I learned that it is all happening in my head, and if I can clean up the thought about what he thinks of me, and if I decide what I want to think about him, as he is the version that is in front of me, and if I take control of how I think about me in the relationship, it would solve all of it. And he wouldn't have to do anything. He's like, "That's what I've been saying." So, I learned that anything I thought I wanted him to do, was exactly what I needed to do.

28:37
I was the solution to all of it. If I wanted him to appreciate me, I needed to appreciate me. If I wanted to feel close to him, I needed to think thoughts that would create the feeling of close inside of me. If I wanted to love him as he is, I had to drop my conditions. If I wanted to like myself, and the way that I was showing up as a wife, I have to choose thoughts that will allow me to like myself. So, the thought that my coach gave me is that, it's all up to me. It's not his job to make me feel loved, that's my job. It's not his job to live, and perform, and behave, in a way that I can love. No matter what he does, he's already 100% lovable, and loving him is my job, and it's not his job to make me feel okay about me, and approve of the wife that I am, that is my job. It's all my job, because fundamentally he can't make me feel anything. To feel anything is always up to me, it's up to me to meet my needs, because it's all happening in my head anyway.

Now, I just want to add here that you don't have to love anyone, you don't have to love your spouse. There is no requirement to love them to stay married, or to stay committed to the relationship, but don't decide not to love them, and then give them the credit for it. It's totally up to you. Don't say that you don't feel love, and then blame the other person for that, because it leaves you completely powerless and stuck. One of the most powerful things you can realize is that no one else is creating your feelings. And if you want to love your spouse, if you want to love anyone, if you want to improve, and feel better about any relationship that is completely up to you.

The last thing that I want to offer you about what I have learned after 25 years of marriage is that the idea that, it shouldn't take work, is not helpful. Why on earth do we think that we shouldn't have to work at it? We kind of have this idea that if it's true love it shouldn't take work, right? We think it was meant to be, it shouldn't take work, we think that the really happy people out there don't have to work at it, right? And this idea can be so poisonous. Of course, it takes work, because you have to work on your own head. You have to work on your own brain to think the thought you want to think, about what they think of you, about what you think of them, and about what you think of you. And that is work, it is work, to work on our thoughts.

Loving was never easy, or natural, our human brain makes loving hard. Our human brains the natural part of us, they just want to notice problems, and so it takes work to redirect them, and take responsibility for the feelings that we create. And then do the work to create the feelings that we want. It does take work, but it is personal work, it is the work you will do on your own brain, right? It's not work, to fix your spouse, or not work on your relationship like in the traditional sense that we think about it. It is the work you do on your own brain. Day in and day out, to nurture the thoughts that create love for you, and for your spouse. And if you do that work you will have the relationship you have always wanted, and that my friends is 100% awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever. As your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay and that my friends is 100% awesome!