284. How to Deal with Emotionally Immature Partners & In-Laws with Lindsay C. Gibson

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Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

And

whoo, do we have a treat for you today?

So we did an episode, two episodes a while back, number 263 and 264 that were about healing from, dealing with, and disentangling from emotionally immature people.

Okay.

And our expert was, of course, on those episodes, Lindsay C.

Gibson, who has changed so many people's lives and relationships based on her just wonderful takes and research about how to engage with people who may not be fully developed

emotionally.

Okay.

So those episodes rocked people's worlds so thoroughly.

Mine, my world.

Yes.

That the pod squad became adamant that they be able to talk to Lindsay directly, ask their questions about what appears to be low so many people in their lives.

You know what?

It's just proof that there's so much room to grow.

So much room.

Okay, so the wonderful news is we have Lindsay Gibson back here with us today.

And the crowd goes wild.

And she will be answering directly the pod squad's questions.

So we are really hoping that this episode will offer practical ways to deal with people in your life who you might find difficult to deal with.

Okay.

Practical strategies about how to get some of your power and peace back in relationship.

And it was interesting too.

A lot of the conversation that we did before was like we were thinking about parents.

And a lot of these questions are siblings, spouses, former partners.

I'm intrigued.

Yeah, that was a big theme was like, I'm so glad we talked about emotionally immature parents, but honestly, my parents are the least of my problems these days.

I got 99 problems.

It's everybody else.

And then I also want to talk about like,

how do we integrate some

grace for people?

And how do we think about ourselves as maybe not fully developed?

Because it's very easy to be like, here's that person, that person, that person.

They're all jacked up.

I'm good.

How do I deal with them?

Which I love that strategy, but I also think there's probably a more holistic way we can talk about all of ourselves on the spectrum of emotional maturity.

That's right.

So here we have Lindsay C.

Gibson, who is an author and clinical psychologist and has been a practicing psychotherapist for over 30 years.

She has written several books which have changed so many lives, including adult children of emotionally immature parents and disentangling from emotionally immature people.

Thank you so much for coming back, Lindsay.

Oh, it's my total pleasure.

It's so good to see you all again.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, you are so welcome.

So let's hear first from Amanda, not the Amanda, who is our host, a pod squatter, Amanda.

Hi, my name is Amanda.

I just listened to the pod about emotionally immature people, and it's just really hitting me.

I'm a new mom.

I have a one-year-old daughter.

And the emotionally immature person that I've been really struggling to navigate that relationship is my mother-in-law.

And it's really putting a strain on my marriage with my husband because we're trying to navigate being new parents, dealing with the relationship with the in-law, and

how to navigate.

the relationship that they want to have with my baby daughter and all of it is just so hard.

I guess my question is: how do I navigate my own relationship

with

my mother-in-law and respecting my husband's relationship and where he's at in his relationship with her, but then also navigating what the relationship could look like with my daughter in the future?

I love you guys so much.

Oh my gosh, this episode really did take home.

Thank you.

I bet you get a lot of questions about in-laws, Lindsay C.

Gibson.

I really do.

It's a very popular topic.

Yeah.

This is one of those places where people other than your parents end up affecting you very much like your parents because the dynamics are so similar.

So I love Amanda's question.

Being a writer, I'm always oriented toward language.

I notice the words that people use.

And Amanda is using the word navigate several times, which I know is a very popular word.

I use it all the time when I'm working with people and, you know, to put things in a kind of very competency-based, positive way.

We talk about navigating difficult situations.

And so it's a great word.

I notice when people use it with emotionally immature people that they're having problems with, it usually means,

how do I do do all the emotional work to make this better?

Okay,

so when your fixation is on how do I navigate it, lots of times the secret message in there is, how do I get them to do what I need them to do without making them mad at me?

Okay, and the idea is that if you get to be skillful enough, if you're a good enough communicator or if you're emotionally mature enough yourself, that you will be able to find a path, which is what navigation is all about,

that makes you feel confident about where you are and what you're doing.

So

that's what Amanda is trying to do.

But I just want to make sure that everybody understands that when you're dealing with emotionally immature people,

they

really are not interested in navigating toward peace.

They're interested in being right

and they're interested in getting what they want, not because they're selfish people, but because they're egocentric people.

It just doesn't occur to them that somebody else could have a different experience or they could have different values or a different sense of what's important in life.

They think they have all the answers, just like the four-year-old thinks that they have all the answers, and they can't understand why you just won't get with the program and let them do what they want.

So,

trying to navigate with people that have no interest in hearing you out is a very difficult thing and it's exhausting.

So, the first thing I want to say to Amanda is good for you for wanting to navigate this because that's like I said, that's a competency-based attitude toward the problem.

But keep in mind that you may not be able to skillfully and gently navigate this to the point that the other person never gets upset with you.

So Lindsay, should we think of it as each of these questions?

The thing with navigating is you have a goal you're trying to get to.

You have a destination that you're trying to go towards.

So do we have to reorient what that destination is?

Because somebody like Amanda could be thinking, how do I navigate this relationship to a loving, mutually satisfying relationship?

But what I hear you saying over and over again is that we have to maybe adjust what our destination is.

But part of navigating emotionally mature people, when I'm navigating or asking someone to navigate for me, I'm trying to get to not hit things.

Like, how do I avoid crashes?

So if we have two categories, we're trying to figure out where we're going towards.

Where is Amanda going towards?

What is she aiming towards?

And then how does she miss

hitting things along the way?

Yes.

Excellent point.

Yeah.

So Amanda and the rest of us, okay, are going to be navigating desperately to avoid those icebergs.

I love that because

the crashes with the emotionally immature person often feel so fatal.

I mean, it really does feel like nothing will ever be okay again.

That's how emotionally immature people react, and that's how they get you to feel.

So we want to understand that there's nothing wrong with trying to navigate.

But what you're saying, Glennon, is really important.

Navigate toward what?

What do we want to end up with?

And it's really unrealistic to say, I want to

navigate so that there aren't any icebergs.

Okay, because that's probably not going to happen because emotionally immature people get so reactive and they're often so emotionally needy and so vulnerable to stress, they can't navigate stuff very peacefully.

So they get very reactive and you get into a conflictual situation with them.

But this brings me to the main point that I wanted to get across to Amanda, and that is

how are you directing your energy?

In other words, a great question to ask yourself when you're a new mother is, where is my energy going?

What do I want my energy to go toward?

What's my biggest goal right now?

And I would hope that it would be, first of all, to take good enough care of myself so that I can care for that baby.

Okay.

You're no good to the baby if you're so exhausted you can't see straight, or if you're so angry, you can barely speak civilly.

All these things that have to do with not being able to take care of ourselves impact that baby.

So taking care of yourself and taking care of the baby and hoping that you can give enough to your marriage that that lasts through the first few years.

Those are your main goals if you want to preserve your family.

And we oftentimes act as if that shouldn't be a concern, that we have bottomless energy and we can just work and take care of the baby and have a great sex life and all of this.

And it's just, it's insane.

I mean, that is not reality for new mothers.

So we have to think about where does Amanda need to put her energy?

First, it's got to be in herself.

Right there beside that is it's got to be for the baby.

She is the number one

person in that baby's life

if she is the primary caretaker.

And that is the first goal: to give that baby enough of a bonding experience, a responsive experience with the first human being in her life that that baby grows up with her tanks full.

If I were speaking directly to Amanda, I would say, Amanda, your precious energy is already spoken for.

Okay,

you don't owe it to anybody outside of your immediate family.

And you have to protect your energy so that you have it for them.

Okay.

Now, what happens with emotionally immature people, and we can just assume for the moment that maybe the mother-in-law has a little bit of egocentrism going on here.

It's making it hard for her to be sensitive to the situation, but you have to find a way

to

decide what you need

and then

let the mother-in-law know that this is what I can do and this is what I can't do.

Okay.

Now, I know that Amanda would be probably freaking out at this point because here comes the iceberg, but the mother-in-law gets what's left over.

That's just the way it should be.

Yes.

Amen.

Grandma has been a child herself.

She's gotten mothering.

She's been a mother.

She's done mothering.

This is not the crowning achievement of her adult life that she gets to be the kind of grandmother that she imagines herself to be.

I'm sorry.

It's just not a fair goal to put that burden on a new mother and a baby who are just creating this relationship that's going to last that baby for the rest of its life.

Yes.

Gibson.

Yes.

Shit.

I didn't think that's where we were going, but now I just don't even want to go anywhere else.

Let's just stay here forever.

Let's stay here right here forever.

And then Lindsay, it's so beautiful because I hear Amanda saying, but then how do I help my daughter navigate this relationship with her mom?

But like all parenting, you won't even have to, Amanda, because your daughter will see how you do it, which is that you take care of your own needs, that grandma gets whatever leftovers you happen to have.

You won't have to tell your daughter because she will see how it's done.

Exactly.

Yes.

And to the extent that you can put it into words, so much the better, because you know, those mental concepts really help guide us even before we get into the thick of it with the other person.

But the idea is that

if I were speaking directly to Amanda, again, I would say, Amanda, you have to decide what you can give

to grandma

and still have plenty left over.

That's an important distinction.

It's not decide what you can give to grandma.

It's give what you can give to her and still have plenty left over.

So that when she leaves, you are not collapsing on the couch and watching junk TV all night because you can't even relate to anybody because you feel so tapped out.

So the idea is that you're going to let her know in whatever

clumsy, scared, deferential way you want to do it, that you can't do a visit this afternoon or that, no, it's not really going to work out for this weekend.

Or you really need to call and I'll tell you how the day is going because the the baby's kind of up and down.

She's not on a schedule yet.

I don't know how to plan things.

And I'll be happy to tell you where we are that day.

But I have to depend on you.

Here's giving grandma a job.

Yes.

I have to depend on you to contact me and check it out with me so that I can let you know when we could really enjoy our time together.

That gives grandma a positive goal, gives her something to do, makes her part of the family.

And now she's helping.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

So you can approach things in that way.

And you're finding your boundaries in the relationship.

And like I said, you don't have to do this gracefully.

You don't have to be so adept that you're navigating this in a way that nobody gets upset.

It's okay if they get upset or their feelings are hurt or your feelings are hurt.

I mean, who's an expert in this?

Nobody, because it comes out of the blue usually.

and you have to do it on the fly, on the spot.

That's okay.

But if you keep your goals straight, that I want to have plenty of energy left over when this visit is done, and this is about me and my baby and my husband and whoever else having enough time and energy to keep our family afloat, that

helps you to know when you need to set these boundaries.

And then you'll find out out as you try them out, whether or not it worked or whether that was enough or whether it was too much.

I mean, you'll figure that out if you're not holding yourself to some perfectionistic standard.

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One thing I want to say, this is reminding me a lot of, it's like a leadership tactical approach to parenting.

And I think like right before we get into avoiding the icebergs and creating conversation, one thing that is so important is that especially for early mothers is to really honor the leadership role they are stepping into as a parent of this young child, right?

And what I have found found in all the leadership positions that I've ever held is if you engage with somebody and you give them a place, give them a path that we're going to go on and ask for their help,

people are so much more engaged and excited to wanna get on that same path with you.

Even if you're talking about an emotionally immature person, hey, something I really am going to need from you is X, right?

That is something that, A, it's a great boundary setter for you.

And B, it gives people, like you said, this positive way of interacting and engaging with the family.

So become the leader that you now are, embrace the role, and then develop these pathways and plans so that you engage with your in-laws or your aunts or the uncles or whomever in your life so that they know that you are the leader and that you do have a plan.

It's good.

It's good.

Yes.

It seems to me like in in terms of the survivability of all of this and in terms of that quote of all of the water in the world can't sink the ship unless it gets inside.

It seems to me that Amanda's

goal

and the thing that she can possibly have success with is the relationship with the husband.

Yeah.

Because it could be that the mother-in-law, who the hell knows what's going to happen there, that could potentially be a source of constant and unyielding chaos in her life,

which potentially could be fine so long as that water doesn't get inside to her relationship with her husband.

So how do you navigate this?

Often I think that we only find out how crazy our families were

when

we link up with a spouse and we look at their particular kind of crazy and they look at our particular kind of crazy and we get some perspective on it.

So, if Amanda's husband has just been surviving, now he's in this relationship, he has a new evolving understanding of what his mother is doing that makes it okay or not okay.

He might have any

differing capacity than Amanda as to how much he wants to name that, confront that.

But it seems to me that the future for Amanda and her daughter and her marriage depends on she and her husband developing some mutual understanding

that maybe they decide not to demonize the mother-in-law, but like some boundary setting together so she isn't fighting outside her house and inside her house for what she needs.

And she might be in an especially hard situation, which is what I was thinking when I was reading that.

Because isn't somebody, her husband, who has been raised by what Amanda has already identified as an emotionally immature parent, if he's not done a lot of work, wouldn't he already be in a tricky tricky situation where I think this happens a lot in marriages where you're like, you're now, I don't know my position.

So I'm trying to keep my wife happy, but my mom hasn't figured out that she is no longer the center of the solar system, that the solar system has changed.

And now she is a satellite, but she won't do that.

So I'm trying to keep my wife happy.

I'm trying to keep my mom happy.

What conversations can they have so that she's not babysitting his feelings too?

Yeah, the navigating question.

So ideally, what we would hope would be that Amanda did whatever work she needed to do on her willingness

to identify and say exactly what she really needs to her husband.

Because lots of times If you yourself, if Amanda had had an emotionally immature parent, she might have been raised to never be direct and specific about what it is that she needs.

Okay, that would would be forbidden.

So

her job is to

find ways of identifying what it is that she really needs, almost like making up a contract with her husband.

Don't accept any invitations with your mom until you clear it with me first.

Can we agree on that?

What do you think about that?

Or it's fine with me if you take the baby, but I need some me time and that would be perfect.

Would you be willing to do that?

I mean, this is like contract negotiation.

Yes.

But in order to do good contract negotiation, you have to know what hits you right.

Okay.

What feels fair, what feels doable.

And she would have to do that process with her husband and overcome whatever natural avoidant or resistant tendency she had to being very direct and specific about what she needs.

But when you get really nitty, gritty, operationalized, what do we do when she calls and wants to stop by?

Okay, remember, every time it happens for the first time, you won't know what to do.

It'll probably be a mess.

Okay.

But use each one of those things to sit down and make up part of your contract.

with each other and then realize that your partner may blow it because who knows what dynamics could be going on.

But that's okay.

It's a work in progress.

We're trying to find a way for the husband to be able to help.

And one of the things that I think really helps with these kinds of negotiations between partners is that this is not going to last forever.

Feels like it.

You have a newborn.

or even a one-year-old like Amanda, it sure feels like it's going to last forever, but it won't.

As the child gets older, as you get more of your energy back, you'll be able to function with this better, smoother.

But in the meantime, you really have to accept that it might not be pretty, but it's something that we have to get through during this critical time in our baby's life.

She doesn't get another infancy.

She doesn't get another toddlerhood.

We've got to give this to her if we don't want to have bigger problems down the road.

So sometimes to make it time-limited

to the spouse really helps to give them that perspective so that they don't feel like, oh, so what am I going to do?

I'm going to be protecting you from my mother for the rest of my life.

Absolutely not.

We're going to do this together for this very short-term, crucial period in our lives.

I love it.

And it's okay to make a bit of a hierarchy.

It's okay to be like, no, the moment I become a mother, the importance of my role as a daughter-in-law has descended.

If I'm choosing between keeping myself and the baby whole, energized,

peaceful, or keeping your mother content in whatever way, I need to be able to choose the baby.

That's reasonable.

May I also add that that is also a very valid choice in hierarchy, even without a baby.

Amen.

Absolutely.

Truth.

Okay, let's move on to Julie.

Hi, this is Julie and I just listened to your podcast about emotional, immature people.

And I think I'm married to one.

We've been married.

He's a retired soldier and now I work for the Army since we got married and stationed in Germany.

I didn't speak German, so I started working for the Army.

So now I work for the Army.

He's since retired, but he's got a wall.

And

I've been trying to break it down.

And we had an impasse right before Thanksgiving where

I said, you have a wall.

And he said, I know I have a wall.

And I'm happy with my wall.

And you need to live with my wall.

And I had an emotional breakdown.

And now I'm trying to think about how I can reframe

because I have a great life,

but I'm not connected to to my husband.

And I want that so badly.

But

I want to hear about what to do about an emotional, immature husband.

Thank you all for what you do.

I love you so much.

I just wait for every pod to drop.

Sweet Julie.

Yeah.

Yeah,

a lot of people feel like Julie, and a lot of people get some variation of that response, which is essentially saying, I am who I am.

I don't see a need to change.

I'm not going to change.

This is what you get.

This is who I am, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Yes.

Because if this person were to go and get a new job and they said, we have some training for you to do, he wouldn't say, I am who I am.

I don't, I'm not going to change for you.

He would absolutely learn the job and not have any problem with it.

Good point, Lindsay.

What the hell?

Yes, that is correct.

So

here we go.

To bear phrase, Maya Angelou.

He's telling you who he is.

He is.

Believe him.

In no uncertain terms.

And he's telling you what he's not willing to change at this point.

Okay.

So you have a choice, Julie, about whether to believe him or not,

which is really a choice about how you want to respond to reality in general.

Do you want to fight with reality?

Do you want to just give in to reality?

What do you want your position to be?

And I think

maybe the best place to be in a situation like this is: I want this reality to change.

Okay, that's what I really want.

Am I willing to fight for the rest of my life to try to change this?

And the answer might be, well, if I was seeing some progress, I might do that for a long time.

And it would be okay because we would be working together towards something that was going to be satisfying to both of us.

But if the person

is keeping up their defenses to such an extent that you can't get a connection going with them, then at some point, you have to look at what that's doing to you.

Julie, when you said that you had an emotional breakdown,

it's no wonder, because you were being told that your soul was not going to get the nurturance or the attention

that

crave legitimately as a human being in a close relationship with your husband.

So it makes sense that you would have had a breakdown because here was a piece of reality that was too big to stomach.

It was too big to take in.

And we tend to kind of fall apart when things are too big to understand and deal with.

So

you have to decide how much energy you want to put into

living with this or trying to change this

because you could make this your lifelong project

of either trying to change him or worse, trying to change yourself to adjust to someone who won't respond to you.

And that would be tragic because that means that you're going to be sort of putting out that flame within you that knows what you need and wants to have a vital, mutually nourishing relationship with someone.

I think that what works best is even as you're trying maybe to educate your husband or ask him to do some things that would be nurturing to you or helpful to you, that while you're doing that,

you also

kind of make hay while the sun shines by investing in your own connection with yourself.

Okay.

This may sound kind of trite or new agey, but it absolutely is not.

People who don't invest enough time and effort into their own self-development pay for it.

They pay for it in a big way, and especially in their relationships, because they don't have enough of a sense of self to withstand the kind of disappointments or conflicts that come up in even good relationships.

So if you want your relationship to be better,

work on yourself.

Make sure that you have an inner self that wants to connect with you and that you want to connect with it and do whatever you need to do, whether it's psychoeducation, reading, talking to friends, getting into a group, individual marital therapy, whatever you might choose to do, but do something that makes you feel like you've got some traction toward a better, different life for yourself.

And that way, down the road, when you get tired or when you get fed up, you are in a position where you have a choice.

Like, hmm.

Now I feel like I could live by myself if I needed to.

Now I feel like this isn't the only relationship I could ever have.

I'm aware of different parts of myself now, different things that I have to offer people.

So that would be a self-development project that could only be toward the good.

So if she feels like she's treading water in this relationship where she wants something and he won't give it, Do something else to make this time productive while you're waiting to see if he would ever be interested in what you have to say.

But I also wanted to mention, because I have this thing about language, when Julie says reframe, she's saying, how do I think about this differently?

That he just is refusing to give to me at an emotional level.

Well, see, I'm not so sure that we want to reframe that.

Or maybe the way we want to reframe it is what I just said, that he's refusing to give at an emotional level for many possible reasons.

I think the thing that reframe and then because I have a great life is probably the most common thing that I hear from women who are struggling in their marriages.

And it makes me feel like they are blaming themselves for the needs that they have that are being unmet.

I should just be grateful type thing.

Yeah, like, how do I reframe this to make myself change so that I could have this quote unquote great life?

I mean, I don't think that you have it necessarily a great life if you aren't getting the needs met by the one person, the most important person in your life.

So, I don't know.

I just think we have to be careful on the blame that we put on ourselves for

having human needs, having human needs, and for maybe somebody else not being able to fulfill those needs.

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I have two questions.

First of all, what is it in a person?

Because I'm trying to think empathetically about, I know we're not going to change him.

He's telling us who he is.

What is it in a person

that says, this is who I am.

I like my walls.

Because that's so different than somebody saying, I don't know what the fuck you want.

I'm trying.

I'm doing all the things.

Like, I'll keep trying.

I'll, or somebody who says, I am who I am.

That's almost impressive to me.

Cause how the hell do you know?

I don't know who I am.

Like, I'll try whatever.

And then secondly, it is what it is.

Is it possible?

Because it feels feels like to me, what I'm thinking when I'm thinking of Julie is it's like she's a plant

and her husband had water and he's like, I'm never going to give you water.

Because

isn't emotional connection or openness or some sort of vulnerability

the absolute

need

between two people in a close relationship?

And is the strategy of self-nourishing just to gain the clarity you need to see the thing for what it is?

Because I could spend my whole life trying to change you.

It's never going to happen.

I get weaker and weaker and weaker and less able to stand on my own two feet if my energy is going that way.

But if I believe you

and so I build up myself, what I've seen happen with my friends is that over time, it just becomes clearer and they feel stronger.

And the writing was on the wall.

That was a lot of questions.

Yeah.

And it's very possible that a person who has these kinds of walls has found that that is what makes them feel the most emotionally safe in life.

In other words, emotionally immature people really don't dig emotional intimacy because it feels very threatening to them.

It's like, why would I do that?

Why would I lower my wall and then you could hurt me?

And then I could never live without you.

And whoa, I certainly don't want that.

So what they do is they're very happy with relationships that are basically transactional.

You do this for me, I do this for you, and don't we have a great life?

We're meeting each other's needs.

You let me go out for beers, and you know, I let you go out and shop, or you know, whatever the

thing is.

And if you're the person like Julie, you have to think about

well, if that's what makes him happy and makes him feel safe,

then,

okay,

what makes me happy and makes me feel safe?

Let's just take the next six months and figure that one out,

which would be a very productive use of your time.

But if he won't connect,

you can only change yourself and invest in yourself,

which is a very worthy.

project.

It helps you to do better in all areas of your life.

But that particular scenario is like what I call the rejecting parent with the four types of emotionally immature parents.

There's a rejecting type of parent that has their walls up.

They don't want to interact with the kids.

They're not interested in the kids.

And they have found their safe spot.

It may not be their happy spot, but they are emotionally safe.

And if that's what you're up against, you're asking that person to open the door to all kinds of anxiety that they're not prepared to deal with.

So I also want to mention that there is a kind of a downward spiral that people get into

where they ask for more,

the person puts up the wall, and they come back and they press further.

And that makes the person's wall go up higher.

So you get that kind of negative feedback loop where the person with the wall is actually encouraging the other person to try to get close to them because they're so non-giving.

And it's interesting to just watch and see what happens when, say, that spouse in the relationship pulls back and starts to invest in themselves.

It's interesting to see when you change that dynamic of give me, give me, give me, and they're saying, no, I'm not interested.

When you change that dynamic to I'm going to give myself what I need, what happens with him?

We don't know.

Maybe he peeks over the wall.

Maybe he peeks over out of curiosity to see what's going on over there.

Is that the he might, he might, he might start an affair, right?

Which would also be clarifying.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it would.

I mean, you just don't know what's going to happen, but you can see that if you're pushing on a door that is staying locked, maybe you want to walk away from the door

and do something else, and then we'll see what happens behind the door.

Good.

Can I ask a question about this?

Because

a lot of the dynamics that we talked about in the first couple of episodes feel so

aggressively conniving or unhealthy and

almost

actively, aggressively bad.

And then it seems like we have

Julie's partner,

which feels

more like benign neglect, like not

actively creating drama, but the problem is just a straight wall of emotional neglect.

I think a lot of people live with that.

with the kind of, they're not mean.

They're not ugly to me.

They don't create a lot of drama in my life, but

I get nothing emotionally.

Can you tell us, and that's the confusion of, but I have a great life, but et cetera.

What does

that, whatever I'm calling benign neglect,

do

to a person?

to the person who is on the receiving end of not receiving that

right the non-receiving end of the emotional neglect in terms of there's no connection there there's not watering there there's that i am happy with this relationship as it is with the wall up yeah it's really hard to

see that as benign neglect because

Right or wrong, we kind of tend to assume that if we marry somebody, we're going to have a relationship with them and we're going to be partners and take care of each other.

You know, I mean, all these things that are in the wedding vows.

So it's really not benign neglect when you essentially say, No, I'm not going to have an emotionally intimate relationship with you.

I'm not going to take care of you emotionally.

I'm not going to pay attention to how you feel.

I'm going to let you feel lonely.

I'm going to let you feel scared.

I'm going to let you feel unloved.

That is

more like neglect in the worst sense of the word.

Not benign.

Imagine what would happen if you did that to a dog or you did that to a child.

You said, I'm not going to smile when you come along.

I'm not going to pat you on the head.

I'm not going to listen to you.

I'm not going to play ball with you.

I'm not going to pull you up on my lap and make you feel special.

Imagine what that would do to a child

or to a companion animal.

animal.

It would break their hearts.

Okay.

Because that energy goes out at a heart level.

The connection is trying to be made

between

two

loving beings.

And when we do that, the energy that it gives us, the synergy and the energy that comes up in that is huge.

I mean, I'm convinced that that's why human beings rule the planet, is because we have this ability to connect right hemisphere to right hemisphere heart to heart as we do this we bloom with extra energy and then we start thinking about you know how do i do this and how might i improve that and we have creative energy that is released as a result of a good relationship so

We have that thing in us that wants to bloom and it wants to thrive.

That is absolutely, as far as I can tell, a part of humanity.

And it's a part of plants, for heaven's sake.

I mean, plants are going to stick out the sunshine and your pollination.

And this is nature.

Yeah.

And so when you come up against something that says, yeah, I don't care if you need this from me, I'm not giving it to you.

Then we have

the loss.

It's neglect, but it's also the loss of what we actually need to have our best energy.

And you need that best energy to live your best life.

So it feels like your vitality and your life force is being diminished.

And you start to fade because then you start doing the self-doubt thing.

Or you really wonder, you know, maybe relationships aren't all that they're cracked up to be.

But if you try to make sense of it, that somehow you're too needy, or maybe you shouldn't have bothered him, quote unquote so much now you're really on a route to turning against yourself and you're on a route towards saying yeah i can't tell what is a normal amount to ask from anybody i can't tell if i'm being reasonable or not

but of course you can because your energy and your sense of hurt will guide you on that if you listen to yourself.

So if we can pay attention to those cues, we can save ourselves from that

fading away that happens when we accept that kind of treatment from the people in our life that are not only supposed to be loving us, but they're really supposed to be increasing our energy with us so that we can both do life together better.

Oh, Lindsay, that's so good.

Because I mean, the amount of times I say to my therapist, like, but like, should I feel that way?

Should I say this all the time.

I think I need this thing, but like, should I need that thing?

And over and over and she will say, does it matter, Glennon?

You do need that thing.

You just do.

Even if your emotional connection needs are different than the next person, they are what they are.

So to stop saying to yourself, should I need this?

and really admit what you do need.

Do you ever hear people say,

okay, I'm just going to be okay with my husband who says

his wall is up and he's not going to give me what I need because I can get my needs met from other people?

Like, I'll just shore up my friendships.

I'll just shore up my dog.

Does that ever work?

There's

a new movie out called Maestro, and there's a scene in there where the woman actually tried to do her marriage to the main character in just that way.

Like she tried to pretend that she could go through life not needing very much from him or that she could meet her own needs.

And there is a moment in the movie where she realizes that, whoa, I thought I could, but I can't.

And it's a great scene because I think we can all relate to that.

We can all relate to trying to get by with a bare minimum or trying to get by with less than what we really need.

And there's a part of us that says, well, of course I can.

You know, I'm a strong person.

I'm a smart person.

I can rise above this.

But you can't rise above the little child inside yourself that needs that and will continue to need that, whatever it is, for the rest of your life.

The only thing you really have control over is how you express that in the world.

So, like, Glenn and what you were saying about, you know, should I need that?

Should I want?

Absolutely.

Where you might need some help

or change might be in how you ask for it or when you ask for it

or whether you ask for it at that moment.

I mean, you have control over how it's expressed.

I mean, gosh, I've certainly learned that in my marriage, that I'm not going to give up on my need, but I am going to try to be smart about how I ask for it or when I pick a time to discuss it.

You know, all these kind of competencies that need to be honed, okay?

But yeah, but whether or not you should feel it in the first place is really not the question.

You are saddled with your own psyche.

And that's a good t-shirt.

I'm saddled with my own psyche.

Sorry.

Saddled.

Still saddled.

Still saddled.

Yeah.

Can't get rid of it.

But you can change your relationship to it and you can help it get what it wants.

Or let me put it this way.

You can help it get as much as possible of what it wants by learning how to do that with other people better.

But yeah, it's like

you're trying to guide a missile that's already underway.

You don't get to call the missile back and say, I want you to stop now.

The missile's going.

Your desire, your need is moving.

And you just get to adjust its course.

Okay, like not now, a little bit over here.

And you can then become more effective in how you're asking for what you want.

Oh, that was beautiful.

I need to hear so much more about this.

And thank goodness, we are going to come back with incredibly juicy, wonderful questions from the pod squad and answers that are actually going to help us in our lives.

So, pod squad, come back next time and we will have more with Lindsey Gibson and you.

See you next time.

Bye.

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I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine,

And I continue to believe

That I'm the one for me

And because I'm mine

I walk the line

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on map

A final destination

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a hard game.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

and I continue

to believe

the best

people are free

and it took some time

but I'm finally fine

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

Our final destination

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we

can do hard day.

These were adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things,

yeah, we

can do hard

things.