[0:00]

Have you ever gone to bed after a fight with your partner and thought, we can’t go to sleep until this is resolved? You lie awake thinking, why won’t they talk to me, why won’t they just see my point of view? You stay up until 2am and eventually they say, fine, yes, whatever, you’re right, I’m sorry. It doesn’t really feel that great.

Today I’m talking with Monica Tanner, Relational Life Therapy certified relationship coach and host of the podcast Secrets of Happily Ever After. We’re talking about bad marriage advice, which is also the name of her new Amazon bestselling book. Welcome to the podcast, Monica.

Monica

Thank you so much for having me.

[1:00]

Marie

How did this book come about? The title is fantastic. I can’t believe someone hasn’t already written it.

Monica

That’s funny, because when the title came to me I searched it on Amazon and I was shocked it didn’t already exist. It felt like a sign.

The way it came about is my oldest son called and told me he’d met the girl he was going to marry, that he was proposing the following month, and he was 21 at the time. I thought, have I taught him everything he needs to know about marriage? I sat down to write him a letter, a kind of beginner’s guide meets cautionary tale. What do you need to know from your mum before you jump into this? It quickly turned into a book because I knew so many well-meaning adults were going to give him advice, and from my own experience in marriage and from working with couples over many years, I knew a lot of that advice was going to be genuinely unhelpful.

[2:00]

Marie

What’s one of the pieces that you thought, this is just terrible advice?

Monica

So much of it comes from personal experience, and you opened the show beautifully with that very common and misguided advice about not going to bed angry. I think it originally came from scripture. Don’t let the sun set on your wrath. It’s a beautiful piece of writing that I think has been very misinterpreted to mean don’t go to sleep when you’re angry. After years of experience I’d say please, if you’re not reaching a conclusion quickly and it’s late, go to sleep and come back to it in the morning.

Marie

What do you think it actually meant?

Monica

I think it means don’t leave things unresolved in your relationship. Don’t let resentment or discontent sit without addressing it. Bring it up and talk about it skilfully. I don’t think it means don’t go to sleep angry in any literal sense.

Marie

More of a metaphor than instructions.

Monica

Absolutely. I’ve lost so much sleep trying to follow it the wrong way.

[3:30]

When I was young I was so nervous about my son getting married. My husband and I were also young when we got married, 22, so it’s fine. But I knew he was going to receive that advice because I’d received it constantly when we were engaged. Couples at our reception, guests at my bridal shower, they all wrote it on cards. Never go to bed angry.

I was so determined to get it right at that young age that I took it completely literally. In our early years my husband and I would disagree before bed, usually because we were exhausted, and he would roll over and start snoring. I’d be left shaking and crying and writing in my journal, convinced it meant he didn’t care about me, didn’t love me, that our marriage was in trouble.

[5:00]

Eventually, long before I had any formal training, I just thought to myself, maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to be me. One night after he rolled over and went to sleep, instead of spiralling, I tapped him on the shoulder and got vulnerable. I told him about my experiences when I was young, my sense that men always left, how uncared for I felt when he just went to sleep.

He said, I love you and I’m not going anywhere. I’m just really tired and I need to sleep, and I know from experience that you’re not going to let me do that. He was right. I was very committed to not going to bed angry. So we worked out something different. I asked him to say exactly that next time it happened. I love you, I’m not going anywhere, but I need to get some sleep. When he did, it calmed my nervous system enough to rest.

[6:30]

The other thing that happened, because he’s a morning person and I’m not, is that he would wake before me and wrap me up and say, I’m sorry I was a jerk last night, or I’m sorry we fought, let’s talk about it. It built real trust. Sometimes in the morning I couldn’t even remember what I was upset about. Sometimes I could, and we’d talk about it with fresh eyes. Either way it was so much better than fighting through until someone gave in.

I now use the acronym HALTS with my clients. Never try to settle an argument or make a significant decision when either of you is hungry, angry, lonely, tired or stressed. Pause. And responsible distance taking is exactly what I unknowingly trained my husband to do: I love you, I’m not going anywhere, but I’m too tired for this right now. Let’s come back to it tomorrow.

[8:00]

Marie

I love that. I use HALTS too, but I add a P, so PHALTS, for pain. If you’re in physical pain as well, it’s just not going to work.

You mentioned he had no idea what it was like to be you. Sometimes we don’t even have that awareness because in that moment our thoughts feel like facts. The rule is we can’t go to bed angry, it’s in scripture, everyone’s given it as advice, he must know this, therefore him rolling over means something. How did you separate impact from intention in a way that allowed you to do things differently?

Monica

There are two parts to this. When your partner’s reaction feels outsized, when their response is much bigger than what you’d expect from what’s actually happening, it’s almost always because they’re not reacting to what’s in front of them. They’re reacting to a long line of experiences, often from childhood, that usually has nothing to do with you. That can be disarming if you let it. You can get curious. You can say, I notice this is really big for you, what’s happening?

[9:30]

The other thing I do is teach couples a thought download. I have them get paper and pen, not their phone, paper and pen, and set a timer for three minutes. Write everything you think and feel about the situation without editing, without judging, without worrying about punctuation or accuracy. Just empty it out.

Then take a second piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and put facts on one side and thoughts on the other. Facts are what security camera footage would capture. What can be proven in a court of law. And what clients find, every time, is that very few things on the page are actual facts. I have a husband, that’s a fact. He rolled over at 10:47 and was snoring by 10:58, those are facts. Everything else goes in the thought column. He doesn’t care about me, he doesn’t love me, none of that is fact. And thoughts are optional. They create our feelings and how we show up, and therefore the results we get.

[12:00]

Marie

How does a couple have empathy for those thoughts when they feel so true? Telling someone just choose a different thought can feel dismissive when the thought is something like I’m unworthy or I’m too much or here is more proof.

Monica

You’re right. What you’re describing are deeply ingrained beliefs that were planted a long time ago. The way I work is through Relational Life Therapy, and it has three phases.

The first phase is recognising and diagnosing the couple’s dynamic, what we call the stance dance. When a challenge comes up, what’s the pattern? We take into account family of origin, losing strategies, where each person sits on the relational grid in terms of self-esteem and boundaries. A lot of diagnostic work to understand how the couple is interacting.

[13:30]

Phase two is inner child and trauma work. What are the beliefs locking their responses into place? Where did the belief that you’re not enough, or you don’t deserve love, or people are going to leave, where did that originate? What adaptations did you create as a child to protect yourself? When we do this work it creates real compassion, both self-compassion and compassion from the partner, because they can see it’s about so much more than what’s happening in the moment.

[15:00]

Marie

What did you and your husband come to understand about your own patterns looking back on those earlier years?

Monica

In the moment it was very messy, not skilful on either side at all. Now we have a shared language. We’ve done an RLT intensive together so we have the same framework. We still have conflict, we can still go at it, our adaptive children can absolutely still take over. But we tend to repair quicker because we have these skills. It’s really about emotional maturity, about noticing when you’ve got the whoosh, when you’re not in your wise adult, and knowing how to bring that part of yourself back online. If you can’t in the moment, you take a break, a real one.

[17:00]

Marie

I love the wise adult and the child. There’s a phrase I use with couples: if it’s hysterical it’s historical. When the feelings are that big, they’ve usually come from somewhere else.

How do you help a couple recognise that even when it wasn’t their intention, that was the impact, and have that conversation without getting defensive or trying to talk the other person out of feeling what they feel? I see this constantly. People trying to convince their partner they shouldn’t feel that way because that wasn’t what was meant.

Monica

A lot of it is psychoeducation. Understanding does not equal agreement. You can understand someone without agreeing with their position, and I see that as a stumbling block for couples all the time. Leading with curiosity helps. If it’s hysterical it’s historical, so being able to see your partner having a big reaction and take a breath and think, this probably isn’t about me, and get curious about what is happening for them. It’s a practice. It’s a skill like any other, and even using it badly puts you ahead of where you’d be without it.

[19:00]

Marie

The tone matters here. Being curious doesn’t mean saying is there something else going on, are you just getting your period, are you hungry? That’s invalidating. It’s actually stepping back and saying are you okay, is there something bigger happening, and giving them a hug or just letting them talk without trying to diagnose them.

Monica

Exactly. A lot of couples stop having certain conversations because they typically go badly. And if you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, like you can’t bring up certain topics, I’d really encourage finding a therapist or coach to help you work through it. What we don’t talk about comes out anyway, just worse. Passive-aggressive, eventually a blow-up. The love and generosity in the relationship gets used up. Learning to communicate about the difficult, reactive topics is not optional if you want the relationship to last.

[21:00]

Marie

I usually encourage people to have these conversations when things aren’t heated. If you’ve found something helpful in this episode and you want to share it with your partner, don’t just send a link with no context. If that’s already your dynamic and it works, great. But if you’re sending it so they can see how they’re getting it wrong, it’s not going to land the way you’re hoping.

Try something like: I heard this and I recognised something I don’t do well. Can I share it with you? Or: I’ve been thinking about this, can we find a time this weekend to talk about it?

And don’t make assumptions if they don’t listen straight away. One of the most common thought spirals I see is: I sent it, they haven’t mentioned it, they don’t care, they’re not invested, if they wanted things to be better they’d be trying. The fact is you sent a link and they haven’t said anything. That might be all that actually happened.

[22:30]

Monica

If you can, give your partner the benefit of the doubt. Find out why they haven’t listened. They might be afraid that listening will indict them of everything and they’ll have all this work to do. Get curious about what they’re avoiding. Then be honest: I listened and I thought about things I could work on. I’d love to feel like we’re both in this together.

What’s not said is just as important as what is. The more we can get honest about why we do what we do, the better off we are. And if you need help to get there, seek it. If you think you can try it on your own first, try it. If it doesn’t go well, get some support.

[27:00]

Marie

Where I see this go badly is when one partner is really unhappy and the other thinks everything is fine. How do you help the unhappy partner in that dynamic?

Monica

That’s a really important one. When the dynamic is unequal like that, the partner who’s unhappy sometimes has to stand up for themselves with loving power, and that might include making their partner uncomfortable. Of course the partner who thinks everything is fine is going to say settle down, what’s the big deal, because they’re not uncomfortable. They have no motivation to do the work.

[28:30]

So sometimes it looks like: this is really important to me. I’ve found someone I think could help us. I’ve made an appointment for next Friday. I’d really like you to come. And you invite them, kindly, all the way up to the point where if they still won’t, you might have to say: I love you, I want this to work, and if you choose not to come and work on this with me, then I’m going to stop sleeping in our room, or I’m not going to social engagements with you for a while. Not to hurt them. To make it clear that this is serious and that it matters.

[29:30]

Marie

I’ve heard it framed as: if your partner’s going to therapy to talk about your relationship, do you want to have a voice in that or not? That can sometimes land differently.

Monica

The risk is the partner who’s not uncomfortable says great, go figure yourself out. But sometimes that’s okay too.

Marie

Because if one person does something different, the dynamic changes. You doing something different, telling your husband what was happening for you, was enough. You didn’t need him to have it all worked out in advance. You just did something different and it shifted things.

Monica

Yes, I think that’s right.

[30:30]

Marie

We could talk about this all day. How can people find you and work with you?

Monica

My website is monicatanner.com and everything is there: my podcast, free resources, social media, and how to work with me.

Marie

Fantastic. Any last parting thoughts on bad marriage advice?

Monica

The through line in the book is this: if advice engenders lazy communication, dampens down communication, or creates less communication, it’s bad marriage advice. If it raises the level of communication and challenges you to do it in a more mature, more skilful way, that’s good advice. It’s a reliable way to sort the helpful from the unhelpful.

Marie

I love that. Thanks so much for joining me on This Complex Life.