RELATIONSHIP GOALS - TRUE LOVE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 88.
Hello, my friends. In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I would dedicate this podcast to the goal of finding or creating more romantic love in our lives. This episode is for you, no matter whether you're with someone right now or not.
But I also want to say right off the bat that not everyone is looking for romantic love. I was actually reading an article the other day written by a divorced woman who's an empty nester, and she said she's not with anyone. And the gist of the article was that she couldn't be happier.
She admitted that when she first got divorced, she worried about missing out on a lot of the things we come to expect from being in a committed relationship, namely companionship, having a partner to manage finances with. But she said that she's come to love the quiet time alone and has grown into a new appreciation for her ability to do life without a partner. I had a client once mention that she was surprised a few weeks after her son went to college that she found that she was gradually less sad as time went by.
She asked if I thought there was simply a part of these transitions that gets easier simply because we get preoccupied or distracted with other things. And so you start to feel the sadness and emptiness a little less acutely. But you actually think that there's something to this.
Our emotional experience is driven by our thoughts. And so when we're focused on what's missing or what we don't like about our lives, naturally, we're going to feel painful or negative emotions. But our brains are processing so much more information at any given time.
We're inevitably distracted by day to day tasks and obligations. We also don't enjoy feeling stuck in negative emotions. And so we might deliberately try to distract ourselves to feel better or to try to look on the bright side.
What I found is that when things get quiet, when you're alone and not distracted with work or other obligations, it's those quiet times when the doubt and the dissatisfaction with the circumstances of our life rears its head again. Worrying about our kids can tend to take a front seat in our minds during these times of quiet. But since our relationship with a significant other or the lack of this kind of relationship can be the other most significant category of relationship in our lives, next to our kids, this relationship can also cause us to feel any number of negative emotions, from loneliness and dissatisfaction to even anger, hurt, and resentment.
So today I want to focus on the role of creating more romantic love in your life, if that's something that interests you. Now again, this conversation is going to apply to you whether you're in a committed or casual relationship or you're not. Whether you're with someone, getting over the pain of the end of being with someone, or just looking for someone new to start a relationship with, this conversation will apply to all of us.
And in fact, I'll also say that even if you're happily not with someone, this conversation might actually help you solidify the powerful ways you might be thinking about love that has you not needing to be with someone. Or alternatively, might get you questioning whether you're deciding not to look for love for the reasons you really like. So first, let's get on the same page about the definition of a relationship.
In past episodes, I've shared this idea that a relationship is simply the sum of your thoughts about another person. So in this respect, do you have a relationship with someone whether you spend any time with them or not? We tend to think of being in a relationship with someone as something that's reciprocal, a two-way street where both people have agreed that they want to be in a relationship. And yes, of course, that is a relationship.
But just consider that if you're divorced, you still have a relationship with that person, not only because you still might be co-parenting your shared children, but also because you have thoughts about this person. We have relationships with people we used to date. Even if we never see or talk to this person, we may still have thoughts about them.
We have thoughts and therefore a relationship with spouses, even if we're widowed. And my friend, if you're not with someone currently and would like to be in the future, you have a relationship in your mind and this theoretical person you have thoughts about in a relationship with that person as well. What are your thoughts about this person? What does this relationship look like? Really fascinating to think about relationships in this way, right? So again, whether you are currently with someone with whom you share some level of commitment or not, you very likely have thoughts about this other person or potential person.
And because each of us, regardless of relationship commitment status, have thoughts, we all can fall into similar mindset traps when it comes to these relationships or our thoughts about these people. I should also say that much of what I'm going to talk about applies to absolutely any relationship you have in your life, relationships with your kids, your parents, siblings, friends, anyone. We have thoughts about all of these people and the sum of these thoughts and maybe even more to the point, the quality and nature of these thoughts determines the quality and nature of our relationship with that person.
Okay, you might be with me so far, except what about that other person? Sure, I get that I have thoughts about that other person, but also my thoughts feel dependent on how that other person behaves, right? I mean, if they would just be a little bit more affectionate or less grumpy when they get home from work, or maybe make a little more effort, then our relationship would be better, right? You're probably nodding your head in agreement right now. And I'm also imagining every night out you've had with girlfriends when someone's been complaining about their spouse or boyfriend or some jerk, that damned ex, and every one of us is like, yeah, girl, that's terrible. He should treat you better.
He's awful. No wonder you're unhappy. And of course, it kind of feels nice to bond with our girlfriends over these shared grievances.
We all want to be treated like queens after all. And so when another girlfriend shares how poorly she feels like she's being treated in her relationship, or just complains about some annoying thing her partner does that makes her life more difficult, we all nod and roll our eyes in empathy. Because there might be some grievance we have in our minds, in our own relationship, and it makes us feel a little bit better to know that we're not the only ones who haven't been carried off like a princess in a fairy tale.
These conversations can actually make us feel like we belong in this sisterhood of other women looking for love and affection and finding it more difficult than we'd imagined when we were younger. But my friends, spoiler alert, as your coach, I'm not going to commiserate with you about how bad your partner is or how terrible your ex is or even how lonely it is to be alone. That's not to say that whatever you're feeling about your current relationship status isn't a hundred percent valid.
But I hate to break it to you, but it's not the other person's fault. I'm sure you've probably heard the saying that relationships take work. In a perfect world, that means that both people in the relationship put in the work to try to make the relationship as good as it can be.
But how do you decide how much work is enough? Seriously, right now in your relationship or in the relationship you'd like to have, what would it look like to you if the other person put in the right amount of work to make the relationship work? What does that even look like, to make a relationship work? You might have in your mind a list of things that you want or would want this other person, your romantic partner, to do. Maybe appreciate you a little more. Respect how hard you work to manage life with the kids, the home, the contributions you make to the household.
Maybe you wish they would celebrate your success or efforts in terms of your career or your personal goals. Maybe you wish this other person would respect your space, to not need you to be available to them when you'd rather be doing something else, or to not demand that you clean up after them, or at least maybe clean up after themselves more so it didn't become your job. Maybe you wish this other person would make a little bit more effort with their appearance, get to the gym, maybe buy you flowers every once in a while, make dinner reservations.
Maybe you wish this other person would make you feel like you matter. None of these things actually seem like a lot to ask for someone with whom you're in a romantic partnership. It seems like a far cry from the dreamy aspirations we had in our early 20s when falling in love truly did feel like a fairy tale.
When we were still young, weren't saddled with as many financial stresses and obligations. Back in the days, to be honest, before kids became the primary focus of our lives, and we had the ability to be a bit more selfish with our time, our wants, and our needs. In fact, for many of us, romantic love seems quite a bit more realistic and frankly boring.
Would we like to have someone to go on romantic dinners with and plan fun adventures with? Absolutely. But is this the first thing that comes to mind when you're thinking of your wish list of what you would ideally want in a romantic partner? Probably not. So let's dive into some of the things we are looking for in these romantic relationships.
What are the categories? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that many of us want a companion. One of my best friends has never been married and she'll often say to me that she misses having someone to be at home with. She has a million girlfriends, a close family, an important job.
She has plenty to fill her cup. But the one thing she'll say is missing is that person who lives with you that's your person. Coming home night after night to an empty home or apartment, there are times when it can feel lonely.
In fact, I would say that the most fundamental reason many of us can want a partner is because we don't want to feel alone. Another reason we can want a partner is because we want that special friend, that unique type of friendship that comes with having a significant other that knows you better than anyone else. A person with whom you can ideally be your full self, no makeup, hair a mess, bad breath, just come as you are.
Someone who you can be naked with and literally not feel a shred of shame or embarrassment. It's a pretty unique type of relationship if you can find it. And of course, when you have this type of friendship, you hope it comes with the possibility of feeling closely connected.
Inside jokes, someone who you can laugh with, a literal bestie. This type of romantic relationship, I think is possibly the least celebrated, but the most beautiful potential of romantic love. Finding someone who is truly your best friend in life.
I don't know the statistics, but how many of us would say that we found this in our current or past relationships? Let's say roughly 50% of us are single or divorced. I doubt the majority of the remaining 50% of us have this type of bestie relationship with our spouse or significant other. More practically speaking, we can want a significant other who is truly a life partner.
Someone to work through the ups and downs of life with. Someone to split the finances with. Someone to split the mundane chores of life with.
Paying bills, keeping up the house, the groceries, fixing things around the house. I think an even bigger aspect of this partnership aspect of romantic love is that we want someone with whom we can plan life with. And here's an interesting part of this as we get to the transition to the empty nest.
As our life starts changing because our kids move out of the house, new choices begin to open up for us. On the one hand, we may feel more burden as we deal with paying college tuition and supporting wannabe launched kids who can't yet support themselves financially. Even when the kids are out of the nest, we can find that we're actually spending more money to support them for quite some time.
I know a woman in her late 60s who's still supporting her children who now have their own children. So when we have these financial obligations to deal with, it can feel like those of us who are working don't have the flexibility to not work. In fact, I know many women who end up going back to work once their kids go to college for the simple fact that they need the money.
So on the one hand, we can feel more financial pressure either as a single person or even in a marriage and partnership. But in a perfect world, it would be nice to have a partner with whom we could make these decisions and plans. But honestly, it's not that simple.
I've coached women who want to make a professional change but worry that their spouse won't support them. I've also coached women who feel guilty that they don't have a job now that their kids are in college. But if they're really honest, they don't want to get a job.
And their spouse's income is sufficient to support their family. At the same time, they're not sure they want to just be a housewife. I was talking to a man at an event the other night who told me he decided to quit his very successful Wall Street job to start a local brewery.
He admitted that when he told his spouse, at first, she wasn't exactly happy, but he was grateful that she came around. Another of my good friends moved to a new state after their kids went to college because of her husband's new job. She's trying to make the best of it, but she had to leave behind many friends in her own successful career.
What it means to have a partnership actually feels like it can get more complicated as new options open up for us, and we find we're at a place where we have to negotiate these choices with a partner or prospective partner who may or may not be on board, or appreciate why we may not be on board. Another subtle but important reason we might want or value being with someone in a romantic relationship, and it's funny to mention because I've been referring to this type of relationship as a romantic relationship, and I have yet to make any comment about romance being a factor in what we're looking for, but back to that in a minute. But this next reason is that we can want someone to make us feel like we matter.
Now, I actually think this reason applies to every relationship we have that's important to us. It shows up in our relationship with our kids, certainly, but also our family and our friends. We want the people we love to demonstrate to us that we matter to them.
This is even deeper and maybe less explored than just wanting to feel loved. This relates to our value as a human being, our self-worth, our relevance. You may not even realize that this is an aspect of relationships that you care about until something happens that makes you question if it's actually true that another person thinks you matter to them.
Let's just go back to our kids for a second. When they grow up, maybe start to pull away, leave the nest, so many of us start to question our purpose, miss the feeling of being needed. We start to realize how much our self-worth has been tied up in being a mom with kids at home.
The same can feel true of romantic relationships. Women will tell me they don't feel appreciated, maybe that they don't think their partner takes them seriously, doesn't listen, or value their opinion. It can be painful to think that you're in a committed relationship and you don't feel like you matter to that other person.
Finally, I want to touch on two other aspects of romantic relationships, and that's love and sex. First, sex. This is obviously not universally true, but I've found with many of the women I talk to, particularly at this stage in our lives, sex is a much lower priority for us than it can be for the men in our lives.
But no matter how high or low sex is on your list of priorities, just notice the role it plays in your relationship based on the thoughts you have about sex, and the thoughts you have about the thoughts your partner has about sex. Kind of circular, but notice you have opinions about how much sex you want, when, where, and how. But then notice what your partner says and does when it comes to sex.
Your brain is judging all of that as good, bad, or possibly you're judging it with ambivalence. All of these thoughts you're having play a big role in your mindset as you engage in sex and how much you actually enjoy it. So if your sex life isn't what you want it to be, I just want to invite you to observe all of the thoughts you have about it.
Now I'm going to get back to all of these concepts with ideas to move you forward in a moment. But finally, we can want these types of romantic relationships because we want love. We want to feel loved.
This is separate from friendship or partnership, separate from sex, companionship, and even self-worth. In a perfect world, we want to feel love. And no matter whether you have love right now in a romantic partnership, if you're lucky, you get to feel love in many other places in your life.
Certainly we get to feel love for our kids and hopefully we feel loved back. Same with family and friends. So romantic love is one more area in our life where we have the potential to feel love.
And while this kind of love may feel more well-worn than it did compared to the fairy tale dreams of our youth, if we're lucky, this kind of love, this person is a member of our chosen family who we'll be with until the day we die. My sons have a band called Butterfly Garden. Most of the songs are indie rock songs, but there are a few acoustic songs my son wrote about love, Virginia and Little Moon.
And they're so beautiful, I've listened to them on repeat. At the end of Virginia, the lyrics are so powerful. Watching every sunset with you by my side is all I ever wanted.
Even when we're old and gray, sitting on our porch, I'll look into your eyes knowing there's no one I love more wholly. And you can hold me every night until we're buried in the ground, the two of us together, only us together. Certainly something for us to aspire to.
Ultimately, this might even be what we'd call true love. And even this type of love is open for interpretation. What does true love even mean? How do you know whether you found it? Can you really know that this love will last or does the timeline matter less than having found it even for a brief period of time? Who's to say that the love you found with your ex wasn't true just because it didn't last? So with these romantic relationships, let's recap what we're looking for.
Companionship, friendship, a life partner. We want someone in our life that makes us feel like we matter. We might want sex, and then there's actual true love.
And let's even talk about what we might be feeling if we don't have these things in our lives. We might crave companionship and friendship if we feel, or because we don't want to feel, isolated or lonely. We might want a life partner to protect against the stress, overwhelm, and even hardship of supporting ourselves independently.
Having to be 100% in charge of every aspect of our lives, from the things we already feel confident doing to those things that we might never have had to deal with before. Getting the oil changed, mowing the lawn, making sure you have insurance, maybe managing finances and money if that's something you've delegated to your spouse in the past. We might feel disconnected from our kids as they grow up and wish we had that special someone to feel like we matter.
Because we're not quite sure if we do anymore now that our kids don't need us as much. We might miss being touched physically. We might feel empty instead of loved.
So as with all of the goals I've been exploring in this podcast, the first step is to be curious. As I've been going through the various needs we might have that we think will be filled by a romantic partner, I hope you've been evaluating for each whether those needs are something you are missing in your current life and relationship. What is missing for you? Are you generally satisfied in your relationship status or do you feel like you have one or more needs that aren't being met? It seems so obvious that if you feel deficient in the romantic relationship department that it's because of that other person or the lack of that other person.
Like how can you fill any of these needs without another person in your life? But I promise you another person in your life can never give you these things unless you give them to yourself. Another person can't love you and connect with you without your permission. Remember a relationship is truly defined as your thoughts about the other person and your connection with them.
So if you have thoughts that make you feel love, friendship, partnership, and companionship, then boom, you've created those things. But if you don't have these thoughts, you don't have these feelings, you want companionship. But what if your partner doesn't want to do the same things as you? What if they work a lot or spend weekends on the golf course? Or what if you'd rather go out and they're a homebody? Are they a companion? Just like being at a party surrounded by people and feeling lonely, you can absolutely feel lonely and isolated in a marriage or relationship.
You will not feel companionship, friendship, or love if you don't think of the other person in a way that creates those feelings for you. And if you're not with someone right now, how do you know that another person will give you those feelings? How could it be possible that you could find these emotions in yourself and not need someone else to give them to you? I've coached a number of women on finding love, and without exception, after really getting curious and taking responsibility for their own thoughts about love and what it means for them, they have each come to the realization that they are enough. You, my friend, are enough.
At the end of the day, you are your companion. You are your own best friend. You can give yourself true, unconditional love.
You are actually the only partner in life you will ever need. And if this isn't true for you right now, why not? Because honestly, this is the most powerful relationship you will ever have. The one with yourself.
Think about the power of loving yourself unconditionally, truly. And then, from that place of love, having the opportunity to open your heart to someone else. Think of what a powerful gift it is to be in a relationship with someone simply because being in their company, whatever that looks like, adds to the joy and love you already have in your life.
Not filling a void or a gap, but truly multiplying the love you get to experience in your life. None of us are perfect, and even the most well-intentioned, loving people in our lives will let us down sometimes if we expect them to make us feel something we're not creating on our own. As you reflect on what you want from a romantic partner, be really specific about what that means.
More even than how you want to feel, ask yourself what specifically you're looking for this other person to do that you think will make you feel how you want to feel. And how will you know if what they do is good enough? If that other person isn't living up to your expectations, why? How might you be taking their actions personally? Let me be clear, you don't have to settle. If the relationship you're in or the people you're meeting don't meet your expectations, you have no obligation to be with them.
You can leave. You can stop seeing them. But often we don't leave, or we don't stop seeing them.
Are you settling because you're afraid of being alone or not having one of these needs filled? Or is the truth really that you want to stay, or that you want to keep trying? Be honest with yourself about all of it. Take responsibility for the way you're thinking about the romantic relationship in your life. Because this truth, your truth, will inevitably show you how to move forward.
I'm always astounded that we often hide the truth from ourselves about the things that matter to us the most. These truths, our own answers about what we really want and need, how we're relying on other people to give all of this to us, how we're not giving this to ourselves. It's fascinating.
It's also the path to finding true love within yourself. And this is the mom2o process, my friend. You are the love you're looking for.
And maybe this Valentine's Day, instead of flowers, you can finally give yourself the gift of loving yourself unconditionally. I promise that it makes every other love in your life that much sweeter and more powerful.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review. And check out our coaching program, mom2.0, at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
