Hey everybody, welcome to a special episode of The Virtual Couch.
Maybe it's not going to be special.
Maybe this is going to be what you're going to see a lot of in 2026.
Happy New Year, by the way.
And that is a question and answer episode. And they might go long,
they might go short, but I really love answering questions.
And I get a lot of them and I don't do a lot of things with them as much as I would like.
So please send your questions and you can go through the website at TonyOverbay.com.
You can send them to me through social media on Instagram at virtual.couch or
TikTok at virtual couch or through Facebook at Tony Overbay licensed marriage
and family therapist or sub stack, sub stack.com slash I believe it's the virtual couch.
But I want all your questions. If it's a couples related question,
I would love to hear both of your hot takes on the situation in your relationship
or anything around marriage, around ADHD,
emotional immaturity, narcissism, navigating a faith journey,
a faith crisis, anxiety, depression.
And if I don't have an answer for something, I was going to say I might,
I probably won't even try to cover that, but I really want to get to everything.
And I can even tell you the things that I know and the things that I don't know,
and maybe some good resources. And I'm going to do more live question and answers
on TikTok and on Instagram.
And Substack is starting to do some with live video as well.
I would highly encourage you to tune in to those live Q&As as well.
Today, I have one just to get started. And it's one that came in just a few hours ago.
And I thought, what a fun experience or something that I could just jot down
some notes and then give my thoughts.
And it's one that I think is going to start, at least if I'm really being honest
with my outline. in one direction and probably go in a direction that you don't anticipate.
Yes, I am even talking about things like intimacy and sexuality,
even though when you hear what I'm going to say, it's sure not going to sound that way.
Stick with me to see how am I going to bridge what you're about to hear into
that high charge topic? Let me go with the question. Here we go.
Hi, Tony. My husband and I have been married for a little over two years.
Overall, our relationship is solid and we're both really intentional about communication.
We actually just had a conversation a few days ago about staying more closely
connected, especially because my husband travels for work fairly often.
A few nights ago, he went to a friend's house for a guy's night and had planned
to stay there for the night.
Before he left, he told me that he texted me before he went to bed just so that
I knew that he was okay. That felt reassuring, especially given our recent conversation.
When I woke up the next morning and didn't see a text, at first I assumed,
okay, they probably stayed up late and just fell asleep.
But then as my morning went on, my mind started filling in the gaps.
What if something happened?
And I think as a old man that I am now, I go to the proverbial,
what if he's lying in a ditch somewhere?
But also she said we literally just talked about
communication so when he finally did text me he explained
that his phone had died he couldn't find a charger until that
morning he apologized profusely his explanation made
sense to me and she said what surprised me was that even though i understood
and wasn't angry with him i still felt anxious and unsettled for quite a while
after my thoughts had calmed down but my body hadn't caught up yet she said
i'm not trying to make this into a bigger issue than it is but i'm curious why
did this affect me the way it did And is this something that we should talk
about more or should I just let it go?
The reason I want to start with this question, it's because it can seem pretty benign.
And I would also say that most anyone listening is going to immediately have
some judgment. So I want you to just acknowledge that is some of the thoughts
that I had initially were, OK, did he have a little bit too much to drink? Did he pass out?
Was there anything nefarious going on? But at this point, I want to assume good
intentions, give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I want to use my four pillars of a connected conversation,
which pillar two then is I'm not going to say, that's ridiculous.
I don't believe you. Even if something seems a little fishy.
And then pillar three, I'm going to go into questions before comments and pillar
four, I'm not going to take a victim stance.
And that pillar one is giving this person the benefit of the doubt,
assuming good intentions that he didn't say, oh, I cannot wait till I pull the
old, my phone died and I fell asleep gag on my newlywed wife.
But again, nothing blew up. Nobody yelled as far as with the data we have here.
Nobody's cheated. Nobody lied.
Something really important is happening underneath the surface.
And it is such a fascinating concept where I get couples that come to see me
after 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years.
And there are some deeply entrenched patterns that are happening in the relationship.
Trying to help a couple early in their relationship is, it's a dream.
I want to say it's a fantasy that comes complete with unicorns and pots of gold.
And it's something that I really want to help with.
And often when I do work with newlyweds and I've done some premarital counseling,
I really want to acknowledge that the things that won't seem like a big deal, I'm not saying,
oh, they're a big deal, but they are the lower charged topics that if you can
get the right communication tools early on and learn how to communicate about
those things, even if they're a little bit uncomfortable,
that is going to save you so much grief and heartache and assumptions and then
getting into the trenches of these deeply rutted neuropathways of patterns that
are happening in your relationship.
So that's why I wanted to start the year off with one that's going to seem a
little bit benign, but take a look at where we go with this.
I want to validate her by her saying, is this something that I even need to
bring up or do I just need to let it go?
Because it's not catastrophic, so why bring it up? But then I think the irony
is these are the moments that start to build the slow residue of your lived
experience as a couple where resentment can start to grow or whether things like intimacy,
and I'm not talking just sex yet, but emotional intimacy.
Honesty, safety, security, and trust where those things can actually deepen
by having conversations that maybe seem like they're really not a big deal.
The first thing I want to do then is normalize this right out of the gate.
Her reaction doesn't mean that she is insecure or that she's needy or dramatic or overthinking.
And also, I don't believe that his response means that he's up to no good or
that he's not trustworthy Because we want to start from a place of,
again, assuming good intentions or there's a reason why people do or say the things they do.
And a lot of that comes from their family of origin, the things that they saw modeled.
And so that's why I want to start from a place of giving somebody the benefit
of the doubt, especially early on in a relationship.
But I can understand why this is where a lot of people get confused.
Just because something isn't catastrophic
doesn't mean that it isn't worth talking about or significant.
Because your nervous system, your central nervous system doesn't only respond
to danger. I believe it also responds to meaning.
And in this case, her brain quickly accepted his explanation.
It made sense to her. And she knows him better than any of us do.
And he did apologize. and so she said no alarm bells
were going off logically okay that makes sense but her
body had already picked up on something else she said
we just talked about staying more connected and then this happened while her
mind said okay that makes sense that's good
and if anybody has been in the emotionally immature or narcissistic
relationships there was a complete absence of oh really like
you don't do things like this either or i told you that i wasn't going
to text you actually there wasn't this blatant gaslighting
or denial so that's why while her mind
was saying okay we're good her body was still saying are we
though are we actually changing something here because we just had a conversation
about this a couple of days ago so that lingering anxiety isn't an overreaction
first of all it's just the way the body works it's going to take time for your
central nervous system to calm down even if you hear something that makes perfect
sense but it's also a little bit of unresolved meaning.
Those emotions are there to act as messengers, to tell you to pay attention to something.
Now, just because it's telling you to pay attention to something doesn't mean
that that is something that is a horrible thing, but it's saying,
hey, let's bring a little awareness here because bodies don't just shut that
stuff down just because logic shows up. They need time.
And consistency and then safety cues to eventually settle. That's not mistrust.
That's your physiology. That's the way the body works.
I really do believe that meaning takes precedent over the events over time because relationships,
while they are built on these small individual moments, they're probably more
so built on the story that we tell ourselves about those moments or the story
that those moments start to tell us about the relationship.
And meaning often sounds like, am I a priority?
Do my needs actually matter? Do they land? Are they heard? When it really counts,
do I matter? Is this somebody that I'm going to be able to trust?
Am I chosen? Or I appreciate feeling like I was understood, but was that just
the right words to say in that moment? Because it isn't about a phone dying.
It's whether about reassurance and repair are consistently followed by behavior,
by someone taking ownership or accountability for their actions,
not just saying the right things.
I want to talk a little bit about one of my favorite things lately,
co-regulation, because I think what she was really reaching for was co-regulation.
When she asked him to text her before bed, she wasn't asking for control or surveillance.
She was asking for co-regulation. And that's the process of saying,
hey, your presence helps my nervous system feel safe.
We are co-regulating each other in a healthy way, hopefully at this point,
but it helps my system feel safe even more apart.
And when it works, it sounds like, okay, I know you're okay. And I also know I matter.
And so now I don't have to fill in the gaps with worst case scenarios.
When that co-regulating moment then doesn't happen after he said it would,
the body doesn't just move on and go, well, we gave it our best.
The explanation shows up later and that's good. But the nervous system already
did its job. It scanned for safety and it did not find it in the moment.
And this gets into differentiation, one of my favorite concepts.
A differentiated response isn't managing his emotion. I don't want him to get mad at me.
It's allowing him to have his own emotional experience as I share mine.
It's not swallowing your feelings or emotions or playing small.
And it's also not escalating it immediately into a fight because that's maybe
what you saw modeled in your childhood.
And that's the only way that you feel like you're going to be heard or understood.
It's being able to say that I can hold onto myself and I can stay connected
to you, which might sound something like, okay, I know your explanation makes
sense and I appreciate it.
But I would also like to share about how that landed for me.
It's a me thing because I noticed my body stayed anxious longer than I expected.
Isn't that fascinating? And we're married. And so I would love to talk to you about it.
But if you're going to get defensive or take the victim response,
then over time, I'm not going to feel very safe sharing my emotions.
I think it might help me to feel safer if we talk about, let's say,
backup plans for moments like that.
And I'm not saying I can see a logical brain guy saying, got it.
I will buy some extra charging cables. I will keep those in my car and,
or it might be like where there was anybody else in the house have a phone just out of curiosity.
And I would hope that the guy would not go like, okay, well,
so I did bad taking the victim stance versus having the courage to say,
I didn't even think about that.
Because again, this isn't blame and it's not control it's ownership and it's connection.
Now over time, it can sure start to feel like blame and surveillance and scorekeeping.
This is why I think this is so interesting to talk about with newlyweds.
And if you are deeply dug into these unhealthy patterns, then that doesn't mean
that there isn't work that you can do.
We're talking about getting together and collaborating. And we want to eventually
get the two of you saying it's us versus what has taken down the relationship, not me versus you.
And the more conversations you can have over these things that maybe seem a
little bit insignificant, if we can address these things with the small challenges
that come in life, life, then it's going to keep them from becoming the bigger ones later.
And here's what I really wanted to talk about when I first saw this question
come in is I don't think I've spent enough time talking about people figure
out a way to really do what matters.
And I want to slow this part down a little bit. If I had some good music in
the background, it would be very, very intentional right now,
because I think this is one of those moments where I want to go find a soapbox.
I can feel myself getting a tiny bit animated.
Just know that this comes from love, from sitting in this chair with couples for a long time.
Over two decades now, I want to say this as much as I can.
I'm going to probably say it more and more, but people figure out a way to do
what truly matters to them, not what they say matters, not even what they wish
matters, but what actually matters.
Now, a low charge, but easy example I go to often is golf.
If anyone really enjoys golfing, and I'm talking, this is something they love
to do, which a lot of people do.
If they like to golf, they're not late for tee times. And I'm talking almost
ever. And I don't use a lot of all or nothing language.
My son is an assistant golf pro at a place. And I had asked him at one point,
hey, are a lot of people late for their tee time? He's like, no.
And this example comes up often when I'm doing couples therapy.
If the person just says, you know, I wasn't able to do this project or do the
thing that she had asked me to.
And I'll try to find a nice way to bring up
with each of them certain things that are very important and would
they have found a way to make that happen and I'm grateful when
somebody's honest and says oh yeah I'm never late for golf because golf doesn't
care about your intentions they don't care that traffic was bad or that your
phone died or that you lost track of time they just say sorry about that but
we'll still take your money thank you very much and good luck finding something
to do for the next four to six hours so somehow magically people tend to figure
that out alarms Alarms are set,
backup alarms are set, calendars get checked, cars are packed the night before.
Outfits are laid out like a little kid for the first day of school,
like it hasn't been done in a long time.
Backup plans appear out of thin air, and then I'll have the same people sitting
in my office, maybe a guy telling his wife, I really tried to make it to the kids'
production, school production on time, or man, I really meant to remember that,
or you know what, I will not do that again.
And I really do believe them in the moment, I really do.
Then there's the next time. And the next time is just different enough.
Oh, man, no, I get it now. I didn't understand that that was that important
to you. But now I will. I will make sure that I put a reminder in the calendar.
But if it was a golf tee time, guys, like if I even said, hey,
play golf lately. Oh, yeah, I played a couple of days ago.
5 a.m. in the morning. First off the tee, man, we were right there on time.
And sometimes I realize, oh, man, I did not realize that.
Yeah, my bad. And what happens often is that then, yeah, that next situation,
then it's a little bit different.
The variables are a little bit different. Oh, no, that last one's a school play.
This one was the kids' awards ceremony. I didn't realize that was as big of
a deal, but now I get it. School play, awards ceremony, I got it.
I will not miss any of these things again.
That situation wasn't exactly the same. I didn't realize it mattered in that
way or, okay, no, I get it.
Again, until the next time. I want to add a couple more examples here because
when I talk about people figuring out ways to do things that matter to them,
and I hope it doesn't sound like I am being harsh or I'm saying that everybody
is doing these things on purpose or that I'm calling anybody selfish or lazy because I'm not.
But what I'm saying is I think we all have a version of selective competence.
We all have things that we magically become brilliant at when it really matters to us.
I have a friend who was a surgeon. He has told me about standing over human
beings when they are about to code or tap out and he makes these life-saving decisions.
But then there was another time where he talked about his wife being out of
town and he's calling her like it's some 911 emergency because he can't figure
out, I'm not even sure what to do because our daughter didn't have any clean
underwear and we had to go to school.
And I'm not telling that story to shame him, although I think you'll get a kick
out of it. I'm telling it because it's such a clear example of how the brain
works because he's not incapable.
He's not dumb. He's not helpless. He's brilliant.
What's happening is that in that moment, he's saying without saying it,
this really isn't my sweet spot. It's not my zone.
It's not my priority. And this isn't where I'm going to organize myself.
And here's the deal. If we're honest about that, then we can work with it.
But if we pretend that it's, I just can't, then we can't.
We can't work on that together. Or another one, another person that a friend
of mine, an attorney billing out, I just learned recently,
I think over $800 an hour, who missed a major school event while his wife was
out of town and his explanations, I couldn't find the email that said what time it started.
This is a guy that one time explained to me an insanely complicated trial strategy,
which involved weeks of planning and layers of contingencies and timelines and
moving parts and coordinating with staff.
It was like a military operation, but this school event puzzled him.
He could not figure out the next step.
He could not find that email. Again, he is not incompetent. He's not incapable.
And that one, I did have a little fun with him. And I just said,
oh, so anything else you could have done? Couldn't find the email?
Have you ever thought about calling the school?
I'm sure there's a school portal somewhere. Text another parent.
Call the parent of one of your kid's friends. Call your kid's teacher. Check the calendar app.
Drive by the school. Check the voicemail from the school. Do literally anything
other than just shrug your shoulders and go, no, no, no.
So when somebody says, I couldn't, what I often hear is, oh,
I didn't. but I need you to accept my explanation so that we can move on because
yeah, this isn't very comfortable for me and I just need the other person to
take it. A lot of times the explanation is legitimate.
Phones die, schedules change, life happens. But if it keeps happening,
here's where it becomes, I wanted to say clinically interesting,
but I think it's just interesting and relationally important to the marriage.
Behavior is a language. And over time we start to understand what people are
telling us through their behavior, especially when their words are consistently
eloquent and beautiful, but their follow through is missing.
This is what I call very affectionately the right mouth noises.
Because a lot of people are wonderful in the conversation they say the exact
right things like man i get it no that makes sense i'm going to do better i
understand why you would feel that way you're right i do want to go after a
career or that i am going to try harder i do want to read that book.
And I'm not even saying they're lying in the moment, but they're not being honest with themselves.
If they continue to say the right mouth noises and even make that sincere face,
but then they don't follow through, that's a them thing.
And their partner is going to start to get frustrated and tired with it.
And I know there's a few possibilities.
This is where differentiation and I think honesty matter. One,
they genuinely don't view it as a priority, but they say the right things,
make the right mouth noises, because they just genuinely don't want conflict.
They're conflict avoidant.
They're conflict averse. They want the conversation to end.
They still want to be seen as the good guy or they want their spouse to just
calm down. It's not a big deal.
Or two, they genuinely mean it in the moment. They really do think,
no, I really do want to change. That feels good. They feel good.
But the second the moment passes, other things take priority again and again and again.
There are some really interesting examples here. And I told one a long time
ago that I got interesting feedback because the feedback I got was from people
that I think missed the point that I was making.
I met a summer league one time with my son, Jake and my son-in-law,
Mitch, and we are going to drive to Chick-fil-A to get food.
And I see an Ike's sandwich shop, which we now have where I live now.
But at the time, those were a novelty.
And so I just said, hey, do you guys want Ike's? And they were both saying, sure.
And I said, no, no, we're going to Chick-fil-A because that's what I said we
were doing. And they both, I think, were absolutely fine if we would have gone to Ike's.
But what I had been realizing in the weeks leading up to that was how often
I say, hey, let's do this thing. and then I impulsively change.
And while people might say, oh no, that's okay. But in their internal world,
they're already planning on Chick-fil-A and what they're going to get.
And let's say that they don't want Ikes, but they also don't want to make me
upset or they're worried that I will get angry or frustrated or whatever that looks like.
It's okay for me to say, hey, here's what I'm going to do. And then that's what I'm going to do.
Maybe even a better example is I was talking with a client once who this person
was going to come over and help her to fix some projects around the house.
She was a single mom and the person kept saying, oh man, I was going to,
but then this other thing came up or I was going to, but then this thing got in the way.
And while i understand that since he was going to
do it for free he was volunteering to help her which
is incredible i don't want to take anything away from him from doing
that but for her it was continuing to
let her down to the point where that was happening with a lot of people in her
life and it was hard for her to really trust anybody and it was hard for her
to not go to man what's wrong with me that people just don't follow through
when they say they will and so i had a chance actually to talk to the guy at
a later date and he handled it like a champ where,
you know, and at first he said, Hey, I'm not getting paid for that.
But even to have the courage to let her know, Hey, you know what?
I'm going to make time on this time, but I want you to know that if another
job or project comes up, that's something that I can get paid for,
then I hope you can understand that that's going to take precedent.
Even just so she knew versus just, Oh man, no, I, yeah, something else came up.
And what he came up with, which I loved, was he just said, no,
I like to tell myself I'm a man of my word. So if I say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.
And if somebody else says, hey, I've got this opportunity for you to do another
thing, then he is going to say, can I do that at a different time, a different day?
And if not, then I think I'll have to pass right now. And again,
I don't know if that was just the right mouth noises.
It really felt like that was who he was and what he wanted to do.
Number three, they have no real intention on following through,
but they're skilled at saying what needs to be said so they can keep their spouse
hopeful, just enough hope to buy them time.
And then the spouse on the other side of that starts feeling something that's
hard to explain, but you kind of feel it in your bones. It's the, I'm not chosen.
I'm not a priority. I'm always the thing that gets handled later.
Or another way that I hear it is I do feel like he tried to understand,
but I'm not actually, I'm not chosen and I don't feel protected.
I don't feel safe. And here's the tragic part, if the partner who's disappointed
keeps letting it happen or letting it go, keeps smoothing it over,
keeps saying, no, it's okay, I understand, you're busy, you have a lot going
on, the relationship learns that that is fine.
Not because it's healthy and not even because it's okay, but because patterns
are reinforced by what we tolerate.
And I want to say this with as much love and as clearly as I can,
eventually, most people value
honesty, even when it stings over being disappointed over and over again.
Because repeated disappointment starts to mess with your reality.
You start asking yourself, man, maybe I am the problem. Am I too much? Am I crazy?
Did I imagine how important this was? Because it felt like it was important
in the moment when we had the conversation.
And then as a couples therapist, I find myself often saying,
oh, no, no, you're not crazy, but your body's starting to pick up on a pattern.
The real invitation here is this moment isn't about fault.
It's about honesty and about learning how to say things that might bring some
discomfort and then recognizing we're still okay.
We can have difficult conversations and still love each other and still stay connected.
If this level of communication isn't truly something that someone's willing
or able to do consistently, then differentiation asks, can I be brave enough
to say that out loud instead of promising something that I can't sustain?
And in this scenario, if he genuinely believes it in the moment,
differentiation also asks, well, can I self-confront?
Can I be curious about why I can say this and mean it, but something always
seems to get in the way and not diffuse that or project that over onto my partner
to put it onto them. That's a me thing.
Because what message is that sending to my partner? Because when something truly
matters to you, again, a work project, a deadline, something you're passionate
about, you don't rely on good intentions. You build systems,
you problem solve, you anticipate obstacles, you figure it out.
So why are we not trying to figure these things out with our partner or for
our partner or give them an honest answer that maybe isn't something that I'm interested in?
And then we can talk about why. The question here isn't, is he a bad guy?
It's not even, is he lying?
It's not even, does he care? The deeper question is, is this something he's
actually willing to organize his life around?
And if the answer is no, or even I'm not sure, then differentiation asks for
honesty, real honesty, not just the right mouth noises in the moment.
Because intimacy doesn't come
from saying the right things. It comes from doing the things that you say.
You matter enough to me to figure this out. So this conversation,
it isn't necessarily a red flag.
It's more of like a yellow light moment. And those are moments that either get
talked through, and then they can be turned from yellow to green,
or they quietly accumulate and they go through a darker shade of yellow until
eventually this becomes a red flag.
And bringing this up doesn't mean that it has to get bigger.
If it does, that's a sign of emotional immaturity. If I'm bringing something
up and my partner immediately makes excuses or takes a victim role or pushes
it back on to the person who's bringing it up, that's not going to build intimacy
or connection in the relationship.
The way that emotionally mature couples stay emotionally close is to have conversations
and to be able to express the things that they would love to see in the relationship
and then stay in the conversation to see if that is something that the other
partner is interested in or even understands if we're in the same ballpark,
what we're talking about.
Now, I said earlier that I'm going to go into the deep end of the pool,
the world of sex and intimacy.
That's where this pattern shows up most painfully. And it might seem like a
little bit of a stretch, but it's the same pattern playing out in a different arena.
It's where I see this dynamic cause the most confusion and heartache and where
couples have been entrenched in unhealthy patterns for such a long time.
Because everything that I just described, the right mouth noises,
genuine intention without follow through, the feeling of being understood but
not chosen, nowhere does that land more or harder than in a couple's intimate
life. Let's talk about intimacy.
Let's talk about sex. The thing that's part of most, if not all marriages,
and the thing that It gets weird faster than people expect as a couple's therapist.
And then people don't know how to talk about it without turning it into a courtroom
and litigation and having to defend themselves.
I see a lot of couples and I see couples all the time who over time fall into
what is by definition, basically a sexless marriage, less than I believe 10
times a year or sex becomes transactional. It becomes a duty, a chore.
It becomes a pity offering. It only happens after the, let's say the higher
desire partner has begged enough or sulked enough or gotten sad enough that
the lower desire partner thinks, okay, if I don't do something soon,
then they're never going to stop doing what they're doing.
So fine, I'll do it. So you'll stop feeling bad. And then they finally,
hopefully come into my office.
And we'll sort a few things out pretty quickly. The higher desire partner usually
needs to stop begging and pressuring and stop shaming.
They need to stop turning sex into a measure of worth. And we need to create
some genuine curiosity instead of coercion.
And almost always the lower desire partner. And I love the work of David Schnarch
who says this is not pathologizing it with sex.
There's a lower desire cleaning partner in a family. There's a lower desire
cooking partner in the family.
But the lower desire partner will often say, you know what? yeah, I want to repair this.
I want to be more intimate. And I'm telling you that those sentences,
those mouth noises are some of the most important moments that you'll ever feel in the room.
Because sometimes I really do believe it's a sincere yes.
And the person who has been overly anxious and clingy has just wanted to hear that.
And they need a third party, a couple's therapist, an intermediary at times
to be the one to say that, or to be the one that guides them to that conversation.
But sometimes it's just the right mouth noises.
Sometimes it's the thing that they know they're supposed to say,
especially with me sitting there, guiding the conversation, making it safe,
helping them not feel attached.
And then there are times they genuinely mean it, but then nothing changes.
They'll say, no, I want to work on it. I'll work on it in therapy.
I'll start reading books. I'll take a course. I'll initiate more. I'll prioritize it.
And the higher desire partner is at times in tears, grateful, truly.
And they're not trying to be a jerk about it. They're relieved.
They feel hope. They're so grateful now that we're going to have these conversations.
They get out of the office and days or weeks go by, months go by and nothing changes.
And the higher desire partner eventually says some version of,
I would just rather know, like I could handle a hard truth, but what I can't
handle is living in limbo. I can't continue to do this anymore.
And I remember a friend of mine once said that when he went to his therapist,
that that therapist said, but you can because you are.
And that broke my heart as a therapist, because when somebody keeps saying,
yeah, no, that's what I want, but their behavior says, no, you do.
Start to feel like you're going crazy.
You start to doubt yourself. You start to feel unwanted while being told,
no, I want you. You're loved.
And that is a uniquely painful place to live. And here's where I think Carl
Rogers absolutely nails it with this concept of the curious paradox,
which says, when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.
I think this is one of the best examples of that curious paradox in real life,
because in this scenario, when the lower desire partner finally has that courage
to be known to say the true thing vulnerably,
whatever that truth is, even if it's too difficult to hear, it creates a kind
of a clean clarity that's actually stabilizing because then the higher desire
partner can stop spinning.
They can stop guessing. They can stop trying to decode mixed signals.
They can accept the reality. And from a place of acceptance,
then you can start to do the work because now if the couple wants to repair
intimacy, now they can do it with genuine curiosity between them,
honesty, teamwork and actual behavioral follow through.
So if one person, the higher desire partner is now saying, hey, I would love to.
Are you even thinking about it right now? And if the lower desire partner says,
and feel safe to say, I'm not, I haven't thought about it much at all.
Because now, instead of that person collapsing into shame or diffusing the anger
on back onto their partner, man, I told you I'm going to work on it.
They can say, I'm not, but I'm willing to talk about it right now.
So what's that like for you?
What does that feel like? Or how often are you thinking about it?
It takes courage to be known and it takes courage to know your partner and to
be able to operate from a place of,
if we can start having these conversations, we can start to work on this situation
and this concept of whole object relations in the relationship where other things
in the relationship might be going really well.
And we can embrace those and we can make space for these that maybe aren't going as well, but matter.
That gets you to hopefully more connected conversations, more genuine intimacy,
not these hope crumbs, not with maybe next week,
not with the mouth noises because intimacy and
i'm not talking just sexual i'm talking emotional physical cognitive intellectual
spiritual intimacy doesn't grow in confusion it grows
in truth and honesty that's one of the best ways to truly build trust even if
it doesn't feel comfortable if you have questions about this question then send
them into me go through my website or send them to me at contact at tonyoverbay.com
i want to do more of these i want your questions and i I will provide answers
and I appreciate the support. Welcome to the year 2026.
I hope this is going to be a great year. Taking this out per usual,
the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with her song.
It's wonderful because I am telling you, if you get the right tools,
you do the work and all those wonderful things.