Improve Your relationship with Your Parenting Partner Podcast - Part 2

0:00 MUSIC

0:07 ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Hello, I'm Annmarie McMahill and this is a Tools for Your Child’s Success podcast.

This is the second podcast of two where we’re talking about intentional ways to grow a healthy relationship with your parenting partner. If you haven’t already listened to Part 1 yet, that’s OK. You might want to listen to it next.

As parents, we want to be at our best for our children. I've learned that if I want to be at my best, I need to take care of my own health and wellbeing and that includes learning ways to improve my relationship with my parenting partner.

Many of us experience changes in our relationship when we become parents, a child can bring about positive changes, there might be a new and different level of connection. A child can bring about strains too, less sleep, less time to talk, less time to spend together.

We might find ourselves disagreeing more, we might not have the energy to sort out the differences as they arise. Intentionally growing a healthy relationship with your parenting partner means that we are nurturing and strengthening our relationship, often by figuring out ways to communicate in a way that deepens our intimacy.

I'd like to re-introduce our guests for the podcast, Tom and Mary Frances Burke who have been married for 42 years, Steve and Debbie Robbins who have been married 37 years, and Father Tom Ogg, who has been a priest for 54 years.

Together they have over 100 years of working together with couples to help them listen and share and connect more deeply in their relationships.

In Part 1, we learned about how trust and being able to communicate about our feelings creates a foundation for strong relationships between parenting partners.

We heard a definition of feelings...

FR. TOM OGG:

What is a feeling? And the understanding or the definition, if you will, that I like is an inner, spontaneous reaction to something outside, to another person, another situation, to an event, something outside ourselves, but it's an inner, spontaneous reaction. And if I have that that frees me up for lots of things so that I can talk about it, I can fuss about it, I can do whatever, and not be hurting anybody. It's me, my insides.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

And how this definition really can change how we approach communicating about our feelings…

MARY FRANCES BURKE:

I think when we accept the basic tenet that feelings just happen. We don't choose to feel angry, we don't choose to feel happy, we just are. We have a good friend who says, "Feelings are like a sneeze," it just happens. And I think when we accept that basic tenet, we can let down our defenses and talk in a more civil, polite, understanding way about the situation, we're much less likely to be defensive and angry, "Well, you shouldn't feel that way," or, "I didn't make you feel that way," or, "That's not my problem, that's your problem, fix it."

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

So I think the ability to identify and name your feelings is so foundational, but for you to listen to each other is another skill that can be practiced and grown. So, let’s start Part 2 on the skill of listening. How do we become better at listening?

DEBBIE ROBBINS:

I am a terrible listener, but I have forced myself to start to learn. And I think when Steve is communicating at a deeper level, when he is talking about his feelings, it is really my responsibility to listen deeply and understand and ask questions. "Well, when else have you felt like that? What color is that? What smell is that? What other vision does it bring, if this feeling were on the street, what would it be doing?" And trying to just put myself totally 100% focused on him at the moment really has helped me to learn to listen and to let go of...