I am pleased to bring you the thinking of today’s guests, CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke. Partners in work and in life for over two decades, they’ve adapted their proven step-by-step process, which they honed while working with numerous Fortune 100 companies, to help long-term couples use conflict as a catalyst to greater intimacy and passion.

We will be discussing a range of topics, such as the difference between conflict and violence in relationships, how to avoid fake forgiveness, and the challenges of walking the line between autonomy and connection in intimate relationships.

It’s Not What You Do – It’s What You Do Next

You can listen to the full conversation by clicking ‘play’ above, or on the following podcast platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Play
• Stitcher

 

 

The following is a taste of my conversation with CrisMarie and Susan.

Q: You’ve said that the key to a lasting relationship isn’t romance; it’s conflict. Tell us more about that.

Susan: Romance is really just my imagination and it’s not sustainable in and of itself. When my romance clashes with getting into conflict, there’s beauty and depth.

Q: If someone is in a relationship where they often fight, is it not a good thing for them to apologize?

Susan: All too often people say they’re sorry without really owning what they did. There’s still a lot of charge in it. Apology is good only if it comes after a more intimate discussion and really being clear about the wrongs that occurred.

Q: How do you define forgiveness?

CrisMarie: Forgiveness is about me opening my heart, because when I am blaming somebody else, my energy is out there. When I’m making them wrong, my heart is shut down, and then I actually hurt myself in that whole process. When I can open my heart and recognize this is just another human being trying to do the best that they can, my energy comes back.

Q: What’s the difference between anger and violence?

CrisMarie: Anger is a really healthy energy. It’s the rising up in Chinese medicine. It’s wood, it’s growth and it comes when some boundary of mine has been crossed and it’s a healthy response, healthy anger. Violence, by contrast, is the crossing of one’s boundaries without permission.

When asked if there’s one last thing they’d like our listeners to hear, Susan says, “It’s not what you do. It’s what you do next.”

About Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell:

Co-founders of thrive! Inc., CrisMarie Campbell, MBA, an Olympic rower, leadership coach, and speaker, and Susan Clarke, MA, a relationship coach and leadership equus coach, are the authors of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage and The Beauty of Conflict for Couples. They also have a podcast with the same name: The Beauty of Conflict for dealing with conflict at work and at home. As partners in work and life for over two decades, they’ve adapted their proven step-by-step process, honed working with Fortune 100 Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, AT&T and San Francisco Giants, to help long-term couples use conflict as a catalyst to greater intimacy, passion and fulfillment. Their work and expertise have been featured in notable outlets like The Today Show, NBC, and Shape. 

Find Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell on Social Media:
https://www.thriveinc.com/ (Website)
https://www.facebook.com/thriveincmt/ (Facebook)

Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell’s Books:
The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage
The Beauty of Conflict for Couples: Igniting Passion, Intimacy and Connection in your Relationship

Book Mentioned in the Interview:
Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness, by Marlena Fiol, which is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

About Marlena Fiol:
Marlena Fiol, PhD, is a globally recognized author, scholar and speaker. She is a spiritual seeker whose work explores the depths of who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her significant body of publications on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to write about personal transformational change. She is also a certified tai chi instructor and freelance writer whose most recent work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and newsletters.

Find Marlena Fiol on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn

Podcast Transcript:
Below is a complete transcript of the podcast. I used a transcription service to create this, please note that there may be errors. For a 100% accurate quote of what was said, please listen to the podcast itself via the links above.

Interviewer: I’m so pleased to introduce today’s two guests, CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke. They’re co-founders of Thrive Inc., and they’re also coauthors of “The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage,” and their most recent book, “The Beauty of Conflict for Couples: Igniting Passion, Intimacy, and Connection in your Relationship.” They also have a podcast with the same name, “The Beauty of Conflict.”

As partners in work and in life for over two decades, CrisMarie and Susan have adapted their proven step by step process, which they honed while working with numerous Fortune 100 companies to help long-term couples use conflict as a catalyst to greater intimacy and passion. Their work and their expertise have been featured in notable outlets like the “Today Show,” NBC, and Shape.

So the title of this podcast is, “Becoming Who You Truly Are,” and for Susan and CrisMarie, intimate relationships are a path to greater consciousness and transformation, both for the individual and the couple. And I would say intimate relationships are an important path to becoming who we truly are. In this season we’re talking about forgiveness and reconciliation. Over and over and in different ways, my guests on this podcast are addressing the question, what does it really mean to forgive someone? CrisMarie and Susan add a provocative angle to this question and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Susan and CrisMarie, welcome.

CrisMarie: Oh, this is CrisMarie. We’re thrilled to be here.

Susan: Yes, this is Susan. I agree.

Interviewer: So Susan, the underlying premise of your book, “The Beauty of Conflict for Couples,” is that the key to a lasting relationship isn’t romance, it’s conflict. Tell us more about that.

Susan: Well, you know, romance is really just my imagination and in that we each have our own version of it, but it’s not sustainable in and of itself. And as my romance clashes with getting into conflict, there’s beauty, meaning depth. There’s a richness of who we each are and being willing to accept and come to not compromise each other really, but to fully be in together in a way that I think is what makes relationships sustainable. And without that conflict, you would just stay in sort of more a one-dimensional relationship. So that’s sort of one version.

Interviewer: Yeah. So CrisMarie, just to add to that, I think that our listeners may be thinking, “Well, if we fight all the time, we’re probably not meant to be together.” You’re actually saying that it’s a positive sign and that no conflict at all might be a big red flag. Can you talk more about this?

CrisMarie: Absolutely. And just to…we do think romance is definitely the gateway that starts the relationship, but too often, and I was one of these people, I thought, “Hey, unless our relationship is smooth, we’re doomed.” So I kept trying to please Susan or do things right, hoping that I could make it just so we’d have this perfect relationship. And that is crazy-making, really, in the long-term.

And I was terrified of conflict based on what I grew up with. I had an Army Colonel dad, who was kind of a tough guy. And so that was my strategy to please and achieve in order to calm him down. And so when there’s no conflict, it’s really…it takes all the air out of the relationship. And so I had to learn when Susan and I were disagreeing, I would think, “Oh my gosh, we’re over.” And you know, “We’re ruined.” And she’d be like, “No, I want to hear your opinion.” And I’m like, “Really? Even if I totally disagree with you?” And she was, “Yeah.”

And what I’ve found time and time again is we would have our different opinions, but it wasn’t as threatening as when I grew up. And so something new would emerge, a new solution would happen that wasn’t her way or my way. It was a whole new way. And so I definitely think those people that are like me that really want to make everything happy or smooth or right or perfect, you’re cutting off your own life force, and there’s so much more possibility with some conflict in your relationship.

Interviewer: Wow. So on this podcast, we’re talking about forgiveness and around that topic, if someone is in a relationship where they often fight, are you saying it is not a good thing for them to apologize and have great makeup sex? Susan, what’s wrong with this?

Susan: Well, we do have a position around apology that may seem different than others in the sense that all too often people say they’re sorry and without really owning what they just did and saying, “Look, I’m the type of person who does this,” and really diving into that in too often an apology is just, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and without the recognition of the self and the participation they had in it.

And so, yes, an apology can lead to great makeup sex because a lot of times there’s still a lot of charge in it. You actually haven’t, you know, kind of dealt with the charge of that. And so that’s why we think great makeup sex can be great, but only if it comes after a more intimate discussion and really being clear. Don’t just apologize to get it done because then you’re not really looking at, “Oh, for me to be fully in this relationship, I need to say that this is me and not ignore that.”

Interviewer: I think it’s a very important dimension of apology that you’re adding to the conversation here. So thank you. How do you define forgiveness?

CrisMarie: This is CrisMarie. I would say it’s really…we were talking about this in preparation for this podcast this morning and just the different people in my life, and Susan really figured it’s forgiveness. It’s about me opening my heart again because when I am blaming Susan or somebody else, you know, my energy is out there. I’m making them wrong, my heart is shut down, and then I actually hurt myself in that whole process. So when I can open my heart and recognize this is just another human being trying to do the best that they can, my energy comes back, if that makes sense.

Interviewer: Yes, yes. So what I’m hearing is that first we have to understand what was really underneath that action that made the other person hurt or angry, and then true forgiveness is a way to solve the impasse. Am I understanding that correctly?

Susan: Well, I think, you know, this is Susan. I would say, you know, it’s kind of interesting. Forgiveness is, to me, more about me than it is about the other. And so that is that opening of the heart. So I think too often I ask for forgiveness or if that’s what people will do. I’m asking my partner to forgive me. And it’s like, whenever I hear that, I think, you know, you might want to start off by forgiving yourself because 9 times out of 10, the moment that you’re asking somebody else to forgive you, it’s not about them yet. Until you really do that soul searching place of looking in, that’s going to be when it shifts.

And we talk about intimacy in our book about it’s not like intimacy comes from “into me see,” and that is really, in my mind, the direction of both forgiveness and recognizing when I can forgive myself and really own who I am, then my heart is open and then I usually don’t need to forgive the other person because my heart is open and that they know it.

Interviewer: That’s beautiful. One of the other guests on this podcast is Phil Cousineau, and he says, “All forgiveness is really self-forgiveness.” So very much in line with what you just said. CrisMarie, you mentioned that you grew up with an angry colonel father, and like you, I also grew up with a hero doctor, father, who was often angry and also violent. But unlike you, I was very rebellious and I wouldn’t typically say, “I’m sorry to diffuse the tension.” We both stood our ground and the conflicts were quite ugly. My new book, “Love Is Complicated,” traces our journey from anger to reconciliation, but it happened more organically over a long period of time.

And really without any explicit apologies, it came out of a deepening awareness, I think, on both of our parts of how broken and imperfect we both were. So CrisMarie, I know I’m extending your work beyond the context of couples, but what do you believe is the role of apology in healing the wounds of parent-child conflicts?

CrisMarie: That’s a good question. I love that you have had your organic process with your own father and come to some sort of reconciliation. My dad is still alive and still…he’s an alcoholic and angry and I think my family’s denial is quite loud. So it’s really me having to come to this place of, you know, he is actually…and I think he’s even has a narcissistic personality so it’s more, can I see him even…and I’m a part of ACA, Adult Child of Alcoholics, like can I see him as a human being behind the disease of all that occurred?

And that’s really…but it’s work that I have to do. We haven’t reconciled. I love him, I interact with him and I can’t go to the hardware store for bread. Like I can’t get what he is not really capable of giving right now. At a soul level, he is, but at a human on this earth, he is at the limits of what he can do as a father, in my opinion.

Interviewer: I love it that you recognize that at a soul level, he is. That’s beautiful. You make the important distinction in the book, and I would ask CrisMarie again about this between anger and violence. Can you speak to that?

CrisMarie: Yeah. We define…well, anger, we think, is a really healthy energy. It’s the rising up in Chinese medicine. It’s wood, it’s growth and it comes when some boundary of mine has been crossed and it’s a healthy response, healthy anger. And our culture is we repress anger so much that we get sick. All sorts of things happen in our repression of anger.

Violence, however, is the crossing of one’s boundaries without permission. So we do this, we cross somebody’s boundaries like a parent who wants to grab a child who’s in traffic, grabs them. That’s I’m crossing that child’s boundaries but I’m doing it because I’m trying to save them. We do that. But if I yell at Susan and she’s uncomfortable with that, that’s another form of me crossing her boundaries versus saying, I” am so mad. I want two minutes just to vent.”

And when I do it that way, there’s a whole different…she can hear me much more than if I’m just yelling at her or whatever is occurring. And in my childhood, I did not learn and many people don’t the difference between anger and violence. And so whenever…like when Susan got angry because my dad was violent as well, when Susan got angry, I’d be so terrified because it would trigger my trauma versus being able to unVelcro anger from violence. Hopefully that makes sense.

Interviewer: Absolutely it does. Let’s take it even further beyond the world of couples. A number of the guests on this podcast are addressing the issue of forgiveness and healing at a broad societal level, such as forgiveness in the context of racial injustices in our country. So Susan, do you believe it’s also true here that apologies may often hide the real issue, the underlying issue is still there so the cycle of racial or other social injustices continue?

Susan: I do. I actually think that this whole issue, whether it’s around racism or even what’s currently coming up around me to all sorts of things like that are examples. And especially racism, until we get to the point where we can really let people express what they are thinking and feeling, and it’s going to be ugly. It’s not going to be pretty. And that goes on both sides. It’s a long, painful process that we have gone through and actually sometimes, I think, frankly some of the politically correct things we’ve done to make it better have just made it worse because the real conversations haven’t happened. And people just go away and they bury or try to deny how angry they are or upset.

And until that can be voiced in a way and contained in a process that allows people to be angry and allows people to express, I don’t think we’ll clean it up, and just saying you’re sorry doesn’t mean you own up to what are you actually sorry for and what does that look like and talk deeper about the impact that your actions or your current actions are having.

Interviewer: You would absolutely love one of the guests on this podcast, his name is Tom DeWolf, and he’s the executive director of “Coming to the Table.” I’ve got goosebumps right now, they’re having exactly those sorts of conversations around the racial wounds and deep, difficult, long conversations. Exactly what you’re talking about. So, absolutely. I think your next book should be “The Beauty of Conflict for a Healthy Society.”

CrisMarie: Well, we’ve got both ends. This is CrisMarie. We’ve got both ends. We’ve got the societal piece but then we are also looking at the beauty of conflict within, which is about that self-forgiveness. So we could go even bigger universal or inside.

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, this is so close to what Tom talks about. I just have to again say he says all societal, the healing of societal wounds always begins with the individual and the healing within. So he’s collapsing those really.

Susan: Yes, we agree with that. This is Susan. I mean, when I was growing up, I was the only white person in my high school and I went through the period of time when “Roots” was on TV, and every single day I got beaten up and every single day I thought I should be. And I remember in high school thinking, and the way I got through high school at that time was to say, you know, “I get why you’re angry at me and everyone my color and I understand it. And all I can tell you is, this is me, Susan here, and I can’t do it any differently but I can hear you.”
And I think that’s how I got through my days in high school. That’s a whole book in of itself. But then I went on to work in indigenous cultures up in Canada and it was a similar, you know, process of having to really listen to people talk about just the raw pain and aches and even owning my own sense of like, even though, you know, I had nothing to do with this, I did because I can stand here and say the shame and pain that I feel, and I think that’s when healing occurs. And it is, but it occurs, you know, I also needed to say, “And I’m still here, I’m standing here, so you need to see me as the person I am because the story you’re projecting isn’t all of me.” And that was where we finally be able to get a meet but it is. It’s a hard process and I think we have to have the courage to do it and we can’t just keep pretending that we’re doing it.

Interviewer: Yes, yes. And it entails both sides telling our story so that for them to see that you are Susan and you have a story and they have a story, and for us to share our stories become so important. Back to couples. Susan, you are used to vigorous and loud debates in your family. So when you use your outdoor voice, you get passionate about something, CrisMarie may get triggered because it reminds her of her childhood. This is so common. We trigger each other but when we become more aware of what’s really going on, we have more choices about how to respond. So, Susan, what are the choices each of you can make in that particular situation?

Susan: Well, you know, for me as the person who I am, I call it passionate, not loud, but, you know, I realize, I mean one, like, I think CrisMarie was saying earlier, if I can say, you know, “Right now I am just really…I have something that I’m passionate about and I’d like to express it, well, you hear me.” As soon as I give her a choice, that’s a whole different opportunity for her. And even, you know, a lot of times she’ll say to me, you know, “You’re just angry,” and I will have to say, you know, “That doesn’t actually fit for me. I don’t actually know that I’m angry. I do have a lot of, you know, intensity or feeling about this, but I actually, I’m not angry at you.” And so sometimes we do have to have that conversation and not just have it be that, you know, “Okay, I’m angry, therefore I need to be quiet.”

And that is sometimes where we have to really meet each other because she can have…you know, the thing about boundaries, she could have a boundary that says, “Susan, you can’t talk that loud,” but that’s actually not a boundary if it’s something that’s supposed to happen all the time. It’s a wall, it’s actually not something that can shift and change. And boundaries really should be something that’s about self-defining and that she’ll take care of. Yes, it’s great if I pay attention to it, but it’s also important that she’s not just directing at me to take care of her boundary.

CrisMarie: Versus, this is CrisMarie, I’m uncomfortable with what, with loud voices?

Interviewer: No, no, no. Passionate voices.

CrisMarie: Passionate voices. Right. But you see, I’m not saying you can’t talk loudly or passionately. I’m uncomfortable. So I’m owning it as what’s going on for me in there.

Susan: For us, what makes the big differences, for me, this is Susan. When she said to me, “I scare myself,” I was like, “Wow, I had no idea you were scared. I just thought you were making me wrong for being loud.” And so as soon as I understood the impact that it was having on her, I had an innate desire to do it differently, but when I think I’ve just been told I’m wrong, I tend to be more defensive. And so in a couple, sometimes it’s just helpful not to come in with, “You can’t do this,” but to say the impact it’s having, “I’m uncomfortable. I’m scared. I don’t know how to… I feel helpless,” any of those very different than just going after the other person.

Interviewer: Yeah. And it’s so important for each of us to understand what our triggers are. I’m curious, have you used the Enneagram in your work?

CrisMarie: We haven’t because we work still in the corporate arena, we use more the Myers-Briggs. We’re familiar with Enneagram, though, but we use more Myers-Briggs disc or sorts.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. I think the Enneagram perhaps offers more opportunities to grow into the best of who we are, whatever our type is. And I find in that regard that it’s a very useful tool. I would imagine from the brief descriptions that you’ve given in your book that Susan would be a seven and CrisMarie a six on the Enneagram.

Susan: It is funny. This is Susan. We have done this a few times and I have come out very differently each time. But the same thing happens to me in Myers-Briggs. So I think I’m not sure what that’s about because I’ve come out as a strong five, a strong seven. And there was another one too, but anyway, so I do know.

Interviewer: Anyway, yeah, I was curious because certainly in my relationship with my husband of almost 30 years, it’s been transformational for us, the Enneagram, understanding each other’s triggers, understanding the underlying motivations for what we do. So close to some of the things you talk about.

So you write, “With vulnerability and curiosity, you and your partner can get through anything.” That’s a big promise. So let’s unpack that a bit, beginning with vulnerability. I think most of our listeners would agree with you that vulnerability is about the courage to say that one thing that you really don’t want to say, but then I think you put a little bit of a different twist on it. We normally think of vulnerability as divulging something about ourselves that we don’t want others to know, and that’s really hard for many of us. But then you point out the challenging, but I think very important form of vulnerability, which is telling someone what they don’t want to hear about themselves. CrisMarie, can you say more about this and why it’s important?

CrisMarie: Yeah. Okay. Well, and you can tell with my training, I was not good at saying something, a judgment that I have about Susan or somebody else because I was a pleaser. So that was just not in my wheelhouse to be that. Not that I wasn’t thinking it, mind you, because we’re all thinking it. It’s whether you say it or not. But when I have the courage to say, like, let’s say Susan can procrastinate and if I say, “I think your procrastinating is getting in the way of us being successful doing X, Y, and Z,” that’s me owning my judgment and being really frank about what’s going on in the dynamic that, I think, is happening.

Now I have an opportunity to check that out with her. Do you agree or disagree? But if I never say my judgment, then, you know, I’m the closest mirror that Susan has to honest feedback, and I think this is true in couples that…because in organizations, the higher up you get, you don’t get feedback. We don’t give people feedback. And so to actually be able to say my most unattractive judgment and then have a conversation about it, is we think that’s the true intimacy and it takes a lot of vulnerability because she’s gonna probably get reactive and upset and talk in that passionate voice.

Interviewer: Yep. Yeah. We can’t control what the response will be, which puts us in a vulnerable position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So let’s go to curiosity. You suggest that curiosity is the other ingredient that ensures that we can get through anything as a couple, and you write that in the face of conflict we have a choice. We can put up walls and defend ourselves or we can be curious. That’s a tall order when we feel angry and hurt. Susan, can you give us an example of this?

Susan: Well, two things that are important about it. One, you know, anytime that defensiveness comes up, if there is a way to sort of step back and recognize I’m in my defenses, that’s that vulnerability piece. Then I recognize that I have a choice. Like, wait a minute, I’m assuming I’m under attack here. I don’t know that I am or not. And if I can recognize that, then, you know, in a couple, if I can get interested in, “Okay, here’s this person I love and care about and they are saying and doing something I really don’t like or is coming at me way too hard, but I love them. So why is this? Why is this person I care about doing something that is so difficult for me?” And that really helps me engage my curiosity. Why is it so important to them?

And, you know, I can think of a time with CrisMarie and I where you need to know CrisMarie is a workaholic. And we, you know, we went on a vacation, the one vacation we went on, a big yoga retreat. We had just arrived at these beautiful palapas and I was so excited, first vacation ever. And she actually says to me, you know, “I just need you to know I am not happy in this relationship. I’m unsatisfied. I don’t know.” And I remember in that moment just being like, I don’t want to say anything offhand here on your show, but I was like, what? Unbelievably shaken. And I also was kind of like, okay, this is a moment of like truth or what are you gonna do?

And I remember thinking, well, I said to her, I said, you know, “I want to be interested in this and right now it’s really hard for me.” But here’s something. I went to the tools, I said, you know, “What I’m willing to do, because, you know, this is important time for us is I want to hear from you.” And so we use what we call a five by five, which is a way of communicating about something that’s difficult and each person has five minutes. One person talks for five minutes, the other one talks for five minutes, then you dialogue for five.

And I told her, I said, you know, “I don’t know how to handle what you just dropped on me, but what I am willing to do is have a five, five, five each day where we talk about your dissatisfaction, your unhappiness, and we get to a point where, some point in the week, you know, at the end of the week we’ll see how it goes.” And as she ended up requesting a five, five, five in the morning, in the evening, which I thought…and but I said, “Let’s also go back and do what we’re doing with this yoga retreat.”

CrisMarie: It was only 15 minutes so that was a boundary, but she was really wanting to make sure we also enjoyed our vacation and with that space of her being curious and me being able to share what was going on over the course of the week, what started to happen is I really got it wasn’t about Susan, it was about my own lack of initiating things that were important to me. Like I’m an actor and a dancer and I wasn’t doing any of that. And so what started out as a problem about Susan with her being curious, wound up really helping me reframe what I wanted to do in my life.

Interviewer: When you said, at the very beginning of the answering this question, you said, “Well, when you’re in this place of feeling like you’re being attacked, you want to stand back and say, ‘Well, is she really attacking me?'” And my thought was, “No, no, no way. When I’m in that place of anger, I’m not going to question. I know she’s attacking me.” And so I was going to jump right on that and of course then you continued and said, “You have to ask, or I have to ask myself, why is she doing this to me? She loves me. Why is she doing this to me?” And bingo, that was so important at least from my perspective. I can sit in all that anger and I can know that you’re attacking me because I will, in that moment I’ll know who you are, right?

I mean, right and wrong, but I will feel like I know who you are but that question, wow. So you talk about why questions. Let me go there. It’s a technique that you talk about in your book to get to underlying motivations for choices we make to ask the question, “Why is this so important to you?” My husband and I used to use this technique with our organizational clients and found that the question needed to be repeated again and again before we really got to what’s underneath.

So the answer to the first why is this important to you was one level and then asking again why is that important to you and then getting underneath that and then what about that? Why is that important? It’s actually, I’m sure you’re aware of this, but it’s the five whys technique developed back in the ’50s at Toyota. And I’m wondering, so Susan, in your experience, how deeply hidden do our basic motivations tend to be and how many layers of why? Let’s say, when you’re deeply in conflict, how many layers of why does it take to get to what is fundamentally driving the issue?

Susan: Well, you know, I don’t believe there’s like an answer per se to that. I think there is a felt sense, though, of like, okay, I need to keep going. There’s still all this charge in me or the other person is feeling it. We need to go deeper. And I do think it’s like peeling an onion. Like I learned in some work that I used to do, integrated body psychotherapy, this notion of, you know, you touch the trauma and come back. It’s a little of the same way with conflict. Touch the conflict, come back, go into it, know that you can come back to yourself and reconnect. Go into it, come back. And so even with that why question, I don’t think you can just get down to the root. I think you have to kind of go a layer and then, okay, here we are now, let’s see what comes from this. Now let’s go another layer.

And in that, it’s kind of like developing a muscle to be able to tolerate that tension and discomfort and uncertainty that comes as you go through those deeper layers. And that’s actually, I think, what supports people going further and further. And, you know, I don’t think there’s actually an end to that question. I think that’s part, and maybe when you die, but you know, it’s a process that you go through in life. Why is this so important to me right now? And there’s not like one answer. It kind of changes.

Interviewer: Yes. It’s actually very similar to what a lot of my guests say regarding forgiveness, but that’s a process that goes on and on. There’s not necessarily an endpoint.

CrisMarie: We say, “Have I done as much as I can for now or now?”

Susan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have a…well, I was thinking about that, the whole piece about forgiveness. This is Susan. We had an issue early in our relationship that was kind of a really difficult one for CrisMarie, and that happened.

CrisMarie: I think it was more jealous. I was jealous of something.

Susan: It was jealous. And so over time it became the Linda issue. And periodically, when things would get fired up, I’d be like, “Is this the Linda issue?” And she’d be like, “Yes.” And so I knew where I stood. I was like, “Okay, this is…you’re back in it. Like, you know, what do we need to do here? What do you need to say?” Now, eventually, I have forgotten what the Linda piece really was. I don’t even remember what it is now. But we still…I know how it gets stirred up, but that’s one of those examples of, you know, sometimes something comes up and an emotional layer and the forgiveness, it’s like…

CrisMarie: it’s disappeared

Susan: Disappeared, and you need to have that real moment time to, “Okay, it’s here, let’s just deal with this and see if we can move on.” So…

Interviewer: So earlier you talked about the fact that the early romance is really just all in my imagination. So it’s really about our own romantic fantasies about the other rather than a reality about us together. It’s a me thing, not an us thing, I would say. So Susan, can you tell our listeners about one of the me things you held onto regarding CrisMarie’s supposed love of outdoor activities?

Susan: Well, you know, when I met CrisMarie, you know, the thing I knew about her was she was an Olympic athlete, and I had in my head that that means that she is all about, you know, doing physical activities, and I transpose that to being outdoors, being in nature, biking, hiking, skiing. I mean there was a little bit of an athletic edge to it that took me there, but I did expand on it. And interestingly enough, you know, I’ve learned one she is really good at rowing and she actually can do many things rhythmically and in her body, but just raw athletics is not particularly her interest. And I keep trying because I love biking and I still have bikes that I bought for her.

CrisMarie: Four different bikes.

Susan: I maybe have let go of some. And I continue to have a little of that romance. Like now I sorta think if we could get an RV, maybe we can travel, it’s curious enough, but we can talk about it now much differently. But yes, that’s been a big one of my romances and I partially, I’m glad it didn’t die, but I also know it’s mine. It’s not hers. And that’s what makes it more something we can talk about and share.

Interviewer: You’ve worked with so many couples, you would be the ones who would know for sure, but I think this is a pretty universal thing. My husband has bought so many bicycles and golf clubs and I can’t tell you how many other athletic things that end up going to Goodwill. So I think it’s fairly universal.

CrisMarie: Well, it’s certainly, you know, we have this romance, this is CrisMarie, and we think, “Oh, if I just do enough, like if I buy her this or if I take her here or whatever it is, we nudge, we are trying to bring them thinking, of course, I can get them to come over to my romance,” and it just doesn’t work.

Interviewer: Yeah. I’d like to explore the issue of me and us a bit further. One of our listeners sent me a note recently and he asked, “How can I move? I am in this new relationship. I went through a difficult divorce and I’m so excited. This new relationship and my prior relationship was very me oriented and we just went our separate ways.” I want us to become us focused and so how can we get more us focused?

Well, first of all, I don’t really offer advice. I try to help people think about things maybe differently, but I’m not one to give advice, but I think that he touches on something really important, and that is that dance between me and us. And I think we all struggle a bit with it with that dance. My husband and I probably err on the side of us-ness and others may err on the side of being too me oriented. CrisMarie, what can you say about how to manage this balancing act between us and me?

CrisMarie: Yeah, we call it me and we just because it rhymes.

Interviewer: I like it. Okay. Between me and we.

CrisMarie: And really, and this is also something we do in our corporate work. A lot of times teams can operate in there. Each individual is operating in their silos. So they’re being me, they’re focusing on me. And in a couple it’s really, you can be so transactional, like you take care of the kids and I’ve got to go to work and, you know, it becomes very a flat in that regard. But if you can start to do some dreaming and scheming of where do we want to go together, what are our hopes and dreams and do some joint goal setting, that kind of raises the juice of what’s possible with us together.

And that’s often tricky when parents, it’s kind of like we just got to get these kids launched to college or whatever the next step is. But if you can actually have something that’s just about what jazzes us together, what’s the next horizon that we are excited about doing? Whether it’s taking a vacation together or getting healthy together, there’s so many things you can collaborate on as true partners that really help infuse the energy of the relationship. It brings kind of a, I don’t know, a spring to your step like, “Ooh, we get to do this together or, and I’ve got a support system.” This is what we’re creating together. It can really increase your we-ness as opposed to, “I’m on my career, you’re on yours, and we’re managing these kids.”

Interviewer: Yeah. Susan, what about the other side of that? What about the, we’ve got so much we-ness going on that I feel I’ve lost myself.

Susan: Well, I think there is the issue right there. I mean those are the two most challenging things in relationship. We want autonomy and we want connection, and they are always going to be wrestling with each other. And so I think one thing that you really have to be really careful of because I probably often want us to do things together. And what I know is I can overextend that and I need to come back and check in. Am I really taking care of myself here? Is this what I want in the same time?

And having that conversation and checking in with each other, because we both know we can kind of give ourselves away, and that’s not healthy for the relationships. So we, at the expense of me, that’s dangerous. And so we always say, you know, it’s the relationship map, one times one is what equals one, a whole oneness. One times a half equals a half.

CrisMarie: Meaning one whole person times one whole person equals a whole relationship. One whole person times a half of a person equals a half.

Susan: And it gets worse. A half of a person times a half of a person equals a quarter of a relationship. So you know, when I do the math, I really get, I’ve got to let her show up and I need to show up. And the minute there’s any hint, and to me the sign is resentment. A slightest bit of resentment is the sign that I am not fully defining myself and stepping in the way I need to. It’s not about her, it’s about me.

Interviewer: Yeah, I love that. That the signal we look for is resentment. That’s useful for any of us on either side of that but it seems to me that some of us maybe need to keep tabs more on bringing we-ness into the relationship perhaps because of our basic nature or how we grew up. CrisMarie, you talk about being the peacemaker when you were a kid and so perhaps I’m conjecturing here that you have to keep tabs more on the making sure that the me remains healthy in the relationship. So I think maybe it becomes important again for us to understand what our own particular proclivity would be in that situation.

CrisMarie: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. If I know that I tend to not speak up, you know, I’ll tend to go along. I have to really watch what is it that I’m not saying? What am I afraid to say? What am I processing? Oh, I’ll tell somebody else about it, not Susan, then that’s a red flag for me. No, that’s where I have to go.

Interviewer: Yeah. Your book is so optimistic. It’s not until almost the end of the book that you acknowledge that sometimes we can’t work through everything and the relationship probably does need to end. You say enough is enough when staying feels like you’re dying a little inside. But what I thought about when I read that is that can be a slippery boundary when we’re in the midst of conflict with a beloved. Doesn’t it always feel a bit like something’s dying a little inside? So CrisMarie, how does one know when it’s really no longer possible to reconcile differences?

CrisMarie: Yeah. I think the whole, if I continue to, if I am bringing forward, you know, I have a hard time with that. So if I am bringing forward and saying what I want, and I’m still not feeling seen or heard or there’s no real impact over there or the impact doesn’t seem to register repeatedly, that’s when I am thinking we must have different values or want different things because that’s the piece where I think we’re coming to an end.

But we really want to stress there’s lots of differences that can be bridged that people think these are irreconcilable? And we’re like, no, wait a minute. Have you had the conversation and really dug into it? But when you’ve had the conversation, you’ve shown up… And I think a lot of times we think we’re saying what’s true for us to our partner and being curious and vulnerable and we’re really not. Because often when we start to coach people couples, it’s kinda like, well have you…and we’re talking to one person, it’s like, well, have you said something? Have you said this? Well, yeah, well kinda, well, you know, he should probably know it. That’s usually what’s going on. So we haven’t really put our cards on the table in a way that’s really honest and vulnerable and being willing to hear the other side. I think Susan wants to say something.

Interviewer: Yeah, Susan.

Susan: The one thing I would say about that, that really stood out to me over the years with couples is, you know, really it’s not anger or deep hurt that is the reason to separate, I don’t think. I think it’s when you get to indifference and when I have seen people, there’s just…there’s nothing there. You could tell it’s like the person either has full…even contempt is a little bit, there’s some energy and contempt, but it’s still very close to the bottom of that.

But indifference, that’s when it’s like, wow, you’re not even here or there’s so much apathy. And that’s when you have to look at it. Like if you actually have a lot of anger and you’re in that, you probably, there’s stuff you haven’t said. So get in there and say it because why leave until you’ve actually found, had the courage to say your piece and see what happens. So, you know, but indifference is where I start to think, wow, if you’re just feeling indifferent, like we had a couple one woman say to us, you know, “Maybe in another lifetime I’ll have a good relationship.” And it was like, “Wow, okay that’s hinting on something that you are so far down this path. I don’t know that if this is healthy for you to keep trying to get to.”

Interviewer: That is such a great circling back to where we began, which is the very title of your book, and the beauty of that energy and that as long as that energy is there, then curiosity and vulnerability will help us get through. Yeah. So for either of you or maybe each of you would like to respond to this, if there were one last thing you’d like our listeners to hear, what would that be?

CrisMarie: This is CrisMarie. And I guess I want people to know there’s probably a lot more you can do, a lot more of that of you that can show up in the relationship then you probably have given yourself space to do because we get in these habits and think, oh, this is, you know, I’m going to get rejected. And developing that capacity to tolerate somebody, my partner having a reaction and know that I’m still going to be okay is a powerful tool for you to show up fully in the relationship. That’s mine.

Susan: I’ll add, this is Susan. I have a quote that I use in my life all the time, which helps me, which is, “It’s not what you do. It’s what you do next.” And for me in relationship that has been vital to staying in. To allow myself the permission to make a mistake. That’s not the problem. It’s what I do in the moment that I realize that so it’s what I do next that counts and that would be what I want people to remember.

Interviewer: This has been such a great conversation. Susan and CrisMarie, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

CrisMarie: Oh, it’s delightful. You’ve been delightful. Thank you.

Susan: Thank you.

Interviewer: I’ve been speaking with CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clark, whose latest book is the beauty of conflicts for couples. You’ll find details on the show notes about how to contact them and how to purchase both their book and my new book “Nothing Bad Between Us.” I’ll also post a link to my website.

And thank you, our listeners, for joining us today, if you know people who would be interested in this podcast, please do share it with them and if you liked it, take a moment to rate and review us on iTunes or your favorite podcasting network. Instructions on the show notes. Make rating and reviewing easy. And remember, we are together on this journey.