00:00 

Well, hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 218, "Honest Relationships." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello there, my friends, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I love that we get this time together to talk about things that really matter and to make a difference in our lives, a positive difference where we really start creating the kinds of life and relationships that we really want. Because isn't life really about the relationships that we have, the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with God, the relationship we have with others, that really determines the quality of our lives and when we up the quality of our relationships, the quality of our life goes up as well. So I have a great, great podcast for you today. I'm really excited to talk to you about this concept. 

01:03 

But before, I'm just going to share with you a fun little tidbit. So many of you know that the end of June, I moved to Indiana from my home in Utah. And moving into this home, I left all my furniture and stuff in Utah. I'm looking at, like, doing an Airbnb with my house there. So I've still got all the furniture there so I didn't bring anything. Well, my office here doesn't have anything in it. And I have a card table or a plastic table right now that I'm working on. And so my office is so echoey that I can't record in there because the sound quality is so bad. So for the last like five episodes, five or six episodes, I've been coming and sitting here in my clothes closet in my bedroom where there's a lot more clothing and stuff to absorb the sound so it's not so echoey. And it just cracks me up that I'm sitting here and just looking at all the clothes. And anyway, just kind of a fun little tidbit that I knew you could not live without that information, for sure. 

02:05 

Alright here we go today we are talking about honest relationships. Now this is a concept I will tell you that is new to me from my divorce. But now, in my current marriage, I don't think I could live without this and it's about being really honest in your relationships. Now I will tell you that being honest is not new for me; that has been a core value that I have believed in my whole life. However, I didn't see it the way that I see it now. There are things that I see now. In fact, I'll even tell you that in my previous marriage I took a very self-righteous road when it came to honesty, meaning that if I ever saw anything that he did that I considered less than honest I was sure to one-up my husband in my mind and put myself up as the pinnacle of an example of honesty. But in the last two years, I realized that there are a lot of ways that I really was not being honest. Now, I wasn't lying about what I was doing, or the money I was spending, or covering up my behaviors in any way, but I was hiding and lying about my true self. I was showing up in a falsified version of me. And by shrouding myself in self righteousness, I was unwilling to open up and share what I considered my own flaws and weaknesses. 

03:38 

And this is a continuation of the concepts that I have taught in the last two podcasts, "Being Seen and Being Heard," and the "One-up and One-down Relationships." So if you haven't checked those out, this would be great to listen to those in combination with this one. But let me show you how this played out. I was caught up in this idea of being the perfect wife because I believed that he wouldn't really love me unless I was perfect. So at this point in where I am with my progression and with all these tools that I now have at my disposal, it's easy to see that this was a "me" problem and not a "he" problem. But at the time, I didn't even see this. This wasn't even on my radar. My family of origin was not one where we shared emotions. And so this wasn't even on my radar of something that I needed to do. 

04:37 

Now, I will be honest, I displayed a lot of flaws in the 24 years of my marriage, but there were a lot of very important things that I didn't open up about. I didn't want him to see my judgmental thoughts about people. I didn't let him see that I struggled with certain things. I didn't usually let on when I felt we were not the perfect family, or insecure, or not up to the task for some reason. I didn't let him see that sometimes I'm petty and ridiculous. The truth is I wasn't being honest with him about who I was. And let's be honest, I wasn't even being honest with myself about who I was. I was hiding my weaknesses, my frailties, my insecurities from both me and him. I wanted to always seem strong and capable. I lived with  the mantra then that "I should always be happy." I really, really thought that that's how I should be, right? And I wanted to show him someone who could handle all of the tough stuff with some extra tough stuff thrown in there for good measure. And part of this process for me was learning to turn down the volume on my more challenging emotions. 

05:56 

I got pretty darn good at squelching my anger, at letting things roll off my back, but not in a good and healthy way. I got really good at pretending to him and to me that things he said didn't hurt. I managed the house in a way that I didn't have to deal with the frustration of not being able to find things, or the frustration of a husband who was not happy with things not being clean. I worked out at five in the morning so I didn't have to deal with the "guilt" of getting a babysitter while I worked out later in the day, which by the way, I now see that guilt is not the issue here. It was my thoughts that I was doing something wrong, which I wouldn't have been. I just turned down the volume on my difficult emotions until I couldn't hear them anymore. And I protected myself, thinking that if I was perceived as perfect enough, that I would be lovable. 

06:52 

So here's some things that I've learned in the years since my divorce. First and foremost, I was always lovable. Just because someone else chooses not to love or is actually incapable of love, it is not a reflection on me at all. That's their thing to work through, not mine. Their inability to love has nothing to do with me. But I had this idea that maybe our marriage could be better if I was good enough, if I was perfect enough, if I was low maintenance enough, if the house was organized enough, clean enough, if the kids were well behaved enough. So I turned down the tough stuff and shut off the vulnerability. Well, actually, I don't even think that's a fair phrase. I don't think I shut off the vulnerability. I just think I never ever turned it on before in my life. And if it had been turned on in certain relationships, it was at a drizzle, a dribble. Maybe that'd be a better word, right? It was just teeny tiny. I never really had stepped into vulnerability in my life before at all. So I didn't just shut off the vulnerability. I never really even turned it on. I didn't tap into letting myself or him see the real me. 

08:10 

So vulnerability is an interesting thing. When you haven't been vulnerable about something with someone, it feels like it's going to kill you when you contemplate going there. But the thing we want most in our relationship, the intimacy, the knowing and being known, created by both the emotional and the physical connection cannot happen without vulnerability. Vulnerability is the key to being seen and heard. It is the key to being known. And this has to start with me being vulnerable, with me being honest with me, me being willing to really see and acknowledge what is going on inside of me, to stop pretending that it's fine, that I'm fine, that everything is fine, and start working through my thoughts and emotions, to come to understand and accept me for being human, for having petty thoughts, for being judgmental. I have to be willing and open to seeing myself honestly and stop lying to myself about who I really am. When I get to the point that I can accept me and love me, not just in spite of my flaws, but because of my flaws, and because of my strengths, then I know I'm getting somewhere. Then I know that regardless of what happens, I will have my own back, and when I have my own back, I'm much more willing to be vulnerable with someone else because I know that if they don't accept my vulnerability, I do, and I'm good. 

09:55 

Now none of this means that I won't choose to make adjustments and continue to strive to become my best next version of myself, but it does mean that I need to come to terms with who I really am. I need to accept me underneath all of the masks and the lies and the delusions about who I try to portray myself as. And then it's vital to a relationship for me to start showing up as this real person. Because if the person I am choosing to be with doesn't really know the real me, how can he love the real me? If all I put out into the relationship is a fake version of me, all he can learn to love is the fake version, and then it's no wonder I'm scared and afraid to let the real me show. Because maybe he won't love the real me like he loves the fake me. And then we wonder why our relationships feel shallow and unfulfilling, because we are not showing up as us. We're not being honest about who we are, about our thoughts and our dreams and our desires. 

11:08 

It reminds me of the woman I read about who faked her orgasms for her entire marriage so that her husband thought that everything was going really great in that area. Meanwhile, she continued to grow in frustration and resentment toward him, get this, or something she was doing. How in the world could he show up differently and create something different if he doesn't know the truth? This was a lie that probably started off by not wanting to hurt her husband's feelings but quickly turned into behavior that was incredibly harmful to the relationship as the years went on and it became harder and harder to tell the truth as the years went by because she got deeper and deeper and deeper in that lie. These little lies that we tell  ourselves can feel like they're going to be so productive. We tell ourselves that they're going to help us get what we want It's reducing the contention in the marriage. We tell ourselves that we're protecting the other person, but what we're really doing is protecting our own insecurities. These lies feel protective because if the person I love rejects the real me, then where am I? What if I show him my true self, my insecure, petty, judgmental self, and he can't love me anymore? 

12:40 

First, if he doesn't love me for showing that stuff, for being that person, guess what? He's not my person. Now that only took me a 24 year marriage that ended in divorce and five years of focused learning and coaching to learn that lesson. He's not my person. But second, there's a severe lack of trust in the person I am claiming to love when I don't believe they will still love me when they see the true me. That trust issue will need to be addressed for the relationship to progress. But we're going to have to cover that in a whole other podcast. Okay, but a big part of this problem is that this lie of not showing our true selves becomes not just a protection, but over time it becomes a fortress, a place that we can't imagine living without. It becomes our identity. It's a fortress that we use to run our lives and to manipulate other people. And yep, I did just say it's a way to manipulate other people. Not showing up as us, only a pretend version of us, is manipulating the other person into loving someone that we are not. And it's lying about who we are, to them and to us. And the walls of the fortress are our justifications for not being honest. We justify by telling ourselves that we are protecting them from the truth, that maybe they couldn't handle the truth of the real us. And here's what I want you to understand so clearly: a relationship built on lies, on a fake you, a pretend, you will never be strong enough to weather the storms. It will always break down. It will never create the intimacy that solidifies a relationship. 

14:33 

Here's something really amazing in my own life. Last week, I fessed up and shared something with my husband that is pretty petty. Now, this self-righteous piece of me is not all gone. I will say that, and I like to think that I'm above being petty. Right? Especially with all the coaching tools that I have, I like to think that I can manage that. But come on, I'm a human, right? And I had something come up and I was being pretty petty about it and I was totally embarrassed that I was having these 

thoughts. But I told my husband about it and, kind of embarrassed to tell him that "you know what, listen, I'm having these thoughts," and it wasn't about him. It was about somebody else. But a conversation ensued about exactly what we're talking about today: the importance of showing up as the real us, being vulnerable enough to share parts of ourselves that we might be embarrassed exist. And I said something about being so grateful that he loved me even with these parts and he so kindly responded that he actually loved me more for being willing to step into vulnerability and show him those sticky parts. This is what vulnerability and being completely honest can bring into any relationship. We can't fully love someone we don't fully know. We can have a genuine love, we can have a kind love, but we cannot have a deep, Intimate connection with someone we don't really know, and know well and know honestly. 

16:13 

I love how this works because this conversation has actually come up many times in with coaching clients this week and so with permission, I'm going to very generically share with you two of these conversations that I've had with clients this week. So the first person is a strong LDS member and she really wants to have a relationship built on spiritual and church principles. She's an older single woman not super old like 30s, but older not in her 20s, right? She's never been married, and now she's dating a really, really amazing and wonderful man who happens to no longer adhere to the principles that he taught as a missionary. They are at a point in their relationship that they both love each other. They've declared that love and they're starting to talk long-term plans and they are both seeing a future with the other person in it. So through a series of spiritual experiences that she has had this last week, this woman realized that the spiritual connection she's always dreamed of, the temple marriage and the spiritual discussions, and the prayers and the sitting by your husband at church every week, very well may not be in her future with this relationship. And of course she knew this when she started dating him. We had discussions about it then. But the full realization of what that really meant really hit her this last week and it was a really difficult, deep and difficult realization for her. 

17:45 

And as we discussed the situation, we talked about how important it is for her to have an honest discussion with him about her thoughts and feelings. To let him know what this means to her. Not to get him to change his mind and to change his feelings or his behaviors. That's not the point at all. The point is vulnerability. The point is being seen. She wants to do this because the vulnerability will do more to solidify their relationship. Or not. When she shows up with vulnerability and explains very clearly that she's not breaking up with him, that this has nothing to do with him, right? But that she wants him to know of her struggle, that this has everything to do with her. That it's her struggle, it's hers to work through. He just gets to show up as him. But when she shows up vulnerable and shares those things, she lays the foundation of the possibility of a deeper connection. The struggle is entirely hers. This is her place of growth to move into. But how he responds to her struggle is a very important data collection point for her at this stage. 

19:04 

If he freaks out, makes it about him and tells her that he can't believe she doesn't accept him as he is, guess what? That's data. If he freaks out and promises to change his ways to keep her, guess what? That's data. If he makes a safe place for her struggle, if he listens to her concerns, if he opens up with his own vulnerability and is willing to have an open and honest conversation without blame and accusation, guess what? That's data. These two people can use her struggle, this experience, to create greater intimacy by being willing to be known and being willing to know the other person as well. Or they can both hide their fears and their insecurities. They can pretend like this isn't such a big deal, and they can continue to build a relationship that is faulty and weak. It's like two people showing up pretending that they're characters in a play. How in the world is that going to work? We cannot build intimate relationships based on pretending. It's all or nothing here. All you, all in, or it's never going to work at the depth you desire. 

20:23 

So the second example is someone that I'm working with who is recently divorced. And her husband never quite felt like he could connect with her, and eventually he strayed, he left the marriage and is now with that someone else. So our discussion focused on the same topic. She began to realize that the reason he couldn't really connect with her is that she never showed up in the relationship. There was a pretend version of her that showed up really well, pretending to be the perfect wife, not showing her flaws and weaknesses, not being honest about the real her, not letting him see her in her struggles. And this was a huge aha for her about the role that she played in the downfall of her marriage. And now she can be aware that when another relationship is in her path, that being honest, showing up as the real her, is something that has to happen if she wants to create the kind of relationship she really wants, that she really wanted in the past, but didn't know how to show up for. She didn't realize that she was creating a space where connection could not occur. And I know that this was a huge aha for me when I started working to figure all of this out. When I made this connection, it started to change everything about how I approached dating, and it absolutely paid a big, big part in creating the relationship I have now with my husband. This type of honesty is one of the core pillars in our marriage, something that has to be there for us. We cannot intimately connect with a character. We can have some fun, we can enjoy some conversations, we can be physically attracted, but we cannot connect at a level necessary to sustain a deep, emotionally intimate relationship unless we are showing up honestly as us. 

22:30 

So here's what I'd love for each of us to do this week. One, check your relationship or your relationships if you want to look at relationships with your children or whatever. Check yourself. Where are you not showing up as you? Where are you pretending? And then I want you to have an honest dialogue with yourself. Stop pretending with yourself. Stop pretending in your relationship, if you're in one. Ask yourself the question, "where am I holding back? Where am I pretending rather than showing up honestly"? And then...what is something you can share that will require some vulnerability? And how can you courage up to share it? What's it gonna take for you? I will say that at first these types of conversations and this level of vulnerability was not just scary, but terrifying for me. Like to the point of tears when I started to think about it. It took a lot of courage for me to step into sharing experiences and thoughts I would have never shared before. And sweet Mr. First 90 Days, he took the brunt of a lot of this and I'm so grateful to him for creating a space where I could start learning how to do this. It took a lot of courage for me to step into sharing experiences and thoughts that I would have never shared before in my marriage. But after getting some practice under my belt with the three 90 Days, and then now with my marriage, now I can't imagine not having these conversations. And though they can sometimes be laced with a little bit of discomfort, like sharing with him the pettiness that I had this last week, I was a little mortified to share that and to say, "oh look how silly I'm being. This is ridiculous, right?" It can be laced with discomfort, but also knowing that the only way to create the relationship I want is to go there. It helps me to courage up because I want that deep intimate relationship with him more than I want to be comfortable. But the amazing thing is this, the more I practice stepping into the discomfort of vulnerability, the more comfortable it becomes. Vulnerability creates the intimacy. 

25:15 

Courage up my friends, you've got this. If this is something that you have struggled with, let's do this, right? Like one little step. And if this is a piece that you're just like, "I just don't even know. This is beyond my ability to manage on my own."This is what I'm here for. I've got you. Okay, set up your call. Let's talk and let's work together and get you in a good, solid place: a place where you can start showing up the way that you really want to. You can start creating the depth of relationship that you really want and desire. This is a piece of growing up that is so amazing, this understanding of what it takes to create what we've never been able to create before. And I love this middle-aged growing up piece...like, growing up into these awarenesses of things that we just did not even know before now. It's at our disposal. 

26:20 

Okay, so you can go to tanyahale.com, you can set up that free consult. Let's talk. My business is doing great, by the way, and I am pretty darn close to having a full full schedule of clients, so I don't have a lot and pretty soon I will have to start putting people on a waiting list...which is kind of exciting and kind of amazing? But that's where we are. So if you want to get in, now is a great time to fill up those last few slots that I've got available. And my friends, if this is helping you, if you're having ahas, if you're thinking in your head "Oh my gosh, I didn't know this. Now I know this," if this iscChanging the way that you're viewing life, there are people in your life who need this information as well. Please share it. Let's make the world a better place. Let's do this. Let's have these relationships that we want. Let's step into this intimacy that is so beautiful and so fulfilling. And honestly, the intimacy that I believe is meant when God commands us to become one. That's what we're talking about here. It's amazing. You can do it, and if you need my help, I'm here for you. I've got you, my friend. Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. I hope that this was a great great podcast for you and some great information that's going to help you move forward, progress, and go in the direction that you want to this is brilliant stuff. I love it. I'm so grateful to be a part of your life with this. Thank you for sharing this time with me and thank you for just for being here. I love it. Okay. Have an awesome awesome week and I will see you next time. Bye. 

28:19 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend And position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.