00:00 

Well, hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 220, "Being Low Maintenance." 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. 

00:21 

Well, hello there, my friends. Thank you for joining me today. Super happy to have you. Happy to share some thoughts with you that I've been having this last week. And we're just going to jump right in. Today's podcast is entitled "Being Low Maintenance." And I always thought that being a low maintenance person was a badge of honor. Like it was the way that we wanted to be and how we wanted to be. And I still think that there's some real value in that. However, my definition of "low maintenance" has changed significantly over the last several years. And that's what I want to talk about today. 

01:05 

So first of all, low maintenance...this idea that things don't take a lot of work to keep them running well. I really, really appreciate low maintenance things in my life. I love a good car that I can get regular oil change on, some regular maintenance, and I don't have to think about it hardly at all in between. I love hair and makeup that I can do in the morning and not think about them for the rest of the day. Or maybe even someday I'll decide I don't want to really want to wear makeup anymore. And I'll get an even more simple hairstyle or maybe not, because I really like them. I think it's fun. I love flower beds that don't require that I'm weeding all summer long. I love friendships that are easy to understand and engage in, where there's not a lot of drama and gossip, but a sharing of deep ideas and we can go months or even years without seeing each other and pick up where we left off. I love clothing that I can wash and I do not have to iron it. So I've also always had this idea that I needed to be low maintenance in my relationship, like the big relationship in my life and probably all other relationships as well. 

02:21 

So I'm going to talk specifically a lot about my past marriage relationship today in the context of my thoughts of what being low maintenance was and how harmful that was. But I think that this is going to apply to any relationship even beyond marriage. I think we oftentimes do think it's that badge of honor to be low maintenance and because of that we don't stand up and be seen, we don't speak up and be heard. So to me, in my past marriage this meant that I was always easy to get along with, that I didn't have a lot of wants and needs, that I didn't ask for much, that I engaged in activities that my spouse wanted to, and let a lot of my desired activities fall by the wayside. I didn't turn every raised eyebrow into a discussion. I compromised what I wanted a lot. I worked my schedule around him and his work and his play schedule. I took care of almost all the cooking and cleaning so that he would not have those types of responsibilities when he came home from work. I didn't complain about moving every few years with the military. You're getting the idea of this, right? There was this space of putting myself on the back burner. 

03:48 

Now I am absolutely not saying that I always did these things and I'm sure that if my ex-husband ever listened to this he would roll his eyes and think, "no, I was the one doing all of that," which he probably was, right? I think we were both doing stuff and not being seen and not being heard. But from my perspective, I saw myself doing a lot of these types of things, trying to be low maintenance. I had this idea that to be loved by him and to make a marriage work that I needed to have as few needs and wants as possible and that I needed to fulfill as many of his needs and wants as I could. I saw this really as my job and not his. I didn't see it as like, "yeah, it's okay for me to fulfill as many of his needs and wants as I can," but I didn't see it as an equal thing, like he should be doing the same thing for me. So many problems with this line of thinking show up. The biggest being that I did not see myself really as an equal in that marriage. There was a lot of both one-up and one-down thinking in all of what was going on for me. 

05:10 

So I want to say that the service piece that we hear so much about when people "ask how to strengthen your relationship, how do you fix what's wrong," blah blah blah. And people will just say, "well you just go into service. You do service." Well okay, that's amazing. When it's coming from a place of equal partnership and a place of love. Alright, if we're doing it out of fear, if we're doing it out of obligation, mm mm girlfriend, that is not going to work. We have to move into this place of love. We're going to talk about that a little bit more later on. But here we go, somewhere along the way. In my past marriage, I moved myself into a one-down position in all of the serving. And I did it out of fear of not being loved or fear of ending up in a divorce. Or I did it from a one-up position where it became a self righteous stance of being the one willing to serve. 

06:08 

Okay, I'm being a little bit vulnerable here in showing y'all how unkind I kind of was sometimes. It's hard for me to look back and think of the one-upping that I did and the one-downing that I did. But I share this with you because I want you to be able to see this if it's happening in your relationship. I want you to be able to see clear examples because I created a mess. And I was, you know, if we can resolve this and not do it in our relationships, it's worth it. Here's the thing: I thought it was my obligation as a wife to do all of these things. Now "obligation" is a word that I just don't like used in almost any sense. But I did, I felt it was an obligation. And I thought being this definition of "low maintenance" was the key to having a good relationship...not being seen, not being heard, not having wants and needs. 

07:16 

Oh, right, to go back and have a sweet discussion with my 23 year old newlywed self. Oh boy, I would tell her some things. There are some really great things about what I used to think and we'll chat about those. But there are also some really messed up things about what I used to think. I was not on point when I thought that if I was low maintenance in these ways that our relationship would be successful. Because here's the deal, being low maintenance back then meant that I ignored my own wants and needs much of the time. It meant that frequently I didn't speak up and ask for what I wanted. It meant that I often put myself in a one-down position and treated what was going on in his calendar as more important than what I wanted to have in mine. It meant that I put myself in a one-up position by thinking I was better than him. I thought that this type of low maintenance, having very few strong opinions, often putting him first, keeping myself on the back burner, was not only what was desired, but what was required. And though they were pseudo low maintenance up front, the end result long term was a very high maintenance relationship. Now it might seem like it's doing something productive and will create what we want, but ultimately it does more harm than good. It's that "easy hard hard easy" principle that I've talked about in the past. It might be easy up front, but it always makes it harder later on. And most often if it's harder up front, it's going to be easier later on. 

08:57 

So at this point, I do want to pull out a few things. I was not all evil. I love that my desire really was to serve and to be loving and kind. I just was confused on what that really meant in cleaning up what was behind it. I love that I didn't engage in a lot of drama or gossip. I love that I was doing everything I knew at the time to make our marriage work. I love that I didn't give up easily. I was married 24 years. I love that I worked hard to have a good relationship with my in-laws. I love that there were times that I stood up fiercely for what I wanted. But the biggest underlying error in my thinking back then was that being that type of low maintenance was not only desired by him, but it was also the path to a happy marriage. Because no contention means a happy marriage, right? So if you go back to episode, I don't even remember, one of the first ones...three, I think it's on conflict, resolving conflict. And I talk about contention. We can have a conflict, meaning different ideas about things, without going into contention. And this is kind of the space that I want to move into now as we move on in this podcast, about what it really does mean to be low maintenance. I thought that no contention meant a happy marriage or no conflict, right? But what I wasn't accounting for was the slow buildup of resentment over the years that is an inevitable result of not speaking up, of not being seen, of not considering my wants and needs on a regular basis. And there is no happiness with that much resentment in a heart. 

10:51 

Now, lest you think my ex-husband was a monster, he was not. He was, I'm absolutely sure, doing the best that he could as well. And he grew up in a home where what I described, that kind of attitude, seemed to me to be the example that he saw in his parents' marriage. So it's expected that this was the pattern that he would consider normal for his own marriage and 

not really expect me to speak up. And since it was very much a part of our society and culture at the time, it's also what I considered normal. Which, as I look back, is really fascinating to me because my mother and father had a very progressive relationship for the time. For the 70s and 80s, my father and I were very close. My dad was very engaged and I look at them as being, in many ways, really good equal partners. My mother was great at asking for what she wanted and my parents were both great at having what seemed to me to be a pretty equal partnership. But society and culture were still very strong in my life and my parents were pretty private about any disagreements that they had and I was heavily influenced by very traditional marital roles. 

12:06 

And even though I really did want to have a successful marriage, I believe I was misguided in what that meant. I thought that it meant no contention. I thought it meant we thought and believed the same way. I thought it meant a lot of compromise, especially on my part because I was the woman, right? I thought at some level that it meant giving up "me" for the sake of the relationship. Being low maintenance meant that my spouse shouldn't need to worry about my wants and needs, that his life ran pretty smoothly because I took care of so many of the things, that his needs were met a lot of the time and that I made sure he was happy. 

12:52 

So then after about 20 years, enter counseling and then about four years later, enter a divorce and then a lot of personal work and coaching and learning for the last seven years. So I still want to be low maintenance. I just I love the idea of things not being highly dramatic, right? That to me is very appealing. It may not be for you. I don't know. But I just like the energy saving concept, the efficiency, behind it. I love that kind of stuff. But at this point I have completely changed my definition of being low maintenance. Now I believe that low maintenance means that I stop trying to control all the things and I learn to control me. So I'm taking my sphere of control from really big down to small. Just me. I stop focusing on trying to control other people's behaviors and I work to control my own. And when I'm managing my mind, when I'm actively working to become my next best version, life becomes much more simple and easy for me to manage. And my relationships really do become more low maintenance. 

14:12 

These days, low maintenance means that I do bring up things that I feel need to be addressed. Absolutely. But I also do them in a very intentional way, in a way that doesn't point fingers of blame as I used to do in the past, but that rather addresses my own thoughts and feelings about it. We've talked about this "owning your own" example of bringing up discussions... "when___, I feel ____ because I'm thinking _____." Okay? Owning our own, owning my own feelings owning my own thoughts. Not blaming him for what he's doing. He may be doing a behavior, but how I think about it creates how I feel about it. So owning that up. Tough things are being talked about. But they're being done in a way that makes it easier for neither one of us to get defensive. And this feels so much more low maintenance to me because it's not that high energy buzz that seems to spin out of control sometimes. Now for sure this kind of discussion takes practice and sometimes I still get a little bit nervous talking about some things. I'm afraid to bring it up. But the more I do it, the easier it is becoming and then guess what? Then it's even more low maintenance because it becomes easier to do 

15:41 

So before, I would do all the things and then be resentful that I wasn't getting the help that I wanted. So here's what I can identify as thoughts behind what was going on for me back then. Four things. One: I sort of thought it was my job to do all the things. So I did them with a lot of resentment. Two: it allowed me to move into the self-righteous space of one-upping myself. Three: it was a really passive aggressive way of pushing him out of the equation, of shoring up my own control 

issues and making him feel less significant in the marriage and in the family, and that breaks my heart. I'm sorry that I did that. And four: there was so much fear that if I didn't do all the things, that we would get divorced. Ugh, just kills me when I do that. I start stepping into honesty and putting it all out there, like this, and I realize how hurtful I was, and how off-base I 

was. I was not anything near the kind, loving person that honestly I thought I was being at the time. I thought I was being really righteous and really good. And I look back now and I just cringe. 

17:04 

But I want to say that I also know that I'm not alone in some of these intentions behind what I was doing. Because I work with clients every week where we are identifying these types of behavioral patterns and thinking. And I love that I'm not alone. I get to help clients see these things that they're not seeing and help them move into healthier patterns of behavior and more intimate relationships. It's so fun for me. Yes, I do a lot of coaching for people who have recently gotten divorced, but I also do a lot of coaching for people who are contemplating divorce. And I help them move into a space where they're really happy with how they're showing up and making a decision from that place. Like, I'm cleaning up all this kind of crap that I'm talking about and then what happens to the relationship and then what. So anyway, so now low maintenance in this scenario means that I clean up my reasons for doing all those things if I still choose to do them. Whatever I do, I work really hard not to do it out of obligation, that horrible word, but I choose to do it because I want to. Either because I really want it done for my own peace of mind, because that's how I like it done, or I'm doing it out of love for my husband and our relationship because I know that it would be nice for him and I know that he would appreciate it and it would help. 

18:39 

And so in working to be really aware of my reasons for engaging, I don't have to bring anger or frustration or resentment into the equation at all. You know, if I really, really like a clean kitchen, which I do, and dishes get left out, which he does not do, but sometimes that happens when other people come over, I can decide to do it because I'm a martyr and put those dishes away, or I can just say, "oh, there's a dish out and I really like the kitchen clean, so I'm going to put the dishes away." I don't have to make it mean anything. I don't have to start counting the number of times that I unload the dishwasher and he doesn't, right? I don't have to do that because I'm doing it because I like it that way. I'm not making it mean anything else except that that's how I like it, right? I am working really, really hard at this stage to be aware of my tendencies to move into self-righteous reasons and passive-aggressive behaviors. 

19:50 

So, cleaning all of this up is also an amazing way to become more low maintenance. I've learned that I can have tough, honest discussions and still be low maintenance. It's all in the way that the discussion is discussed. I can and need to be asking for what I want, but I also don't hang everything on him dropping everything and acquiescing to my needs. I get to recognize that he's an adult. He gets to make all of his own decisions. And sometimes doing what I have requested does not fit in with what he's got going on. So when the answer is "no," I'm getting really good at realizing that, "oh, I get to do some work on my own mind about his 'no.'" It doesn't mean that he doesn't love me or he doesn't care about me or he doesn't want me to be happy. It's just sometimes the answer is "no" and that's okay. If I'm struggling, I can turn inward and do the thought work necessary to figure out why I'm struggling. And finding that thought always provides so much clarity for me and it keeps me from pointing fingers and blaming him for my struggle. 

21:06 

So let me just kind of explain that a little bit more. If I'm struggling, I might say that the feeling that I'm feeling is inadequate or insecure, then I would say, okay, what thought am I having in this circumstance that causes me to feel insecure, that causes me to feel inadequate? And I may come to the thought that, "well, I feel like I think that he must not love me." And then I can say, "is that true?" And I'm like, "no, that's not true. That's a ridiculous thought." But just because our brain thinks it doesn't mean it's true, right? We have to learn to question all that crap. Because a lot of times it's not true. But this is where, for me, the low maintenance comes in. I'm not creating unnecessary drama in my relationship because I'm trying my best to take responsibility for what's mine. My thoughts, my feelings, my behaviors: all my responsibility. My wants, my needs, my desires, my dreams: all my responsibility. And if I try to solve for my discomfort in any of these areas, by getting my spouse to change, or to do things differently, then things move into high maintenance because I don't have any control over his behaviors at all and yet I'm thinking that he has to change his behavior for me to feel better. 

22:34 

And this is something that we often do. We feel uncomfortable with something and we blame it on our spouse or on another person. We somehow think that if they changed we would feel better so we try to get them to change. Well, of course we do. That's the easiest way our primitive brain can think of to feel better, is to get somebody else to change. So we will blame them, we will accuse them, we will try to fix them, but this is the deal: it's not their job to change to make us feel better. It's our job to manage our thoughts if we want to feel better. So now low maintenance means that I'm asking for what I want and need and I know that when he can't step into that it has nothing to do with my worthiness or his love for me. 

23:20 

Now, low maintenance means that I have my own activities that I love and he gets to have the activities he loves, and sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don't, and that's okay. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with our relationship or our love and our commitment to each other. It also means that us not being all the same, having the same political or religious views, or wanting to spend our free time in the same way, doesn't mean that there's a problem. That, my friends, is the harmony in marriage. Harmony is defined as "the pleasing arrangement of different parts." Isn't that beautiful? I don't even remember where I came across that, in some podcast I was listening to this last week and they talked about harmony and they're like, "it's two different parts, but they go so well together" and I just thought, "oh, I love that." Low maintenance means that I don't compromise the things I really want or expect him to compromise what he wants either. We just both find a way to get what we want. We don't have to have a fight or even a tough discussion about it. It just means that we work together to find the best solution because we both want what is best for the relationship and for each other. Low maintenance means that I clean up my reasons for why I do things, whether it be around the house or for him or whatever, and I not make it mean anything if I'm doing what I would deem more or less than him. If he leaves something out and it bothers me to have it out, I can put it away without creating a big issue out of it or I can leave it where it is, not make it mean anything except that it didn't get put away and ask for him to ask for it to be put away later. 

25:05 

I don't have to be high maintenance. I can manage my mind and create the low maintenance life that I still really desire for me, but I can do it with healthier tools. I still really, really value more of a low maintenance lifestyle. I just have the tools now to create something that really is low maintenance, because the long term results are still low maintenance. I love growing up. Serious. And I don't just mean I'm getting older, because that's just going to happen. I love the emotional maturity that is coming with my growing up and the seeing things that I've never seen before and the being able to step into behaviors that are healthy and just create so much more peace in my life. I love this piece of low maintenance. Okay, my friends, good stuff, right? Look at yourself. See your patterns of behavior. See what's going on. And let's make some adjustments. Let's move into really just cleaning all this stuff up. 

26:19 

If you are struggling seeing your stuff, I am your person. If you get on a coaching call with me, I'm super nice. I'm super kind, but I am not there to be your friend. I am there to be your coach. I am there to help you see things that you don't see. And sometimes I that means I tell you things that you go, "ooh, that kind of hurt a little bit." Okay, right. But we can't clean it up if we don't know that it's there. And this is what I get to do with my clients every day. I get to help them see patterns of behavior that are not healthy thoughts that are not creating what they want. I get to help them clean up things in their lives so that they feel really good about how they're engaging. This to me is such a brilliant, brilliant model and such a great resource. Coaching, amazing. I use it all the time. In fact, my coach yesterday I was working with and I just had some amazing ahas into my life and into my thoughts and into what I'm creating, and why I'm creating it, and how I'm creating it. It was just brilliant. I loved it so much. Yes, I work with a coach because I don't see my own crap either. None of us do. That's why coaching is a valuable tool and I promise you it is worth the investment to clean things up because you clean it up in one relationship. It transfers over into every other relationship you have as well. And it's brilliant and I love it and I'm so grateful for my clients and even if you don't work with me one-on-one, I'm grateful for you for being here and for sharing this content with people who can use it and let's make make this world a better place by sharing things that make a difference. I love you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I will see you next week. Bye. 

28:26 

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.