00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 271, Equal Partnerships. 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, hey there everyone. So glad to have you here with me today. You know, I have been thinking a lot about equal partnerships lately and I think a lot of it is because of my perspective. So I was married for 24 years, ended in divorce and that was such a place where I did not show up as an equal partner and it was a huge problem in my marriage. And at the time I thought that I was doing something that was helpful. I was keeping the peace, meaning that I was not fighting outwardly but inwardly I was just struggling and angry and frustrated all the time. I was not speaking up, I was not being seen, I was not being heard and it created this very unequal partnership in a couple of different ways. And so now as I got out of that marriage and then as I found life coaching and really started doing a lot of work and a lot of exploration into what was going wrong there, what wasn't working, how was I contributing to that. And now that I've been able to, I was single for six and a half years, got remarried to Sione about a year and a half ago and implementing these tools has made such a huge, huge difference on the kind of relationship that he and I are creating here. And being an equal partner has been a vital, vital part of creating this really healthy, good relationship that we are in. And so I wanted to talk about that a little bit today.

01:48

I know that you may feel like you're in an equal partnership but I think there's some good stuff here to just kind of take a look at and just say, "oh, am I showing up equal? Am I not?" Because societally we have been trained as women and as men to not go for an equal partnership and to one-up and one-down a lot. And so a lot of the things that we do that are harming our marriages, we actually don't even give a second thought because it's just what we've always seen or what we've always known. And so I want to explore the idea of equal partnerships with you today.

02:23

So when I refer to equal partnerships, I'm talking about two people intentionally choosing to set aside these social conditionings, choosing to intentionally question what seems normal and really stepping into being equals. Now here's a couple of really generalized statements. For women, this often means taking a look at where we show up playing that "I'm not strong enough or smart enough" card or that "he's such a child card" or even addressing where we are stepping out of our sexuality, which is a God given thing for us. Okay? For men, it often means questioning your head of household status and all of its implied with that phrase, stepping into more responsibility at home and learning to feel and express more emotions. Now, like I said, of course, these are very generalized examples and they could be swapped. They could be applied to the opposite gender, but I think that these are areas where men and women tend to gravitate toward.

03:26

So here's what I've noticed as I've done this work and as I watch people around me and maybe I'm just super judge-y, which I wouldn't put it past me, but here's what I've noticed: there are a lot of not equal partnerships around us. And so we don't have a lot of really good examples to go off of and we are socially conditioned not to have equal partnerships. So many of the of the ideas that we have about what it means to be in a marriage or in a partnership are destructive and they're hurtful to creating this equality that really creates the intimacy that we are seeking for. So we have a spiritual belief that God wants us to have an eternal marriage, and yet when we consistently execute one-up and one-down moves with our spouse, we are destroying the foundation for what it will take to really have that cohesive relationship we're looking for, let alone one that we would want to last for eternity and not just for this life. I see so many unhappy marriages, places where couples are just putting up with each other, where they are content not being emotionally connected, where they nitpick and insult and ignore and are just really mean to each other. And I think so much of this is just unconscious patterns of behavior that we created over the years and they're more painful than we recognize. A lot of times we just blow it off and go "whatever. It's fine. Everything's fine," when it's not. But my friends, this is just not good enough. I do not believe that this level of annoyed tolerance is what God had in mind when He offered us the option of marriage.

05:15

I think a true equal partnership can be the source of some of our greatest joy and contentment and fulfillment in life. And most of us are not moving toward that. Because we feel stuck and we don't know how to get out of it. And that's what we're doing here on this podcast, right? Is helping us figure out how to get out of the stuck. We actually have the capacity to really be in loving and emotionally connected and supportive relationships. And yet many of us are settling for relationships that are unsatisfying and emotionally disconnected, places where we tiptoe around so as not to upset the other person or where we fear being seen for who we really are. And I spent 24 years in my previous marriage living in this type of situation...so my friends, I get it. And I understand why we do it. I know for me there was so much fear around being rejected. There was so much fear around not being loved, around not being seen as the "good" wife, around being a failure if I got divorced and fear of other people's judgment. And all of this fear kept me from expressing my wants and my needs. It kept me from showing up truly as myself and it kept me playing small, stepping into the role of less than, one-downing myself. But then I also went into times where I one-upped myself with this self righteous "I'm better than he is because I'm being less than," which is just ridiculous and crazy when I look back on it. But it's such a normal thing. But I really believe it is time for us to step up into wanting, desiring, and creating more in our relationships.

07:00

And your spouse or partner may not be interested in doing this work. When you start showing up as an equal partner and treating them as an equal partner, things will start to shift. You cannot change the dance steps and not have something happen. When you change the dance steps, when you start doing the Mamba, they cannot keep doing the Fox Trot and have it work. Now your partner may step right into the Mamba with you. They may go, "Oh, I like this. I like this more open, honest communication. I like this transparency," or you may start doing the Mamba and they may take a step back and go, "Whoa, like what is that? I don't even know what you're doing and it makes me a little bit uncomfortable." And then they may just watch for a bit. Is she consistently doing these Mamba steps? Is she consistently doing what needs to be done? And when they find comfort in it, when they see the patterns, when they understand the patterns better, they may step back in and do the Mamba with you. Or they may step out and go, "whoa, what's this? Like I'm not sure that I like this. This is making me a little bit uncomfortable. That's asking for a little bit too much vulnerability. I'm not sure that I want to do that." And they may choose not to step back in. However, you get to choose to start showing up in ways that align with your values and that promote your self-respect. This is the best stance for feeling at peace regardless of how your spouse or partner chooses to show up. How your partner shows up in response to you changing into these healthier patterns of behavior is good data. And I'm not saying that if they choose not to step back in that you have to get divorced. Absolutely not.

08:45

I work with clients all the time who are like, "listen, my partner doesn't want to step in, but I want to stay married." And I'm like, "okay, then let's help you get to a place where you feel amazing about staying where you are, you feel amazing about how you're showing up and the type of person that you're choosing to be." I have other clients who are like, "listen, I don't want to live this way anymore. I don't want to do this."And I'm like, "okay, then let's figure out how to help you make the best decision possible in a way that keeps yourself respect and your self-loving stance." These are the kind of work that I get to do with my clients and I love it.

09:23

But I just want you to realize that contrary to what we were led to believe as young women in the world and in the church, men don't usually love passive women who don't want to make decisions, who stand back and play the weak part. Are there some men who enjoy that? Of course there are and I'm a little bit suspect of all of those men, to be honest with you, because I think that there's something that's not quite right there. But of all the men that I have had the honor of working with as a coach and I've worked with a lot of men, or men that I've talked to about this topic, which has also been a lot of men, they want an equal partner. They want somebody who challenges them and their thinking. Someone who has the internal strength to make tough decisions. Someone with whom they can be equally yoked. And I think we as women want the exact same thing, right? We want that and yet we have to learn how to step into that. We have to start seeing the things that are keeping us from that that we may not be seeing. But here's the thing, even if your partner doesn't treat you like an equal partner, when you start showing up as an equal partner, you will change the dynamic. When we don't step into equal partnership, we are sacrificing the opportunity for a truly intimate emotional connection. And until we are equals in every way, we will never truly be partners. We will not be able to create the kind of relationship that deep down you know is available and that most of us crave.

11:05

So here's a question I want you to consider and I'm gonna come back to this a couple of times in the podcast. If you truly believe that you were equals, what would you be doing differently in your marriage or partnership? Okay, so just think about that for a second. What comes up for you before we really start this conversation? If you truly believed you were equals, what would you be doing differently? Okay, we're gonna go through some ways that you might not be showing up as an equal partner and I want you to notice what comes up for you. You might see yourself in some of my examples and you might get insight about other ways that I don't talk about, that you're not showing up as an equal partner. The examples that I share might spark an idea for you in another way. Pay attention. Please pay attention, increase your awareness in this area. It is time to step up and do better and be better if we are to have the equal partnerships that will bring this connection that we are created to desire in our lives.

12:07

Okay, so here we go. The first one, how often do you acquiesce to your partner's desires and wants and put yours on the back burner and don't even mention them? Meaning your partner asks for something and even though you have a different idea, you keep quiet about what you want and you work to fulfill their wants only. Now, doing things for your partners that your partner wants is not bad. And that's a lovely beautiful thing in a relationship. The sticking point here is not even putting your wants and needs on the table for consideration. We only focus on their wants and needs and we ignore ours. Our wants and needs are just as important and valid as anybody else's to include our partner. When we believe that we will put them on the table, we won't hold back for whatever reason, for fear, for anxiety, for lack of self-respect. We will put them on the table.

13:12

Second thing, how often do you defer to his decision-making processes because you don't want to rock the boat with your own ideas? Again, there are times when your spouse or partner is more qualified to make a certain decision and vice versa and you trust their ability. The sticking point here is that often we will defer because it seems easier or because we don't want to rock the boat. We do it from a place of fear. We are seeing keeping the peace as more important than being seen. If you have not listened to "Being a Peacemaker," I don't remember what the name of that number of that podcast is, it was about a year ago, I think, go back and listen to it. It talks about the difference between keeping the peace and being a peacemaker. Such an important concept, right? But in this instance, if we're doing anything from fear, we're seeking to keep the peace. My previous husband was really great with knowing things, with general knowledge, right? He was who you wanted on your trivial pursuit team. Well, I am absolutely not the person you would want on your trivial pursuit team. That kind of knowledge is not my strength. But I am really good at common sense and pragmatism, with seeing the whole picture. And in the course of my marriage, I would often discount my amazing thinking skills and insights that I could have contributed to the relationship. I would keep quiet and then just get so frustrated when his decisions didn't turn out great because there were so many common sense things that he wasn't implementing. That wasn't his strength. But notice that I wasn't contributing my great thinking. I was just bowing out. I was keeping the peace. Again, I wouldn't put my amazingness on the table for consideration. I wasn't contributing in an equal way. We had different strengths when it came to intelligence and I held mine back. I deferred to his. That was problematic.

15:13

Okay. Here's the third thing I want you to think about. How often do you equate your value with being a support behind the scenes rather than stepping onto the front lines to work with your partner? When we only see ourselves valuable when we're in a supporting role, we are not contributing equally to the success of our relationship. That doesn't mean that we're not supportive of our partner. That's an amazing perk of being married, learning how to really support and love another person. But it does mean that they have as many opportunities to be supportive of us as we have to be supportive of them. We get to step into things and places that we love and give them the opportunity to support our wants and needs and desires as well. We support them and we give them opportunities to support us.

16:13

Fourth one. How often do you have a want or need and you leave it unexpressed because you don't want to feel selfish? Now, what I'm not saying here is that we should get everything we want and that it would be a good idea to push for and demand all of our stuff. What I am saying is that equal partnership means that we put it on the table so it is part of the decision-making process that we make together. When we look at both of our wants and needs on the table, they are all considered and we figure out the best way to incorporate as many of those wants and needs as possible with the resources available. Again, neither of our wants or needs are more important than the other one, but we put all of our wants and needs on the table and then we sit together to make a decision together about how do we manage all of this? How do we combine as much of this as possible to create an even better end result than we had originally considered?

17:24

Okay, number five. How often do you put your wants on the table, wants and needs on the table, and then not advocate for what you really want because it will make your partner uncomfortable? And often that's you asking the other person to consider and even make some concessions if necessary for fulfilling your wants and needs. Are we advocating for ourselves or are we just standing down? I have so many women who call me for coaching consults and at the end of the call, they express that they really, really want to work with me. They see the value in spending the money and that if it was up to them, they would invest in themselves. They would sign up right then. They would be ready to go. But they're not sure what their husband thinks and they need to run it by him. Now, I get that because if I was going to spend this much money, I would absolutely run it by my husband. I would just say, "hey, listen, this is this is what I'm planning on doing. Like, let's talk about it." Okay, so I get that. That's what partnerships do, right? But here's the fascinating thing. Probably nine out of 10 of these women don't end up working with me. Now, I don't know what happens after I get off the call with them and how the conversations with their husbands go. But as women, our wants and needs matter a lot and spending money to invest in ourselves is important if that's what we feel we need. That is a want and a need that we are putting on the table. And I've even had many of these women say, "he should be okay with it because he spends more money than this on his hobbies or interests or trips with his friends or his brothers." And yet they end up not working with me. I don't know what goes on after that. But the fascinating thing for me is that I rarely have a consult with a male client who says they want to work with me, who doesn't end up working with me. Probably nine out of 10 of them do. That's just fascinating to me. Very interesting. Men generally feel much more confident about investing money on themselves and they don't feel they need their wife's permission. If we need permission, that is not an equal partnership. Discussing, collaborating, absolutely. But asking permission, that's not equal. That's more of a parent-child kind of relationship, a one-up, one-down. It's just something fascinating to look at. Our wants and needs matter as much as his wants. Money is an issue. If your husband makes more money than you do, or even if he makes all of the money because you've been a stay-at-home mom, do you see it as his money, or do you see it as both of y'all's money? Because guess what? It is both of y'all's money. That's what equal partnerships are about. Whether we're talking about money or we're talking about something else. If your situation is such that this has been an inequality in your marriage, this is a place where you can start stepping into equality here.

20:49

Now I'm not saying that these women I've done constant sorts with did anything wrong. It absolutely may be the best decision for them and it probably was because it's the decision they made, right? And together they and their spouse may have decided that the timing wasn't right. But there is the possibility that they are not advocating for their own wants and needs. Their husband may have said, "well, I don't know." And they may have said, "okay, okay, okay, that's all right." I don't know, right? But it's hard to start advocating for yourself if you spend a lot of years not advocating for yourself. It can be scary and it will throw your husband into something unusual. He'll be like, "whoa, what's that? She's pushing this. I've never gotten pushed back on this before," and he will most likely use his primitive brain to reject something that feels unusual or uncomfortable. And it may not even be that he's like, "no, you have to ask me for everything and I'm the keeper of the money." It may just be a pattern of behavior and it kind of throws him off. And I get it. But this is this can be very, very complicated. But if you see this or if you are someone who has done a consult with me and this is how it's played out for you, just notice with curiosity. No judgment about how you're doing it wrong. Just step into curiosity like, "huh, fascinating. I noticed that I asked. I didn't tell. I also backed down really quick when I got the slightest amount of pushback. Why is that? What was I afraid of?" Think about how did it play out? Figure out all those pieces. What did you do? What did he do? How did you advocate? How did you not advocate? Did, did you feel that it was an equal partnership decision and, if not, why did you choose not to advocate for yourself more? And I'm not saying this just in this context of people working with me; this is in every area right where we as women are like, "listen I want or I need this" or "this is important to me" and we don't advocate for ourselves more, we don't make an equal partnership decision. The answers to these questions will be fascinating information to help you understand how you can start stepping into being a more equal partner.

23:16

And six, what about sexuality? I know we haven't really gone here on this podcast but we're going to start doing this a little bit. Do you see yourself as an equal partner in this area? Do you recognize that your sexual relationship is just as much for you as it is for him? That your desire and enjoyment and satisfaction are just as important as his? Okay, many of us from our generation have this idea that sex is for the husband, it's not for the wife. Like, we're not supposed to have desires. Right? Such a mess in my first marriage. We think that it is our job to make him happy and keep him happy with our sexual favors. Such a one-down position. Listen to that. That we are to be desired by him, but that we're less worthy or spiritual if we have too much desire. Again, a very common theme for our generation. We're supposed to be desirable, but we're not supposed to desire. We see ourselves as less sexual. When? The research I've read says that we as women actually have more capacity for sexuality than men have. It has just been socially conditioned out of us. Fascinating, right? But what if we were equally invested in our sexual relationship? What if duty sex was never a thing and we engaged more often in this relationship because we stepped into our inherent sexuality as women and desired it more often? We chose to move into that more. What if we moved it from, "it's a service I perform for him" to, "I choose to engage in this for me or for us because it will create more of an equal partnership."

25:17

Here's just a little teaser. At the end of October, I'm scheduled to interview Jennifer Finlayson-Fife about midlife sexuality. She is an LDS sexual therapist and she's fabulous. If you've not checked out any of her stuff, check out Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. She's just great. It will be a great discussion and I'm super excited about that, but we've got a couple months before I get to do that interview.

25:45

So hopefully these examples have helped you to see more clearly how you may or may not be showing up as an equal partner. So let me ask the question again. If you truly believed you were equals, what would you be doing differently in your marriage or your partnership? So if you're not showing up equally, how can we start gently and lovingly nudging ourselves in that direction? Being able to show up as an equal partner in our in our relationships really begins with our own self-respect and self-love. It begins with us truly believing that our worth is just as great as the worth of others and that it's not based on anything, including how much we give to and serve others. When we truly believe in our worth as a human, when we truly see our value apart from our actions or what other people think of us, then we can start stepping into being an equal partner There is so much in our society that works to make women believe that we are just a step down from men, that we are a bit of an accessory, especially in our generation.

26:52

So I recently went to see the new Barbie movie, and I loved it by the way, laughed through the whole thing I loved how it showed this dynamic though in Barbieland It was the exact opposite of our society where the Kens were seen as the accessory and it seemed so backwards when I was watching that. It seemed so ridiculous. But in our world we have grown up with these ideas for women and they don't seem ridiculous. They seem normal because that's what our brain is used to so much. They seem so normal that often we don't even notice them or question them. Gratefully things are changing right? I was talking with my daughter Alison, she's almost 24, about the Barbie movie and she said she really liked it. But she said one thing she didn't like was how it portrayed women as not being powerful and not being able to be the CEO or the President and I was amazed at her perspective and so glad that she is living in a world where she does feel powerful and where these ideas of being "less than" just don't sit well with her. They don't jive with her. When and if she chooses to get married, she will absolutely consider herself an equal in her relationship and that just makes me so happy for her.

28:11

Interestingly enough. I had also just finished reading the book "Lessons in Chemistry" (if you haven't read that, it's a really fun read.) It's a historical fiction book about a brilliant woman chemist in the 1950s and her experience of not being taken seriously because of her gender. That was my mother's era, and noting the difference when I put this all together between my mom's generation and my generation and my daughter's generation makes me really happy. Granted, it has taken three generations to make that amount of movement and there is still a long way to go, but it is moving. You don't turn a huge ship in a matter of moments. And the societal patterns of behavior are a huge ship, but we can start changing these for us. We’re little ships and our little rudders can make big movements really fast. We can change this in our marriages, we can change this in our world.

29:12

Okay so back to equal partnerships. An equal partnership is also not one where it becomes Barbieland and all of the men are reduced to being accessories and not taken seriously and treated as children, as "less than." Equal comes into play when we see both partners being important, both having wants and needs that are considered and valuable, both feeling as though they have a say in what happens and a respected say. Because many of the men in our lives were raised with the same social conditioning that we were, some of them still have some antiquated ideas about the role of women and they don't know how to move into an equal partnership either. And when we stay connected with these ideas because we're afraid of rocking the boat, we are sacrificing our equal partnership for something far less satisfying. So if you are married to someone who still carries some of these "head of household" ideas, you get to help change the dance steps there. You get to start stepping into your own equality. And he gets to figure out where he wants to go with that, right? But stepping into our own self-love and self-respect helps us to show up as equals, because those things are rooted in being equals. No one is better than or less than. We all have different skills and abilities to contribute to the world. But all of those things create different experiences for each of us. They don't say anything about our worth or our value. The more we can clean up the thoughts in our brain that say that there are hierarchies among people, the more we will be able to create an equal partnership. So if you recognize that you are not in an equal partnership and you want to create more of one, what are some things you can do?

31:04

Okay, we just talked about the self-love and the self-respect moving into that. Here's something else. Start stepping into honesty. Let's have some honest to goodness frank conversations about our wants and needs. This doesn't mean that we become demanding. It just means that we really start to understand that our wants and needs matter as much as the other person's in our partnership and that we give them equal consideration. This looks like collaboration rather than compromise or being controlling. So we don't demand what we want, but we can absolutely say that something is important to us and that we would really want it to work out and we can advocate for ourselves. We don't back down at the slightest resistance to keep the peace. Here's the thing: when we are equal partners, we slide our bums around the table to sit next to our partner and it becomes the two of us against the problem, not us against them. A huge piece of this is coming from a place of really believing that we are equals and coming from a place of love rather than a place of fear. If we're equals, both of our ideas matter, both of our understandings matter. It's all on the table for consideration. We have enough love for ourselves to ask for what we want and need and we have enough love for our partner to consider their position as well and to really want an equal partnership, something more fulfilling and substantial.

32:38

Fear will either back down to keep the peace, or it will take an uncompromising stance and make demands. Or it will just passive-aggressively make the decision we want. You can know if you are moving into fear as well when you start to take a one-up or a one-down position. One-down can be thinking that his wants or needs come first, that they're more important than yours, that he makes the money so his wants matter more. When we are negotiating our own wants we can very quickly go into one-down thinking; it's been socially conditioned into us. One-up thinking would be thinking that by sacrificing for his wants you are a better person than him, that you can handle disappointment better than him, that he'll act like a child if he doesn't get his way, and that you have to put his needs first in order to keep the peace.

33:31

I have noticed over the years in my relationships with other women when we get together how quickly the conversation can turn to talking about our spouses and moving ourselves into this one-up position. Anytime we start husband-bashing, talking about how they're children? We are one-upping. See how easy it is to get out of an equal partner mentality? It is so easy. We go down these paths without even thinking about them, and again when we approach our relationship from a place of love, both love for them and love for us, we will be moving toward an equal partnership. When we approach our relationship from a place of fear, either of their reaction or thinking we'll be selfish if we consider our wants and needs as important, then we are moving out of equality. Firm, firm 100% believer that God wants us and created us to be equals in our partnerships. And we won't get this with antiquated ideas that men are better or smarter than women. That right there is a one-down position that destroys the hope of a true partnership because we can't be true partners with someone that we see as being more than or less than us.

34:52

So what does that mean for you? Where do you see that you might have some cleaning up to do? Okay, let's go back again to the question I asked before: If you truly believed you were equals, what would you be doing differently in your marriage or partnership? If you are stuck in a place of an unequal partnership and can't figure out how you need to move forward, how you need to change the dance steps. Coaching can help you. As your coach, I am well-versed on how to help you see things that you don't see. I can help you see how you're moving in a one-down or one-up position. I am well-versed to help you understand how to get unstuck and how to show up as the equal partner that you are. This is part of growing up. Setting aside ideas and beliefs and understandings that do not serve us, that are holding us back from becoming the person we want to be, from creating the kinds of relationships we want to have. This is what I think is so brilliant about middle age. We get to start stepping up into this place.

36:06

Okay, if you need some help, if you would love some personal help from me, go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can go to the "free consultation" tab at the top. You can click on there. You can find a time on my calendar that we can sit down and talk for 30 minutes about what you feel you need to be supported to help moving more into the kind of life and relationships that you want to have, tell you all the things about coaching. I love coaching and I think as I have been able to step into being an equal partner in my new relationship, I recognize the value of it in a way that was not even on my radar in my previous marriage. Previous marriage was all about keeping the peace. This marriage is about creating a partnership. And I think that my perspective from my previous marriage to this to this marriage has helped me to create and develop some really amazing tools to help you learn how to do the same thing as well.

37:08

All right, my friends, that's going to do it this week. Love this coaching gig. So grateful to be able to be here with you and thank you for being here with me. Please, please, recognize your value, recognize your worth. It is not based on anything, not how much you serve other people, not on how selfless you are. It's not based on your looks. It's not based on any of that. It's based on you being a person who is valuable. Let's continue to step into this. Okay, I love you. Thank you for being here. Wish you all the best and I will talk to you next time. Bye.

37:54

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.