strong couples

13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don’t Do: Episode Link

In this podcast episode, the host interviews Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and author of the book ’13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don’t Do’. Amy explains that her previous books were based on reader requests, which led her to write a book about relationships. She emphasizes that mental strength affects both partners and discusses the importance of communication, problem-solving, and maintaining love in a long-term relationship. Amy encourages couples to address their problems instead of ignoring them and to communicate without disrespect or blame. She also advises couples to remember why they fell in love and to seek individual therapy if their partner is unwilling to attend couples therapy. Amy concludes by highlighting the three aspects of mental strength: thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to hot flashes and cool topics podcast. We have been looking forward to this interview with Amy Morin and today she is you will probably know her. She did a great Ted talk about what strong people don’t do and you have a new book coming out called 13 things mentally strong couples don’t do.
So you’ve gone from. kind of talking about individuals, women, and now talking about couples, which is so important. And this book, Bridget and I both read it,
and we really felt, let me start by saying, welcome to the show, Amy. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Colleen’s excited about this. I’m already off on a tangent about that.
As am I? Yes. So, and it’s interesting because you call yourself, well, you are a psychotherapist, but you say your psychotherapist turned accidental author and your books have really hit a nerve,
have really touched people because you’re instead of saying you have to do this, this and this, you’re saying, don’t avoid these like stop signs, don’t do this. And it’s a different way people can look at it.
In this new book that just came out, it’s called 13 things mentally strong couples don’t do. What made you say I need to to now kind of branch out into couples? Well,
a lot of my books have been based on what my readers ask. When the People book came out, people were asking me, like, how do we raise mentally strong kids? That led to the parenting book. And then women were asking me, like, all right, I know what it like a tough navy seal looks like, or a lot of elite athletes who are men, what does it mean to be a mentally strong woman? So that’s led to the women’s book. And then there was a kid’s book and a workbook. And I was like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. was getting a lot of people saying yeah but I could be stronger if it weren’t for my relationship or how do we grow stronger together or I’m invested and my partner isn’t and so I thought yeah it’s time it’s time to write a book then it’s to talk about our relationships because it’s true that our mental strength affects our partners vice versa and I was hearing you know it happens in my therapy office all the time where one person’s invested and the other person doesn’t have that same level of information So I wanted to make it clear, that’s okay. You can work on your own, on your own mental strength.

And in the process, quite often you’ll motivate somebody else to do it is when you stop trying to force them to do it.
It’s when we’re nagging and lecturing and trying to get the other person to change that we really don’t see any results. Right. You give such good examples in the book as well of just all the different situations,
the different 13 things. in there. And I would love to go over all of them, but we would have to do five podcasts to go over all of them. – So I wanted to start with the layout of the book.
And then obviously going through 13 things would, we’d have to get pillows and spend the night. But with the book, you kind of started off with, let’s say for example, the first thing is they don’t ignore their problems.
And you talk about an example of a couple. who has been in therapy, but then you have a quiz and you do like a starting point and why. And then you go into mental strength exercises,
which I think is so important. Then you go, who’s motivated? Like, is it the husband? Is it the wife? Is it the partner? Are neither of them, are they talking over each other?
Are they listening? And then troubleshooting and common traps. So with each chapter, honestly, this is one of the most comprehensive books I’ve read, because you’re looking at every angle of each issue.
So to start with, they don’t ignore their problems. You use an example I think that many of our listeners can relate to because it’s our demographic of an empty nester and she kind of comes in says,
I’m an empty nester, I don’t even know what to do with myself, let alone what to do with my husband. And what what made you say I’m gonna give an example, then I’m gonna have people take a quiz?
Like was it self -reflection for people reading the book? – Yeah, because what I often find is people will be like, “No, I don’t do that thing.” And maybe you don’t most of the time, but we all do them sometimes if we’re honest.
Like let’s take ignoring problems. We all ignore some of the problems in our relationship that perhaps we should address at one time or another. Or maybe right now, you’re not… doing that thing because life is pretty good, but then you there’s a bump around the around the corner where you hit some sort of obstacle and you think oops now now this thing is a much bigger struggle for me so in all of my books I’ve put quizzes because people will then say you know I thought I had nailed this chapter and then I took this quiz and it made me realize okay maybe I struggle with it a little more or it really helped me understand so if we
took that example of of do you ignore problems? We didn’t wanna bring up every single problem if your partner’s two minutes late or they didn’t do the dishes, like nagging them all the time. We don’t wanna do that. But on the other end of the spectrum, we don’t wanna sweep it under the rug if you think there’s an affair or you don’t wanna talk about a financial problem, you don’t wanna just pretend it doesn’t exist ’cause it’s still there. So to really help people find that balance and do I do this or is it my partner who does it?
Because sometimes our problems problems are just symptoms and I explain that more in the book, but sometimes we think our partner maybe is ignoring things and then our partner has a different perception.
So I really wanted to dive in. What happens when I think this is a problem or my partner doesn’t or vice versa? – It’s interesting because you talk about differentiating the problems that can be solved and the problems that can’t be solved.

And you didn’t say to the woman who came in at the end. an empty nester, well, you need to do this and this. It was more like, well, why don’t you try finding common interests?
Like not saying it’s blame, but shifting the focus on mental strength. Why do you think that’s so important in the book to talk about mental strength exercises?
You know, I want people to figure out how to tackle the problem. A huge reason people come into therapy is because they’re they’re tackling it. the problem from the wrong angle. So I always encourage people do you need to solve the problem or solve how you feel about the problem nine times out of 10 people end up in my therapy office because they’re tackling it from the wrong problem somebody in an abusive relationship
says no I just need to be mentally stronger like no the problem is you’re in abusive relationship and no matter what you do you’re probably never going to feel happy if you’re being abused at that moment but on the end of the day you’re probably never going to feel happy if you’re being abused at that moment side,
somebody else might be like, you know, my partner annoys me and I need to change their behavior. So they’re nagging, they’re lecturing, they’re trying to motivate them to change when really maybe you should just learn how to tolerate those feelings a little bit differently or different coping strategies.
So always try to help people figure out which way are you attempting to tackle it? Is it working and might you do it from a different angle? And sometimes when we make that shift, it makes all the difference.
in the world. It’s uncomfortable. Like if I figure out, all right, I have to accept this is who my partner is and how they’re gonna behave, but that’s uncomfortable. I don’t wanna do that. I may wanna change them ’cause that will make me feel better, but life isn’t about always making things easier for ourselves. Sometimes it’s about figuring out how do you cope with those things that you can’t change and accepting it too. – Right, you use such a great example in there and you also use an, I know, I can do that. could see it describing me where you Said it when you were a kid and someone lectured to you Were you really thinking that gee what they’re saying is great? You know, I will listen to them No,
you want to get out of it and I was like, oh, that’s me. Somebody tells me I need to do something I will never do it. I will never do it and I thought oh,
yeah, that is perfect But you use the example of the woman that was really trying trying to help her husband be healthier. And but the whole method she was using was just making him further away,
just pushing him away. But I love the example that she used. Do you wanna share just a little bit about what you advised her to do? – Yeah, so I think you’re referring to the chapter where there’s a woman trying to fix her husband.
– Right, number six. – And he had to help fix you. – Number six, they don’t try to fix each other. – And he had to help fix her husband. some health issues, and he was drinking a lot. So she thought, perhaps if she just,
you know, she could talk him out of it. If I just educate him enough, if I remind him that alcohol is really bad for your diabetes, he’ll quit. But it’s not usually the case. It’s not usually a lack of education.
People like we all know that junk food is bad, or people know that smoking is bad, yet they still do it. It’s so lecturing people out. doesn’t work. So if you want to fix somebody, you really have to start with yourself.
And in the therapy office, we often talk about how our relationship is like a dance. You drag somebody out on the dance floor and try to force them to dance. It’s not going to go well. But if you’re already dancing with somebody and you kind of change your dance steps, the other person naturally changes theirs. So whenever you want to make a change in your relationship, it starts by saying, well, what could I do differently? Maybe I’m going to respond. to my partner differently maybe I’m going to ignore certain things and so in this particular example this woman we discovered that when her husband came home from the bar she would yell and scream at him which then of course had the opposite effect of what she wanted he was like why would I come home if you’re going to yell at me when I walk through the door so our strategy became let’s use some positive reinforcement for the behavior you want to see you wanted to come home and have a wonderful evening so let’s treat it him with kindness when he comes home straight from work and he didn’t stop at the bar.
You make a great dinner, you talk about how much you enjoy his company and reinforce the good things that you’re seeing. When she started to make those shifts then he wasn’t on the defense all the time and he started to talk a little bit more about his emotions and the struggles and okay maybe I’ll see a doctor.
But when we lecture people or when we’re telling them what to do they just, it actually reinforces their behavior because they think if I were to lecture you about a behavior I don’t like to see,
you’re just going to think of all of your rebuttals about why you love that thing that you’re doing, whether we’re talking about drinking or smoking or something like that. Research will show the more you talk about all the reasons you love it, the more that you actually love that thing and the less likely you are to stop it.
So the strategy isn’t about lecturing somebody, sometimes it’s about how do I change my behavior so that you come to that conclusion that it’s not working for you. you. – And you also talk about the fact that in starting to do that approach of lecturing, it’s changing your dynamic of a relationship to no longer kind of husband and wife or partners. You’re now like mom and lecturing child. And, you know, Bridge and I both been married over 30 years to very, we’re both very happily married to our husbands.

And I can say in reading your book, I would have answered different things, different ways, depending on the decade. Like younger,
you know, with the younger kids when they were home, I would have been like, I need more help. You need to come home and help. It’s interesting how the dynamics change. And I think when you reach a certain stage in life,
a lot of this stuff doesn’t seem as important as it used to seem. But the second thing you talked about was they don’t keep secrets. And one thing I found interesting in that chapter was that you differentiate between personal privacy and secrets.
Can you talk about that? Yeah, I think a lot of couples don’t ever have that discussion of what’s our expectation of what it’s okay to keep private versus what constitutes a secret.
So you might decide that in your relationship, if an ex contacts you, we should have a discussion. about that ’cause I wouldn’t want you to keep that a secret per se. But on the other hand, you might decide some things are off limits.
Like I’m not gonna give you my social media password or I can have private conversations with my friends that don’t involve you. Or if my friend calls and says she’s in a crisis and I wanna talk to her, I don’t necessarily have to tell you what the crisis is about because that’s her personal business.
So just to having those conversations upfront can go a long way toward how… helping couples because so many people will say, Oh, I didn’t think it was a big deal. So I didn’t tell. But your partner might think it’s a big deal.
And sometimes it’s little things that people know, like, I just didn’t want to upset you. So I didn’t tell you how much I spent on this item that I bought, or I knew you’d make a big deal out of it. So yeah, I said we were just going away for the for the boys weekend, but really, we went to Vegas and some unsavory things happen. So people are like, No, I’m protecting. my partner, but really you’re keeping secrets. And what happens when you keep secrets is your partner kind of catches on that you’re keeping some sort of secrets.
They start keeping secrets and this distrust builds over time with like, what are we actually gonna tell each other? And it’s okay to reveal things that maybe is upsetting to your partner sometimes or to talk about things that are hard to talk about but so often we use secrets as a way to justify our behavior. Whether somebody’s out there or not. an emotional affair or somebody has a secret addiction it is unbelievable how many people walk into my therapy office and they have an addiction and their partner has no idea but in order to continue that behavior they have to keep it a secret so when we don’t want to change sometimes we are really motivated to hide a secret as much as we possibly can. You know you also make it very clear at the beginning of your book that if you are in an abusive relationship relationship that this isn’t the book for you and that you advise their you know get help you know there’s numbers that you can reach and but another thing that goes with secrets is the abuse you make it clear that abuse is when they keep you from your family if you know can you talk a little bit about that because sometimes families it’s a good thing you’re not talking to your family but most of the time it’s not that case – Yeah, there’s that, I think at happy medium to be struck as well.
So for a couple who’s maybe struggling with infertility to have a conversation, are we gonna tell anybody about this? And you might decide for now, let’s keep it between the two of us. It’s great for couples to have those sorts of boundaries.
But on the other hand, what you don’t want is like you say, if it’s an abusive relationship where your partner says, you can’t tell your mother that this just happened or I don’t want you to know that this is an abusive relationship or I don’t want you to know that this is an abusive relationship you talking to anybody about anything stressful going on in the home,
that’s when it becomes a burden and it’s really unhealthy. So always encourage couples who are in healthy relationships to have those conversations about the secrets between the two of you, like what’s going to be family business? You have a child who’s struggling at school,
is it okay to talk about that? Or for somebody who says my partner has a drug or alcohol problem, I need support. I don’t want to hold on to this as a secret. secret. Then maybe you go to a support group, as opposed to telling your mom about everything going on at home.
Just making sure that you have some support, but that at the same time you aren’t breaking the confidence between you and your partner. – That kind of plays into a few of the other don’ts,
like don’t become a martyr, or don’t use your emotions as weapons. And I think that, at least from the beginning, that are just starting to get married,
maybe married the first 10, 15 years, they’re coming into the marriage with debt or they’re coming into the marriage with childhood trauma. How can they communicate in a way where they don’t feel like either they’re becoming a martyr or they’re weaponizing the trauma?

That’s a great question because we see that a lot. I mean, who doesn’t know? have some unhealed wounds? And our childhood example of what a healthy relationship looks like as we become adults,
sometimes we realize, oh, maybe that wasn’t quite what I thought it was or perhaps in a healthy relationship, people treat each other differently than I imagined. So I think it is important to talk about those things,
bring it up, discuss, well, you know, when I was a kid, this is what I learned or this is what I saw or… This coping strategy that I had when I was seven worked really well It doesn’t serve me at the age of 37 perhaps so I Think that self -awareness is key when it comes to say weaponizing our emotions sometimes people figure out when I cry I get what I want again Maybe that worked for you when you were seven
when you’re 37 and you’re not getting your way And you like I can turn on the waterworks and then suddenly people feel sorry for me, starts to create problems in your life. So I always encourage people,
if you have some unhealed wounds, go to individual therapy. If your partner’s willing, maybe they can be brought into the therapy too, because perhaps that’s healthy to figure out, how do we solve conflicts in a healthier way than what we’re used to?
Otherwise those things fester and they’re really hard to address. – You know, along those lines, you know what you grow up with and what you don’t. you witness in your home. You also have the don’t communicate with disrespect and don’t blame each other for the problems their problems. And, you know, just like you said, that’s what maybe they saw in their home. And can you address how some steps that they could take to not do those things?
– It’s really healthy, I think, for families to sit down and say, like, what are our emotional rules in our home? because we don’t even realize what those are so you might have grown up in a home where doors were slammed or people went to their room and sulked for hours or even maybe when people were watching a football game people are yelling and screaming and it’s great to show all this emotion but maybe you also
grew up in a home where all of those things were stifled and everybody pasted on a smile and nobody ever showed any emotion and if you put two people together who have very different tolerances or ideas about how we should experience and express emotions, it gets really messy and really complicated. So I always encourage people to have those conversations, like what’s acceptable? Somebody slammed a door, is that really upsetting to you or do you find that to be normal behavior?
And there’s no right or wrong answer about how emotions are gonna be expressed, but it’s important for you and your partner to be on the same page. And then to have those conversations too about how do we solve a problem so that we don’t get disrespectful? And if somebody does, what are we going to do about it? And sometimes it’s outright disrespect where somebody says something rude. But sometimes there are those more subtle things too.
The sarcasm, the eye rule, the, the stonewalling or somebody’s just refusing to talk about a conversation. And people often say, well, you know, I’m not rude. I don’t ever say anything rude,
but maybe they don’t look up from their phones while their partner. partner is talking to them. So having more upfront conversations and calling each other out like in the moment of like, you know, I noticed you rolled your eyes when I said I was going to my mother’s house.
Do you want to tell me what thought ran through your head at that moment? And if we could be more open about that, there’s so many subtle things that we notice, we don’t say, and then they kind of fester over a while.
So then I interpret your eye roll, meaning you don’t like it when I go to my mother’s or you. are annoyed by the fact that I spend Sunday afternoons with my mother. So then it like becomes this bigger issue that if we just talked about it, like, okay, you don’t like that behavior, I’m gonna keep doing it anyway, but how do we live together in a harmoniously way anyway? – That kind of leads me to the thought of in the book,
and I’m not sure which section it talked about to have conversations not in the heat of the moment. to have them in kind of a neutral setting, which I think is oftentimes hard to do because people get to let the emotion,
but when the emotions carry, you’re not really listening to the other person. And it’s almost like you want to say them, what I heard you say is this, this, and this. Can you talk about kind of taking the emotion and setting that aside to have a conversation that’s common?
calmer and more effective. Yeah, we know from the research that as our emotion goes up, our intelligence literally goes down. So if somebody gave you an IQ test, when you were really angry,
you would score worse than if you took it when you were calm. So like the last thing you want to do is have this debate about something important when your IQ is lower than it should be. It’s not going to go anywhere.
And we’ve all gotten into those discussions where. where you’re not listening to the other person, you’re just thinking about what you’re going to say next. And that’s when voices get raised and people start repeating things ’cause they’re thinking you’re not hearing me.
And they’re right, you’re not hearing them. So an exercise we often do in therapy is just about reflective listening. Before I offer my opinion, before I come up with a solution,
before I say anything, I’m just going to reflect back what you’ve said. So if you can… to me and you said, you know, you’ve been leaving your socks in the middle of the floor, you haven’t done the dishes, and you didn’t take the trash out,
I’m not going to say, oh yeah, well you didn’t clean the car last week either, which is what we often do. So instead I’m going to say, okay, so let me get this straight, you’re really upset with me because I didn’t, I didn’t take the trash out,
I didn’t do the dishes, and I didn’t pick up my socks. Do I have that right? If we just did that simple simple little thing where you kind of repeat back what you hear, it would go so much further and people are like,
yeah, yeah, actually, that is what I said. And then you could say, is there anything else? And, and then they might say, yeah, and also last Tuesday, you came home 20 minutes later than you said you were.
Okay, so you’re also upset about that. And then once you feel hurt, it’s almost like the other person, it’s like a balloon, like the air gets sucked out of them and they can finally relax like, okay, you heard me. I don’t have to keep defending my point or reiterating how important this is.
And then you can problem solve, like, all right, so you’re upset that I did these things. Now, I’ll tell you my point of view, I’ve been working really hard, and this has been going on to you.
And then you can have a real conversation, but you can’t really do that until we’re calm enough to be able to really hear what the other person said and then make sure that they understand that we heard them by reflecting back,
“Yes, I heard you, and here’s what I heard you say.” – You know, oh, another one is, you know, as couples are married for a while and things happen, you know, in your life, life happens, that they don’t forget why they fell in love.
And can you share some tips with that, what you advise people when that is the situation? – Yeah, we get so busy with everyday stuff, right? Paying the bills, going to work. and kids activities and things that we kind of forget.
So people will say, you know, we’re more like business partners after 15 years of marriage, like we’re not sitting around talking about our hopes and our dreams and the conversations where we used to just sit around and talk endlessly about life and philosophy and religion and all the things that excited us.
Now we talk about, you know, who’s picking the kids up for soccer practice tomorrow and… what bill needs to be paid by next Friday. So it’s more about to rewind the clock and be like,
“Well, why did you pick me? Why did I pick you? What are the reasons I fell in love with you? What made our relationship different from the different friendships or other romantic relationships we’d encountered over the years?” And remembering that is really important.
And we don’t want to turn that into a weapon because sometimes people will be like, “Well, you used to be fun.” You know, when we college when we met you were a good time now. You’re now you go to bed by 8 p .m So we don’t want to turn it into a weapon because your partner is still the same human being life circumstances have changed but they’re still the same human and remembering that can be different things
like Just looking at your spouse’s picture throughout the day studies show that that really can reignite the flame and help you remember that Yes, this is an amazing human being being that I picked,
but they also picked me. Or if you have a song, whether it’s your wedding song or another song, just listening to your song together goes a long way towards stirring up those emotions again.
When we’re first falling in love, our emotions are almost like like a drug that we develop this sort of euphoria and this dependence and this tolerance and all of these things over time.
time we know that those feelings aren’t necessarily that intense and that’s natural and normal and healthy. We couldn’t stay in that state forever because we don’t really sleep that much or we don’t eat that much or we are distracted all the time.
So it’s healthy for those feelings to shift but as they shift we often become less tolerant of our partner. We are less likely to assume good will if they’re 10 minutes late we think oh it’s because you’re a jerk not just because traffic was bad.
So just remembering why you fell in love with that person can just be really life -altering, I think. And it might be you just give them a card every once in a while that just lists here are the top five reasons why I picked you or the top 10 reasons why I’m still glad we’re together after all these years.
And those little things go a long way toward keeping the relationship happier and healthier. And that’s so interesting because the last one that you have in there is they don’t stop growing and changing.
And that’s very hard if you’re not growing and changing at the same time. You know what I mean? When one’s growing in a different way, you know, in a different path. And how do you keep that when one it maybe is growing and changing and the other one isn’t at that point yet in their life?
Again, I think it goes back to communication because sometimes we assume even our little habit changes. We think, well, this doesn’t. affect you but it might right so if somebody says you know I’m going to start going to the gym in the morning and their partner’s like have at it because I don’t want to do that well going to the gym earlier might mean that you then go to bed earlier so then because you go to sleep
first maybe you don’t have 20 minutes to connect before bed anymore and it does affect your relationship and it does affect your partner but if you have a conversation that says you know okay I changed some of my habits it’s affected us what do we do about it?
Maybe we connect earlier, maybe we go for a walk after dinner so we can connect. Then you can problem solve it and have those conversations. The last thing you want to do is try to drag your partner along of,
no, you have to do these things just because I’m doing them. But at the same time, you don’t want to go off and do your own thing without including them somehow or having conversations about how’s this going to affect me,
whether your partner becomes a vegetarian or they. decide they’re going to take religion much more seriously than they have before. All of these things are going to affect the relationship. But if you can talk about them, then you can figure out how do we make sure that we are both growing and that our relationship continues to stay strong despite these changes.
You know, another thing you talk about is you feel like therapy is such a great thing for any couple, really. Like some therapy used to be. shunned or looked at probably 40 years ago.
Ooh, there’s something really wrong with you if you have to go to a therapist. And now everybody loves, you know, talks about therapy, they love not everybody, but most people talk about how healing it is.
Can you share just some things that why that mindset is changing and why you think therapy is great for all couples? – Well, you know, I see so many couples who spent like years planning their way.
and they didn’t really spend any time planning their marriage. Like if we went to talk to a premarital counselor about how are we gonna deal with same money and how do we deal with differences in religion or differences in how many kids we should have.
If we started right off from the bat with figuring out, let’s do those sorts of things. I think a lot of marriages would be different because people then could have worked things out or they might have decided this is a problem we can’t solve.
If you want five kids and I want two, what do we do? For compromise, nobody’s happy. This isn’t one of those situations where both of us are going to get our way. And I think,
you know, if anything good came out of the pandemic, it’s that more and more people are going to therapy. And what a lot of people don’t realize is you can even go to couples therapy online. So it’s more accessible than ever. There are still some barriers in terms.
of insurance doesn’t typically pay for couples therapy. It pays for mental illnesses. So if you have depression and you go to individual therapy, your insurance will pay for it because that’s considered a health issue. My hope is someday more insurance companies will figure out why relationships greatly affect our health.
So it’s really important for them to cover couples therapy too. But I think now that the stigma from therapy is decreasing, people are also realizing you don’t want to wait till the last second to go to therapy.
So many couples would come in my door and they were basically looking for permission to get divorced. They were at the absolute end. They had tried everything except for therapy. So they were like,
okay, let’s check this off the list and then we’ll get divorced next week. It was real no intentions of getting together or working things out. But what we know now when we come in when there’s a small problem,
you can often address it before it turns into a big problem. And so I’m thrilled that so many more couples are open to that. And when people are figuring out too, well, if my partner won’t go to therapy,
I think there’s a problem, my partner’s not interested, I can go myself. And for a lot of people, that’s like a completely different mentality, because they’ll say, well, we’ve had marriage trouble for 10 years.
years and I’ve been trying to get my partner to go to therapy, but they wouldn’t. But you don’t have to wait until they’re ready because they might never be ready. You might have a partner that never wants to go to couples therapy. But if you go to individual therapy,
that can make a huge difference too, which is why in the book, I give plenty of examples of people that I never met their partner. I only met the person who walked into my office, but we still made huge changes in their relationship just based on how they changed their,
their mood, their attitude. attitude, their behavior, and it those changes inspire the other person to make some changes eventually too. Because you’ve been doing this for a while,
are there certain times where couples walk in and there’s just a problem where you immediately go, yeah, this is not going to end well? Like are there certain things that just become insurmountable for couples?
There are and I don’t think people should stay together at all costs. My grandparents were married for about 75 years. My grandfather just passed away. I am not sure they liked each other. I mean, they got together at the age of 14 and 15,
and they tolerated each other, but I don’t think there was much love there. And I think, is that really the definition of success? You stayed married at all costs despite being miserable? And I don’t think it is.
And sometimes I’ll see couples that are just invested in not creating sadness. sadness. And their whole goal is I don’t want to get divorced because that would be sad. Somebody’s going to miss out on the kids on Christmas and I don’t want to be that person.
So we’ll stay together. They stay together just for the kids sake or for convenience or, you know, I don’t have a 401k and my partner does and I can’t afford a divorce. And when people have that mentality,
you can come to therapy, but it’s probably not going to be that helpful. And if you’re just just goal is to not make things awful in life, it’s not really a very good goal to then say I’m just going to play defense to make sure that the world doesn’t crumble altogether.
But I’ve worked with plenty of people too who who say, you know, I do have some non negotiables. If my partner cheats on me repeatedly, that’s not something I can get past.
My job isn’t to then convince them that they need to forgive their partner if that’s an unforgivable offense. by all means, you might decide it’s time to move on. Or if you have somebody who has an addiction,
somebody will say to me like, my partner is an alcoholic and I married them for better or worse or sickness and in health, but what do I do? It’s been 20 years and I’ve been miserable and they’re not changing their behavior.
That’s a non -negotiable for you by all means. I think it’s fine to say for my own mental health. it’s okay to go. So I think there are and different people have different ideas of what they’re willing to tolerate and what they aren’t.
But when they come into therapy, my goal isn’t to teach them to be more tolerant of behaviors that they that they aren’t interested in tolerating or for people who say, you know, our goal isn’t to really work together,
our goal is to just tolerate each other for years, like you can do that. But if you really want to have a happy, healthy life. that might not be the best goal to have. And also mental illness if the partner has a really tough mental illness issue can you talk about that as well?
Yeah so it you know sometimes it’s maybe just depression but if you have a partner who’s so depressed they can’t get out of bed they can’t work it’s gonna affect everything or if you have a partner who’s so anxious that maybe they don’t leave the house or they don’t go to social events with you,
like, how, how is that going to affect the relationship? Most people I know will say, I’m okay, as long as my partner is working on it. So they’ll talk to a therapist,
maybe therapy isn’t going to be a magical, but it always have some motivation and they’re willing to or they’re willing to try medication or they’re willing to try different treatment options so that I know that they’re attempting to get better.
better. But when people say, you know, my partner has this issue, maybe it’s OCD and they can’t go out in public, but they’re not willing to work on it. Then people say, you know, I just, I don’t know what to do. Sometimes it’s about getting therapy to say,
how do you support your partner? Your partner has social anxiety. Maybe you’re used to doing everything for them. You’ve made every phone call for them over the years. You talk for them. So part of the strategy,
if you’re both motivated, might be that your partner takes a step. step back and says, actually, here’s the phone and here’s the doctor’s phone number so you can make the call. And then how do you support them? Or if they’re having a panic attack,
what can you do that would be helpful to them? So I always encourage people to get involved when their partner has a mental health issue, because you’re the one right there in the moment, there may be things you can do to coach them and support them and help them.
But it just becomes extra complicated when the person who has a mental illness doesn’t have any motivation to get help. I guess the last question I have, which is something I was interested in,
each of your books talk about things that mentally strong people, couples, parents, children don’t do. What do you consider mentally strong? So I’m glad you asked that question too,
because sometimes people are like, I can’t be mentally strong. I have depression. But mental strength and mental health are too completely different things. So it makes more sense to our brains when we think about it in something tangible,
like physical strength and physical health. And we don’t doubt that you could go to the gym and you can lift weights and that would make you physically stronger. Doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever get a physical health problem.
You might still get high cholesterol. And nobody doubts that or they don’t say it’s a weakness. It’s just maybe genetics or it’s just your life experience. experience or same as with mental strength and mental health.
Building mental strength certainly improves your mental health. And if you have a mental health issue, you can still choose to be mentally strong by doing these exercises every day. It’s just a complicating factor.
So when we talk about mental strength, it’s really three things, the way you think, the way you feel and the way you behave. So thoughts, we can’t always control the automatic thought that that pops into our head.
It’s going to be a bad day. This is awful. But you can then control how you respond to those thoughts. So building mental strength is about reframing some of those unhelpful thoughts. And then there’s the emotional piece.
It’s not about being happy all the time. It’s knowing, okay, sometimes sadness is healing or it’s okay to be anxious. But how do I manage those emotions? If my anxiety is not serving me well, maybe I push through it and do that scary thing anyway versus there’s time when your anxiety is warning you,
this isn’t safe. So you need to not do that thing. And then the third part is about our behavior, knowing that, yeah, it’s one thing to be a positive person, but unless you take positive action,
it doesn’t really matter. So what kind of steps are you going to take to solve problems, to manage your emotions and to really say, what are my goals and how do I reach those in life? It is now available. 13 things, mentally strong couples don’t do.
Thank you so much. Amy Moran, for being our guest. And we appreciate all the insight you shared. – Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun.

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Amy Morin Shares 13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don’t Do

13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don’t Do: Episode Link

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