How to Communicate When Your Relationship is Unbalanced | Relationship Theory

hope you enjoy this episode brought to you by our sponsors mint mobile click the link in the episode description to switch to mint mobile for as low as 15 a month and save big on unlimited talk text 5g lte data plans enjoy the episode because when somebody gives you the keys of the kingdom they've also given you the way to hurt them and take advantage of that yes and if you do then this devolves into madness hey everybody welcome to another episode of relationship theory i'm your co-host tom bilyeu and i am here with my lovely lovely wife my favorite human on the planet lisa bill you welcome to the show today we're going to be talking all about an imbalance in the responsibility in your relationship this one we have seen people go on fire for so buckle up my friends because it's about to be an interesting ride all right i love how giggly you are already hey this is my favorite show in the world to do because it's time with you it's also really good therapy for us to talk through these issues and see like where we even see things differently so it's a lot of fun you ready i'm ready all right let's do it question what if your partner was raised to believe that respect is not being questioned and that he should be catered to he was raised seeing everything revolve around his father who did whatever he wanted without question including cheating in his relationship cheating in his relationship among other things part of this may be difference in culture i was raised with some equally sorry i was raised with some equally supportive parents who shared responsibilities of the household and the family dynamic both of my parents worked as a team to achieve their goals so now he has so now we have a dramatic imbalance of responsibilities and the belief that if i question anything or ask for help i'm challenging him so now i'm han so now i'm handling the house and the newborn baby pretty much solely and still being expected to pay my own bills and contra contribute financially meanwhile he only goes to work to pay his own bills and the rent and the rest is free time for him and he does what he wants okay okay so here's where this stuff gets super intense if she has accurately described the scenario that's a nightmare waiting to happen and they are gonna have to sit down and divvy things up and get to a point where they feel like they're carrying equal weight in the relationship but my thing is always like would he hear that and be like oh yeah that's all accurate except for she should be okay with it or would he be like what like what are you talking about i'm doing i do at least as much as you with the baby and you know whatever so they did this study and they asked couples who does more chores around the house who carries more of the burden of the housework and both of them said i do and so it's it is a human inclination to feel that you're the one that's hard done by because you see everything that you do you have your perspective and so when you look at what the other person is doing and so much of it you're just inevitably not going to see so always getting on the same page about what's going on like that is step number one because the big revelation may be oh my god i had no idea how much you were doing on either side right maybe he's like hearing it like that you've just changed my life thank you so much i had no idea that that's how this was coming across it's not what's in my heart and soul i would never want that to be the case or you finally having the real conversation which is yes and like that's what it should be and now at least we know right now we know what the actual conversation that needs to be had is because if it is a misunderstanding easy to clear up if it's a collision of values it gets a lot harder oh okay let's go down that but before we do i actually want to address like how the perspective of each person is so true like i even want and it didn't join me as i was reading the question i was like he's a such [ __ ] lazy bastard and then actually you're so right because how many times do mean you think something and then we come together it's like oh my god you thought that too like i thought you were on the opposite or i thought oh my god i thought we were on the same page but you actually think the opposite so understanding that is really strong and then as you were saying i was thinking maybe um like what if he's on his side saying she freaking asks me all the time and so he gets annoyed now because he's gotten to the point where he gets asked all the time to help around the house or whatever or just gets asked questions a lot and she perceives it as i ask him one question as he snaps at me i'm not saying there's a situation but for instance i'll come to you and you're like okay babe another question and i'm like what do you mean i've said like five words to you today so to you it's like oh my god she's asked three questions already and it's only you know she's been awake for three seconds but for me i don't feel like that so that's really interesting i'll go briefly down that path but stop me if this actually doesn't really apply well to this discussion people see the world very differently and they they don't realize that they have a perspective that it is so easy to confuse perspective with objective truth so when you wake up in the morning you seem crazy to me because i talk a lot not not just that that's really minor but today is the perfect example you came to me and i had been up for longer than you as is typical between us and you had come down and said you know what today i took me time and instead of feeling like i had to rush out of uh bed and so i'm like predicting right like what you're gonna say oh she just laid in bed and she like was chilling yeah yeah and you're like and so i got up and i started hanging my clothes up and i thought you know what i can just hang my clothes up and i thought what you put yourself to work like that was your like my if i have time and i'm gonna give myself free time where i don't have to spring out of bed i wouldn't do chores that seemed so insane to me and so it was one of those where oh laugh out loud because to you it was some big grant of time to get to hang up your clothes and not have to like get out of bed and that to me if you wanted to stress the relationship tell me that i need to get up and start hanging clothes up i'd be like the [ __ ] i don't have enough to do already like i'm killing myself over here and so go ahead oh no i was gonna say this is super freaking fascinating i didn't mean to interrupt you um okay so say that so you're saying perspective is everything perspective is everything and it's not objectively true and so you have to figure out like you you may each see the same facts wildly different okay so let's take both scenarios let's break it down on saying assume that he was like oh my god i had no idea and then how do people go from that to saying hey how do we um do this together and then or depending on which way you want to do it and then also doing it the fact that he's like yeah and what so let's take both scenarios okay we'll get to collision of values and i think we should spend more time there because it's way harder to navigate so the really simple thing is just to figure out if you're on the same page people hate it when i do them to this it's so powerful and i'm always weirded out that people push back but force the other person to say in a single sentence that does not have a semicolon in it what exactly it is that they think the other person should do so okay cool i am a wife and mother and i have to pay my own bills you know describe that to me in a single sentence what the responsibility is for each of us and if he says okay i believe because you're the woman that you should um be child care exclusively uh also the home is your domain and i think we should both split things dutch cool and then i in turn would say what i think you should be doing is xyz and then we'll see like where we land right because to me the way that i just phrased his potential statement sounds so crazy and if i were his partner in that i'd be like you're out of your [ __ ] mind like if we're we have to take the totality of things that must be done and divvy them up in a way that acknowledges because it isn't going to be a straight division of labor so it's like that we're each carrying a load that we're happy to carry and so negotiating that stuff of like okay you don't mind this but i really hate that and so clearly you would hang up clothes i would not and there are things that i would do and love that you would hate and so it's like finding out where we both look at the other person and go thank you for doing that for me because i really don't want to do that like for instance here's a great example if groceries are delivered and they're really heavy i consider that my obligation to bring in heavy things to do this sort of more physically taxing element of that right people can say i'm crazy but like that feels good right we've agreed on that but i hate organizing things in the fridge in a way that like is irrational and so i'm just like i will get it to the fridge but don't make me put it in the fridge and you're like so wait i don't have to go outside and deal with it and carry it in or any of that and all i have to do is put it in the fridge and i get to be ocd about the way that i stack it count me in right so it's maybe it isn't even exactly equal but we're both ecstatic that like i can just do that part and you would rather have the other part so which comes to utter detailed communication because we figured that out baby's too heavy yep i know what to do like we don't even discuss no no this is your job like we've we've had that discussion we sat down so when i actually if you don't mind me jumping in when i went from being a housewife to them working and building quests i started to say i tried to do everything right i was like i'm gonna be an amazing wife i'm gonna be there for my puppies i'm gonna be the one that's gonna feed them walk them do all the house stuff do all the bills everything i was already doing and now i'm gonna come over here and help you build quests realize that that wasn't sustainable for just my mindset and stability and like enjoying life so i came to i was like i really love this business but i can't do everything and i'm breaking and trying to and you were so gracious and just such an amazing supportive husband that you're like cool let's sit down and let's go over everything that you're finding overwhelming or let's just lay out every single thing that has to be done in the house every single thing laundry dishes cooking food groceries and now let's see who makes sense who does it and if there's certain things i'm not willing to do and you're not willing to do then where do we go with that we have to come to either and that's really important to understand sometimes the right answer is just don't do it yeah right exactly like so for instance you were like i'm never making the bed ever ever ever you can never will i make the bed not once and so now i'm like well [ __ ] i love the make i love having the bed made but how can i ask that of you right so we just kind of went and that's my thing like if you're not willing to do it don't expect the other person to do it that's what's shitty not expecting like hey don't expect me to do it but i don't expect you to do it either well now and here's the thing actually i'd love to talk about with like let's say dishes because that's one thing that i hear a lot with the women complaining he doesn't help me with the dishes so with me and you we've had this discussion and you've said babe i'll use plastic like oh you i'll use disposable i'll use i'll freaking eat out of the can or whatever just so the environmentally friendly people know that is merely an example i use to let you know i will happily wash my own dishes which i do gladly now but i just i could the the comments were going to get lit up with tom is destroying the environment so okay um i've lost my train of thought so oh so we went over okay these are the things that need to be done and then how do we work around them like let's say you get takeout you happily eat from the bag and i'll be like but i want a plate and you're like okay but you're choosing to use the plate why the hell am i who has already said i don't want to freaking do dishes you've chosen to use a plate not me and now you expect me to help you so we've had that discussion but here's the small little caveat i want to add if i've actually asked for help like babe i'm feeling really overwhelmed would you mind helping me with the different dishes even if all the dishes were mine you'd be like of course baby because i've reached out but it's not an expectation i think that's the difference you just drug people into deep waters so all right now no no in an amazing way and now now it's about collision of values right so i have a value system and my value system has like certain things so number one uplift your wife make sure that she feels better about herself when she's around you than when she's not want your wife to win right like those those things matter to me and it's important to me to feel like i lift others up especially the people that i care about i also have those something in my value system that says don't take the piss to use a british phrase where i wouldn't want to feel like i was being taken advantage of so for instance you know that if you said hey i'm i'm really breaking here will you help me that i would stop whatever i'm doing and take up whatever you're doing even if they're like if the other day and i don't even know if you know this i mopped the floor because you said that you were really stressed out because we're shooting this in covid and so we don't have anybody come to help us clean and so there was one part of the floor that was bad and like mop the whole house but there was one part of the floor that i thought was particularly bad so i went and mopped it and obviously i don't care but i was just doing it for your sake because i knew that it was starting to stress you out but if you were constantly like oh i know that i can get him to do it by like oh i'm breaking oh the single tier you know whatever and it's being done specifically just to get me to do something like that that would really bother me so it's this that's why i say it's deep waters it's this really nuanced thing of like you know what my value system is i'm very clear and i can articulate it and you never use that against me so you never try to manipulate me emotionally to do something like that and because of that then i feel so good helping you out because i know that if you've ever asked like man that really means that she's tried everything else and so now like i can feel like a hero coming in and like doing extra work to help you and that feels good right so it it is very nuanced because when somebody gives you the keys of the kingdom they've also given you the way to hurt them and take advantage of that yes and if you do then this devolves into madness and that's why like so often when we get these questions i wish that we could spend like a little bit of time with the people to see like where's the real friction here because i think it's going to be pretty rare that there isn't some other unaddressed issue we call dust settling right it's 10 years of some other thing that bothered you and you guys never reconciled yeah all right so because they're not here let's take the other stance of just assuming he's exactly as she described it and so now she brings up and he's like and what what how would you approach discussion in discussing it in the first place and then how would you handle the discussion okay so i mean obviously i would do what you and i actually do and this is where i think people would because i've often thought like do we do a reality show like about our relationships people can see what we're really like they'd never believe it because we talk in a way that is so weird because it's so direct like oh i think we're having a collision of values like we will say that in the middle of an argument like is this are we really at the surface or do we have a collision of values oh i we actually are colliding on values i fully let me see if i understand your point and i will steal man your argument and say have i understood correctly what your position is yes you steal man mind yes you have accurately understood it okay we both understand each other and we still think the other person is crazy and doing that is what they have to do you have to be able to articulate the other person's position so accurately that they feel seen understood not judged because when you steal man it you're not trying to set them up so there's straw manning where you pick the worst of somebody's position and you say oh it's this right and then you destroy it easily and say how ridiculous it is okay that's straw manning when you steal man you really want to get inside their soul as to why to them that is a just way to look at the world right because it's really it's not that it doesn't exist but it's really rare that someone is a mustache twirling villain so most people they really just see the world in a different way and so when you can steal men at one the process of steel manning it is like oh my god i don't agree but i actually get now where you're coming from and so it gives you the empathy that you're going gonna need because on the other side of this if you think they are a villain get out of the relationship right right so if they really are just sociopathic then there's nothing to be done and her still manning of his of him would be something like look i work when i work this is my money i believe that you should take care of the house and the reason why i believe you should take care of the house is that's the background that i was from and like almost taking his position in a positive manner aggressively and seeing if he's like yeah you've actually understood me yeah now at least you understand where he's coming from he doesn't feel attacked but now you can go oh everything i've just written down is correct well now like you said it's like if he just agrees yeah that's how the world is just now spending your life trying to change someone and you know we know where that leads yeah at least at that point if you steal men each other and each of you state your values that are feeding into this then you can say okay well are these things that we're willing to give on is there a negotiated path forward or is this something that we have to um agree to disagree and it's gonna forever be a concern like you and i see tidiness so differently and really it comes down to um use of time we collide on what we value in terms of how we spend our time and we've been together 20 years and we it is not that we don't understand each other is that we just fundamentally experience those things differently and so we've just had to say we're never going to come to terms on this and there are some things that you can sort of carve out and say okay this isn't going to be an issue like for instance i don't make messy common areas but i have areas that i can make as messy as i want and so that was the agreement that we came home so you have to figure out like are these things where you can get on board like so um you will keep us on track from a time perspective yeah we're yeah we're getting close okay so um recently you were doing an interview and the person you were telling your story about hey i used to be a housewife and now i'm an entrepreneur and they just assumed that you had one husband when you were a housewife and a new husband now you're an entrepreneur it didn't occur to them that i could evolve and that we could negotiate that and talk super openly about oh cool so your value system is changing the things you want change here's my value system uplift my wife and i this is literally how i process through it okay wait my value is i want to uplift her i want her to live the life where she's turned her potential into whatever skill set she values most she's telling you now that what she values is being an entrepreneur and so okay that breaks sort of these social contracts that we've had over other things but what's my highest value and that's another thing people struggle with is you have to put them in order because when they collide it's like which is higher and it was like okay cool well i know that i want her to be the person she wants to be to become the strong and as powerful in whatever way she defines that as so cool that that decision that goal that value necessitates certain behavior and so you got to figure that out because it really may be that he has visions of what a man is supposed to be she has visions of what and he has vision of what a woman is supposed to be she has visions of what a woman is supposed to be and what a man is supposed to be and so now it's like well are you guys willing to reshape those or are we now at a real impasse and that's a real thing and um i know it's very sort of culturally and vogue right now to say there's one way to view the world and it is the right way and i'll say that isn't functional and so there may be only one way that you're interested in in which case you negotiate and exit from the relationship and that's that i'm not saying people should stay in a relationship they're unhappy and they should not but i'm just saying rather than be annoyed and upset and think they're the [ __ ] it's like okay well we can't go forward together fair enough fine you do you it's going to lead to whatever consequences it leads to i know what i want what i need and move forward also i just want to add there is an element of and look it's hard because as i was reading out the thing i was like what an [ __ ] but there is an element of like you just can't judge him like if that's how he thinks there really is no right or wrong if that's the life he wants and he's like yeah i want like even though it's not a relationship i would agree with there is something to saying that he's wrong or that the way he's thinking is inaccurate if that's how he was brought up right like if his dad was like that i'm not going to give him the pass for that but it's like if he go ahead i don't know like but why wouldn't you give the pass for that because if he if you'd like me to explain yeah because as an adult you should be able to say what is my goal what am i trying to get to and then adjust your values and your beliefs accordingly right that doesn't mean to try to believe in unicorns but i'm saying there you can this is a whole way too big for this conversation but beliefs are malleable people mistake beliefs for objective truth and once again they're usually not and so there's a lot in there that you can change so as an adult like i wanted a traditional marriage it meant something to me to work earn money and you not need to work when that changed for you it was like well it's not my highest value so i'm gonna let go of that because my highest value is to elevate her really my highest value to share a life and then elevating you is a huge part of that so i re-evaluated my beliefs and what my goals were and you think that so you think though that i would have then had the right to have judged you if you didn't re-evaluate totally separate but that's what i'm saying like i'm just saying i'm not giving him a pass i'm not going to judge him god god i got it but i don't think he's a bad person for having beliefs that don't take him where he's that's the thing you don't think of him as a bad person i think she's built animosity up it seems like in the wording she's used she's built animosity up so going and even starting the conversation i can almost predict that she will bring that to the table and judge him for it and she'll say well it's your father he brought you up like this he was a cheater you think it's okay to cheat but i was brought up in a family that actually supported right it becomes very judgmental immediately so i can imagine he's just going to switch off and be like well hang on a minute you've come you've come at me attacking me and you've come at me with a judgmental viewpoint i'm not saying she hasn't got any right to feel the way she does but my advice is to almost come at it with a non-judgmental way of saying it and being and being like look this is how i'm feeling this is what i would love this is what i would look for let's talk about it tell me how you're feeling versus going at him saying you do this you do this and i can't believe it extraordinarily powerful advice and i will further advise her to because that there's a lot of power in the being angry about something aiming at the behavior and not the person so i'm not judging you you're a good person i love you that's why we're together these behaviors have become really problematic for me and for these reasons and by shifting it away from the person and wanting to win together which is really important to getting to the other side of this but not needing to let go of and these things are non-negotiable can be a pretty powerful way to do it but the to do it with encouragement and sweetness and kindness and a desire to get to the other side is powerful that doesn't mean that you don't have a bright line agreed word all right with that i know we got to wrap because we got another one guys thank you so much i hope that that stuff lands for you it has helped us tremendously in our relationship to just lay everything out and talk about it point by point and understand when something is uh negotiable and when something is non-negotiable all right if this added value be sure you hit subscribe and that notification bell so that you see all of this content until next time my friends build an amazing relationship i've been figuring it out that was pretty good right all right peace

Channel: Relationship Theory

Views: 18,604

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Lisa Bilyeu, Relationship Theory, impact theory, women of impact, couples, relationships, relationship advice, long-term relationships, marriages, values, therapy, imbalance, equal relationship, relationship equality, respect, lack of respect, perception, negotiable, negotiate

Id: 1FbH8HALXcw

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021