#30: Rekindle your relationship in midlife, with Dr. Ray and Jean Kadkhodaian

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

This episode is for anyone in a committed, intimate relationship. In today’s episode with Dr. Ray and Jean Kadkhodaian, we talk about what it takes for people to stay together, especially in midlife. But whether you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s or beyond, this episode has a ton of information about how to create a deep bond that will carry you through parenthood (if you have kids), the empty nest time period, and well into your twilight years. This is one to share!

Dr. Ray and Jean Kadkhodaian have been married since Valentine's Day in 1998, and in 2002, they co-founded the Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Center, a successful counseling center in the Chicagoland area. After working with thousands of couples, they created and perfected a unique approach to coach couples to have amazing relationships, called Couples Synergy. Dr. Ray & Jean both have Master's degrees in Clinical Psychology, and Dr. Ray has an additional doctorate in Clinical Psychology. They are co-hosts of their own podcast, Couples Synergy: Real Couples, Real Stories. They also co-authored a book, "Good Boundaries-Great Relationships." They have two grown sons and a daughter-in-law, are avid hikers, and enjoy traveling the world and experiencing life together.

When it comes to relationships, they believe that they cannot teach it unless they live it. They are a real couple who have worked hard to create an amazing relationship through the difficult challenges life brings us all. Their knowledge and experience, not only comes from the couples they have helped, but from their own personal relationship, which they are very proud of.

Learn more about Dr. Ray and Jean:

https://couplessynergy.com/

https://www.instagram.com/couplessynergy/

https://www.facebook.com/couplessynergy

Learn more about Karin:

https://drcalde.com

https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Intro:

[00:00] Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

Episode Intro:

Karin: Hello everybody. I'm really, really excited about this episode. I have Dr. Ray and Jean with me today and what they share is just gold. They have a really unique model in that they are a husband and wife team and they work with couples and they work one on one with them in the beginning. So Jean works with the women and Dr. Ray works with the men. And then they work with them together and they really help them rebuild their bond and have fun together, build trust. So they talk a lot about how they do this and what gets in the way of couples relationships, especially over time. And so we get into what happens in midlife for couples and why so many couples struggle at this stage. Just before the 38 minutes, mark Jean gets into women's Development theory and it's really worth a listen. And then Dr. Ray will get into what's going on with men at this stage so you really get a full picture. And then, of course, how that all comes together for couples. They talk about why the divorce rate for couples in midlife is as high as it is and also how to prevent that. And they talk about why falling in love again at this stage of a couple's relationship can actually be better than falling in love for the first time. So there is a lot of really great stuff here. I hope that you appreciate it. I also hope that you'll leave me a review and share it with others. I'm glad you're here. Here we go.

Karin: Dr. Ray and Jean, welcome.

[02:33] Dr. Ray: Thank you so much for having us on.

[02:35] Karin: Your know, this is the first time that I've had a couple on my show, so this would be just a little bit different and fun. I'm looking forward to it.

[02:46] Dr. Ray: Yeah, me too. So are we.

[02:48] Karin: Great. So tell us where you are in the world.

[02:52] Dr. Ray: We are in western Colorado. So if you know Denver and you travel four and a half hours west over the Continental Divide, we will be right there.

[03:04] Karin: Wow. So you're quite a ways from Denver. Are there any other cities that we might know in that region of Colorado?

[03:12] Dr. Ray: Yeah, one of the major cities is Grand Junction okay. And then also Montrose is a city just south of that. And then south of that is Telluride.

[03:25] Jean: And we're 2 hours south of Aspen.

[03:26] Dr. Ray: Yeah, and a lot of people know Telluride because a lot of people go there and ski. And so are you skiers at Know? We can head down a mountain on skis and stay on the skis. I wouldn't call us skiers.

[03:40] Jean: Then we're hikers.

[03:43] Karin: Nice. And I bet you have a lot of hiking opportunities there.

[03:47] Jean: Absolutely.

[03:48] Dr. Ray: Yeah.

[03:49] Karin: Excellent. Yeah, I love hiking too. Well, great. What brought you to that part of the world?

[03:55] Dr. Ray: That's a really great question. We are actually born and raised in the Chicagoland area, both of us, so in the suburbs of Chicago. So the mountains are very foreign to us. When we got married, we always knew that we were going to move out of Illinois at some point. And in the beginning, on our honeymoon, we went up and down the East Coast. We went up into Maine. We saw Portland Head Lighthouse, which was actually the inspiration for starting our clinic in Chicago. And we thought it was going to be Maine for a while. And then our son went to Texas A M and we went down to Texas many times and we thought it was going to be Texas. But Texas is really hot and Gene can't put on enough sunscreen to live in Texas.

[04:48] Jean: And then we started hiking and then we kept coming out here to do hikes. And here we are.

[04:54] Karin: Well, tell us what you do for work.

[04:57] Dr. Ray: Well, Jean and I, we started our clinic called the Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Center in the Chicagoland area, 2002. And at that time we were working in the mental health field and we were working just like many clinicians, working with clients one on one. We were working in community mental health. We were working with couples because we were assigned a couple and we saw that traditional couples work was really difficult to do. And especially if you don't have any specific training or certification in it and experience in it, it just feels like you are doing a wrestling match with the couple. And so we decided we wanted to create a much more effective approach in working with couples. And that's really what started our work in the Lighthouse.

[05:54] Karin: And you said that you wanted to create something different and more effective. So what is the model that, you.

[06:01] Jean: Know, we've been studying people in this space for a long time. Gottman and Sue Johnson and a lot of kind of traditionally educated people like Tony Robbins or other people are all somehow involved in relationship because relationship is everything, whether it's business, your children, your partner. And we found that most of them had a piece. So if you look at the five Love languages that work is really about how to make deposits into your relationship, it doesn't deal with conflict resolution. It doesn't deal with bonding and attachment, like Sue Johnson. So our work is a combination of what we learned in studying couples over 25 years, what we learned in being a couple for over 25 years, and all of the research that's out there that had parts that we felt were the best of their work. Imago, which is Harville Hendrix. So it's a conglomerate of all those kind of things that can take a couple well beyond anything that's fairly traditional.

[07:13] Dr. Ray: We package that model into a 90-day program, and it's a very structured program where it takes couples through that process of rebuilding that foundation and reinvesting in the relationship, and then also, once the foundation is rebuilt, to actually heal any of the past wounds that they have brought into this relationship that remain unresolved. And that model is called the couple synergy model.

[07:49] Karin: And you said 90 days. So are couples meeting with you, like, on a weekly basis, or how does that work?

[07:57] Dr. Ray: It does work that way. Once a week that we meet with couples. I work with the husbands doing individual work. Gene works with the wives doing individual work. And then we also come together, the four of us, and that's where we are really teaching them our structured approach.

[08:16] Jean: The 90 day program is really a training program. And so initially, we work individually, like Dr. Ray was saying, with each of the parts. Like, he works with the guys. I work with the girls, because you're not the person you were the day you got married. And many people are so busy in their life, they've lost touch with who they are, and they're stuck in these patterns for good reasons. They don't want to fight all the time. They don't want to hurt their partner. So what we've noticed is people tend to really narrow their life considerably. They kind of do the same thing over and over again. They don't spend a lot of time together without buffers their kids, their friends. And they really don't know how to show up in what we call an adult adult relationship, as opposed to parent child, which is where we all learn how to be in a relationship. And so the Couple Synergy Program is designed to help people show up in a way they've never learned before.

[09:17] Karin: How did you come to do this work?

[09:19] Dr. Ray: Both of us, we have a background in unhealthy relationships.

[09:26] Jean: A background.

[09:30] Karin: Well said.

[09:31] Jean: Yeah. The history of going. And when you fall in love with someone, it's pretty almost magical how you will attract someone who knows your weaknesses, who knows how to push your buttons, who knows this unhealthy dance you learned. And what we found is that's actually perfect. It's not that you're with the wrong person. It's that you don't know how to grow with this person in a different way. And so we as young adults had what I would say people would consider toxic relationships. Although I really don't like that term because it implies a powerlessness that is a set thing. Like this is toxic as opposed to you're attracting another wounded person who also doesn't know how to change and grow with you. And so in our own lives we did our own personal work outside of those relationships because the relationships weren't healthy enough to do it with a partner. And that's ultimately when we met was after we had done considerable amount of work ourselves as individuals. And most of that was kind of feeling our way through it, some with help with therapists and stuff. But a lot of it was us discovering and it took us a lot longer to do that on our own without the guidance. So that's how we're able to fast track people so much quicker into preparing themselves to be an adult in a relationship.

[11:05] Karin: And why is it that you work with them individually?

[11:08] Dr. Ray: First, the word synergy means that the sum is greater than the whole, is greater than the sum of the parts. And so each person, they bring their own piece to the relationship and if they don't work on their piece, then the whole is not going to be whole. And so each person has to take responsibility for what they have power and control over changing. If they come into the situation and pointing their finger at their partner saying that if they would change then things would be better, well then they just get stuck in a stalemate and they're not going to move the needle in any direction. And that's very normal because we see.

[11:55] Jean: Like that we see out. We don't see in. And so that source of pain comes from out. And we think if out would just change, I'd be okay. And what we do in those first three sessions individually is show them where their power actually is. And it's scary to learn that it's much more comforting to try to control someone else because we have what we think and what we know and then we have what's in our heart which is unknown. So we keep deferring to what we know, doing the same patterns, doing the same things. And we find that creating this safe place where both people are respected and we're all pulling for the same thing. Two winners or two losers. There's not a winner or loser in this work that they're able to find their power and then show up empowered in that relationship, which is our goal.

[12:54] Karin: And you say that it can be scary and I suspect that part of the reason why it can be scary is because you're looking at probably some painful stuff and some old stuff that you've been holding onto that maybe you've.

[13:08] Dr. Ray: Never even recognized for sure you haven't recognized. And most people don't know that. That the natural evolution through a committed partnership is that that old stuff is going to come to the surface. Those wounds naturally are going to have to be looked at. Or what couples do is they just continue to kick the can down the street, distract themselves, and they don't really look at that stuff. And they just try to have a relationship at a very superficial level. We use the analogy of an iceberg at 85% under the water, 15% above the water, and most couples are just tending to the stuff above the water and they're fighting about the stuff above the water, but they don't really know what that's connected to. It's connected to some really deep stuff that they don't want to look at. Right. It's too scary.

[14:06] Jean: When we're falling in love, our heart is wide open, but it doesn't have any vulnerability. This person isn't balancing a checkbook with you yet. You don't have anything to lose. And so it's very easy to pick and choose what you want to share and let them know because they're not the ones who's hurt you yet. And then as you bond with another human being, you can't help but start to bump into those things. And so we have all sorts of ways of coping. And when you look at your childhood, if coping meant I'm going to go isolate and tend to my feelings myself, or I'm going to be angry and push people away, or we're going to minimize all of the ways, that we learn to cope. It sets up this precedent of a long term shutting down of the heart and only staying in a place of what we know and what we can control. I know if I do this, he's going to respond that way and I know what to do with that, whether I like it or not. Go ahead.

[15:11] Karin: There's some comfort in repeating those patterns and repeating the known, isn't there?

[15:16] Jean: Right. It's a lot less effort, it's a lot less work, especially if you've tried to open your heart and you don't know how and they don't know how, and it just turns into a big mess. And then it gets really scary because now you have finances together, a family, things you don't want to let go of. Most of the couples we work with, they're in love, they want to be together, they just don't want to be in so much pain.

[15:40] Karin: Yeah. And I sometimes get these couples who they hear about coaching, and coaching is more forward focused and sometimes that's really powerful and useful. But so often the reason that couples are struggling is because of the past stuff and so they don't want to deal. So are there other reasons why people don't want to look back?

[16:11] Dr. Ray: I think it's because they don't want to get stuck in the weeds. And most often that's kind of what happens in traditional marriage counseling, is that they just go and they hash out the same fight over and over and over again. They get stuck in that pain and then they leave the session after an hour, and they don't feel any resolution. They just feel like they've had that wound ripped open again. And so even in coaching, in a coaching model, it is forward focused. But we have to learn from the past, right? We have to take a look at what has happened in the past and understand the why and not get locked into being back there and staying stuck back there. And so I find that the coaching model is much more effective in that way.

[17:05] Jean: Whenever we experience pain, whether it's physical or emotional, it equals shame. And shame says, not only is it my fault, but I'm not enough. The reason it's my fault is because I'm not okay? There's something fundamentally broken about me, which is a lie. And that's why people don't really want to look back, because they feel, I'm going to be exposing a very vulnerable part of myself that I think is horrible and nobody should know about. And we are domesticated like that through our childhood for all the right and wrong reasons. And when we help a couple get to that point where they let their partner into that locked cupboard in their heart, where they've been sitting in that darkness, and the most dangerous place we can be is in our head. And we don't want to say those things out loud because it feels terrible to say, well, I was hurting this way and it was my fault, which is probably a lie. And to be able to help a couple find these are funny terms, unconditional love for each other in a conditioned environmental conditional is important. One of the conditions most couples have is, I'm going to only have sex with you and nobody else. And there's other conditions that if they're in place, they help us feel safe within the container of our relationship, which is what we talk about as the inner sanctum, which then allows that vulnerability and that safe privacy space to show your partner all of those things that someone told you was a dark part of you which really wasn't. It was a hurting part of you, right? And that's how we heal.

[19:01] Karin: And how do you help couples create that sense of safety?

[19:07] Dr. Ray: Gene mentioned the inner sanctum, and that know, one of the things that we teach is if you think of a bullseye and you think of each concentric circle going down to that inner bullseye, that inner bullseye is the inner sanctum. Within that space, it's only reserved for the couple and their spirituality. And within that space, it is safe enough to be able to share what Jung called the shadow self, right? The parts of ourselves that we don't want to show the world and to feel truly accepted by another human being, which is something that is very scary for all of us as we try to keep those negative parts of ourself from the world because we don't want to be judged and we want to be accepted. And so to create a place where you can show that part of yourself to another person and still be accepted and not judged, that is true safety. And most often what happens is that couples, they don't maintain that inner sanctum. They bring other people into it. Maybe they talk to a girlfriend or they talk to their mother all the time, or sometimes parents, they turn to their children in an inappropriate way, lean on them emotionally. And so that inner sanctum is not sacred. And so it leads to a lot of disconnect. It leads to a lot of distrust and a lot of resentment. And what we try to teach couples is how to maintain all of those concentric circles. And where do the relationships in their lives? Where do they fit in, right? If you met someone for the first time, you're not going to tell them your deepest, darkest secrets. They're going to be on the outside, and they are going to have to earn trust to move into more inner circles. And so just learning that concept alone really helps couples start to understand that, right? Because now from there, you can navigate not just your personal relationships or extended relationships with people now you can also navigate the world. You can navigate work relationships. You can navigate the Internet, right, social media, media itself, and really being conscious of what you are allowing into that inner sanctum, what are you allowing to become a wedge between you and your partner?

[21:50] Jean: Another way to look at that is with the analogy of a house. So if you're outside and you live in a cold climate and it's snowy and you're shoveling your driveway and you have a winter coat on and hat and gloves and boots, and the neighbor comes by, you say, hi, how's it going? Great weather we're having, right, that's outside, that's safe. You do that with anyone, whether you like them or not. But what if they come into the front door and they take off their boots and their coat? And what if they find their way to the living room? And who finds their way to the kitchen table or the pool in the backyard? And who goes upstairs and who goes into your bedroom and who goes into your bathroom? And so that place of the inner sanctum is going from that winter coat to completely naked and vulnerable. And you can see with that analogy where it's appropriate to let certain people into certain parts, but not all of it. And what we do with couples is you can't just expose them to each other when they've had years of being guarded and protecting themselves and even maybe years before they even met. And so that's part of the individual work as well, is getting to know yourself at that place of what happened to you and creating a safe environment. And so in the beginning, we always start with we want you guys having fun together. We want you having new experiences. We want you making deposits into the relationship, which is the Five Love Languages book. We don't want you talking about problems. We don't want you discussing the big ticket items you came here to work on because we need to teach you something first so that you can have that conversation in a way that is resolution and feels good and heals.

[23:47] Karin: So that goes back to those conditions that you're setting to create some of that safety for couples.

[23:53] Dr. Ray: Yeah, it's important to reset the boundaries in the relationship. And couples are trying to reset boundaries when they have no foundation to build upon. You can't set boundaries with someone you don't trust. And so we get them to reset their friendship. How much time are you actually spending together, just the two of you? Well, most couples are spending less than an hour a week. That's with screens. Even sometimes they're sitting in front of a TV and they're not really rebuilding that bond that they have. Right. And getting to that place where we could just have this basic trust and have fun together, because you're not going to have fun with someone that you don't trust. And from that place, that's when we could start to melt the resentment. That's where we can actually start to teach them skills on how to process these hurts that have accumulated throughout their relationship. That just carrying them with them and they're just untouched.

[24:59] Jean: One of the things we've noticed recently in our work is we've been working couple to couple with people for 25 years. And that means the couples coming in, they're having an hour worth of work with us, either individually or together. They're doing some homework and they're going right back into their lives. Like, they get this hour and then they're out the door taking care of their kids back in their life. And they can intellectually grasp what we're trying to teach. They can have moments of healing, but they keep feeling like it's like if you hired a personal trainer and you only worked out when your trainer was standing next to you telling you to work out, it would either be very expensive or you really wouldn't get the results you want that require much more repetition and much more time. And we've recently started providing weekend intensives, which are four days long, of diving into your relationship with no distraction. So there is no going back. There's only what's happening right now and really filling up those what Sue Johnson, I think, calls the love tank is she the love tank person, whoever, I think that's that phrase and really helping them get full so that now when we're working with them after the weekend, they crave that feeling so much. They want to do the hard work to make sure they're getting rid of the pain that's in between them, that's.

[26:29] Dr. Ray: Blocking that deep connection and weekend intensive. Sounds very intimidating.

[26:36] Jean: Oh, yeah. We're changing.

[26:37] Dr. Ray: And we actually, as some pilot study and feedback we've received from couples being on the program, they actually are helping us rename it to be a relationship enhancement weekend because that's really what happens. And our last one that we just did, we did it in Colorado. There's this beautiful wood lodge, like wood log Lodge with huge windows overlooking the mountains. There are no TVs in this place. There's no internet connection. You are completely unplugged. And the amount of energy that you infuse back into your relationship throughout this weekend is just transformative. And we saw couples who were anxious and kind of really intimidated in the beginning turn into this just loving like they're dating again, loving couple and sharing with each other and having fun and laughing, and it's just an amazing thing to watch.

[27:41] Jean: Yeah, we had a couple we've been working with for a few months, and they've been married 37 years, and they were literally living in separate homes. They had a house in Florida. House in Illinois. And it was a good place for them because they were setting boundaries and they weren't budging. And we wanted them there because we really wanted the best for both and not anyone to acquiesce. And at the end of the weekend, I mean, they were making out on the couch. It was amazing. 37 years. It was so cute. That's wonderful. I love it. Yeah.

[28:17] Karin: So how do you help those couples who just say, but we just don't have time. You've got all these pressures. And they're right at one level. I mean, there's so much that we expect of people. They've got their jobs and they've got their kids, and they've got maybe they volunteer at the school or they're taking care of parents. Whatever it is, there are so much pressure on couples. How can we convince and maybe that's the wrong word to use, convince. But how do you help those who just it's just so hard to find that time to spend together.

[28:57] Dr. Ray: Jean has the best excuse in the world. And if you listen to our last podcast episode, we interviewed our mothers and Jean's mother, she talked about she's got the trump card. She's got the trump card.

[29:10] Jean: She has nine children. And my parents, they did date nights. They went away for weekends. We may not have had the same babysitter twice, but I think the bigger problem that people are facing right now is we have this strange relationship with urgency and important, and our phone buzes, and we have no problem finding time for that, even at the expense of taking care of our children. Right? And you'll see people give their kids a phone so they can be distracted, so they can be on their phone. And it feels so important. No, it feels so urgent. But most of it is very unimportant. And the things in life that create a healthy person and a healthy relationship are not urgent, but important, like exercise, eating well, spending time together, cleaning the house, all those things that lead to health and wellness, as opposed to ordering a pizza or drinking a beer or the things that comfort us in this moment. And that's the hardest part, is if you're in pain, you have two choices. One, you can seek comfort, and the way we seek comfort is immediate. It's eating something not good for us, drinking something, distracting ourselves with TV or social media, taking a pill. If your pain is back, your back pain, and you take a pain reliever and you sit on the couch, you're going to feel better. But all those things make us sick. Over time, they instantly bring us pleasure, which is fleeting. And the cost of that pleasure is long term illness. So if your back hurts, you take a pill, you sit on the couch, you'll start gaining weight, your muscles are atrophy, and over time, you'll need more and more and more of that pain pill. The other choice we have is discipline. And this is what we're talking about these couples about being disciplined and saying, no, I'm going to make an effort and a space for my relationship. If my back hurts, I'm going to go to physical therapy. I'm going to get stronger. It's going to hurt. It might hurt really bad right now, but ultimately, in the end, it leads to joy and permanent healthy change. And, yeah, we hear that all the time. I don't have time. I don't have time. But where did we learn that that is part of our domestication you look at our kids, our kids don't have time. They're in all these sports. They're constantly having to achieve something, whether it's school, sports. It's so much different than when I was a kid where if I was going to be in softball, I would be responsible for driving my bike to softball and playing. Now every parent is at every practice. They're at every event.

[32:07] Dr. Ray: Their tournaments are across state lines. Coach buses.

[32:11] Karin: Don't get me going on.

[32:15] Jean: Soccer, gymnastics, dance, hockey. It's all of them. And so we turned all this stuff into like, we're all going to be.

[32:23] Dr. Ray: Rock stars at this about being a kid anymore or experiencing. You have to achieve. And the one resource that we all have the same of is time. And we have the choice on what we want to spend that time on. And we could spend our time focusing on getting our kids to become AAA players, or we can focus on them becoming whole, healthy human beings. That may not be soccer champions down the line, but they're going to enjoy the sport. They're also going to enjoy their camaraderie with other kids, and they're also going to enjoy our interaction with them as their parents. As I said, what we focus on grows. And that's really important. That's what we try to. Teach and impart upon the couples that we're working with. And some of the couples that come in and say we just don't have the time and we give them homework assignments and maybe they come back and they don't do the homework and we have to have a heart to heart conversation with them and be like, what are we doing here? If you're coming in here looking for us to do the work and changing a relationship, well, nothing is going to happen. And that's just a waste of time and waste of money. And that's not fair to either one of you. And so where are you going to draw the line and start making your relationship a priority? Because your relationship is the cornerstone of the family. And without that cornerstone, an arch will collapse.

[33:59] Jean: The first homework assignment we give all people we work with, not just couples, is to read a book called The Four Agreements. And the last agreement is always do your best. And Damagaruez, who's the author of this book, he talks about this because what doing your best does is help you not feel guilt. But the problem with that is if you do less than your best, you feel guilty. But if you do better than your best, you also feel guilty. So now we have both parents working, or one home and one working. And neither one of them feels like they can give enough. And so they compensate through that guilt, which is misplaced, and steal from the relationship, which is the worst thing we could do to our kids. And we don't even realize it. And we think catering to our kids and letting them stay up all night and letting them be part of every meal, and we never go out without them is good parenting or taking care of our kids. But what's better for our kids is for them to see that your relationship matters. Because without your relationship, your family is not intact. And to invest in that and to teach your kids it's okay to be without us for a couple of hours or a weekend and it's okay for you to go bond with Grandma or bond with a babysitter or other people in the village that are going to care for you. You'll be fine while we're gone. It's not damaging or abuse to leave your children for a weekend and take care of your relationship, but that's the mindset, because that guilt, which is misplaced, they have a hard time resolving that once they're able to get there and see that their kids are fine, in fact, thriving when they back off, it helps a lot.

[35:54] Karin: Yeah. And also when we don't allow our kids to be cared for by others, we're also giving our kids a message too, aren't we? That it's not okay to be apart from us. Or perhaps we can't trust them to be okay, or whatever it is.

[36:12] Dr. Ray: So that's another message or that they're fragile.

[36:15] Karin: That they're fragile, yeah.

[36:17] Dr. Ray: And that is subconsciously. If we are projecting that message onto our kids, then they don't feel their confidence. They don't feel the ability to stretch out and explore, which is what kids are supposed to do. And so now it's I'm only going to explore if mom and dad say it's okay. And we are seeing in our clinic in Chicago, we're seeing a lot more kids coming in who are 1819, who never got a driver's license, they have never had a job. They are still in their parents home playing video games, not interacting with people face to face. And this amount of shelterness that is happening is a result of that.

[37:04] Jean: In my lifetime, every single one of my siblings, well, probably not the two later ones because they were born in the 80s, came home in a car in the front seat in our mother's lap without a seatbelt. And today a baby is in the backseat. They're in a car seat until they're 1213 long. They stay in the backseat until they're handed a car key and say, okay, now you come up front. No wonder they don't want to drive. They're told this is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. And they're on a camera at birth. We know people whose children are 25 and they're still on that 360. I can see you anywhere in the world. And the parents are still monitoring their adult children who are in already long term relationships with their partner. And it's really disturbing the amount of enmeshment based on illogical fear that we've created.

[38:12] Karin: And I could go down this road and ask more about that, which is really tempting. But I also want to make sure that we talk about these couples who are in midlife and perhaps their kids are a little bit older, like 25 or teens or out of the house. What are some of the challenges that those couples are traditionally facing that you see?

[38:38] Dr. Ray: So I'm glad you mentioned that demographic because there are two demographics that we see the most of and that's the couples with kids that we were just talking about, struggling with that balance and guilt and all of that. And then there's the demographic of the couples who their kids are grown, they're adults, maybe they're out of the house or empty nesters and now they're looking at each other like I don't know who you are. And they become such strangers to each other. They're living parallel lives because they have lived through raising their kids and they did it very well. Like they just tag team two ships passing in the night and dealing with things at a very parallel level, but very little interaction between the two of them. So if they went on trips, it was a family trip. If they went out to dinner, it was the family out for dinner. But it was never the couple really investing in their relationship. And so over time they drifted apart. They don't really know who each other are anymore. And the number one reason why older couples divorce is because they lack a common vision. And so at that point in life, the kids are gone. They don't have now this focus in their life to say, this is where my value is. Now, what is your value? Right? What direction are you going in? What kinds of things do you want to create? And most couples at that point, it's been so long since they've talked about those things.

[40:21] Jean: We also have a very important thing happening that nobody talks about, and that is the way we develop over time. And when a girl goes through puberty, her brain rewires to be pleasing to others. So a really good resource on this is The Wisdom of Menopause by Christian Northrop. So she talks about these stages and so our brain literally rewires that we want to be in a position that says, pick me. I'm looking for someone to pick me. And if our emotional health is not that good, we are going to want anyone to pick us regardless of how we're being treated. And then that phase goes into the mother phase of it's not about me at all. And so I have to serve. I have to serve. I have to serve whether I'm happy or not. And women will do this to their partners when they're dating and treat them like the focus of all their generosity and giving, and it loses that balance. And this is part of the women's movement where we sort of eliminated the need for a man to woo you and prove his ability to take care of and protect you. And guys are terrified now to open a door to offend you. So it's very confusing. And then what happens is we go into this phase of menopause, and Menopause says, it's now all about you. And her brain starts to have these thoughts that she's never had before and to feel these feelings that are intense and they're not balanced. Just like when we're pregnant or go through puberty, our hormones are all over the place. There's a deep truth in there and a lot of craziness, and women are really having to navigate that well. At the same time, her hormonal changes and imbalances also start the husband's hormonal changes and imbalances, and they both get this sense of what am I doing with my life? Who am I? I have spent the last 50 years of my life being a child or taking care of children. It's all been about out there now what? And the things that I went against myself in order to be pleasing, in order to give. I never dealt with my anger about that. I never dealt with the hurt. And I think that's true for both genders that were on such autopilot. Get the career, get the house, get the kids, get the financial nest egg, for your future, all that stuff. And then you get to this place of this wonderful place that we call the Now What. And in the Now What, we have to go from being obedient, subservient and following all the domestication the rules to really getting to be in the driver's seat of our lives and doing whatever we want and we don't know what that is. And it's scary because we've been in the car seat for 50 years. Same kind of analogy to step out into something different and then you're doing that with another person as an individual, it's not as scary. But to do it with your partner and to say, let's change things up and they go, well, we always did this. We don't know what we're going to get. This is really scary. And those are the couples we love to work with because they can finally listen to their heart and they can finally go, you know what? Everything that I thought back then, I was right. My truth works, my gut works, but the world told me I was wrong, so I behaved. And it's a really beautiful time of life that we're right on the other side of it. And it was a brutal six year transformation for us.

[44:27] Dr. Ray: Brutal.

[44:33] Jean: We have to live it. Right? We can't teach it if we don't live it.

[44:36] Karin: Exactly. Yeah.

[44:37] Jean: And the things that come up for healing are the things that are blocking you from opening your heart and being in love with your partner. And that's what we want. When people come to us, they say, we want to feel like we did when we were falling in love. And we say, oh, no, we want so much more than that. We want that. But now you're falling in love with someone who has your history. And so what we really want is them to create one life, two people living one life together that they feel safe in and can explore the world in a way they never could before because they were so busy behaving in.

[45:15] Dr. Ray: General, previous generations didn't really have to deal with this transition. And it's not a surprise that the boomer generation has the largest population on match and not because their spouses pass, but because they have the highest rates of divorce, because they get to this point, this natural point of evolution in the relationship and they don't know what to do. Previous generations, they either died at that point or they just kind of coexisted.

[45:52] Karin: Well, and women in the past had to still really depend on their partners financially, right? So there was more of an incentive to stay together. And yet women nowadays are more financially independent and so they have a choice, right.

[46:08] Dr. Ray: So this evolutionary transformative period that couples are facing now, there's no role model for it. And so they don't really know how to move into this phase, this next phase, and actually transition and learn and heal and grow through that.

[46:28] Karin: Yeah. I see that as kind of two different experiences. People can see it as terrifying, really scary, don't know what to do. And then I can also see people seeing this as, oh, this is so exciting. There is so much that we can create now at this point in our lives. I'm wondering, is that a transformation that you see in the couples that you work with, that they go from feeling scared to feeling excited?

[46:59] Jean: Yes.

[47:00] Dr. Ray: With our guidance, sure.

[47:04] Jean: When you are domesticated the beginning of your life, you're taught things that you need. Right. You probably were taught to hold someone's hand crossing the street. But now, if you're in a big city, you don't go find some guy and say, can you hold my hand? So we could cross the street, because it was never about holding the hand. And so a lot of the individual work is growing beyond that domestication of what we thought we were supposed to do, which was probably appropriate back then. But it doesn't belong to the afternoon of life, which is a Carl Jung concept that there's a morning of life, our domestication, where we have to learn to physically survive in this world. But then there's this afternoon of life to do what we really came here to do, which is to become. And we can't become if all we're doing is behaving. And you use the word choice, and it's all about choice. And if we have the ability to choose, and all we choose is what we think everybody else thinks we should do, then we're locking ourselves up and we have this place in us of truth that works for every single one of us. And that's our goal with helping people, is not to tell them how to live their lives, but to teach them how to trust those feelings. And then when they take that risk, 100% their responsibility and choice, they get 100% of the payoff of that, and it instantly heals. Something to watch people do that. My grandmother, when she was 80 years old, my grandfather passed, and after that, she wore her first pair of pants. She had never worn pants before because that was not expected. That was not what was the way she learned how to be in the world. Women wore dresses. And once he passed and she had no one else to answer to, she got herself a little pantsuit, started listening.

[49:09] Karin: To herself and what she wanted at 80.

[49:13] Jean: Wow. And so part of this freedom to not be so dependent within our families and communities, which is something we've lost, also gives us the added burden and opportunity to really create and become something in this world beyond anything else. And this isn't that selfish. I'm going to go and do what I want, and I don't care if it impacts other people.

[49:43] Karin: Right.

[49:43] Jean: This is something that's saying, there's enough for everyone, including me.

[49:47] Karin: Yeah. Not a scarcity model. Well, I want to back up just a little bit because, Jean, you've talked a lot about what women are experiencing in midlife. Dr. Ray, maybe you can talk a little bit about the man's perspective during.

[50:02] Dr. Ray: That time in know, we talked about or Jean mentioned the morning of life and the afternoon of life being a Carl Jung concept. And men go through a very similar transformation as well. People joke about it being the midlife crisis. They go out and buy the sports car and everything. And that's really just kind of a 15% above the water perspective of what is truly going on. And for men, they are taught to get on that Scrimmage line early on and to mow down that opponent and to go and get that trophy and to achieve and to claw and scratch your way to the top, to get money, to get things and then to be able to have a family and get a spouse. Right? And so whether it's taught verbally or just subconsciously at this point, it is still the driving force to be achievers. Well, at some point that evolution has to change where now you're not the strongest guy on the field anymore, you're not the fastest, right. You're maybe at your place in life, in your career, and the younger ones are surpassing you now. And so it's not now about money, about success. Now it's about what's your value? What do you bring to this world and doing that soul searching and learning about your definition of what it means to be a good husband, a good father and a good man in this world. And when we search across social media and movies and entertainment and everything, there's so many different wrong messages about what it means to be those three roles. And it is important for men to get to that stage in life where they really redefine that is, am I living up to those values?

[52:17] Karin: Because those are big questions.

[52:19] Dr. Ray: Yeah, they truly are. But when it comes to the most important judge in your life, it's the one in the mirror. And too often what men do is they judge themselves by comparison. Said, I need to be like that, I need that, I want that, but who am I, really?

[52:44] Karin: So it sounds very similar and that they're both really needing to learn how to listen to themselves for sure and.

[52:53] Dr. Ray: Turn towards each other in the process instead of being adversaries or opponents, but turn towards each other as.

[53:03] Karin: Yeah. And Gottman talks a lot about that, about being on the same team. And what do they talk about? The atmosphere of what is it?

[53:12] Dr. Ray: Gratitude, fondness and admiration.

[53:14] Karin: Fondness and admiration. Thank you.

[53:16] Jean: Yeah. It's hard to be in that place when you're stressed.

[53:20] Karin: Yeah, indeed.

[53:21] Jean: It used to be when we didn't have so much technology, we didn't have air conditioning and we would sit on the porch because it was cooler outside and we didn't just sit in front of the TV in our air conditioned or climate controlled environment. And so we had to stay part of nature and we had to stay part of relationship including our neighbors and our communities. And we've kind of walled ourselves all up physically and it's led to not as healthy of a place of being in the world. It increases anxiety, it increases depression. And so this thing that we're talking about, about taking a relationship and elevating it to that place is advantageous physically. You're physically healthier, you are mentally healthier, you're emotionally healthier and you're spiritually free and that's the goal we have with people. And you may have seen couples like this when they've been together a very long time and they just beam and it isn't because she's a hottie or he's got a pile of money, right? It's just that depth of value that the world really wants to pull us away from that. And if all you're doing is looking on a screen you would swear everyone in the world is 21 years old and that's all that matters. There's no mature place of being in the world anymore because that's not urgent and so it's something we have to struggle to find and that's true of all of life. Life requires us to go against the natural laws. So if you think of a plant, the sun is fire and heat rises and rain falls but a plant needs to bring water up and draw the fire down in order to be alive and so there is a struggle in being alive on this planet and comfort is not our friend. It is not our friend and we're told we should be comfortable but really we should grow wonderful.

[55:33] Dr. Ray: I just want to reiterate what you said is that the world is against couples creating that and that is absolutely true. When you look at pictures of an old couple holding hands and walking together or sitting together on a porch people say, oh, that's cute. But when it comes to a definition of relationship goals, power couple, those terms, the hashtag terms are usually tied to instagram models who are out on some foreign beach and skydiving or doing something that's really exotic, right? And these are people usually are in their twenty s and they look like they're coming off of a private jet. And the world tells us that that's what you should be striving for. Not that loving couple that's in their golden years and are so connected to each other that they share one life together. That is what the potential is for every relationship. But what is put in front of us is the flashiness that that's what should be attractive.

[56:54] Karin: And it reminds me of the Harvard study and how they've found that relationships simply make our lives better and that they are a goal in and of.

[57:06] Jean: Themselves and it's not taught.

[57:13] Karin: I would, I just feel like we could just keep talking on and on about all this stuff and yet we're getting close up to an hour. And so I want to ask you the question that I ask all my guests, and that is that what role does love play in the work that you do? You're looking at one another right now. You can't see this and smiling.

[57:37] Dr. Ray: We would not have started on this journey together if not for our love together and our relationship. The clinic in Chicago is called the Lighthouse. And when I said that, we went up and down the coast of the East Coast for our anniversary, we stopped at Portland Head Lighthouse. And this was before we even started our company. And it was raining sideways and it was just storming and you could barely see anything. And we had to get out of the car really quick and just being pelted by rain. And we saw the light go around and we hear the foghorn and then we jump back in the car. And that moment in time, it really kind of defined something very important for us in our marriage, and that is that throughout the storm that we are going to go through in our life, there's always going to be this beacon. There's going to be this place, this point that's going to move us in that direction and keep a constant for us. And that's why we named our company that, The Lighthouse, because it was to help guide people who are going through the storms of their life, especially couples. And all throughout our transition in creating the clinic and focusing on our work, it has all been about helping couples go through the natural challenges that we found ourselves going through. That there isn't a book out there for that. You go to a marriage counselor and they most often wouldn't be able to guide you through that. But it is all from a place of love and nurturing our own love and helping other people nurture theirs as well.

[59:30] Jean: As a young girl, I was actually already an adult and a mom, so I became a mom young. I would ask people that question, what is love? And to me, at that point, I would have defined love as tying a rope around your ankles and giving the other end to someone who was on a horse and hope they did right by you. What I've since learned is that's actually trust and what love is, is a connection. And I think about it like a garden hose. And energetically we have these cords that tether when we fall in love with someone. And if you think about that like a garden hose, is the stuff traveling down that hose, is it yucky stagnant water? Is it a trickle? Is it dried up and cracked? Is it vibrant and loving and passionate and full of things that make us healthy and nurture us so love can be just as good for us or just as bad for us. And most people are in love when they get married and most people, when they get married believe they're marrying someone for the long haul. And most couples we work with, they still love each other. But what's flowing between them is not something they want. In fact, it's something they find painful. And that love is the thing that drives us to go through the difficult things in order to change and heal. And you see couples today, young couples, they're buying homes together and they're having dogs together but they're not getting married and they are not committing. And they don't want that love. They don't want that bond that says what I do impacts you and what you do impacts me. And I think we think that's a really important thing that keeps us together during that storm that helps us have what we would love to have when we're in the later part of life. And it comes from weathering all that stuff and from knowing and witnessing another human being in this world and being so connected that you can't possibly see your partner in pain and not feel pain yourself. And your whole drive becomes for your partner to be happy and there's for you to be happy. And that isn't something you can do when you're 30 or 40. It is something that belongs to that later part of life that is beyond the selfishness type or the protective stuff we're talking about in early relationships that really has a spiritual component to it. And without love you could never get there. It's way too painful.

[01:02:26] Karin: Yeah, indeed. Well, thank you for that. Before we end, perhaps you can tell people how they can learn more about you and learn about working with you.

[01:02:38] Dr. Ray: Sure. The easiest way is they can access our podcast called Couple Synergy. Real Couples, Real Stories, Real Relationships. You can access it anywhere you get your podcasts. They can also check us out [e-mail] and from there they can see all the programs and services that we offer.

[01:03:01] Jean: And really the Relationship Enhancement weekend, it's incredible. It is life changing. One of the things is we're so weird with money, right? And we'll spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just on a wedding. And we see people spend the same amount on a divorce, but not on the relationship. And where would you even go? How would you even know? And we've had couples on our weekend that are newly engaged and couples that have been together 50 years and we know what they experience on that weekend changes their lives permanently in a really wonderful way. So I just want to put that we only work with twelve couples on a weekend. It's very limited by intention. So this isn't a huge thing, but it is life altering and we'd love to meet everyone like that.

[01:03:58] Karin: And it sounds like it's worth the investment. And that's what this work really is, right? Is it's an investment in your relationship? Well, thank you, Dr. Ray and Jean, for joining me. Really. I really loved our conversation, and I hope you enjoyed it, too.

[01:04:16] Jean: It was wonderful. Thanks for having us.

[01:04:18] Dr. Ray: Karin thank you for having us.

Outro:

[01:04:20] Karin: Thanks for joining us. Today on Love Is Us. If you liked the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, like Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.