Revisited: Love Is Not Enough with couples therapist Shawn McBride

0:03Relationships, any kind of relationship, is hard. No matter how much we like someone, respect someone, or love someone, it seems that disagreements and fighting are inevitable. And when conflict gets to a breaking point, many of us feel the urge to simply throw in the towel. That's where Sean McBride comes in. Sean is a couples therapist, and he runs a practice called the Couples Counseling Center. I actually found him on Instagram and have become a huge fan of his videos. He's helped thousands of couples learn the skills to do the work that makes relationships succeed. And he's got tons of practical advice.

0:40Even if you're not in a romantic relationship, I think you'll learn a lot from what Sean has to say. Because in all of our relationships, be they friends, family, or our colleagues, we could always do a little more. This is a bit of optimism.

0:58I am so glad that you joined me today. I found you on Instagram. Yes, sir. You know, and you were, I mean, there's no better way to put it. You were preaching. I'm a former pastor. Well, it definitely shows up. You were preaching the most brilliant metaphor to explain why some couples cannot communicate well. And your metaphor was that somebody is drowning. Yes. and you're throwing facts at them yes yes you know i'm drowning well there's a sign that says no swimming yeah it says no lifeguard yeah and the amount of times that we are in relationships where somebody says i'm in pain i'm hurt i'm sad and we throw facts at them that's it and it doesn't work and the way you captured this dynamic made so much sense.

2:02Your ability, and I've watched many of your videos since I count me as a huge fan, your ability to capture the discomfort and speed bumps of a relationship in a way that the rest of us can understand, in my opinion, is better than anyone I've ever heard. Oh, wow. I'm honored. The check's in the mail. What's the address? The check's in the mail. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. So let's take a step back, right? Yes. You're not like the average counselor. No, sir. No, sir. Let's be honest. The average counselor will be like, so what do you think? Would you like to respond to what your partner just said?

2:42You are unabashedly opinionated. That's it. Let's get to it. Let's get to it. Let's face this right now. So obviously couples come to you because things aren't working. I have a few questions. What are the more common things that people come to you for that it's just the recurring? I need one, two, and three. Sean, how do we communicate better? Number two, Sean, how do we resolve conflict? Number three, Sean, how do we recover from infidelity, from cheating? Those are the top three issues that I deal with every single week in my private counseling office, whether in person or virtually online.

3:26Okay, so let's unpackage it. Are there some basic steps on how we can learn to communicate better? So number one, it starts with listening. Okay? I often tell people, our creator gave us two ears in one mouth for a reason. Right? Why do we have two ears and one mouth? Because we should listen more than we speak. So effective communication starts with listening, but it doesn't stop with listening. Once you listen with your ears, you have to be sure that you're hearing what your partner's communicating. My wife and I have raised five children. They're all adults now. And when they were little, we used to say, hey, clean your room.

4:12Hey, son, go clean your room. Hey, daughter, clean your room. They listened because they have ears. But when you go check the room, you see that it's not clean. That means that you didn't hear me. Okay. You listened with your ears, but you didn't hear me. So part of effective communication is being sure that you're not just listening to your partner, but do you hear what they're saying? Hearing leads to understanding and understanding leads to resolving the conflict. But most people, especially men, think they are great listeners because they heard the words spoken. They are pretty sure they heard.

4:54Yes. They can recite back what they heard. Yes. So where are people failing to listen? Like, what is the gap there? Yeah. So here's the gap, Simon. Great question. Typically, when a couple's trying to communicate and resolve something, number one, there is minimization. One or the other will minimize how a person feels or what that person is saying. Oh, well, it's not that big of a deal. Or how could you be upset about that? Or that really doesn't make sense. So they minimize their partner's feelings. And feelings are important. Emotions are very important. And so you can't just minimize what a person says or how a person feels.

5:42The second thing that happens is there's a lot of dismissing that's going on. When you're talking to me and I dismiss it as, oh, you're just being overly sensitive or, oh, you just had a bad day. No. What I feel is what I feel. My feelings matter. So if there's minimization, if there's dismissiveness, and here's the big one. In conversation, sometimes your partner's not being validated. Their feelings are not being validated. Validation is very simple. You're making valid what feeling your partner has. If they're angry, you're validating that anger. If they're sad, you're validating the sadness.

6:24Validation is not agreement. It doesn't mean, okay, I agree with everything you're saying, But I can make valid in this moment how you feel, your anger, your sadness, your fear, your shame, whatever you're feeling. So dismissiveness, minimizing your partner and not validating your partner leads to more chaos and confusion. Oh, I'm feeling guilty as you're saying it. I'm literally thinking of conversations I've had where my partner has told me their feelings and I'm proud I wasn't dismissive. I absolutely validated. Yes. And unfortunately, I did not pass the first test where I absolutely have said, that's so not a big deal.

7:02To you, it's not a big deal. But that's like saying to your partner who's drowning in the pool, it's no big deal. People drown all the time. People fall in the pool all the time as they're drowning. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's go to number two, conflict. There's typically four responses to conflict in a relationship. Fight, flight, freeze, fall. So in conflict, someone is the fighter. They're going to scream. They're going to yell. They're going to argue. They're going to fuss. They're going to cuss because they want to solve the conflict. So we call that a fighter. Then there's a flighter, someone that flees.

7:43Conflict arises. They flee. They run. There's a song on the radio. I forget the musician, but it says she's a runner. She's a track star. she's going to run away when it gets hard right so you got your fighter you got the flighter then you have the freezer this person completely shuts down yeah and the shutdown may be for an hour it may be for a day it may be for multiple days so they completely freeze and it takes them a while to unthaw and then there's the fourth person that's a phone a phone is typically a people pleaser. They go along to get along. Typically, people who fawn have some kind of abuse in their childhood.

8:25And so to not get beat, to not get whipped, to not get cussed out, they just fawn. And so we bring, Simon, that baggage into relationships. So we never learn how to deal with fight, flight, please fawn. And we bring it into relationship. And now you got two people that don't have any skills in communication and resolving conflict, two people that don't have any tools, okay? They get married, they start dating, they get engaged, and they just don't know what to do to resolve the conflict. And that's where I come in. I've experienced all of those, and I've been at least a couple of them. Now walk me through when in the heat of an argument where anger and irrational thoughts are running through me, how do I assess and what skills do I call upon to at least take the first step for resolution?

9:21So I use this little analogy called smart love, S-M-A-R-T. In resolving conflict, in having better communication, the S in smart love stands for self-awareness. It is up to you. It is up to me. It is up to your partner. you have to be self-aware of what you are feeling. You have to be self-aware of your emotions. In this moment, am I angry? In this moment, am I saying? People go into conflict and people try to communicate and they are clueless into what they are really feeling. And I find this with a lot of men that men a lot of times can't describe and can't break down. and a guy will come to me for counseling.

10:09Hey man, what are you feeling? I don't know. I just feel, you know, describe it. Like break it down. I just feel something. And so I have to help particularly men work through feelings of anger, feelings of sadness or disappointment. And there are many ways you can describe these feelings or feelings of shame or feelings of fear, right? So you have to have, first of all, a self-awareness. what am I feeling in this moment? If you don't know what you're feeling in this moment, it's going to be hard to communicate to your partner. Remember, we're trying to get understanding. The M in smart love, Simon, is managing whatever that emotion is.

10:55So if I'm angry, I got to manage that. That is not the responsibility of my wife or my partner. If I'm sad, I got to own that. I have to manage that and not blame my partner for my sadness. If I'm afraid, that belongs to me. That fear is mine. I got to be able to manage that. And I think if people can get just those first two, let me be self-aware of what I'm feeling and then let me manage that. Typically, we can cool things down a little bit in the midst of that conflict. So I'm allowed to be angry, but I'm not allowed to yell and lash out. Absolutely not. That's managing anger. Right. That's managing anger.

11:40Because, and I even, in my own marriage, my wife was verbally abused up to the age of 17. We've been married, Simon, 30 years. And so early on in my marriage, I was making the big mistake of yelling and raising my voice and saying this and saying that. And my wife couldn't handle that. Now, I learned that behavior from my own mother because as a little boy in my home, I watched how my mother handled conflict. My mother was a yeller. My mother was a screaming. So she was the fighter. And my mother was also the flighter. So she would fight and then she would run. My father was the freezer and the fawner.

12:21And so we all learn how to communicate somewhere for better or for worse. And typically it's in our childhood. Okay. So we have the self-awareness. We have the management. What are the ART? So you got to acknowledge your partner's feelings, awareness of what your partner is feeling. That's the A. I often talk about connecting before correcting. Okay? Connect with your partner on an emotional level before you try to correct your partner on a rational level. Having an awareness, what is my partner feeling? And then the R is reading your partner's emotions with sympathy and empathy, which is two totally different things.

13:15So back to the pool analogy. Sympathy says, when I read my partner's emotions with sympathy, what that says is, I care. You're in a pool. You're drowning. Sympathy says, you know what? I care. Here's a life vest. Here's a life preserver. But, Simon, empathy goes to a deeper level because empathy doesn't just say, like, sympathy, I care. Empathy says, I feel what you feel, and I'm going to prove it by diving in the pool. I'm going to risk my own safety so that I can understand you at a level that I can connect with you. And you can't do that standing on the edge. You can't do that unless you get in the pool with the person.

14:03What does that look like practically in the middle of a conflict, to be able to jump in the pool with somebody? Oh, yeah. To be able to validate that anger and say, boy, if I were in your shoes, now that I understand your anger, I would feel the same way. Oh, my goodness. You're disappointed. You're down. Oh, my. Let me empathize with you. If the tables were turned. That's it. Simon, I would feel the same way. That's it. So you're not gaslighting. They're making them feel crazy for feeling like they're drowning. you're saying if I were in your shoes, I would feel like I was drowning too. Absolutely.

14:40Because Simon, think about it. If you dive in the pool, now you can see things from their vantage point. You can't see that on the edge spitting facts, although the facts are true. You can't really understand it until you get into the pool and surround yourself with all the fear and the water in your lungs and all of that. So good. And T? Together, we journey in the land of emotions. Together, we journey in the land of emotions. We make a big deal about emotions. We make a big deal about understanding emotions. We celebrate emotions. See, Simon, intimacy is not just sex. Intimacy, where I come from, is into me, I see.

15:31And the way that you can really see into a person is when you understand their emotions. Simon, we've made emotions to be this bad thing that as a little boy growing up, I was taught, stop being angry or stop crying. So I was taught to suppress my emotions. So I became a grown man and I started to still suppress things like this is not working. So through counseling and therapy, I had to realize and to learn it's okay to have emotion. It's okay to express emotion. It's okay to work through emotion. That's how you get closer with your partner. Brilliant. So in your first, the first example, you know, I realized I'd done some of those things.

16:18In this particular example, I'm very proud that I'm thinking of a successful situation. Okay. Where my partner and I were fighting. Yes. And the fight looked like this. I told her everything I was doing right. And then I told her everything she was doing wrong. And then she responded by saying everything she was doing right and everything I was doing wrong. And this went backwards and forwards as if it were a tennis match. And I was aware. I had awareness. I had self-awareness. I started with the S. And what went through my mind was I see what's going on here. and this is not working. This is not working.

16:58Like this tennis match is going to go on forever and it's one of us, we're going to get to the point where one of us is going to say something really mean. We weren't there yet, but I could see how this movie plays out. And I remember literally interrupting. I said, babe, this is clearly not going to resolve and neither of us is going to win this. I would like to propose new rules for our argument because we're going to argue. I'm okay with that. I would like to propose new rules for this argument, for this game. My rule is I will now, instead of telling you everything I did right and you did wrong, I will now say what you did right and what I did wrong, and then it's going to be your turn.

17:40And I'll go first. And I said, babe, you nailed this. You got this right. And here's where I screwed it up. And she looked at me and said, well, here's what I got wrong and here's where you got right. And now we were practicing your T, togetherness, where we were celebrating what the other person got right. And for the first time, we could see that the other person wasn't wrong, but that they were trying. Yes, yes. And that we weren't necessarily helping the situation. So we saw each other as complicit in the tension. Yes. We saw ourselves as complicit in the tension, and we saw them as attempting to alleviate the tension.

18:15And I got to tell you very quickly, yes, tension, the tension subsided, it subsided, you sat closer together, we started smiling, and we could actually get to the point of being rational and then like trying to figure out how did we get in the fight in the first place? Yes. Simon, that is such a powerful principle. That is such great rules of engagement. I love it because it expresses humility. But more importantly, it expresses, here it is, appreciation for your partner's perspective. Simon, every counseling session, I end every couple's counseling session, the last five to seven minutes, having that couple look at each other and share a couple of appreciations.

19:03Yeah. Because, Sama, just think about it. When you first started dating, there was a great sense of appreciation for your partner's perspective. And this is new. And you value that perspective. And you validate the perspective. And you love the perspective. And come on, give me some more perspective. But once you've been dating a year or two years or three years, you stop appreciating the perspective. You stop appreciating the difference. So I encourage couples every single day, make a deposit into your relationship by telling your partner one thing you appreciate about him, one thing you appreciate about her.

19:49And watch what happens. In most relationships, couples are making more, if the relationship is a bank account, they're making more withdrawals than they are deposits. When you're making deposits, you're intentionally looking for things to be grateful for. You are intentionally looking for things to appreciate your partner for. So now you're on this quest to say, you know what? First of all, I accept you. for who you are. Yeah. Not for who I want you to become. See, a lot of couples get into relationship in the back of their mind. I'm going to change him. I'm going to change her. No. No, you don't go into relationship to change people.

20:33In a relationship, if you go into it to be served, that's not going to work because that's a lot of selfishness. But if you go into it to serve, to give of yourself, one of the greatest quotes of all time, it is better to give than it is to receive. And so oftentimes in relationships, we're looking to get and we're looking to take. And I'm saying, no, we have to go into it. How can I serve my partner? How can I love my partner better? How can I give to my partner? One of the best things I ever learned, and thank goodness I learned it early in the relationship, was that both partners, or at least I, show up every day with the fantasy that my partner can read my mind.

21:19You know, like, how did you not know that I dot, dot, dot? Yeah. You should have known that I dot, dot, dot. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I just love that, that we show up with the fantasy that our partners can read our minds and instantaneously like. Our partners cannot. So in communication, in a relationship, what do you want? What do you mean? Break it down. We are students in our own relationships. Yes, we are. And for years, like these little nuances, like I grew up in a different country. And so sometimes the language I use or the points of view that I have are different than where I live now.

21:56And my partner is on an education. And I can't be frustrated if my student doesn't understand something. I have to be a good teacher and be like, ah, here's what I meant. But likewise, I am the student as well. Yes. And if our teacher gets mad at us for not understanding, we can say, hey, I'm the idiot. I didn't understand. You need to teach me your point of view so that I can learn it so this doesn't happen again. So the next time you say it, you can say it in the shorthand next time and I'll understand. Yes, yes. Yes. And doing that with patience, doing that with grace, doing that in calmness.

22:35Hey, teach me. I don't understand. Hey, rather than fighting, rather than I don't understand, so I'm out of here. Or I don't understand, so I'm going to freeze up on you for a week. Right? Yeah. So being able to communicate in a kind way. So we have one more to get to, which is infidelity. But before we do that. Oh, yeah. Before we do that, I want to interrupt with an observation, which is one of the main reasons I wanted you on here. One of the reasons I love you is because all relationships are the same, whether it's a romantic relationship or a work relationship. And in work relationships, we have communication breakdowns.

23:15We have conflict. We have power dynamics. We have misunderstandings. We have misuse of language. which everything that you and I have said, everything you and I have talked about is transferable to a work environment because all relationships are emotional, even at work. The reason I'm interrupting now to bring that up is because as we get into the third one, which is infidelity, you don't really have infidelity in a work environment. I guess you could go give something to your competitor, but that doesn't really happen much. But it's what we're talking about is the complete break of trust. Yes.

23:48And so I wanted to share that we're about to talk about an infidelity has application to any relationship where there's a complete break in trust. Yes, yes. Sean McBride, infidelity. How do you help couples overcome the trauma of trusting someone who just at every core of what a relationship is supposed to be, they violate that trust? And how do they repair it? It's very hard, Simon. it's one of the most painful, difficult, arduous conversations that I have during the course of the week when couples are trying to recover. Simon, I don't I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses for anybody.

24:34But before we talk about the relationship, sometimes we have to go back. I never say to a man who's cheated or a woman who's cheated, what's wrong with you? I have a better question that Dr. Bruce Perry talks about in his book with Oprah Winfrey is, what happened to you? Because, Simon, sometimes what is happening is connected to what happened, whether it's a man or a woman. And sometimes men and women go into these relationships with unresolved childhood trauma. What happens to a man or a woman in the first two decades of their life will influence them as adults for better or for worse. So when you talk about a child who's been abandoned, a child who's been neglected, a child who's been abused verbally, sexually, emotionally, and if that person who's now who's an adult, if that stuff is not unresolved, I'm not saying it's the reason they cheated.

25:47What I am saying is you have to include that in the conversation because some people in infidelity are trying to heal core wounds outside of their primary relationship. They're trying to get very basic needs met outside of their relationship because the relationship is not working. the relationship in their mind is not fixable so but i still have these needs for a woman she still wants conversation she still wants affection and so she can't get that in her primary relationship she's human i'm not saying it's right but she'll seek it elsewhere okay if you look at statistics the number one reason that men cheat is not because of sex what they're really seeking is admiration.

26:42What they're really seeking is respect. Sex becomes this secondary thing that happens, but they get connected to the woman because she admires him. She honors him. She makes him feel a certain way. Same thing with a woman. When a woman cheats, when you break it down, okay, what happened? It started with the conversation because most women want two hours of conversation every day with their man, 14 hours of conversation a week. If they're starving for conversation, if that man is freezing, if he's flighting and not giving her conversation, she finds it elsewhere. Again, I'm not saying it's right.

27:22I'm saying here's what I've discovered with thousands of people while some people make that choice. And recovering from it is very hard. And I think what you're also saying is you're not offering an excuse for the behavior. Absolutely not. What you're saying is that the person is still accountable for their behavior, but we want to understand the root of the behavior because we don't understand the root. The behavior will probably continue. It's accountability and. Accountability and. But, Simon, what's interesting is I would say 90 % of the couples I've worked with through the process of recovering from infidelity, either one of them acknowledges that while they are not responsible for the behavior, they contributed to the behavior.

28:10Yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:40That's what I'm saying. Almost always somebody started the fire, but invariably the other person poured gas on the fire. We both fight about who started it, but the reality is I either started it or I made it worse. Oh, you made it worse. I'm accountable. I bear some accountability for the fire that exists right now. Yes. And as you're speaking about the difficulties of resolving infidelity, it does go directly to work relationships as well, which is people who are secretive, people who hide information, maybe lie at work. is because they have been taken advantage of. They have been, they've had their ideas stolen.