Stop Waiting for Your Partner to Change — Do This Instead

0:01Welcome to Motherkind. It is me, Zoe. This is the show for you, the woman behind the mother. It is a Monday, which means we are sharing a Monday moment with you. This little shot of inspiration this morning comes from the incredible Kat Sims and it is all about the mental load, how she went from the brink of divorce and the communication style that she changed everything. Here it is. Thinking and talking about the mental load for a couple of years now, what are the biggest challenges that you see with it and that you hear we're all grappling with? I think the biggest problem is that, and this is what I learned from my experience, is that I was always focused very much on what Jimmy was doing wrong or what he wasn't doing at all.

0:47And as much as those feelings were really valid, like that was true, those resentments were real. I wasn't handling it properly. I hadn't figured out how to solve it. I was just waiting for him to change. And actually what I realized is that I can't change anybody else. I can make my wants and needs clear, but the only person, only thing I can change is myself. And so I started to think, how can I change my behavior in this pretty toxic dynamic to try and make it better? And one of the things that I learned in recovery actually was a phrase that said, do I want to be right or happy? Obviously, I'd like to be both.

1:25Apparently, that's not always possible. And so I thought, you know what, I want to be happy. So I made a decision to do a few things. Firstly, I made a decision to start communicating properly. Like, I think a lot of women are focused on all of the things that their husband has made them feel. And like they're angry and they're resentful. But I was like, why am I angry and resentful? because he doesn't seem to know what I want and he's not doing it. Turns out telepathy is not a viable form of communication. And the other thing is it's not a proof of love. You know, when people are like, if he loved me, he'd know.

1:58No, it's bollocks. He doesn't know. That's not fair. It's such an unreasonable expectation. It's all part of this rom-com nonsense that we've been sold by Hollywood. Nonsense. So I was like, okay, so I'll have to start actually being clear about what I want and need, but also how it makes me feel. And our therapist gave us this great phrase. She just said, whenever you feel a bit of a resentment, even the smallest resentment, just say, I don't feel very kept in mind. And it was such a cracking term because it wasn't accusatory. It wasn't, you've done this. It was, I don't feel very kept in mind.

2:28And we knew exactly what that meant. So I had to change my communication. Um, and I realized that, um, I was also in the words of Taylor Swift, part of the problem. I'm the problem. It's me. I wasn't perfect. Like as annoying as his bed making skills were or his aiming was um or his lack of knowledge about what you know shoes are what size shoes our kids wore I was pretty hard to live with as well that constant requirement for perfection like Jimmy's like I've made the bed I'm like well you haven't really have you like you've not made it like I make it he's like yeah but I'm just because I made like a hotel and so I had to get on board with the fact that actually done is done you know it's not the end of the world.

3:12And it isn't a way of him going, I'm going to make this bed in a really crappy way, just to piss her off. It wasn't that. It was him going, I'm going to make the bed because I know that that's a good thing to do. That'll make her happy. So it's choosing to see the goodness in something and also recognizing that men aren't doing this. I don't think men are doing it. Some of them might be, but generally if you've married a good man and you're like, I love you, but I also hate everything about living with you. Chances are he's just not aware, not because he's stupid, but because women have been, since the moment they splashed down earthside, they have been groomed to understand the mental load and to take it on because we saw our mums do it.

3:54And they looked at what their dads were doing. And our generation had a very, you know, our parents generation were very strictly, more or less generally down those traditional gender roles. so we're not going to get it perfect as as you know this generation but I do think that we're cycle breakers and I think that if we give each other if we give the our partner who we love a little bit of grace and recognize that yeah it is a bit embarrassing that they don't know how to do this but actually let's make a list let's support them let's communicate clearly so that hopefully our kids don't have to make a list you know that's kind of yeah so I suppose the answer to your question is I had to change my perspective of where the problem was and you describe in the opening of the book just this amazing scene oh yeah before you'd learn all this and you sit jimmy down yeah and you say I want a divorce well I said I want to I said what I said was so we're going to separate and he was like I'm sorry what and I had been like if for weeks going this is the only possible option like I'm miserable every time he walks in a room.

5:03I want to stamp it. I want to, you know, punch him in the face. Like everything annoys me, gave me the ick. I was like, just get out of my life. And so when I was like, so we're going to separate, I genuinely thought he was like, yeah, I think it's probably, probably the right thing. And he went, I'm sorry, what? And he was completely blindsided. And in that moment I was like, okay, something's really wrong that I feel a certain way. And he is completely unaware of that. Like I have to accept at some point there's a communication issue here. And so we went through that, um, horrible conversation, which inadvertently, I suppose, opened up space for us to have a really honest conversation that wasn't fighting and screaming and, and door slamming.

5:48And it really, I suppose that bottom really helped us get back out. And he was like, I just want to do, can you promise me you'll do couples therapy one more time. And I was like, I don't want to, like I was done in my head. I was done. But I thought to myself, you know what, if whatever happens, I want to be able to look at my kids and go, we did everything we could. And so I thought if I refuse to go back to couples therapy, that's on me. So we went back and I think that because we were so broke, we'd like reached that gift we'd got the gift of desperation and I think that we we just we were able to sort of hear each other for the first time and and I was able to accept that perhaps I wasn't as perfect as I thought I was and it was so annoying still difficult for me to you know honestly I have to like gird my loins to to to apologize and a question you get asked a lot is how do I get my husband to go to therapy.

6:49I mean, I was really lucky. My husband was always very into therapy and he was the one that was like, let's just do it one more time. You know, you can't make anybody do anything at the end of the day. But what I would say is, you know, like, you know, say to him, I want to be able to say to our kids, we both did everything we could, you know, otherwise what, you know, what are we going to tell them? But the other thing is, if you can't get your partner to go to therapy, go to therapy yourself. Like do it yourself because I really believe in attraction, not promotion. And if you go to therapy and your partner starts seeing you behave differently, start seeing you take responsibility or whatever it is, then that he will be, if he's a good human, he'll be attracted to that, you know?

7:35And I think that slowly but surely you might find him come around, but it isn't easy. And at the end of the day, you just have to accept that you can only tell him what you want and need and if he doesn't do it, you know, that's on him. But it was the best thing that we ever did.