Hey everyone, and welcome to Parenting Beyond the Headlines. We're so glad that
you're back listening with us. I'm Sarah Cody on the East Coast. I'm
with my friend Amy Alamar all the way over on the West coast. Amy,
it's good to see you on zoom. Yes, good to see you
as well. And I hope you're staying warm, you know, Sarah,
I was reading the newspaper and I dove into one of the modern love columns
about a couple who had been married twenty five years and split up during the
pandemic through using Airbnb Andmatch dot com. And it just struck me because my
husband and I are getting close to twenty five years and you know, I
just kind of it's odd to read something like that. And so I wanted
to talk about sort of marriages and relationships in general during the pandemic. And
I'm really excited that we have of Ruth and Joe Freeman, both psychotherapists with
their own private practice who see individuals and married couples. And also Ruth is
the founder of Piece of Home Parenting dot com, where she shares a lot
of her wisdom with classes online. So this is something that you know isn't
unique, but maybe we don't talk about as much. Hey, welcome guys,
and I have to say, this is the first time we've had a
married couple as guests on the show, right Amy. Yeah, it's very
nice. Perfect, it's the perfect topic. There you go. So I
would say, conversationally in terms of like zooms with my girlfriends and talking about
marriage and the pandemic, some people have grown closer and some people are at
each other's throats. Do you think are you seeing that very different dynamic depending
on the couple. Well, I always talk first, but I was thinking
I was trying to let Joe talk first today. Marriage issue is right here
at the start of the podcast. Kid. So as a result of the
pandemic with is giving me more generous permission to talk first. Very nice.
Well, you know, it's interesting because I was just reviewing some of the
studies that have been done, and in fact, the studies have yielded contradictory
conclusions which reflect what you just said, that some couples that have grown closer
and some couples that has been increased conflict. So I you know, I
think that you know the couples that I have worked, whether they they are
they're having challenges or because they're working with me to start with, and so
um in terms of I think a couple that for instance, is has um
two or three teenagers in the family, and one of these teenagers is very
challenging in terms of the behavior and some mental health issues that teenager, because
of the of the lack of pure contact and isolation, has probably gotten worse.
And therefore the stress and the stress and the family has gotten worse.
And therefore the parents being able to cope with an already challenging tchanger has also
increased their stress and affected their relationship. So I think it depends on lots
on what's going on and the family structure. That's a really good point.
It's not just about the marriage, It's not just about that relationship. It's
about everything that's going on and how you individually handle that and handle that together
at peace. In our parenting, many of us have concluded that adolescents are
probably the population that might be suffering the most from this pandemic in terms of
ages and stages. They've had the biggest losses, and parents are frightened about
their teenagers. Some teenagers aren't coming out of the room. You know,
they're not leaving their room. They're just online in their room and there.
Yeah, and I think that that and if parents don't already, you know,
Joe and I were saying before, we were talking about this before,
and we were saying that if parents had pretty good coping skills to begin with,
their relationships have actually gotten better because they had tools to deal with this,
and they spent more time together. There were less distractions in a lot
of ways. It's a funny moment in time. But those parents that had
some cracks in the relationship, those cracks have gotten bigger. It's interesting,
Ruth, because I've noticed. And just the last podcast we did, actually
we talked about how girlfriends really are special relationship for women, right, and
so the nuclear family can't replace the girlfriend. And what I'm hearing from you,
you know, at a lescence, they are all about developing pure relationships,
and we as a nuclear family can't be cool teens. So so we're
you know, they're suffering the same um and and because they're in this critical
developmental period that can affect every single person in the family. Yeah, right,
right, And and and you know you said a couple of things that
are really relevant to couples too, because you know, some of my favorite
UM teachers about couples talk about how we the couple has evolved so that we
over time, if we look at how couples have functioned over time, save
in the United States, we have evolved to a place where we want so
much from our partner. We want a best friend, we want someone to
have fun with, we want someone to pour our heart out to, we
want a sexual partner, we want you know, all these things in this
one person, and that concentration of focus has made relationships much harder. So
you know, I can remember when I was growing up, even my mom
would never expect to turn to my dad for emotional support. It wouldn't gruss
her mind and that and that there was a reason for that. But you
know, she would talk to her sister, she would talk to this one.
But but I consider Joe like my number one, you know, emotional
support person, and that for us has worked out. But I think that
expecting you know, that person to be your running partner and your gym partner
has put tremendous stress and and therapists are saying that those couples that have other
connections do better, and even the friends is very important, but you know
someone else that you do you meet at the gym to do your workout with,
and someone else that you talk to about the kids possibly and not that
you do nothing with your partner, but there being a better um spread of
your dependence. And I think that the pandemic just like narrow stuff and made
it more difficult in a lot of cases. I have a like that before,
and I think that's a really interesting way to think about it, and
that you could almost like in it to the way we think. Like when
we were kids, we went off on our bikes and our parents weren't worried
about every step we took. Everything is sort of heightened now. Yeah,
yeah, So what you know, if if there's um stress in the house,
if they're stressed with that married couple, no matter what the reason,
where do you suggest they begin, Because this is a tough time to be
stuck here in inside at home more if you're not getting along well, you
know, before before we got together, I was looking at a couple stuff
thinking about this because I was excited to talk about it. And one therapist
that I really liked talks about boundaries, routines and rituals, and and you
can see that Joe and I are in two different offices right now, and
that's and that it's like when I look at that, that I think that's
a good sign of a couple, because like I thought, if we were
in the same space and we had this year the space and I would be
like annoyed, you know. And like so I was, I was thinking
about, I love the way Joe's taking notes while we're talking. It's so
great. I was thinking about, um, like where am I going to
be comfortable and Joe, I should go to my own office, right and
like that's a boundary. You know, we're gonna do better if we're in
separate spaces around this and boundaries around time. You know, this is work
time. You know. I've heard people say to his parents and peace at
home. They're saying, I'm not working from home. I'm living where I
work, and and they're working all the time. Their brains aren't turning off
from working. And so those boundaries of Okay, work is done, and
now I'm going out into the living room and it's going to be different.
I'm not gonna take you know, I'm not going to bring that, and
so emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, you know, the boundaries are very important
to be able to think about. And routine teens and rituals routines are like,
you know, doing the same thing every day the same way. And
we talk to parents about this a lot during the pandemic because those fell apart
and it made life much harder. And one of the things that routines does
is it comes your brain. If you know that when you get up in
the morning, the first thing is you go in the bathroom, and then
you go downstairs, and then you have breakfast and then you get dressed.
If you know that, you don't have to think about it every day.
But if you have a choice every day what am I going to do first?
Or am I just going to read in bed or am I going to
get up? Your brain is more stressed. You have to make choices all
the time. And so routines with couples calms everything down. We know who's
going to do what when, And rituals are routines with meaning. So like
you know, when Joe and I sit down to dinner most nights, we're
going to say one thing we appreciated about the day, we each We always
did this with the kids, and then it kind of went away, and
during the pandemic, I noticed that we gradually brought it back. And it
touches on something essential to well being during the pandemic, which is gratitude.
And I think a lot of people are practicing gratitude because we're noticing more things.
We're you know, we're aware of what we've lost, and so routines
with a ritual something that adds some meaning to it. I think all those
things are helpful to couples, and a lot of it has gone out the
door with the pandemic. Yeah, do you think carving out alone time even
if the kids are in the basement watching a movie or you know, I
have teen boys, even if they're upstairs in the room where they want to
be. Frankly, um is carving out like a date night in the living
room if you can't go to the restaurant down the Starah, I'm gonna like
out us. But we did a date night in our car. We watched
naps in the car and we did take out. That's fun. It's like
getting back to the teen years. Amy. Yeah, something you know you
have to hide from the kids, you know the house. Yeah, it
was just to leave the house and do something. But we didn't want to
eat at a restaurant, and you know it was the where to go?
You go, like drive and look at lover's leap or whatever like that now
like the old timey views. Right, Well that's cute. But is finding
you know, maybe not in your car, but is finding time just the
two of you, no matter how you do it a good thing? Joel,
do you have any thoughts about that? Are you're asking me mat if
you have any thoughts about the just having the time just the two of you?
Oh? All I could think about that's whether that's whether Indian pourhouse was
intimate in the back seat, But that's my brain too. Is taking a
turn, missus Alamar in the pandemic piggy piggyback on what I think you were
saying, It's not there's a way here that in the face of so much
loss for many of us, perhaps the teenagers are experiencing with the greatest,
but it's a loss for all of us hopefully. Uh. That one paradox
here is that that you end up appreciating your partner more in terms of what
they can bring to you. I noticed, you know, maybe partly because
of my age, but also partly because of dealing with this very unique time.
You know that my anxiety is greater, So my dependence on Ruth as
a source of comfort is enhanced at this point. There's a way that if
I if she if I don't know where she is, I have a little
bit more anxiety. And and so it's like that the touchstone of comfort is
so important now at least for me, and it's it's enhanced, but hopefully
my appreciation, my gratitude for that touchstone is also enhanced. And hopefully I
expressed that to Ruth. And so that's why one reason I think that paradoxically
this time can can increase the quality of the relationship that we don't take it
for granted as much. And Joe is actually illustrating something right now that increases
intimacy, which is and it's particularly challenging from men who have been brought up
in a traditional way, which is to demonstrate vulnerability. And I think that,
you know, Brandy Brown talks a lot about this being vulnerable and being
authentic, showing on the outside how you feel on the inside, and she
associates that that was her first study on intimacy was people who could show how
they were feeling in a real way. And Joe talking about this makes me
feel closer to him. But I think a lot of men traditionally feel like
they're not supposed to show their fears during these times. And I think those
couples that have learned how to do that, and women do this too.
Women they focus on keeping everybody happy and they don't actually talk about what's going
on for them. And I think that couples that can can be honest about
their terror in a lot of cases, I mean there were times during this
pandemic that I would feel terrified. I mean even if you've got a cold,
you could feel terrified. And I think processing that not only is helpful
for the individual, but it makes the couple feel closer if they can do
that. If you're trying to do just do things normally, let's do it
the way we've always done it. I have to look brave, I have
to keep it together. I'm the parent, I have to look okay.
I think you get exhausted, stressed out and want to run away. But
if if you can just have some of those scary feelings, sad feelings.
I mean, it was I just had to keep one example. I didn't
we didn't see the kids for Christmas, and you know, this was the
first time in thirty five years that I wasn't with my and I wasn't with
my grandchildren everything. And Christmas Eve, I was so sad. I was
so I was just oh, and I bought all these presents. This is
how we killed the Post Office. I bought a million presents and sent a
million presents to it as part of my grief. And then Christmas morning,
I woke up and I lit some candles in our room and I was like,
this is the first Christmas morning I have to get up. And then
I was like, this is like kind of cool, this is and I
we just we had this delightful Christmas morning. It was beautiful and just hanging
out and you know, I took a picture of our room because it looks
so beautiful and and it was remarkable to see my feelings go from utter devastation,
heartbroken, and then the next morning feeling so loved and cozy and just
like, Okay, we got through. We got through the worst possible thing.
I'm gonna make it. You know, but that's vulnerability, and that's
also agility with your feelings. There's a book about this, I can't remember
her name, but it's being willing to be one minute sad, devastated and
the next morning the sun is coming up. And I think that has to
be built into couples relationships, where you have permission to express it and you
can tolerate those changes in your partner. That's a good point. And the
holidays were tough and confusing this year, weren't they. I was like,
we were alone too, and my dad has passed away recently, and so
my mother was alone, and like, just it all felt bad and we
had a good Christmas Eve, and then I had a rough Christmas Day.
So it's just it's the same. It's this is a tough time where we're
tapping into vulnerability and boundaries and all these buzzwords that we talked about anyway,
in such a heightened different way. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is
this is like running the marathon, and it isn't short term. It's long
term, and and it's how our feelings are evolving over time. You know,
one minute you might feel totally close to your partner, the next minute
you think you're going to pull your hair out, and then you say,
Okay, this is just this minute, this is just this minute. You
know. Well, to that point, we were just talking about together and
us and making time for date nights. Whether it's Amy's way or you know,
a different way that's just gonna live on. Amy, You're not You're
not gonna. I'm glad to be the fun one, you know, Amy
Alamar's car. But you know, as we touch on that that we need
to make time for each other when everybody's in the house and the stress is
going on, there needs to be some way to find a lone time too,
and that's that feeds relationships in a different way too, right, Yeah,
absolutely. I mean I Joe and you know, Josie's clients and I
do piece at home parenting and icy clients, and I often think at the
end of the day we come together like we don't We're not that big of
a house, but we don't actually see each other that much in the day,
and then we come together at night and we have something to tell each
other, you know, And I think you kind of have to have that
separate times. Our circle are older people and lots of our friends are taking
classes online. They're doing all these things apart and then coming together and sharing
it. And I think, you know, and I want to say one
thing that I always tell couples in parenting classes. And I can't find the
original research, but I read this research or article that says when partners perceive
they don't have to be married just you know, cohabitating, partners perceive that
the domestic responsibilities are shared fairly, not equally fairly, they tend to have
more sex. And I think that right now. You know, families with
young children, like my daughter has a four year old and a sixteen month
old, and they went through four months of both having big jobs with big
teams to supervise and these young children with no nanny, no childcare, and
they had to constantly be negotiating and and you know, coming up with that,
and I think that pressure is tremendous on them to feel like it's fair.
I mean, what's fair when you're both kind of at war. You
know, you're on the front, but it's it's a factor to be negotiating,
to be talking about this with each other, yeah, rather than just
shouldering it and being annoyed. It seems like if if you even just know
that one thing you can talk about sounds and what feels fair, because taking
into account what what what one person hates to do, you know, it's
not ours, it's not tasks, it's it's perception and feeling supported and feeling
acknowledged and feeling fair. I think that's a huge factor in closeness altogether.
Yeah, you know, as we begin to think about winding down, we've
thrown a lot of good ideas out there for folks. If if somebody's really
listening and wants one takeaway, you know, what do you suggest if they're
not feeling like things are right, if they're feeling like they've gotten on each
other's nerves, if they're feeling like they're not making these important decisions well together,
Just what's one little takeaway you can leave us with both of you?
Well, you know, A hat a very interesting session this week with a
couple, and I think this is a particular challenge for men. The man
was talking about the external let's talking about the external environment in the home and
was upset that something had not been done and I finally was able to have
him talk about what his internal process was. So I think that in this
time, we might well be focused. We may have more of a need
to have things organized externally in our environment, and we have less tolerance for
maybe that things not to be organized are messy, especially if we have a
strong kind of internal critic that's running the show that says things have to be
together. But when I was able to direct him to talk about his internal
state, he actually was able to start to say, oh, you know,
I drive myself without mercy. I don't give myself any breaks. My
wife is the only one that can that can cue me to say, look,
we don't have to deal with that today tonight. Let's let it go
to tomorrow when we're arrested. But I can't do that for myself. And
when he was able to describe his internal state and how much pressure he puts
on himself, and to recognize that his wife is actually very generous in terms
of saying, take it easy, you don't have to, we can put
things off, he could he could take her guidance. The wife who was
very angry and defensive at his criticism, you know, she opened her heart
to him. And I think a great deal of empathy, which I think
almost every woman's going to do or every partner's going to do if their partner
can talk about that internal state. Unfortunately, it's really hard for men to
do that oftentimes either because they're not in touch with it. And so that
was I think, if we can go there, if that's the one bit
of advice I would want to give, especially to men, if if,
if, if you can do that, it would be I think, create
much more emotional intimacies. That's a great point. And it's almost like if
you can open up and lean on your partner's strengths. Yes, do that
too, Yeah, Ruth, what's your takeaway? Well, Actually it was
funny because I had a very similar thought. I was thinking, if we
can notice our internal critics, if we can notice what we're telling ourselves,
because that often comes out of our mouth to others. If we notice that
and sometimes even through journal, that helps. Um. But I was going
to think specifically. I was just working with a couple of the other day
and if I wass think about women, If if women could first of all,
notice what we're telling ourselves before we get angry at our partners, and
then framing our communication when we're unhappy with our partner's behavior, framing it in
the form of a request versus a criticism. So you know, like like
with with Joe, I'll often say, Okay, this is the third time
I'm asking you. That's not so helpful. What is helpful is can you
tell me by what time you're going to get this done? And I think
the trick of just kind of making it into a request so that you can
feel better as opposed to it's so easy to fall into that criticism, which
is the death of relationships. It's it's it's really hard. And that's true
with teenagers too. That's great advice all around because that that can be the
nagging can be. And there's more of that now too, because we can
have fights about these silly things that because we're all here and needing to take
care of the home and take out the trash and you didn't do it,
and you know, like that can escalate sometimes and it's just silly. Well,
you guys were delightful, really just an inspiration and fun and you know,
always enjoy talking to you and thank you so much for the wisdom.
And I am eternally grateful that I learned about Amy's car date. And I'm
never gonna let it go And that's a little nugget in my pocket to always
bring up. Now. I love it. Amy, You're not your car
date, right right? If only you knew? Right well, we are
just so glad to have you with us too, listener, thank you for
joining us. Please keep in touch with us. You can find us at
parenting Beyond the Headlines dot com and we are on social media, Sarah Cody
Media and Amy alamar So please reach out, let us know what you want
to know about and talk about. And we hope this finds you safe and
well. I'm good luck everyone. I mean, we're all in this together
and we're all feeling these pressures and we will all get through it. We
will talk to you again. Take care,