Men vs Women in Relationships
Figs chats with podcast host (and relationship skeptic) Nicolas Gregoriades about the most common relationship dynamic between men and women.
Married to a Workaholic
enJanuary 26, 2023
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About this Episode
A listener's relationship issue is highlighted in "Married to a Workaholic" as Figs and Karen take a nuanced look at a system they've seen hundreds of times in couples.
In this case, the listener's husband is prone to answering work texts while they are spending quality time together, resulting in painful disconnection and conflict.
Figs and Karen carefully break down each perspective within this system—the listener Pursuer ("Are you there for me?") and the "texter" Withdrawer ("Am I enough for you?)—using systems theory and attachment theory.
Throughout the episode they do deeper and deeper into the experience of the listener and the "texter," accessing their negative judgments of each other, the ways they protest not feeling loved, and their unmet love needs.
Couples Therapy Works is a new series from the Come Here To Me team delving into the complex work of couples therapy from the ground up. Each episode will feature one or more of Empathi’s own counselors as they examine the truths and challenges of relationship repair.
To submit a question for Figs and Karen to answer, email figs@empathi.com or leave a comment on YouTube, Instagram, or Apple Podcasts.
If you or someone you love are struggling in your relationship, visit empathi.com for counseling, quizzes, and courses.
Recent Episodes from Come Here To Me: Relationship Experts Walk the Talk
Feedback Failures
Are your concerns usually met with defensiveness? You might be stuck in a feedback loop… Figs explains why constructive criticism is so difficult, and what to do about it.
Should You Diagnose Your Partner?
Figs and Steph discuss the pros and pitfalls of the growing trend of partners "diagnosing" each other with personality disorders.
Healing the Present in Please Like Me
Get an early release of the previously therapists-exclusive beat-by-beat breakdown: https://get.empathi.com/comehere/please-like-me-early-access
Come Here To Me: Relationship Experts Walk the Talk
enAugust 24, 2023
The Truth About Codependent Relationships
In "The Truth About Codependency", Figs explains how to actually help couples in a codependent relationship—starting with critiquing the term.
To do so, Figs explores 3 possible uses for "codependency":
- Couples featuring a partner "Dependent" on substances (alcoholism, addiction) and their "Co-dependent" partner
- "Overly attached" couples high in conflict who think they "Just need to learn to be independent"
- Couples featuring a partner with trauma around having needs being unacceptable
In every single case, you first must normalize, normalize, normalize.
When the term "Codependent" was created to describe loved ones of addicted individuals and their behavior, they were missing an ingredient essential for understanding human behavior: Attachment Theory.
From day one, human beings need to be emotionally bonded to survive.
Everything supposed "codependent" individuals do and feel in relation to their adult primary attachment figure makes absolute sense in this context. This isn't something to be fixed.
In cases featuring substance abuse, each partner's actions make sense, but they will not be able to proceed to the next step until the addicted partner(s) can be fully there for the other.
After couples understand their relationship system, that there's nothing wrong with either of them, and that their behaviors are actually born out of a need for each other's love, one partner is able to ask for their needs to be met.
This is where, as Figs describes it, a "threshold moment" occurs. Either they ask for their needs to be met, their partner is able to do so, and they experience profound emotional healing, or they see their partner isn't able to be there for them and get to say, "No."
The final step is to integrate what has happened—remembering there's nothing wrong with you, and asking for your needs to be met from a place of vulnerability and connection is more rewarding than placating or hiding.
You now have the ability to do this process, repair conflicts and heal wounds from the past, over and over again for the rest of your life.
How to Fix a Toxic Relationship
In "How to Fix a Toxic Relationship," Figs breaks down what a toxic relationship is (and isn't) and the steps necessary to repair it.
For the purposes of this conversation, a toxic relationship is one in which the couple is spending days, weeks, months—a significant amount of time—in "disconnection" without meaningful repair.
This can include individual negative cycles (conflicts) that persist or escalate dramatically, and/or it can mean the couple is spending very little time in connection over a longer period of time.
Most importantly, couples in a toxic relationship are not having meaningful repair—a multi-dimensional empathetic experience wherein they're able to be there for each other lovingly, feel their individual pain, and feel empathy for both of them together.
So, in order to fix a toxic relationship, Figs leads couples through three stages:
Stage 1: Break down the negative cycle and help both partners recognize the tragedy they are both engaged in together, cognitively and emotionally. This is the most difficult step in the process.
Stage 2: Go deeply into one partner's pain, organize it, have them feel it fully, and ask for their needs to be met—then, their partner shows up for them. Do this in both directions.
Stage 3: Help the couple integrate what they accomplished. They are not "toxic" or broken, and they can repeat this process of repair for the rest of their lives.
Please note that if you are experiencing domestic abuse, it is not currently possible for you to safely attempt to navigate these stages. Reach out for help online at https://www.thehotline.org or by phone at 1-800-799-7233.
Attachment in HBO's Succession
In "Attachment in HBO's Succession," Karen joins Figs to discuss a particular scene in Succession (S4E2) as a representation of deep attachment-based wounding.
Triggering Or Toxic?
Couples Therapy Works: How do you know if your partner's behavior is unacceptable? Karen joins Figs to answer this important client question.
Seeing The Negative Cycle
In "Seeing The Negative Cycle" Figs and Karen take a close look at the makeup of The Cycle, a concept from Emotionally-Focused Therapy.
A cycle is the negative "infinity loop" every couple inevitably encounters in their relationship, which shows up for partners as conflict they get into over and over.
Download the infinity loop sheet: https://get.empathi.com/episodes/seeing-the-negative-cycle
Figs describes it as a river that is always running underneath your house, but which only rises above ground-level from time to time. The emotional bonding dynamic in your relationship is ever-present, but is most easily accessed in moments of conflict.
To recognize that you are in a negative cycle, Karen suggests paying attention to the language you are using (such as "You always–" and "You never–"), and to what is going on in yourself (are you triggered or reacting with fight/flight/freeze/fawn behaviors)?
Figs explains that if you are experiencing any of the 4 quadrants of the infinity loop, then you are in a cycle.
These quadrants are… You are hurting, you have a negative judgment of your partner, your partner is hurting, and your partner has a negative judgment of you.
Each of these feed into and result from each other, and so if one of those elements is present, Figs emphasizes that it's highly likely they are all present.
All roads to a better relationship pass through "We are in a system together."
Understanding The Cycle is the first step.
Behind the Therapists
In "Behind the Therapists" Karen and Figs use the feeling of being overextended to explore 3 "roses" and 1 "thorn" about being a couples therapist, each.
Karen finds it rewarding to…
- Take desperate and confused couples and organize what is really happening for them.
- Help others (thereby feeling valuable as a person enough to "exist for today.")
- Experience couples on the edge of giving up on the relationship become open-hearted.
Karen finds it most difficult to bear the moments when a couple is stuck and she has a hard time holding them in a frame of hope.
Figs is fulfilled by…
- How alive couples therapy is—he has to show up for the couple in the moment, no matter what.
- Going deeper and deeper into sadness, hopelessness, and despair with a couple, trusting that they'll come through closer.
- The performance and artistry of a session.
The most difficult sessions for Figs are when a couple doesn't trust him yet—they're not in alliance.
"Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness.
Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this: kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved.” — Dr. Wayne W. Dyer