335: Good-Enough Responding To Stay Sexually Attached

Foreplay Radio – Couples and Sex Therapy

Cloud10

Sexuality, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.5 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re talking about good-enough responding - responding to our partner in ways that keep us connected even when we disappoint them. Think about when a withdrawer finally comes forward; while their pursuing partner may long for whatever they’re offering, the same pursuer most likely feels doubt and mistrust about the sincerity of their withdrawing partner or the evidence that this is a start of a change pattern. George is so confident that mistrust is going to be present at this stage - he calls it a natural part of the change process. So of course - the pursuer doesn’t reward their withdrawer with success for initiation and guess what? - the withdrawing partner backs away. Fail. But what if there were a way to find a secondary target, a secondary path to stay connected. George and Laurie discuss how you can target a lesser but important target (other than true responsiveness); you can give permission for you partner’s defensive/protective move - you can let them know it makes sense to you. As hard as it seems to do, validating your partner’s defense actually helps them feel seen by you and keeps you in connection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The following content is not suitable for children.
0:02.4	Joseph, let's talk about that good enough responding idea that you have
0:06.3	when people can't give their partner what they need, how maybe there's a second target that
0:12.8	keeps the connection and builds a bridge. Nice, like second targets, Laurie. Hi, I'm comedian
0:18.6	Brad Wallick. And I'm energy medicine practitioner and clairvoyant Jackie Leonardini.
0:22.9	And together we host the new podcast Funny Energy Healing Through Humor.
0:27.4	Listen on the iHeart app Apple Podcast for wherever you get your podcast and follow us on
0:32.2	Instagram at Funny Energy Podcast. Welcome to For Play Radio, couples and sex therapy.
0:43.2	I'm Laurie Watson, your sex therapist. And I'm George Fallon, your couples therapist.
0:48.1	And we are passionate about talking about sex and helping you develop a way to talk to each other.
0:54.0	Our mission is to help our audience develop a healthier relationship to sex that integrates
1:00.3	the mind, the heart and the body. Good enough responding, Laurie. That's the marker.
1:08.0	You know, there's so many people, the expectations are so high. And those high expectations
1:15.8	lead to disappointment. Yep. With a lot of couples, especially around sexual issues,
1:21.7	there's been lots of distance, lots of misses. Right. So to create change, you got to build
1:28.1	this expectation that change is difficult. And you know, the attempts to try have to lead
1:36.7	to some success. So really shift in those expectations to good enough. It's almost like the gap
1:43.2	between a couple gets so big that when one person finally takes a risk, like it's just not enough,
1:49.1	it's just if it falls flat and then they're right back into that negative cycle.
1:54.1	Right. So do you think it a lot about how to kind of low those expectations in more practical
1:59.8	ways that can set couples up for success? Good enough is sort of like when I was a young mother
2:05.9	and I read this book on good enough parenting, you know, you don't have to be a perfect parent.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cloud10, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cloud10 and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.