Hello and welcome to the Empowered Couples podcast. Today you're going to be hanging out with just me,

Jocelyn. As some of you know, we record an episode together once a week and then a solo episode.

And today we're going to be talking about the question, what's wrong? You know you've asked it before.

What's wrong? And why you never want to ask this question and what to say instead if your partner seems off.

And I thought of this episode after we recorded the one earlier in the week about expressing

yourself to your partner and not relying on their response. And I imagined some of you saying,

okay, Freeman's, but what if I want my partner to express more? I can tell

something is off with them and they don't open up. They don't express themselves as much. And I hear

that quite a bit in the DMs of you telling me, you wish your partner would express more of

their thoughts, of their emotions, of their needs. And I know that it can be very tempting when your partner seems

off to ask the question just by default, what's wrong? Right? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?

I used to ask this quite a bit, to be honest, in past relationships and definitely even with Aaron.

And I didn't know why it wasn't effective, right? Every time I felt like I asked it, I would get like this side look and be like nothing, nothing's wrong and kind of defensive. And I'm like, I didn't, I'm just trying to check if something's, you know, wrong. Like you seem off. And so I didn't quite understand why this question didn't work, why it didn't get my partner to open up, and you may be nodding

your head going, okay, Jocelyn, yep, I'm tracking you. I can feel the same. And the interesting

thing about this question and why it doesn't work, and I promise you I will share with you what to

say instead of this question in a minute. But why it doesn't work is because it can actually just make the person

more defensive. It almost feels like you imposed something onto them. Like I don't have anything

wrong with me. Don't project that onto me, right? It can almost feel like someone puts something on you,

and so people then can become unconsciously defensive. And the other thing that I realized

is it can make the person in particular, we're talking about the partner, feel as if how they're

acting or the way they're being just isn't okay. It's not okay. They can't just be how they're

being right then. And so it can almost feel off putting like what, like what I'm doing right now is not okay. It's not okay. They can't just be how they're being right then. And so it can almost feel off

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