How do you keep your relationship strong when life gets busy, stress builds up, and connection starts to slip away?

If you’ve ever found yourself bottling up frustrations, avoiding tough conversations, or just wishing you and your partner felt more like a team, this episode is for you.

In this episode we are unpacking a simple, powerful tool designed to help you and your partner reconnect, communicate, and thrive, even in the chaos of everyday life.

Whether you’re navigating the ups and downs of parenthood, juggling work pressures, or just want to feel closer, this conversation will give you practical strategies to break the cycle of disconnection and build a relationship that lasts.

So grab your headphones, settle in, and get ready to discover the steps for how a weekly check-in could be the game-changer your relationship needs.

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TRANSCRIPT

Speaker A: How do you keep your relationship strong? When life gets busy,

stress builds up. Connection slowly starts to slip away. If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated, avoiding some of those tough conversations,

or just wishing you and your partner were more like a team,

this episode is for you. We’re going to be unpacking a simple,

powerful tool designed to help you and your partner to reconnect,

repair conflict, communicate better,

and hopefully thrive even as the chaos of life gets in the way. Whether you’re navigating the ups and downs of parenthood or just juggling work pressures or kids going a bit feral and you just want to get closer, this conversation today will give you some practical strategies to break the cycle of disconnection and help you to build a relationship that lasts.

So grab your headphones or your AirPods or whatever you put in your ear and settle in and get ready to discover how weekly check in could be an absolute game changer.

Welcome to Man Talk, a podcast of real conversations about life,

your life, and in this case, your relationship life and the emotional well being of men. My name is Howard Todd Collins. I am the director of Men and Relationships Counseling.

Thank you for being here. Sit back and relax and join me for this latest episode of Men Talk.

Hello, hello, hello. I hope you are well, wherever you are.

For those of you who are astute in terms of timing, my my podcast comes out usually every month and most often at the beginning of each month, and you will notice that one is landing just a little bit late.

So I do apologize for being late. We’re about a week or so after the normal deadline of the Mantor podcast dropping, so to speak.

Number of reasons for that. One is that I’ve just become incredibly busy, both in the private practice world of psychotherapy, but also in a new part of my career which is just taking off as a lecturer or teacher teaching emerging therapists in the bachelors of psychotherapy and counseling.

And that’s something that whilst it’s incredibly powerful for me to stand up in front of people and talk about the skills and the purpose and the values and the approaches to therapy, it’s incredibly rewarding, but also incredibly busy.

So it’s taken me a little bit more time to spend thinking about the podcast, but also obviously spending some time recording it. So please accept my apologies for the delay in this episode, which is actually episode number 14 of season five of the Mentalk podcast.

We are going going to be having a closer look today at you and your relationship with your partner and in particular so many conversations I have with both Men and women and also couples together around what is it that’s required for a couple to stay connected in a very busy life?

In particular,

how to repair conversations that are more conflicting.

So when you’re not getting along, but also to actually find a way to talk about repair but also talk about just how your relationship is going, generally to look at the positives as well as the negatives.

So this episode is all about a particular exercise that I found very useful.

A lot of people have told me how valuable it is.

So I’m going to be taking you through the exercise today in this podcast. But before we do that,

let’s spend a bit of time just talking a bit about what is it that gets in the way of particularly for you from having conversations with your partner,

partly about conflict, but also just generally checking in with how your relationship is going.

So what are some of the common pitfalls that get in the way for lots of men?

If you have a think about your relationship with your partner and just think about you and the kind of style of communicating that you tend to have in your relationship, there will be plenty of reasons why why it’s difficult to have conversations about repairing conflict or even having a conversation about just how well you are going as a couple.

There’s lots of reasons. I’m going to cover essentially seven reasons in this particular segment and also talk a bit about why the exercise that I’m going to be introducing to you later on can help you in some way.

There are plenty of reasons that sound a bit like excuses,

and in some ways they are. But and most importantly, they are particular patterns that many partners and particular particularly many men that I work with will describe that just gets in the way of knowing how to start a conversation,

let alone making the time to have it. So let’s go through some of these seven reasons why a lot of men in particular that I work with talk about that stops them from having conversations about how well their relationship is going, but also how to deal with conflict.

Now the first one is really about avoidance. Now I’ve spoken about avoidance before in this podcast. Many men who are I meet will talk about a kind of avoidance or discussing difficult issues for a whole load of reasons, part of which is to do with fear of arguments or fear and tension or the emotions around it.

There are many men that I meet with that would rather walk away from something that feels overwhelming because it just seems easier than dealing with what’s going on emotionally. But also even communicating with a partner who is also angry with them or disappointed with them.

So it’s often easier to avoid that kind of tension. And to some degree, the mind goes into, well, if I leave it later, it’ll just go away and we’ll just get on with life, or I’m just going to get distracted.

So that’s fine. The problem, of course, is that the more we avoid stuff, the more things tend to build up over time. So the exercise that I will look at shortly creates a kind of structure, really.

It’s sort of a structure of how to have a dialogue.

So making it less likely then, that you would avoid or ignore what’s going on, because you’ll have a kind of guardrail,

a kind of scaffold of what to say and how to say it.

And over time, the more you get to talk about stuff like conflict, but also talking about what is going well,

when you’ve got a little bit of a guide, you’ll start to realize how you’ll normalize conversations about topics that are important, including confrontation or difference.

So the first reason that a lot of people say to me is I would rather avoid the conflict altogether.

The second one, of course, is a bit linked to the first one, really, which is about how we generally avoid certain kind of feelings.

I often talk about this with men, but also on the podcast quite a lot, is that men internalize their emotional experiences.

We think and we feel and we go through stuff in our own mind. We don’t share it, we don’t talk about it.

And to some degree,

that’s the kind of safer place to be. We would rather not be that vulnerable. Right.

And there’s also an aspect for some partners that I tend to hear about a lot is that there’s a kind of expectation that our partners should just know what we’re feeling and thinking.

Now, that kind of bottling up, combined with the avoidance of a conversation,

does tend to build up into.

Part of it is the resentment and disconnection in a relationship, but also a whole load of misunderstanding. It kind of erodes trust in a relationship.

There’s not enough conversations going on.

So the exercise that I’m going to be presenting will also encourage you and your partner to talk about things that are going well as well as things that aren’t going well.

So we’re trying to look at how we get you to think about appreciating your relationship and in particular, how you openly appreciate the person that you love.

So the format itself will prompt you to think about what you value as well as what’s going on that’s not going so, well,

the idea, of course, that it will break the habit of internalizing emotions.

The other part of this common pitfall, or a third one, which is they’re all connected really,

is this need that most of us have to fix problems, to go into sort of problem solving.

And that kind of bypasses something of a relational skill when we’re having a conversation, which is the skill of listening well and empathizing and validating our partner’s experiences.

Now, whilst we have good intention to fix things from a relational perspective,

the most important part of talking is about feeling heard and feeling understood, as opposed to unheard or dismissed. When we go into sort of solution, focus very quickly. So again,

the exercise will guide you to,

as opposed to immediately fixing problems, to learning how to be a speaker and a listener and actually listen without being defensive.

And that’s a really significant skill. Now, there’s another few parts of these common pitfalls that I want to go through with you.

So hang around because that’s coming up next.

Now, a little earlier, I mentioned the V word, which is vulnerability,

which is a real fear that most of us have. This is a fear of being open emotionally.

And it creates a kind of reluctance to have a conversation that is partly about conflict, but also actually about emotional intimacy.

There are many people that I meet, and this is men and women, but blokes, we’re really,

I think, very conscious of this, that we don’t want to appear weak in someone way. So we kind of avoid the vulnerability of having a deep and meaningful conversation with our partner, even if it’s about something that’s positive, let alone something that’s not going so well or seemingly is negative.

So the exercise that we’ll go through provides a framework for how to open up to some degree what you’re thinking and feeling and what kind of statements and what kind of literal language that’s been researched that can really help to start the conversation.

So it’s designed to create a kind of easier approach to being vulnerable and being honest.

And this is linked to this other. This is like number five of the pitfalls. We’ve covered four already.

So the fifth one is about the struggle to articulate feelings, literally to know how to communicate. And it’s a kind of challenging situation for most of us because how do you know what you’re feeling?

What language do you use? How do you communicate this in a way that helps your partner understand what you’re going through?

So again, there are some sentence starters in the guide that I’m going to give you about how you communicate and help your partner understand what it is that you’re going through.

And this is including both positive and negative emotions as well. Now the sixth pitfall,

you’re probably not keeping count, but there are about seven of them. But the sixth one is about being distracted and therefore not being present.

This is how we get preoccupied and we all do this. We get busy with work,

we get lost on our screens. There are other stresses going on on that stop us from being fully present in conversations. So we’re internalizing our thoughts, but also we kind of lack attention at the same time and we miss opportunities for connection and conversations with our partner.

So again, this conversational guide is about dedicating time, specific time in your relationship with your partner where there is no distractions,

where you’re literally fostering a sense of genuine connection in a conversation.

Now, the final common pitfall in terms of talking and communicating with your partner about things that are going well or not going well are some kind of negative beliefs that may be going on inside your own head.

Now that could be anything. It could be self doubt that you’re really not sure about expressing yourself. So you don’t make the effort or you don’t initiate a conversation. You may be hesitant about engaging in a more open, honest reflection, reflection with your partner.

So this structure that I’m going to give you very shortly is a positive structure. It’s about appreciating and focusing on what is going well as well as what’s not going so well.

We’re trying to create a kind of guideline that kind of creates something that’s really something you look forward to, not something that you avoid completely.

So these pitfalls are all kind of contributors towards the cycles of disconnection and frustration and isolation that happen in relationships. It’s really normal, it’s very common to fall into these traps.

Most significantly, of course, is how to recognize and address them, which is the key step to moving forward and building a more fulfilling relationship.

And we’re going to start the next section by providing with you this step by step guide to repairing your relationship with the person in your life.

Now, it does seem that I’ve been teasing you a bit because I’ve been talking a bit about the common pitfalls of what gets in the way of having a conversation with your partner and this guide that I’ve been alluding to.

So here we go. We’re going to go into this step by step guide for what is called relationship repair. But it’s so much more than that. This is Coming from an exercise that’s called the State of the Union exercise.

It’s an evidence based,

step by step approach that comes from the Gottman Institute in the usa. These are guys who are basically relationship experts. They’ve done lots of research about what it is that keeps couples together, what are the skills involved and what are the attitudes and the beliefs, but also the particular styles of communicating that really helps couples to thrive.

So this exercise is part of their research.

What it does, it creates an approach that’s designed to get you and your partner to regularly reflect on your relationship, to celebrate the strengths and also address the challenges in a constructive way.

So let us break down these four steps and how maybe you can use them to repair your relationship, but also strengthen your partnership with the person you care about. Now, the first step.

Well, actually, before we start that, the most important thing is you have to make the time to do this.

You are going to need this to happen every week and probably for about an hour,

one hour in a week, and maybe more,

and certainly not much less. You could probably do this in half an hour, maybe 45 minutes. But ideally,

I want you to be making the time to go through this structured exercise with your partner once a week for one hour.

And if you do do this, I would love to hear how you go. And we’ll look at that a bit later on before we finish the podcast of how you can actually get in touch with me.

First step that you do together as a partner, you take it in turns,

is that you share five things that your partner done in this last week that you really appreciate. Five appreciations.

Now, that may be hard to do. Maybe you can’t think of five,

so you think of one, if not two,

maybe you’ve got six or seven. Okay, that’s fine.

Ideally,

five things. Now, the more you do this exercise over the weeks ahead, you’ll start to notice things a lot more. Anyway,

five things that you really appreciate. You need to be specific about what they are and in some ways what these actions reveal about your partner’s positive traits, what you really appreciate in them, what you love about them, but also what you’re just grateful for and what you can acknowledge in some form how you appreciate who they are.

Now, this could be anything from the way you’ve noticed them deal with the kids,

or the way you notice them deal with their family or parents, or the way you notice the way they showed up in terms of the way they look or presented at work, or maybe you were enjoying a meal they cooked, or you acknowledge that they cleaned up after a dinner that you made.

Or maybe you can just acknowledge that whatever it is that they’ve done that you really love, that you forget about,

that just needs to be named.

Ideally,

this needs to be something that is real and genuine.

I don’t want you to be making things up. This comes from your heart. Now, when you do this, when you both do this.

So remember, this is a reciprocal conversation. So you’ll start.

And maybe your partner comes after you in terms of sharing what they appreciate in you,

it will start to help you feel seen and valued, which kind of reinforces your strength, but also the goodwill in your relationship with each other. What it does, it actually solves a problem that many couples talk about with me, where they feel unappreciated,

they feel taken for granted,

and there’s a kind of erosion of any positivity and this lack of recognition for showing up every day to share a life with each other, but also to actually be part of each other’s lives.

You have to start to notice these things really important. So that’s the first part of the step. The first step is give each other five appreciations. The second step is to start talking.

This is on the back of something that’s positive. It’s even more about your strength, but it’s also about talking about what went well this week.

So maybe you can acknowledge how well you’re trying to work together as a team,

as a couple, as a partner,

as co parents.

Maybe you did find time to go out together and see a movie or have dinner. Maybe you just were able to spend time on the couch together, watching a Netflix show and enjoying it.

So name it, talk about it.

Acknowledge that these successes that are going on in your life that you forget about may well keep you motivated. It will remind you of your strength as a couple. Now, the reason why this can work very well,

it solves the problem of what is an over emphasis on negativity. You know, you diffuse the negative by allowing yourself to look at what’s going well. If you’re losing motivation to work on the relationship, this is a really good way of reminding yourself of the strength.

So shared successes are really significant.

Small wins will keep you motivated.

It will keep you on that kind of trajectory that gives you a little bit more hope.

So those are the first two steps. They’re really positive. The focus is on something that will give you a foundation for talking about stuff that maybe is not going so well.

And those are the next two steps.

Now, you know and I know and I Know that you know that conflict is inevitable in any relationship.

It’s going to happen. You can’t avoid it completely. Right?

Most importantly though, it’s how you handle the conflicts or incidents that have happened that either one of you regret. It’s how you handle it that actually does make all the difference.

So this section, this sort of third part of the four steps really is about taking and interns to share some concerns or issues from the past week. Now, what I tend to suggest to couples is don’t overwhelm yourselves.

In this section,

maybe choose one or two things that have happened.

You know, instead of, you know, you may have a list of five or six things. Maybe one of you does, maybe one of you doesn’t.

I would not be recommending you choose to spend five or six or whatever,

15 minutes on looking at five issues. I think it’s probably too much. So maybe choose two.

If there’s only one, fine. If you’ve got five or six, I would suggest you decide what’s the priority for the conversation you’re having now and then look at the other issues either next week or maybe wait a couple of days and go into those other issues on a different conversation.

The point of the exercise is not to overwhelm you both.

The point of the exercise is that you’re beginning to work on how you handle differences differently.

Now there is a kind of guide for handling difficult conversations that I want you to think about. And it actually is what comes in the form of an acronym,

kind of broken down by some of the research that the Gottman Institute has done around guiding conversations.

So the acronym is called attune. A double T U N E.

So A is that you become aware of your partner’s feelings.

T is that you can tolerate the different points of view. So tolerance is the T.

The second T for attune is the way you turn towards your partner’s needs.

The U is understanding understanding your partner’s perspective.

The N is about being non defensive in the way you listen.

And the E is for empathy for their experience. So attune is the guide for this kind of conversation. So what you’re doing is you’re choosing an issue of something that’s happened during the week that you’re unhappy about and the way you start your conversation.

And this is where the research looks at in terms of conflict style. If you start your conversation with what’s called a softened startup,

not a soft one, but a softened one,

your conversation will go better. So if you started with owning your own feelings or thoughts I feel is your first sentence or your first statement step,

as opposed to you did and you did that and you did the other.

Because when you start off with the you, you start to blame.

And fairly quickly that’ll go into more defensive arguments, I feel is a really good way of starting. Right.

And then you can describe the situation that’s happened as opposed to making it about your partner’s flaws.

So when you start explaining yourself in that way,

you can start talking about what you need as well.

So here’s some examples of this. So I try and get a bit more concrete, and you’ll be thinking about this as you’re listening to me now. There’ll be things that have gone on in the week that you’re concerned about that you need to talk about.

It could be anything from a comment that your partner made that you felt hurt by,

but you didn’t bring it up, you didn’t talk about it. So this step provides a safe space to address some of these before it begins to fester in resentment. Right.

Some couples find it hard to talk about money or financial issues. Some people don’t talk about forgetting a birthday or kind of missing an opportunity that really was required of you to respond in some way.

And your partner felt that you were distracted or not caring.

You could say something like,

let’s just say it’s a domestic issue and you’re tired of cooking and you’re kind of getting a bit frustrated and annoyed, and you start to feel like you’re kind of blaming your partner for not doing enough.

So this is the way the formula will work. You can say, I’m feeling tired and overwhelmed from cooking for these last four nights.

I need us to come up with a plan for the week ahead where we’re sharing the cooking more often, or maybe we eat out a bit more.

So as you’re owning your feeling about the cooking and you have a need,

that’s the formula I feel about cooking or too much cooking.

I need to come up with a plan with us together to share the load and take the pressure off. Right?

So if you’re listening to your partner talking about something, your job is to listen without being defensive. And a way of doing that is to make sure you’re calm,

that you’re breathing slowly,

you’re looking out for any reactions, any emotional charge. You keep breathing slowly and you try and slow down. And the most important part of you as a listener is to help your partner feel understood that you get what they’re saying.

You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying or disagree,

but you understand it in terms of their feelings and their needs.

That is the key.

So you’re doing it in a calm way.

If you notice either you or your partner start to get activated. So you got, you know, you start to get more defensive or angry or you’re withdrawing or you’re retreating or you’re getting distracted or you’re tuning out.

I want you to flag it and say, can we have a break just for five minutes.

I just need to be able to kind of realign myself with the exercise and become present again and then you kind of go back to it.

The purpose of having such a structured conversation around conflict means that anything that’s unresolved that you avoid during the week starts to get to be processed, you see. So over time,

when you get practiced at this, it avoids the resentment,

it avoids the emotional distancing that can happen when either one of you feels misunderstood or annoyed or angry.

Now this is a process that may take a while to get used to.

This is why I want you to only focus on one or two things that are going on that are negative as opposed to five, six or eight things.

It’s just too much.

We want you to practice awareness, tolerance, turning towards your partner’s needs,

understanding their perspective,

non defensive listening and finding empathy and understanding for their experience. That is the task at hand.

That is step number three.

It’s probably a really important one to get your head around the last step, the final one actually gets you to start thinking more ahead of time about how to look after each other better.

Now, as you may see, step three is a fairly heavy part of the step by step process. It is about making the time to go through some of the stuff that’s not working so well.

Make sure you do step three before you come into this final step, which is step number four.

Step three is heavy, it’s heavier. You start off with one and two, which is more positive.

Step three, yes, it’s going to be more challenging, but not impossible to do to talk about what’s not going well.

Step four is a kind of bracketing the whole process with something that leads into something more positive Again, it’s really about having a conversation with each other about what each of you need in the coming weeks week to make you feel more connected or more loved as the week begins to happen.

So you’re moving into kind of planning ahead a bit, but you’re talking about this particular question or this particular offering. So here’s what you can say.

What is One thing that would help you feel more loved as we go through the week that I can do to help you feel more connected right now, that could be anything.

It could be that you decide, you know, one of the best things that makes me feel loved by you as a partner is that we spend more time together of an evening before we go to bed, that we have a bit of a cuddle on the couch,

or that when we are sitting watching on Netflix documentary or whatever series you’re looking at, that you’re sitting next to each other on the couch and you’re holding hands or you put your hands on each other’s lap or something or.

What I really like about the fact that you can offer me something that makes me feel more connected is the way you greet me when you come home from work, if you come and give me a kiss and say hello,

or when you put your work stuff down, that you come and say hi before you go upstairs. I mean, these are all little moments, right? And in a sense, what it’s doing is getting you to think more about how do you connect with each other, how do you meet each other’s needs?

You know, if you’re looking for needs to manage chores in the house and there are certain tasks that you want more help with and that makes you feel a bit more connected, then talk about some of those practical needs.

You know, if you’re talking about the lack of time because either one of you is extremely busy at work and you end up feeling like your partner’s not available, then talk about that.

I really would love for you, you to put your phone down or close the laptop and spend some time focusing your attention on me because that makes me feel more connected.

So there’s all sorts of possibilities here. Now, the reasons why this works very well.

One is it kind of you end up through this whole step by step process feeling a bit more positive and of course more hopeful.

And also significantly, I think for lots of partners, when you talk about needs that aren’t being met and they’re not spoken about, this particular step helps that you start talking about what your needs are,

right?

You’re talking about the fact that you may feel disconnected or unloved. And so you’re talking about, well, how can you change that?

How do you as a partner start to think about your partner’s needs and make sure you remember during the week to actually look at this. You can make a note of it if you need to in your phone or on a pad.

If you forget easily, then make some notes. About it. Right.

It’s also really useful because you get to clarify what your needs are, something you may not talk about much if you’ve been together a long time.

These are the kind of things we don’t think about. We take them for granted. So in a way it is another opportunity to just close off the step by step guide with something that’s a bit more positive.

So the question is, what can I do for you that makes you feel more loved or more or more connected in the coming week?

So I have taken you through basically four steps.

Let me just do a quick summary. The first step is to give one another. Each of you give each other five appreciations.

The second step is about talking about what is going well, what’s going right as a couple in your relationship.

The third step is where you select an issue or process something that’s happened that’s a conflict or something that’s happened that you’re regretting in some way.

And the fourth step is about what you can ask your partner.

And that is the question of what can I do next week to make you feel more loved and connected? It now the purpose of the exercise, and this is where some of the research is that it gives you regular time for more structured conversations that will help any kind of build up or a deeper sense of resentment in your relationship with each other if you’re avoiding conflict altogether.

But it actually builds up a better sense of connection when you’re talking about things that are also positive as well as negative. Some of the benefits that a lot of my couples partners have spoken about with me is that it improves their communication over time because essentially it encourages open,

honest dialogue,

particularly when you’re expressing appreciation of each other in a more non defensive way.

You’re strengthening connection by helping each other feel heard and more valued. And that always is going to increase emotional connection and physical connection as well. Well, you’re preventing buildup of conflict by talking about stuff that doesn’t escalate over time.

And hopefully you’re sharing your appreciations in a positive way, which actually increases motivation for couples to stay together but also keep improving their relationship.

And there are some pretty good constructive problem solving ideas within those steps as well.

This is where the researchers come from, the Gottman Institute, where they’ve just basically studied for years and years.

And what is it that keeps couples together?

And a lot of it is about couples who regularly engage in positive communication,

expressing appreciation, but addressing issues more quickly as opposed to avoiding and leaving them. And these are the couples that will talk about long term relationship satisfaction. These are the couples that feel more stable.

So I really want you to think about how you incorporate an exercise like this in your life. And what I have for you is a free guide. You can access this on the Show Notes.

It’s basically a relationship check in guide. It covers pretty much everything we’ve talked about today, but it gives you something to work with.

You can sit with the guide, with your partner and work through it.

I would love to hear how you go.

So have a look at the Show Notes.

You can download the guide. There’s a link there for you.

Let me know how you go. You can always reach me at mantalkwithhoward. That’s my Instagram handle. Or you can email me howardenandrelationships.com all those details are in the Show Notes.

Let me know how you go. If you really enjoyed this podcast,

you’ve enjoyed listening to it, you’re getting something out of it. Tell your mates and give me a review wherever you found the podcast.

And I look forward to hearing from you. But most importantly, I will speak to you again in the next episode of Man Talk.