Episode 174 - If He Really Loved Me

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

Have you ever had this thought?

"If he really loved me..."

Take a second to consider how you've finished that sentence in the past. (Feel free to share, I'd love to hear!)

Now I want you to ask yourself what you are really wanting in that moment.

Are you wanting some confirmation about his affection? Are you just wanting more help? Are you wanting to spend a night out connecting with him?

"If he really loved me" keeps us distracted from what we're really wanting and needing in our marriages. It keeps us justifying arbitrary rules instead of getting busy with some open and vulnerable communication.

I've tossed the "if he really loved me" rules out.

You can, too.

Ep 174 - If He Really Loved Me

<00:00:00> Kayla Levin: Hi friends. I hope everyone had an amazing Hanukkah. I am so excited for this. What I like to think of as like the big stretch of normalcy of the year. We have all the way from now till Purim. Purim is, like not too much of a blip. So like we kind of get to get into a rhythm and a routine for the first time since the school year started, I always say this and my husband laughs at me and he is like, when have we ever gotten into any rhythm or routine in our life?

And that's probably true, but I am happily in denial. It's gonna feel very rhythmic and routine for the next couple months. That's what I'm shooting for or hoping for.

So this came in from a conversation I was having with somebody on the internet, this idea of if he really loved me, and first of all, it made me think it's been a really long time since I did a question to answer episode, so I wanna start collecting some questions.

You guys wanna hear a certain topic. Is there something that you'd really also like? Things that are like out of left field, you're like, I don't know if Kayla would ever talk about this, but I kind of wanna know what she would think about it or how she would apply coaching to it. , I would love to <00:01:00> hear and do a q and a episode for you all cause it's just super fun.

I I really enjoy doing them. So go ahead and email any questions, thoughts, topics that you would love to hear addressed on a q and a episode to Kayla, Kayla eleven.com and we'll get that to you in the future. Um, but so let's circle back to this topic. Because I think this is really helpful, and I think this is probably gonna be the kind of episode that I'd like you to please send to any newlyweds that you know, , because these, I think this is one that maybe we figure out as we go.

However, I am gonna say that if you've been married longer, there may be some pieces here that you haven't considered that you might still be hanging on to. So I want to encourage everyone to take a lesson to this week's episode.

What's This Whole Idea? ---

<00:01:46> Kayla Levin: So, First of all, what is this whole idea? So it's just a preface to a sentence that we use.

If he really loved me then, and then we get to say whatever we want, , right? Like whatever conclusion <00:02:00> we've come to of If he loved me, then I would know, because this would be the evidence, this would be the proof. And it sounds really true. It feels totally justified to think this way when we're thinking that.

Right. By the way, I wanna offer that. For some of you, the word might not be loved, it might be respected if he really respected me, has a different tone to it. But I think that some of us are gonna have that feeling too. If he really respected me, then he would do these things without me having to ask.

If he really loved me, then he would want to take me to this place.

He would want to do this thing for me, he would want to talk to me that way. Right? So it's really just one more way that we have of. Confirming for ourselves our list of rules that we have for what our husbands are supposed to be doing, and we convince ourselves that the reason we feel terrible is because he's not following the rules and it's not true.<00:03:00>

Now, I'm not going to tell you that you have to never want anything in your marriage, and we're gonna get to that. So let me just say that right off the bat in case you're starting to get anxious. But really the reason that you feel. is because when he's not doing the thing, you are now making it mean he doesn't love or respect you.

And that's a horrible thing to think. Right? And then, you know, for many of us, if he really loved me, actually then spirals into the next thing, which is he doesn't love me, therefore there's something wrong with me. , I'm not fundamentally lovable. I'm not good enough for him, right? It just becomes this whole crazy spiral because he didn't do a specific thing or behave in a certain way or remember a certain thing.

What Do We Really Want? ---

<00:03:44> Kayla Levin: I mean like, let's just go with birthdays. I've shared on the podcast before, I don't care about birthdays and I don't remember birthdays, and I barely remember my birthday, and it's just charming for me. If someone reminds me that it's my birthday or someone else's, and I'm very happy to just tell my husband, you know, I think my birthday's coming up <00:04:00> soon.

I kind of save up. Ooh, I'm gonna be wanting something. How? How close am I to my birthday? And I'll just let 'em know like, could we get something on the schedule for some time in March and we're gonna call it a birthday dinner, right? Where there are so many of you who have this huge long list, and I get that this is, may be a little bit more my personality and so it's easier for me on this one.

But even still, there's so many of you with this huge long list that like this is how a husband is supposed to honor his wife on her birthday. It's not really getting you that much closer to getting the thing. And also what you want isn't even those things like, yes, I love to go out on a date with my husband, but you don't want the date and the gift and the remembering and all those things.

What you really want is to feel like he loves and cares about you. What you really want is to feel like he respects you or that you're important to him. And these are the parameters that you've set for how he, he can express it. and what I think is always fascinating <00:05:00> is to see, here's how I think it should be expressed to me, but are there ways he's already expressing it to me that I'm not even seeing because I'm so bent on my version on what it's supposed to look like for him to express it to me.

Now, if you've been stuck in this headspace, , you're not going to see that. You're not gonna be able to right now go, oh, right. You know what? He does do that thing. He does do that thing. Because you've been looking at everything through the lenses of this is how a person expresses love and respect. Right.

But I wanna let you know so that you can get curious that if you start to just drop that and say It's possible he's expressing love or respect, or whatever the thing is I want in some other way, and I just haven't seen it because I've been only looking for these ways. You'll be amazed what you find. You really will.

So I'm gonna offer you just four quick things after I've already given you basically a whole podcast on this phone , about, about these rules that we set. That if you really loved me, type rule, <00:06:00> or if you really respected me rule,

Check in With Your Body ---

<00:06:02> Kayla Levin: the first thing I wanna offer you is, It's really helpful to check in with your body.

Remember your body. Have you felt it lately? Have you noticed that it gives you information all day long? I forget, I don't check in. I don't remember until I remind myself to remember, or someone reminds me to remember. So here is your reminder. Your body is going to give you a lot of information about the way you're.

So instead of going, if he really loved me, he'd remember my birthday. And then spending the rest of your time cerebrally contemplating all the rules and all the wrongs and all the what ifs and all the other people who would remember your birthday and, and all the people you should talk to about it and how frustrated you are.

I want you to just go with just the phrase, if you really loved me, he'd remember my birthday and I'm just using that. But it substitute whatever you need and then check in with your. , what is your body telling you <00:07:00> about that rule? What is it telling you about that sentence in your mind? Is it telling you that this is empowering?

Is it telling you that this is creating possibility? Or is it telling you that you now have a huge deep pit in your stomach and you feel awful? Or is it telling you that you just wanna climb into bed and pull the covers over your head? Check with your body. We can work on making our marriages better without having to ever feel terrible in the process.

This is one of my favorite, favorite things that I've discovered in my life. You don't have to hate something to change it, which means you don't have to get yourself all worked up to make something better. You could just decide you want it better in the first place. Isn't that cool? , right. So you don't have to get into the drama of, if he really loved me to go tell him, Hey, I'd love you to take me out to dinner.

I'd love you to remember my birthday, by the way. Then you could just take his phone, make a Google Calendar, reminder, , <00:08:00> remember it's her birthday, right? Help him out with these things. Why not? Why not? If it feels terrible, it's not your most productive way of getting the need met. Okay? . So I want you to check in with that.

What, what we often do, and what I did very much as awe, and I still catch myself, but not nearly as much as I used to, is I used to use the feeling as an indicator for how true the thought was. So I would think a really terrible, dramatic thought, and then I would feel horrible and then I would think, wow, it must really be true cuz it really hit home and it's not true.

That's not how it works. when, when I'm working with someone and she discovers the truth, you'll hear this in last week's episode. What do we do? We laugh. All of a sudden we laugh cuz we were like, oh my gosh. Right? Of course, when we feel terrible, we're confused about something. What I love seeing this just happened inside of <00:09:00> our community is somebody was stressing out about something outside of her that she couldn't control and then she remembered.

That Hashem is in the picture and she felt so relieved and so happy, and it was just like, oh, right, I forgot. When we think true thoughts, we feel so much better. So your first tool is check in with your body. If the thought feels terrible, there's something off. Okay? Number two is I want you to check in with what do you really want?

okay. We get really busy in the rule, right? If he really loved me, he would do this, and so therefore he shouldn't. I can't believe he didn't. And normal people would know, and every husband knows they need to remember a birthday and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? But if I slow myself down and I say, okay, got it.

I feel terrible. I feel like if he really loved me, he would've remembered my birthday. But what do I really want? For <00:10:00> me, when I check in on that, I'm like, what I really want is a nice, fancy dinner with my husband. . That's what I want. I want a night where we can just celebrate another year and we can reflect and have quality time and talk.

That's what I really want. Sometimes a thought like that is, I really wanna believe he loves me cuz I'm busy in that if he really loves me, because anger is a very good way of covering up our hurt or insecurity. So we just jump right over there, . Right? But if I ask myself, what do I really want? It might. I want some reassurance right now that he's committed, I wanna know that he really cares about me.

I don't actually care about the dinner at all, but this rule was supposed to protect me from feeling not cared about. And now that he didn't feel follow the rule, now I'm feeling not cared about. Now I'm feeling really, really vulnerable. And I don't know if you know this, but you can just go over it him and say, Hey, I'm feeling super vulnerable.

Could you just tell me, , maybe <00:11:00> I sound crazy. Just tell me you love me. I'd love to hear it. You can. , it's pretty cool. So check in. It might be something else. I think those are gonna be your two most common ones. But check in when you've got a rule and you're all caught up in your rule. You know, if he really respected me, he would give me my space.

If he really respected me, he wouldn't interrupt me when I'm doing X, Y, Z, maybe what I really want is to go work somewhere else outside of the house for a day where there's no interruption and it has nothing to do. Hear what I'm saying? So check in with yourself. What do you really want? The other thing I wanna offer you in case this extra reminder is necessary or important, is that there aren't actual rules for this, okay?

There Are No Actual Rules ---

<00:11:48> Kayla Levin: Especially those of you who are newer here, there are no rules for if you really loved me. They really aren't. And I love looking at very culturally different marriages to get tons of evidence for how that's true. <00:12:00> Half of you are gonna say, if he really respected me, he would help me out more in the house.

But there's another half of you that say, if you really respected me, he would leave it to me cuz he would know that I could do it. Interesting. And it's gonna be based on your socialization, your culture, the modeling you got from your parents. There are no real rules, which means you get to make them up.

Isn't that cool? ? You know, like if you have a rule, he should spontaneously say he loves you. What if you just decided that he should just respond? I love you too. I might just decide that that's the rule I want cuz that works so much better for me. You get to decide so, Again, it doesn't mean you can't want things or you can't have values, but the thought if he really loved me, respected me, whatever.

It's not particularly true and it's not very productive, and most of us have had it. So I'm not saying you're weird, right? But it's not true or <00:13:00> productive. Now I wanna talk about wanting things or having the values, right? So those are different. . And what I would say is that you can just untie them from what it means about how he feels about you.

And so for instance, you might say, honoring milestones is a value for me. It's something I want in my marriage, and a birthday is a milestone, and that's really important. So now I might say, wait a second. So here's a. How can I create that value in my marriage? Suddenly I'm putting myself in the driver's seat, right?

I'm more focused on how I'm showing up instead of how he's showing up. How can I be a person who's all about the milestones? That's a cool role to play in your marriage, and that might be a lot more empowering. It will be a lot more empowering than waiting around for him to become the milestone cheerleader, which maybe he's just not okay.

So having the wants, having the <00:14:00> values. is a real thing. Yeah. So I know for a lot of you it's like, I just want more help. I just really want more help. And maybe that's tied into a value. I want a, I want a home where everyone pitches in. That really, really matters to me. Right. By the way, I fall into this one with my kids a lot.

I catch myself on that. Right. If they respected me, if they cared about me, they would wanna help. They wouldn't wanna just leave me to do all the stuff in the house. I've got big kids now. How does it feel? Terrible, , what do I really want? A clean house. And you know what? I also have a value of my kids' learning to be helpful.

So that's going through those first through three tools, right? But now if I think my value is to raise children who are helpful, this is a little different. I know because husbands are not someone you're raising and you're not educating them. But now I can put myself in the driver's seat. How do I create a home where people are pitching in?

It's gonna be different with. , and it might be different for my husband. With my husband, I can still ask that question. Can I create a home where <00:15:00> he's interested in pitching in? I might suddenly notice there's a lot of places where he does pitch in that I don't pay attention to, right? Or I might suddenly notice there's places where he's offered to pitch in, but those aren't the ones that I was thinking of, so I just didn't really think about it.

Right? So put the value on the table and then work toward.

Finally, I just wanna remind you about episode 34, which is called the Five Love Languages Trap. It is not an anti love languages. Episode, but it is a new way of looking at the love languages because so many people have, misused them in a way that has really, I think, not served their marriages. So if you're listening to this and this is hitting a lot of like, ugh.

Got it. Yes. This is, this is what I need to hear. This is ringing a bell. I wanna encourage you to go check out episode 34, the Five Love Languages Trap. And I will make sure to link that in the show notes. Okay. Alright, my friends, I hope you have an amazing, amazing.

and I will see you back here next time. Be well. Bye-bye.

<00:16:00> Hey there. If you know a newlywed or you are one, we have a wedding gift for you. Go to k eleven.com/newlywed to get access to my best selling course. First year married, you have got to be in your first six months, so make sure you don't wait. And if you've been married longer than that, but you're looking for some more support or this stuff is just super fun for you.

I'd love to have you join me inside of my membership community, how to Glow. It's for women looking for a fresh take on relationship development. Join us for live coaching calls, signature classes, and anonymous q and a. Let's do it.

<00:16:38> Kayla Levin: