Episode #82 Why He Feels Attacked When You Have Feelings

Why does it feel like you are trying to share your experience, your feelings, or your hurt… and somehow he hears it as criticism?

In this episode, Landy Peek unpacks one of the most painful relationship dynamics so many women live inside: the moment you try to express what is going on for you, and the conversation immediately shifts. Instead of feeling heard, you are met with defensiveness. Instead of feeling closer, you feel even more alone. Instead of your feelings being received, he feels criticized, blamed, or like he is failing.

This is a no-blame conversation about emotional misattunement, nervous system patterns, and the exhausting cycle that happens when one person is trying to share their inner experience and the other experiences that sharing as accusation. Because most women are not trying to attack. They are trying to be understood. They are trying to express hurt, disconnection, loneliness, resentment, or overwhelm before it turns into something bigger. But when that expression is repeatedly received as criticism, the relationship can start to feel deeply painful for both people.

Landy explores why this dynamic happens, why so many women start questioning themselves when they are simply trying to communicate honestly, and why this becomes even more charged in midlife and perimenopause, when the capacity to keep softening, filtering, and carrying the emotional weight of the relationship often starts to run out.

This episode is for the woman who is tired of walking away from conversations feeling misunderstood, tired of being seen as “too much” when she is trying to share what is true for her, and tired of wondering how something as vulnerable as sharing a feeling turns into a conversation about his defensiveness.

If you have ever thought, I wasn’t attacking you. I was trying to tell you how I feel, this episode will hit home.

In this episode, we cover:

Why sharing feelings can land as criticism
Why some men feel criticized when women express hurt or emotion
The cycle of emotional sharing, defensiveness, and disconnection
Why women often leave these conversations feeling more alone
How women start doubting themselves when they are trying to communicate clearly
The emotional weight many women carry in relationships
Why perimenopause can intensify existing communication dynamics
What may be happening underneath this pattern for both partners

Episode Transcript

Landy Peek (00:35)
let me paint the picture for you. Okay, so it all starts when, it's the day my period starts. I'm in perimenopause at 45. I kinda think that my hormones are like Russian roulette, right? I never know if I'm gonna come out enraged or if I'm gonna be calm and collected.

And I can tell you more often than not, around my period, it's gonna be more on the ragey side than it is in the calm and collected, like it is the rest of the month. So coming back to the story, painting the picture, day my period starts. It's super stressful day. There's a lot going on. There's a lot that's out of my control and there's a lot that is coming at me all at once as I'm having to pivot and change and do things

that I was not expecting to have to do. And so I've got stress. It's right before my period. I haven't slept through the night in at least a week because you know, those hormones and it's that 3 a.m. wake up call. And so I'm really short on sleep. I'm stressed. I'm overwhelmed. And as my husband asked me to do something,

What came out of my mouth was not clear. It was not calm. It was swear words at a really high volume.

And that sets us up for the rest of the evening. And it becomes a fight. And in that fight is an argument, right? But in that argument, there is that pattern that has happened over and over. And it only happens when I am overtired, overwhelmed, super stressed, lose my shit.

This the only time this one comes up. When I can't handle anymore, it's when the argument's on.

And I'm not the only one because I've sat with so many women who have the same experience. We are the over functioners. We're the doers. We're the ones that get things done, carry the mental load. We've seen so many reels and memes and things like that on this. We know it's real, but a lot of us are getting frustrated and the highest rate for divorce for women is in their forties. And it's not because you stop loving your partner.

It's because a lot of things start colliding at once. Welcome back to the Landy Peak podcast. This is Landy Peak. And today we're going to be talking about relationships. The over-functioner, the under-functioner.

how perimenopause impacts the way, how perimenopause pulls back the curtain on the dynamics that are already existing in your relationship, and all of a sudden you can't handle. Because midlife, everything feels louder.

The tension is louder, the loneliness is louder, the resentment is louder, the miscommunication is louder, the distance feels greater. And it can be easy to start blaming ourselves. There's something wrong with me. Why am I so frustrated? Why am I so reactive? Why do I have so much less patience? Everything starts to feel harder to swallow at certain times of the month and other times we feel fine. It's like we're constantly getting whiplash.

And I want to offer a different lens because maybe you are not suddenly becoming impossible to live with and deal with.

maybe the filter's coming off. I can actually say the filter is coming off because with perimenopause, as we are stripped away from those lovely hormones of estrogen and progesterone that are helping us have that filter, that buffer be able to handle things in a different way, what used to get translated by us, managed by us, timed perfectly by us, emotionally bubble wrapped by us,

we no longer have the ability. And now, here we are. Feeling more, saying more, reacting faster,

getting to the end of our rope so much sooner.

And we know this about ourselves. This is not new news.

But what we're really feeling and seeing is inside of our relationships, some of those communication patterns that have been there for a very long time.

are starting to really show up because we're not able to buffer, manage, explain better. We don't have that anymore.

And it's not because your relationship suddenly became hard overnight. It's because the way that you and your partner have always communicated and the relationship roles the two of you may have been living inside without fully naming them.

are colliding?

with this time and space where we no longer have the ability to buff.

Because I think for a lot of women in perimenopause, it's not creating a brand new relationship dynamic. This isn't something that's just starting to occur. It's exposing an existing pattern. And there's a big difference. For many women in perimenopause, perimenopause brings sleep disruption, irritability, anxiety, mood changes, brain fog, rage. Can we talk about the rage?

and a much lower threshold for overwhelm. You've heard this all before. Those symptoms are so well documented and they affect much more than our bodies. They affect our bandwidth, our patience, our emotional margin, the ability to recover, the ability to keep absorbing what hurts without showing it. And so our tone of voice might change.

at least that's what my husband is saying, that there's more tone. so often it's just becoming blamed on hormones. And that's not where I wanna go today. We know it's documented, we know it's out there, we know there's a huge hormonal shift that's happening.

but this isn't a hormonal issue. This is an issue that's being exposed by the lack of hormone buffer.

And we dismiss women because it's hormonal.

And we are being taxed more.

Because as that hormone changes, we can't carry the same things in the same way. We don't have that editing ability anymore. We can't keep cushioning the same reality. And that matters in relationship because maybe there was an issue before, and maybe there was defensiveness before, and maybe there was shutdown before in that relationship. And so many women I've talked to feel like we are now sharing our emotions and when we are-

bringing our emotions out. This is my existence. This is what I'm feeling. This is how I'm perceiving life right now. Our partners, our partners are taking that as we are attacking. And here's the mismatch. They're feeling I'm being attacked and we're saying, I just want to be seen and heard. I don't want you to fix it. I don't want you to do anything about it. I want you to see it.

And the more that we bring in, want you to see it, the more they feel attacked and then they defend. And all of a sudden, when you are sharing, I am having a really hard time, in the next instance, you are now having to defend and shift and try to explain, that's not what I meant. I didn't mean to attack you. didn't mean to say anything about you. I just wanted you.

to see my experience. And so the pattern has always been that you, and I'm just guessing here, let me know if it's not right. You are the over-functioner in the relationship and you're the one that carries the mental load that is the default parent, is the default everything, right?

You're the one that keeps track of what food we need to buy, what we're out of, what cheese we're out of, what cheese brand that we buy, what the kids are eating. All of the appointments, all of the different things, you're the emotional buffer for everybody. As somebody comes home with a bad day, you are that person that is supporting them. But no one is supporting you. And I see you. And I know this. And I'm here. And.

You've been carrying this load for a long time. And perimenopause with this exhaustion coming in and it's stripping away all of the cushion that you had, it's making it a lot harder. And so there's the dynamic that's already been in play. You're the over-functioner. He's probably the under-functioner in a relationship. And so what that means is that you do more in the relationship. And because you do more and that

can come back to our need for control. And that's not a bad thing, right? We control because we need to make sure that we're safe, that it gets done. And a lot of us have that self belief that if we don't do it, it won't get done. And if we don't, if we try to give it to somebody else, we can't trust that it will get done. And that's not a made up belief.

That's our actual reality.

You can count on you and only you. know this. And there is a different story out there. There is a different reality out there, but it is 100 % real. And so here we are in these relationships that worked for a while and I'll explain mine. So my husband travels. As my kiddos were little, I became the everything because I couldn't

consistently count on him to be here.

I would get a phone call at 11 in the morning and saying, I'm taking off to Germany at 3 p.m. I can't have that consistency of like, okay, I'm gonna work to five, he's gonna pick the kids up at school. Because that could change on a moment's notice. I understand where this was created at a necessity. And so I became the over-functioner because

It's how I maintained. It was easier for me to just keep doing bedtime routines and make sure everybody got everything to school because when he came in, things got missed and it's not his fault and it's not my fault. It's that the checks and balances needed to be there and I had to hold everything because if I let go of something, something failed.

Something didn't get done. The kids went to school without lunch because the backpacks got zipped. And that's my sign that everything's done in the backpack. And he was trying to help and he zipped it up. And guess what? It messed up my system. I understand where the overfunctional came from. Now, my husband loves me very much. And when I talk about under-functioning, under-functioning is where the other person does not, and it's just relationship-based. Now, this is the very fascinating thing about over-functioner, under-functioner.

It is relationship based. So the under-functioner does less as the over-functioner does more. Now both of them came into these roles as a way to survive and protect the relationship. And this is what I really want you to hear. Both of these roles, the over-functioner and under-functioner, were created

to protect the relationship because you both loved each other. So here's how it goes. The over-functioner, for some reason, has taken on the biggest load. And that can just be in that specific relationship, right? They take on the big load. They're doing all of the mental load, right? They're probably doing most in the household and most with the kids. And the...

Overfunctioner to be able to survive, right, to be able to function needs to have that control because you and I know we can count on us. The underfunctioner sees the discomfort, the arguments, the mishaps that happen as they try to help.

sees the extra stress that actually trying to help puts on the over functioner and they learn to back off more.

and then they get resentful. So over functioner is resentful to the under functioner for she has to, and I'm using she, but she has to do everything. She carries the load and all she wants is somebody to help. I used to fantasize about having the mythical person that will come in and literally help me with this load.

The under functioner is also resentful because they feel like they always do it wrong. They can never do it right. They can never help. They're constantly being complained at that you're not doing enough, but they don't feel like they can do anything.

And it all started in very simple, subtle ways that just were to survive everyday life. Probably when you have little kids. Maybe earlier, maybe later, maybe different. And the really interesting thing is an over-functioner, hello, that's me, an under-functioner in the relationship, hello, that's my husband, although that is shifting as we're working on it.

does not mean that that person is an under-functioner in everywhere else in their life. So this is one where I used to look at my husband and I'm like, my gosh, how can you function at work? here's the biggest thing. It's relationship-based, not personality, not anything that they are doing. It is designed in that relationship. So when,

under functioner at home can be an over functioner at work. And I see this with my husband. He's extremely capable and he is an over functioner at work.

He carries the load. He's the go-to person. And I see in his work relationships how there is a created system for under-functioning with some people, where they will call him and just like, well, can you do this for me? They can do it. It's just, he's good at it and he can get it done.

So that over function or under function or pattern has been there for a long time. And we've grumbled about it. We've noticed this is not new news. But as we bring in perimetopause and we strip away those buffers and we're more tired.

that exhaustion is real and it hits. We don't have that extra cushion, that extra flexibility. And so we are done with it.

And so we're done with it. We can't do this anymore. And so then we go and express our emotions to our partner. I am done with this. I cannot do this. I'm exhausted. I need support. I need help. You probably said something similar. And here's where the miscommunication happens, the breakdown. We are seeing, I need more support. I need more help. I'm

overwhelmed, I'm drowning here. And they are hearing, you're not good enough. You're not doing enough. And so the only way a concrete brain can then step in, and a lot of men's brains are those concrete brains, like men have not been taught how to experience and deal with emotions. So we look for the logical way and the logical way is what can I do more?

She says she needs help, okay, I'll start doing the dishes. And it's like, I don't need you to do the dishes. That's not hard. I can like turn on a show and do the dishes. I can space out and do the dishes. Like, and listen to a podcast and do the dishes. Like, that's not hard. It's the emotional and visible load that I can't carry anymore and he can't see. And so then we have

more mishap with her communication. And it's because that emotional labor has been uneven the whole time. The invisible caring has already been there. And we may have already been feeling that no one notices. No one but us initiates. No one but us repairs. No one but us remembers. No one but us anticipates.

And no one but us keeps the relational life connected.

But before all of these hormones are stripped away, you had more room, more capacity to soften, to say it later, to swing back around, to repair the relationship. The things that have always been unfair and unequal, we just tolerated them.

And now it lands harder, it stings faster, we have less of that buffer and that rage comes out and there we go. And I think so many women are feeling really disoriented in life in this space because we can feel the changes, we don't have the same capacity. The word recall, right? All of sudden we're exhausted, all those kinds of things that are coming in, our capacity feels different. We don't love this.

space of life.

but we're not always identifying what's going on with the relationship.

And then we, depending on that time in our cycle, sometimes we feel like we have got it and we're good and we are who we typically are, but other times we don't have it anymore, right? So it's a surprise to us as much as them. And so it is Russian roulette. I don't know what's gonna come out. And I wanna talk about that nuance. Because when a woman says, feel,

alone in this relationship. I can't keep carrying this by myself. I need more support.

She's speaking to the accumulation from years of invisible weight, from the exhaustion of being the one who keeps track of everything, the one who has to notice, the one who has to say it, the one who has to come back to it after it didn't go well the first time, the one that repairs the relationship.

And the person across from her is not hearing her pain. He's hearing his own blame.

He hears, I'm being told I'm the problem. I'm being cornered right now. I'm not enough. And this is where everything gets scrambled because she's trying to describe the impact and he's trying to defend against the shame. And she's saying, this is heavy. And he's hearing you're wrong. And she's saying, I'm tired. And he's hearing you're disappointing me. She's saying, I need change. And he's hearing you're not enough as you are.

And once that happens, the real conversation starts disappearing. And now they're not talking about the loneliness. You're not talking about the imbalance. You're not talking about the fact that you feel like you're carrying everything. You're the emotional architecture of this relationship, of this family. Now you're talking about tone. You're talking about timing. You're talking about intensity. You're talking about fairness. You're talking about word choice. You're talking about volume.

Whether she could have, you could have said it differently. Whether he's allowed, quote unquote, to have a reaction. Whether she's being too harsh and he's shutting down. And here we go again, around and around. And this is what happens every time I get tired and overwhelmed and stressed. And there's a rupture.

Research on couples has described this kind of interaction for decades. This is not new. This is why the divorce rate for women is highest in their 40s. It's because one partner is looking for engagement discussion while the other partner is feeling the attack and they withdraw and they get defensive or they shut down. It's often called a demand withdraw pattern.

and it tends to erode the connection over time.

Because this is not a communication issue.

I want you to hear that. It's not a communication issue. It's not your tone. It's not the words. It's not how you presented it. You are having your own experience.

and your own personal emotional experience. And we get this more when we're like two, right? If you have a two-year-old that is tantruming on the ground, most often you're not taking it personally. You're saying they're having a meltdown. We're too tired. We're too hungry, right? We don't have the capacity. We're pushed too hard and they have a meltdown and we're not taking it personally. We're not seeing it as an attack. Your partner's probably not seeing it as an attack.

We're able to disassociate from those feelings and see it as that person is having a hard time.

when it's a kiddo. But as an adult, especially as an adult woman who has handled a lot and carried a lot and done this, and all of a sudden it feels like the rug is being pulled out from under both of you because your change, how you're changing, how you're showing up, how you're interacting, is stressful to their nervous system too, and vice versa. But all of sudden,

The rules of the game got changed, not only on us, but on them. And so when we're looking at, it's not just a carrying issue, but going back to the over-functioning, under-functioning issue. And it's where one person has become the holder of everything, the one who noticed, the one who plans, the one who anticipates, the one who manages the emotional field.

The one who remembers things that no one else remembers. The one that tracks the conversations that still need to happen. The one who circles back. The one who keeps the family, the logistics, the relationship, the unspoken dynamics, and the future in her head at all times. Not because you are a controlling person, but because somebody has to do it. And your partner,

He might not even realize how passive he has become in that emotional life of the relationship. He's grown used to you holding more. He's grown used to you entering the conversation once it is already urgent. He has grown used to you doing and noticing and naming and pushing and returning and repairing. And that system has worked until it didn't.

until you are no longer able to carry the invisibility. Midlife says, nope, I'm done. You don't get to keep doing this the same polished way. You don't get to keep swallowing with a smile. You don't get to keep performing calmer, privately disappearing. And I think that one of the most understood parts of the season is a woman may look more reactive, but what is actually true is she's less buffered.

She may sound sharper, but there's less distance between what she feels and what comes out.

She may seem less patient, but what actually is true is that she can feel in her body the price of continuing to carry what has not been mutual for a long time.

And that's not writing off that every reaction is wise and every conflict makes her right.

But it does mean that we need a more honest frame. And it's not that you're just hormonal.

Because if we're solely framing it around us as women, we're not seeing the whole story.

Many men have not been taught how to stay open in the presence of strong emotion without translating it into criticism. And it's not because they don't care. It's not because anything's wrong with them. It's because so much of the masculine conditioning links worth to competence, to steadiness, to usefulness, to control.

And when the woman that they love is upset, hurt, disappointed, or done, their nervous system is interpreting it as, am failing at this. I am losing. I am in trouble. I am being judged. I need to protect myself. And this is where it falls apart.

emotional restraint, self-reliance, and shame around vulnerability can make emotionally charged conversations harder to stay present for, especially when distress in someone else feels like they're saying you're inadequate. So now, as women, we have less bandwidth. And a man is more likely to hear that as a threat.

And that creates the heat, the rupture and the feelings. And so it then turns into the argument that happens that's not even what it's about.

I know one of the things that I really share with my husband is this is my experience and my experience has nothing to do with you. My son, I think said it the best. And so I had my emotional reactivity. The rage came out. I yelled, I swore. And my son, who's so emotionally intelligent at eight, is like, mom, you were just the volcano.

And Dad and I, we were the people of Pompeii and we just got hit with it. And it's like, yes, that's exactly it. The volcano erupted, but it had nothing to do with them actually. It was the one extra demand that came in that wasn't really anything.

but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. It created the volcano. Now, one of the things I love, love about the images of volcano is because there was a cause and effect that creates a volcano, right? The cause of an actual volcano, I don't actually know how they work, but it's like, you know, the tectonic plates and the molten lava and there's the right...

timing and the right things have to come together at the right moment to create that volcanic eruption. There's the cause. The effect is the eruption.

Now, what we don't like is the outcome. Because if a volcano erupted on a remote island where nothing was there, there wasn't a human, wasn't anything, and it just erupted, it would have been like there's a volcano that erupted. But if the volcano erupted, and like Pompeii, it impacted humans and the village and animals and

It destroyed. The outcome is the destruction and the outcome is what we don't like. And if we can kind of pull apart the cause and the effect, the lack of sleep, the overwhelm, the stress, the extra demands, the holding all of this for years, the cause, the effect, we blew up like a volcano.

But it's the outcome. It's the outcome everybody has an issue with. It's the outcome that created the argument with me and my husband.

Because the outcome is the molten lava that I just spewed got on them.

And my wise little son is like, it's just like Pompeii, mom. And you exploded and we were just there.

And so we're pulling apart, it's the outcome that then gets talked about and argued about, right? It's the tone of voice that came out. It's the language that came out. It's the whatever it is, that's the outcome. And here's where we're struggling in our relationships. As women, we are showing the cause. Can we talk about the cause? Can you see the cause?

And our partners are talking about the outcome.

We're talking about completely different things. And this is where we're falling apart.

This is the heartbreak for so many women. Not just the relationship is hard, but the cause is never getting

deeper issues keep slipping out of reach. And she tries to talk about the weight. You try to talk about the weight. You end up talking about your delivery, the outcome. You try to talk about feeling alone and you end up talking about his intentions, the outcome.

You try to talk about the fact that you cannot carry this level of emotion, practical or mental load. And you talk about whether you're coming on too intense. This is exhausting. And it makes you start to question yourself. Not because you're the only one trying. Not because you're always right, but because the issue, the real issue keeps getting rerouted into the reaction.

the outcome. We start to lose our footing. And then we start to wonder, am I too much? Am I making this worse? Am I being unfair because that's being reflected back at us?

And then we stop wanting to bring it up.

And we start to feel that separation come.

And underneath all that...

You may be at the end of your willingness to keep carrying on what was never yours to carry alone.

And this is where I think so many are really getting lost is because most women

aren't coming out in tents out of nowhere. You're not exploding like the volcano without a cause and effect.

The intensity is coming when our tenderness has not worked, when patience has not worked, when seeing it carefully has not worked, when waiting has not worked, when giving the benefit of the doubt for the hundredth time has not changed the underlying burden.

And then it comes out as a volcano, not because you woke up and decided you're just going to explode on everybody, because you're tired. Tired of carrying the invisible things, tired of being the one who notices what's off, tired of bringing something real into a room and watching it get deflected, minimized, personalized, and defended against. And then you're defending yourself. Tired of doing emotional translation for two people?

And midlife has a way of making that exhaustion impossible to ignore.

as I shared with my husband's. I mean, he is someone that is involved and helping, but the difference is...

I notice when the bread is out or when we're getting low so that I can anticipate making sure that we buy more.

And it's my direction and my thoughts. And he will 100 % stop and pick up bread for me. But do you hear that for me? He will not see, ⁓ my gosh, we're out of bread, or we have three slices left. I need to think and stop on my way home and pick up bread. Nope, it's me texting him saying, can you stop on your way home and pick up bread? And he thinks he's helping. So when I say,

I'm doing it all. He says, no, I'm not because he's, I'm doing it. I'm picking up groceries for you. I'm doing the dishes. I'm, and he is. We're both right, but we're talking about different things. Right? I'm talking about that invisible load that I am carrying that he is not.

and he's talking about the actual concrete things that are getting done and he is doing those.

But there's still a load that's hard to carry when I'm constantly the one that is the default, that is thinking and remembering and holding it all together.

I can tell you in detail each one of our kids things and the times that we need to get ready and the times we need to leave the house to get them there. So can you. And my husband, he takes them when I tell him to take them. And it is, we are a partnership and we are doing things together and I understand his side,

But it started really making sense. When I looked at, here's the cause and effect, and I'm talking about the cause and he's talking about the out.

This midlife space shines a light on what the relationship has been depending on. How much extra labor has been required from you. How much shape shifting, emotional management, self editing. How much recovery after conversations that never quite got to the center. And that is why I think this season of life can feel so destabilizing.

Because the old coping strategies don't work. the old relational bargains don't feel as livable. And we're getting to a point of I can't do this anymore.

And when I say in my relationship, I can't do this anymore. This doesn't mean I want not to divorce. It means like, let's look at the cause. Let's look at the load. But it can feel like a crisis.

Because something that was once invisible is finally being named. And once it's named, we can work with it. But it's not gonna be something we do perfectly, and it's not gonna be one conversation, and it's not gonna be without grief. But honestly, I think honesty is what this season is asking for, not polished honesty.

not calm enough to be palatable honesty, not honesty that protects everyone else from discomfort while we're disappearing, honesty.

Looking at the dynamic has been there for a long time. The communication pattern has been hurting us. The burden is not evenly shared. The conversation keeps getting hijacked. This season has lowered my ability to keep cushioning the truth. And if we are going to find each other again, we need to understand what system we have been living inside. That is the real invitation. And I know

that's scary and that's hard. I've heard from so many women that that struggle of I'm talking about the cause and my experience and my emotions turns into how the outcome is, how you're presenting it, that they don't even want to bring up anything to their partners anymore. And if we can step back and see that we're, we're talking about two completely different things and no one's the villain.

but it allows us to ask better questions.

And I don't have the magical answer. I wish I did. And to be able to say this is exactly what you need to say to your partner. It's a lot of different conversations.

but is looking at some of the patterns.

What has been carried silently for too long? What has been defended against for too long? What does each person do when discomfort shows up? This is a huge one for us. We looked at the patterns and it deactivated a lot of the stresses because I know for me, I've got an anxious ambivalent attachment style. I am going to cling on

until I feel you push away and then I'm going to tell you to F off and we're done because it's easier for me to leave first than to be left. I know this pattern. I need to be reassured that we are good in the relationship, that we are okay, or I'm going to push you away. And I know that emotions are uncomfortable for my partner. And if we go there,

he's gonna need some space. And if he takes space and then reassures me.

we can have that space and we can come back together. But the lack of reassurance, we're okay, is gonna create more strife for me and I'm gonna push. I also, with that anxious ambivalent attachment style, am going to try to, like, I'm gonna beat the dead horse over this issue. I'm just gonna. I know that about myself.

so I can start to shift that pattern. But when we look at the patterns and it's just a pattern, it shifts from the blame game to, this is just a pattern.

And what happens when one partner brings pain and the other partner hears blame? This is huge. Because we're talking about the cause and the outcome. And the effect is what started it, right? And the effect is really where the argument spurred from. But then it turns into, I'm bringing pain and he's hearing blame.

and we're not even in the same book anymore.

So asking yourself what happens when the one who always absorbs more suddenly can't absorb in the same way.

because the truth is where intimacy can actually begin again.

And it's not the old version of what we were doing. It's a truer emotional intimacy. One where we have the capacity to speak what we need to speak. Where shame does not get to run the whole conversation. Where pain is not automatically treated like an accusation. Where one responsibility is not the same as humiliation. Where one woman does not carry the whole emotional load.

just to keep the relationship functional.

This is the kind of relationship I want. And it's not perfect. It's really messy. But it is real.

And I think midlife is asking us to really look at what's real.

The filter's coming off and it is painful because it shows us what it's been costing us. And that pain is information. And it could be the beginning of something more honest and it's being more honest with you too.

I hope this helped you feel a little less alone in what you're experiencing. I don't have all the answers, but I can see the patterns and that's the first step. And maybe the next time when the heat rises.

you can ask yourself, maybe in your relationship, what's happening underneath this moment.

What are we each protecting? What has been carried too long? What is the truth trying to come out? Because that question might take you somewhere much deeper than the fight itself.

I want to thank you for being here, for showing up, for listening, for doing something incredible for yourself and your relationship. This will change your life, your partnership, and if you have kiddos, your kid's life's too.

I want to say that I think you're incredible because I don't think as women we hear. We don't hear that I think you're incredible and smart and capable and we all know that.

but you are loved for just being you. You are liked for just being you. And I've got your back, no matter what.

I want to wish you all the happiness that today can bring and I will talk to you on the next episode.

Speaker 2 (47:04)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives.

As we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from a conversation today, please share because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.

Episode #82 Why He Feels Attacked When You Have Feelings

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