No matter where you are in your relationship, there are some accidents most couples make…join Dr Liz is here to learn tips to avoid these pitfalls. Discover your “Couples Dictionary”.
Transcription: (rough transcription for your use)
Hi Dr Liz and Dr Penny here. Um, why don’t you take a quick couple moments to first ask you a question. What do new and longer-term couples have in common? Okay. Guess, okay, we have our vocabulary. We have our dictionaries. Each couple comes together with their own set of words and definitions. And then together it becomes a new dictionary, a new way of communicating, of us making assumptions. Def jumping from one thing to another. And I guess the home team advantage, Ooh, excuse me with new couples is that they spend more time getting curious. They spend more time asking each other, what did you mean by that? What? Um, so let’s say a new couple gets together and um, they’re examining their, they’re going out and buying something and after some point in time they buy a TV. Okay. And so let’s say I turn to my sweetie, my news sweetie and say, Hey, I really liked the way. Um, I like you being so frugal with the money. That person might want to, you know, the, the other person, the guy or you know, would be someone to say, Hey, this, what do you mean frugal? Uh, I’m not, uh, you know, what do you mean frugal? And I might say, well, to me, frugal means that you, you do your research, you’ll look at all the things that are out there available and then you choose and spend wisely. I love it. To me that’s frugal. Oh, okay. Cause to me frugal means like, I’m a tightwad or I’m cheap or, uh, you know, I’m miser. We want to be able to, uh, understand what the other person means by the words that they use. Okay. So that situation, one, um, definition of frugal is very, very positive. And the other ones, um, not so positive. And so now that couple joins them together and other situations when frugal comes up, it’s meant as a compliment, not necessarily as a put down. Longer-term couples also come together with their own sets of definition of words and they, and they have their dictionary, their couple’s dictionary. Uh, what sometimes happen is that they come preloaded from other relationships. They don’t spend as much time as they did in the beginning. Defining and exploring what one means by that. And so misunderstandings happen or we jumped to the wrong conclusion. For example, if someone, let’s say I said, Hey, I need some self-care. I am going to go to the salon and to get my nails done and just take the whole afternoon off and just, it’s all about me. It’s just going to have a spa moment. Okay. And maybe my husband’s, that’s pretty selfish. I need to find out before I jumped to the wrong conclusion and say, selfish. My mind is selfish. May mean I’m thinking only about myself. Um, I’m spending unwisely, um, other people don’t matter, other people’s needs don’t matter. So, I might need to ask him, get curious. What did you mean by being selfish? You might be saying, I think it’s great. You’re finally taking care of yourself. You’re finally doing something for yourself. You’re preventing a meltdown, a burnout, what you’re making yourself look beautiful. When you go do that, then you come home, and you look even more beautiful and you’re happy in a good movie. I don’t know until I ask. And that’s, I guess one of the downsides that longer-term couples tend to assume and jump to their definition being what their spouse’s definition is. So homework, right as I want you to spend the next day or two, looking and listening to those words that each of you throw out and jot them down. And they could be great. They can be positive words. Be like, you’re confident, you’re thoughtful, you’re so kind. Or they could be words that you may be feeling a little mood controlling, selfish, uh, you know, frugal. Write them down and then pick a moment. We can go back and say, look, I brought up, I’m just curious. Do you have a couple of minutes? Nice. It’s no problems, no fights, no nothing, nothing wrong. I just want to figure out what did you mean by the other day when you said you, uh, you love that I’m so confident. Or, um, you know, remember that time I was in the kitchen and you said you’re so kind. What did you mean by that? Define that. Tell me what I’m doing or saying that conjures up the word kind or kindness. I would love for you to do that and get a clear understanding. All right. Take care is Dr Liz and do me a favor, drop in your comments below. Let me know. What were the words that you guys found that you, you had different interpretations or different definitions and what was, did you find that you were spot on and you guys were guessed correctly? And check out my FocusWithDrLiz.com and check out some of the programs that I have. There’s one as fantastic as my happy marriage IQ would love some of the other activities and insight you can have about each other.
