Welcome Brave Lovers! In today’s episode we are talking about how we can achieve better communication even if we have very different communication styles. Laurie and George discuss the idea of relationship continuity. Partners remember something that is important to the other and bring it up or initiate connection.
Listen in as they discuss some of the differences between men and women’s brains and positive ways to stretch beyond me and care for “us.” They offer an expert roleplay to break down to listeners how to get back on track to attunement when continuity is disrupted. A great reminder, it’s not just you or me, it’s also “we.”
Need more support in your relationship? Make sure to sign up for our virtual couples retreat in November and pre-order a copy of our book Brave Love, Great Sex today!
Transcript
george (00:21.128)
Men and women are often tracking different things. You know, their conversation styles can be very different. Let’s jump into it, Laurie.
Laurie Watson, PhD (00:33.379)
Good. Yeah. I want to talk about how we get better continuity of connection. How do we stay more connected in ways that maybe the other one needs? George, we’ve got our retreat coming up and we’ve got our book coming out. Our retreat is on November 17th for couples. It’s online. Brave, Love, Great Sex Retreat and the book, Brave, Love, Great Sex, September 15th. Please buy it.
As a pre-order that really helps us.
george (01:05.612)
Yeah baby. Well let’s jump into this continuity thing. I always like when Laurie gets excited about some new research or some new ideas, so here’s one of them. Put your seatbelts on.
Laurie Watson, PhD (01:09.846)
Okay.
Laurie Watson, PhD (01:17.433)
You know, I one of the things that I have noticed is in just in my relationship with men and my relationship with women is there is really a difference in terms of how we enter a space. I I have a girlfriend, Renee Segal, and she is so good at this. Like she tracks what’s happening in my life. We live in two different states, we only do Marco Polo together.
But she tracks my life and it makes me feel so cared about. Like she’ll say, Hey, I was wondering how your week went with this or or what’s happening at work or
You know, but she’ll have specific details that she asks about. And this provides for us this continuity of care. It’s like she’s kind of with me when she’s not with me. That’s what it feels like inside. And the research says that oftentimes there is a gender difference here, that it’s rare for a man to kind of spontaneously say something like, I was thinking about what we were talking about yesterday and I wanted to follow up with X, Y, and Z.
And you know, there could be many reasons for that, right? We know that sometimes for men, if they’re withdrawers, it’s like, I don’t wanna bring up something that could spur a conflict or you know, if I bring up something that my my wife was upset about, she’s gonna be negative and then our whole evening is gonna be tanked and we won’t get sex at the end of it, you know. I mean there are a lot of reasons I think it’s it’s hard perhaps if you’re more on the withdrawers side of the continuum.
to wanna bring something up that could be potentially emotional. But I think that
george (02:57.198)
Yeah, I’m not I’m not sure. Again, we’re just we’re we’re exploring here. I I think there’s something about being men are pretty focused and that’s what leads to the compartmentalizing. If you want to problem solve you know, you you’re on the issue. That’s what you’re talking about. Once that issue is solved, you’re on to the next issue. There it there is more segmented kind of
movements that are not all weaved together like like you’re saying there’s continuity. It’s like, you know, if my wife is talking about the garden and like we’re done talking about the garden. I w now let’s talk about lunch. And then we talk about lunch, then I wanna talk about, you know, what are we doing next? And like I I think a lot of w we’re
Laurie Watson, PhD (03:25.142)
Right. Mm-hmm.
george (03:42.23)
stereotyping overgeneralizing. I mean there’s lots of different ways this shows up and you know, gay couples or how people present themselves. But I think there is something about just different styles and and people that Lori’s talking about that do have a continuity that weaves everything together.
Laurie Watson, PhD (03:44.524)
Yeah, for sure.
george (03:59.5)
I know there was a comic that you know said like a woman’s brain is like a bowl of spaghetti where everything’s kind of touching and weaving together where a guy’s brain is more like a waffle. Everything has its box. And I think there’s some truth about that. I can just see in my own life, like my conversations are much more focused. It’s like we’re talking about this topic, right? Let’s shift to the next topic, to the next topic. And there isn’t this, this, this weave that you’re talking about.
Laurie Watson, PhD (03:59.799)
Mm-hmm.
Laurie Watson, PhD (04:23.498)
Mm-hmm. And I want to soften that a little bit because I I know you’re not saying that a woman’s brain is chaotic like a bowl of spaghetti, but you’re talking about how one thing could touch another thing and whereas what you’re saying men often compartmentalize. And I I think that that’s true. I mean, I think often when I’m picking up with a girlfriend that I haven’t seen, you know, in a month or six months
It’s something about girl culture that you kinda remember. Where were we last? What can we talk about? You know, when my husband comes home from work, I’m asking him, how’d the project go? You know,
And I gotta say my husband’s really great at this because he’s he’s learned me. He’s been a he’s been trained well and he’s very empathic and so he often asked me about not just my work issues, but my personal life and how I feel about things and how it’s going, the children, whatever. And it makes me feel really cared about.
george (05:08.801)
He’s been trained well.
george (05:28.877)
And I think that’s important. That’s what we’re gonna try to get out of this, right? But for the record, I love spaghetti. It’s one of my favorite foods. And there is such a gift. There’s such a it’s there is such a gift to not having to be as focused and compartmentalized. And there’s more of a freedom and range and kind of wandering and, you know, fluidity to that that I think is really special.
Laurie Watson, PhD (05:35.897)
you’re the Italian part of you.
george (05:53.676)
So that you’re talking about Derek. I mean, I think as a man I try to develop more of that. I try to develop see the value in, you know, once we’ve stopped talking about the garden and now we’re inside. If I circle back and I just say, Hey, how’s that flower doing? It does mean so much to my wife that there is the the conversations continuing and not always just being initiated by one person.
Laurie Watson, PhD (06:18.358)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it isn’t like she just has to bring it up and tell you her excitement about it. speaking of the gardens, I got the garden man coming on Saturday. Life is so good. Can hardly wait for that.
Yeah, no, I th I think it’s it’s different. I I knew a man who I was seeing and he would say things like, you know, when I come home from work, I really don’t wanna hear about my wife and the neighbors and
you know, the way she was decorating and her dilemmas and her part-time work. It’s just not that interesting to me. You know, and so he didn’t ask. because then she you know, she had lots of words. He had little words. She would go on and on, and he was like, I’m already overwhelmed from work. I don’t need to take on your ideas and thoughts too. It was I mean, it was a block, but it came from this part of him that was protecting
the part inside that had already been sort of at capacity with his own work. And of course then to have capacity for his wife’s life
You know, he he just didn’t have it. He didn’t know how to get empty of his own upsets and feelings and pressures enough to come into her world and have capacity and desire to really wanna listen. It was it was very sad. I think sad for me because I’m so curious about people. I really I really wanna know what’s going on with people and w you know, from the little things to the big things. I’m interested.
Laurie Watson, PhD (07:58.409)
and it but I think that sometimes people don’t have capacity and I’m not saying all men are like that. Certainly many men have quite a bit of capacity to take in their partner’s world.
george (08:09.837)
Well, it’s one of the strengths of compartmentalizing. It’s it does conserve energy. You don’t want to throw energy that you don’t have and get deeper in the hole. And you know, a lot of guys I work with have the opposite problem. It’s what you’re they get so used to the continuity of work they can’t turn that off. They come home and their brain is still swimming with work and they can’t be present with their partner and their kids because they, you know, this this thing is continuing to run. So it’s trying to find that balance.
Laurie Watson, PhD (08:40.628)
It that’s interesting that you say that because you know it’s really trending right now on overthinking in social media, just how I I think many of us imagine it as I’m fretting about an issue. did I say it right? You know, why are they being so mean? We just kind of over analyze something and then that takes up our energy. But you’re saying men, even though one strength might be they compartmentalize that in this way maybe they don’t, maybe they’re over
Overthinking, they get in a rut about work and they can’t let it go. They actually are not compartmentalizing.
george (09:18.071)
So many of my friends say they can’t sleep because they can’t stop their brain from racing. Right. And then when that when you’re kind of caught up in that, you know, that’s tunnel vision. There’s really not a lot of capacity for all the other things happening around you.
Laurie Watson, PhD (09:35.713)
Yeah, I I remember when I was young going to work and I had small children that I was leaving at home and I asked an older male friend, like, Do you worry about the children when you’re away? do you think about your home life and stuff when you’re working? And he says, Not one second. You know, like he was able to compartmentalize and that was a very positive thing for him because he could focus
And you’re saying your friends can’t let work go, are always overthinking about it when they come home and then they they lose the energy that would be relational or we can lose energy that would be creative, right? Or relaxing.
george (10:20.242)
And I think there are a lot of I think there are a lot of partners, you know, the wives in this example that
get resentful of that work, it becomes a competing attachment. So they don’t check in. They’re not practicing the continuity. They’re not really showing engagement about work. And it becomes this, you know, polarizing opposite worlds that are not shared. I mean, I always love couples that share work stuff with each other. You know, there’s that’s a continuity that you’re talking about. They keep the connection alive. They can, you know, things that are relevant, they know how to share that with each other instead of doing it in separation.
Laurie Watson, PhD (10:57.268)
Exactly. Because you can imagine even if you’re frustrated with your partner’s work and they are overworking or workaholics or whatever, asking them about it could relieve that stress, could keep the get them into a more relaxed state. I think though sometimes there’s the fear that if I talk about these things, then my partner’s gonna wanna tell me how to do it, how to fix it at work, or I should just leave it alone or just drop it and be with the family.
know, we’re we’re so all of us can get into fixing mode and not really hear what’s happening inside our partner. Yeah, good point. I I don’t I mean, this was just a piece I saw in the research and I didn’t go too much further, but I think it’s it’s true that that men have more difficulty picking up the continuity. and I I’m curious about that because obviously
george (11:35.69)
Exactly.
george (11:43.989)
And what did the research say?
Laurie Watson, PhD (11:56.803)
There are some men that don’t and some women that do. So I’m not sure that I’m not sure about the study if there was percentages.
george (12:04.631)
Well, the idea that continuity is a good thing, that there’s a way of holding on to the your partner’s experience and checking in with your partner’s experiences that they feel less alone with. And unfortunately we have these hectic lives with so many things happening that it’s so easy to compartmentalize or keep things to yourself and it breaks that continuity. It creates more separateness.
Laurie Watson, PhD (12:27.702)
Yeah. Well let’s come back from the break and maybe do a role play with Joey and Maria.
george (12:41.697)
We also can try to talk about it for a minute or two in the bedroom, see if it switches and then and some maybe instead of roll let’s just talk about the bedroom and then we’ll play it we’re handled with it.
Laurie Watson, PhD (12:53.592)
Okay, let’s let me give that another okay. Let’s come back, George, and talk about this after break about how it impacts the bedroom.
george (13:04.641)
Let’s hear it. Continuity in the bedroom and how it gets broken.
Laurie Watson, PhD (13:08.522)
I gotta say, I have sat with women who say, I’ve told my partner hundreds of times, this is what I like. This is how I like to be touched when I’m approaching orgasm. You know, I want them to do this. And they get so excited, it’s almost like I never told them that. And then it’s not a good experience for me. And I find myself backing away and shutting down. It’s like somehow or another
In excitement and in arousal, what they’ve talked about, there’s no continuity for their male partner.
george (13:41.503)
Interesting.
george (13:45.422)
I have. I’m just trying to understand, you know, does that excitement cause a form of tunnel vision that loses the bigger picture, right? That’s what continuity is. You’re holding your partner’s awareness while you’re in your awareness, right? That’s the hope of great sex. You’re expanding two nervous systems coming together. And, you know, there’s this element where you forget about your partner.
Laurie Watson, PhD (14:09.57)
Yeah, exactly. And we kinda want to sometimes forget about our partner and just get lost in the pleasure. But when it is repeated and we’re doing the thing that actually is not that sexy for our partner, not a good thing. I I had a couple once that I saw and she was the low libido couple, but she said, you know, actually I like sex and
You know, I I have liked sex over the ages, but often what happens is I’ve told my partner, when I’m close to orgasm, I want him to continue at the same steady rate to touch my clitoris that way. That’s what I want, that’s what I need. But instead, he speeds up, he gets really excited and he touches me really hard. And
And he she was listening she was saying this in front of him and he was listening. And he protested. He’s like, Yeah, but I remember that one time, basically twenty years ago, that you know, that I touched you really hard and you had the biggest orgasm you’ve ever had. And so I think what happened is he had a physiological experience that became a truth in his body. It was so exciting to him.
To have her kind of explode this way, that there was something that said, if I do this thing, she’s gonna feel that and I’m gonna feel a response to that. And so when they were in the moment, tw 20 years of this, you know, he would still touch her kind of the rough, fast way, hoping for that. And she had said it, I mean, I heard her say it, and he kept saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but
And and it was so hard for him to reattune to come back to her, but this is what I really need. And this is what makes me want sex. You’re saying I don’t want sex, and I’m telling you, this is why.
Laurie Watson, PhD (16:15.512)
You know, it it was like so sabotaging that, you know, he had learned something and he had almost learned it internally, that he couldn’t let go of it when she kept communicating a new thing.
george (16:21.805)
That’s it.
george (16:26.859)
Yeah.
That’s what Dr. Peggy Pl Kleinplatz. That is what Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz talks about. And you know, nothing like doing something that worked relentlessly over and over again to the point where it no longer works. Right. And and that I like the idea of just the label calling it a breaking continuity. Right. This is the thing that breaks it. You’re not able to keep your partner’s experience on the radar.
And I think a lot of men experience it the other way, like something that’s so important to them when they can’t get their partner to sexually engage, right? There’s a breaking continuity. It’s like, hey, wait a second. We’re we just work like dogs this whole week. This is our time to reward ourselves and enjoy each other and spend that time to reconnect. And you’re not interested. Like, how could this fall off your radar? How could something so replenishing, so hopeful irrelevant to you? Right. And it’s like
Laurie Watson, PhD (17:24.194)
So pleasurable. Yeah.
george (17:25.321)
So pleasurable. Like this is what is going on here. I mean, that’s a break of continuity for men. They don’t understand how their partners have gotten here.
Laurie Watson, PhD (17:31.721)
I have such a good example of that, George. Like when when maybe you know, a woman says, Well, my partner hasn’t initiated for a couple of weeks. You know, he’s made this vow, I’m never gonna initiate again until she really wants it. She’ll let me know, right? Which doesn’t actually work, y’all. But she’s like, Well, yeah, when he didn’t initiate, I just I felt so free, but it didn’t really occur to me to initiate. And I’m like, You’re spending a big money in
george (17:35.757)
All right.
george (17:53.185)
Yeah.
Laurie Watson, PhD (18:03.908)
therapy and or B this is like the primary issue in your s in your marital life that is problematic and it doesn’t occur to you to hold on to this is deeply important to my partner.
It’s the holding on in my heart and in my mind and tracking what is important to my partner or or what is just interesting to my partner, you know? And and sort of that oblivion of it never occurs to me to initiate. I’m like, but but they talk about it all the time. They talk about how they feel love like this. They talk about how they feel need this to want to get up and work the next day. You know, it’s just it’s this this disconnect.
george (18:52.971)
Yeah, we’re we’re given all these examples of breaks in continuity. You know, not to blame people, but to just be curious. Like, how do you lose awareness of the other person’s experience? How could something be so important to one partner and just not be on the radar for the other partner? Like if we could identify that, we can start saying, Hey, this is a problem. Couples do better when they have more continuity, when they have more touch points to come together and connect, that relationship’s gonna be strong.
Stronger. Something’s happening in all these different episodes that are breaking that. And if we can start, you know, putting it on the table, you know, that’s I think the most important step to doing it differently.
Laurie Watson, PhD (19:33.933)
Yeah. I think you know, in a marriage or in a a long term partnership, we have to decide that there’s a third entity, there’s us. You know, maybe I don’t want to have sex because I don’t there’s a million reasons I don’t want to have sex. So I don’t make it a priority for me. But it is a priority for my partner. And how do we think about making the relationship which is the third part of us
You know, there’s him, me, and the relationship. How do I prioritize the relationship so that we’re happy? How do I think about maybe I don’t want to listen to the gossip of the neighbors? I don’t really care. But how do I know, you know, this is my wife’s world, she’s negotiating things with people, she’s helping people. How do I get interested in her world to care about that kind of stuff?
george (20:07.245)
Yeah.
george (20:26.369)
I think it’s a good rule of thumb. Anything that’s a priority for one partner.
needs to be a priority for both partners. I mean, that’s we have different interests. We’re attracted to someone very different and opposite of us in lots of different ways. But that’s what continuity does. It finds moments of connection in those spaces. Like we gotta stretch ourselves and there’s nothing like marriage to as a growing machine, right? It’s gonna force us to kind of surround ourselves with things that are very different than what we might want to do solo. And I think that’s some of the beauty of it.
Laurie Watson, PhD (20:50.424)
Ha ha ha.
Laurie Watson, PhD (20:59.39)
Exactly. Exactly. Marriage is definitely a stretch for for all of us. Probably people listening to us think that we don’t ever have struggles in our own marriage, but that is absolutely not the truth. Got plenty. Gotta sit on my own couch.
george (21:17.077)
It’s good to be daily humbled by, you know, the stresses of jiving and getting into continuity. I I like the word. I like the I like just the curiosity that we’re bringing to when it breaks and and how do both partners take responsibility for getting back into continuity, getting back into showing interest. Right. And so maybe we’ll give a quick example of
Laurie Watson, PhD (21:42.668)
Think I think what you said, it’s sh go ahead. Joe, fix that.
george (21:47.21)
I was thinking about just Joey Maria, how we can do this. How you know maybe you wanna bring it up as far as you tried to talk about the garden and I wasn’t interested. And maybe we got into a fight and now we’re trying to repair using this language of continuity. You know, we just read something, we just listened to a podcast, and now I’m I’m trying to see the importance of that.
Laurie Watson, PhD (22:14.232)
Okay, ready go. You be Joey, I’ll be Maria. So, you know, I I was thinking about the peonies out there and I wanna plant a whole nother segment of white peonies on the bank. and I think I’m I’m thinking maybe we should do that on Saturday.
george (22:15.863)
Go. Yeah.
Laurie Watson, PhD (22:35.08)
Do you got any time on Saturday to help me with this? ‘Cause I I really think it would be so beautiful in the spring underneath the dogwood. It you know, they would bloom at the same time.
george (22:44.011)
Hm. You know, you want me to be more direct and I find myself wanting to zone out here, but I I I really get how that would be
a really missed opportunity for us. Like this, I can see your passion as you talk about this. And I’m sure I’d rather be doing other things on Saturday, but to see like how excited you get, like I can see you visualizing it. Like I want to catch some of that with you. You know, and I’m sorry that so often I miss these moments ’cause I’m thinking about, you know, Saturday I want to play a little pickleball. I want to do a workout and like, you know, it it feels like a competing thing instead of and I miss this chance to just share this cool moment with you. Like
So yes, I want to see these white beanies and you know what what what what what your creativity is gonna kinda unleash with this.
Laurie Watson, PhD (23:33.772)
Yeah. Well, thank you. I’m glad you kinda caught yourself there and are gonna help me on Saturday.
george (23:42.291)
I don’t know how enthusiastic, but I’m gonna try my best because I know it’s important to you. And if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.
Laurie Watson, PhD (23:49.475)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Joey. Yeah. Yeah, that would work. That would work. How was that for you to just like catch? Like, do I really care about this and do I want to spend a hot Saturday digging holes? Yeah.
george (23:54.369)
All right.
I got
george (24:04.279)
Yeah.
I think that’s the work. The work is trying to catch the good reasons you don’t want to join, but also seeing the us, seeing the bigger picture, saying, Hey, listen, I have to sometimes make choices that prioritize my partner’s needs over my needs.
Laurie Watson, PhD (24:25.385)
Good. Okay, so continuity of connection is prioritizing what’s important to your partner and also kind of taking note about where they are at in their world. One last thought. When my husband was working in finance and I was a young woman, I was kind of bored silly with his talk about it. It was not interesting to me.
And so I kept a little white card in a drawer hidden away. And I would write down the contracts that he was working on, the people’s names on the project and what it was all about. So that and I would refer to that before he came home. It was like my notes. Because I knew that he would talk about all this stuff. It wasn’t terribly compelling for me. And if I couldn’t track it, names and places and accounts, I I just I I couldn’t participate. So I very
intentionally took notes so that I could be more present with my husband when he was talking about something that didn’t naturally draw me in.
george (25:19.788)
Mm-hmm.
george (25:27.469)
Yeah. And same here. I mean, I know the garden is so important. So when I wake up, I have a shake, work out a shake, I go out and drink my shake and just check out the garden. And then, you know, when my wife wakes up, I say, Hey, notice that plant popped or, you know, what happened to this other plant? Or this squirrel just dig a hole there? And like sh it’s such a great way of connecting in the morning. So we’re keeping continuity.
Laurie Watson, PhD (25:43.104)
I love that.
Laurie Watson, PhD (25:50.273)
I love that. You are. Yay, George. Okay. That’s good. Okay. Thanks for listening, y’all.
george (25:54.465)
Another nine I screw it up in, but I’m getting one right.
george (26:00.663)
Keep it hot.
