I think one of the issues that I have found over time is that when one person goes, "Oh, this is on my mind, I wanna start talking about it," they start talking about it.

It's like, but that person's not even available.

Maybe they just got out of their car and they walk through the door.

What do you do? Bombard them with six questions? Good luck.

It's about, "I wanna talk about this thing.

When is a good time to talk about it?" And then you're like, "Oh, we're both showing up.

Mm-hmm.

Where did that genuine curiosity about the other person...

Like what does a stuck relationship look like to you?

Okay.

So, you know, in thinking about that question, I think that one thing that I think I would like the listeners to, that I thought about starting off with is that the question isn't if a relationship is difficult because every relationship is difficult at times, you know, there's like waxing and waning of that.

is that is the relationship capable of growth and i think people when we think about oh distinguishing between a relationship that's struggling versus a stuck one is that many people will think oh conflict means that something is wrong with the relationship and that inherently is not correct because healthy relationships you know couples they do struggle right they have fits and starts they have so they argue they disappoint one another I think that's just part of in a relationship, especially long term, there's moments they feel disconnected.

But it's not whether like they're struggling.

The distinction is, do they become trapped in the same emotional cycle? Right.

So, for example, I wrote down this one quote that I often say to my couples, like healthy couples revisit problems, stuck couples relive them.

They will feel like they're being seen or attended to.

And so let's talk about how would you define codependency to begin with?

Yeah, I think that's a great question to start with.

I think what people...

I think that there's a healthy level of dependency, right? It's like when people say, "Oh, you, you know, you really shouldn't need people.

You need..." There's a difference between needing people, which we all do, versus being needy.

And there's a difference between being dependent, right, in a healthy way, and being codependent.

So codependency is more often born out of valuing your self-worth, your self-esteem, your image, your identity, all those things based on someone else, and your partner, your spouse, what have you.

Mm