Espresso Shot 35: CONSCIOUS COUPLING

NICOA shares her own CONSCIOUS COUPLING beliefs and UNCOUPLING thoughts as well! Listen in to see how your own relationships may benefit from insights around this concept. This concept specifically refers to the steps an individual takes to maintain a healthy relationship with their partner. The idea is that both people make the commitment to stay together, and then do what is necessary to keep their partnership alive based on the vows and commitments they've made to each other.

Transcript

Nicoa Coach: 0:02

sometimes don't you just need a quick moment of inspiration? Or maybe you just need a moment of caffeinated contemplation to reflect on life. That's the idea behind my weekly coffee with Nicola espresso shots. I'll be sharing short jolts of inspiration in each clip. In addition to my longer Coffee with Nicoa interview episodes, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an espresso shot, or a full length Coffee with Nicoa interview created just for you. Hey, guys, it's Nicoa Coffee with Nicoa. This is your weekly espresso shot. I want to talk about conscious uncoupling. Have you heard of this? I think a while back there was a whole theme around conscious uncoupling, which is when someone's going to break up or they're going through a divorce. And they do so very empathic Glee and collaboratively and they consciously decide how they want to make that happen, how they want to make it unfold. And they've sometimes publicly share how they decouple. Alright, so I've done that before. We actually when I got divorced, we sent an email and kind of a very lengthy letter to everybody we knew. And it describes what what had happened, you know, within reason and why, and what we were planning to do going forward and how we needed their support. And if anybody is going through a decoupling I'm happy to share with you our letter that we send to people because I don't think I'd ever received a letter and still have not from anyone I knew going through a breakup like that. But we had created a 25 year life together and so to uh, to decouple that to on Ravel that and rewrite a new versions of ourselves moving forward was rather tricky. And I wanted to be very intentional about it. And you guys know me, I like to talk, I like to tell my perspective. And I like to do things. With great intention, it really is the word it is very intentional. And that's how I have created my life by design, I'm very intentional, to a point where I can be maybe overly attached to how things might out have an outcome. But I've also learned how to let go of what I put in into play for my future. And one of the most important things that I've had to learn in my new relationship in my new marriage is that conscious coupling has to include that letting go piece, right. So when John and I came together, we were very aware of this choice. And it is a choice to spend your life with someone and a choice to engage and to meet each other's needs in at a level of commitment that is supportive, and a win win for everybody involved. And that takes work. It's not just the honeymoon all day long, every day, after the all the excitement settles in, we realize that's hard. And especially since we just both come from other relationships where we had habits, we had belief systems, we had interpretations and limiting beliefs in many ways. So the way we continue to work through that is to talk about it. And conscious coupling really is about deciding what you need in a relationship and also spending time listening to what your partner needs. And I don't care if you've been married for 25 years yourself. You know, we've been married almost four years, three years, three years now. And you know, you have to check in all the time, how's it going? What else do we need? What do you need more of what do you need less of? What do you wish I'd stopped doing? What do you wish I'd start doing? And you know, it's just like in the corporate world, right? You know, we do these exercises in corporate environments where we talk about stop, start, continue, you know, how well are you guys managing that. And here's a little trick, the most important thing to do is learn how to calm your own nervous system, so that you can actually hear your partner's needs. And that is the hardest part. And I will honestly share that was very tricky for me. I had some triggers that healed in the last three years by being in partnership. And I do believe your evolution in this lifetime and the ability to heal happens faster in relationship. And so I had a high attachment style I was anxious about being loved and being taken care of. And that showed up often in me being quite needy. And I changed that word over time because I realized that there's a separation between a stress reaction of being needy and actually having needs that could that need to be met. And those dialogues have continued over the years between the two of us and it are quite beautiful. And I'm quite hopeful that we both are continuing to heal and have made a conscious choice to be together in this partnership. And we've made a cut aren't just choice to heal with each other. I highly recommend if you haven't already heard of a relationship coach out there named Jason Gattis. I learned a lot from him following him online. Jason Gattis, it's J A y s o n. G add is I'll put it in the show notes. But he has the relationship school. And he also has, and I use this as the foundation of our vows. And if you want to stock back on an Instagram post, in November, on November 29th 2020, the day after I got married, I posted our vows which I had leveraged the foundational elements of a list of marital agreements that Jason put together. And it is the most powerful thing I ever read. Do I believe John and I are living up to those expectations. Not yet, we're trying, it's hard. But it's worth it. And if you can set your own nervous system down your own ego down and sit in a space of what I call this 5050 dialogue, where you're in a space where you're so grounded, and okay with who you are, then you can hear what the other person needs. And that's the practice and the back and forth and the game that conscious coupling requires. And so if this is difficult for you in relationship in partnership, then I invite you to look in the mirror and say, What do I need? What do I need to be okay, and I had to do that when our honeymoon began to fade away. And I we were going through the pandemic and all sorts of challenges. And that come along with moving in together and merging two families, I really had to recognize where my triggers were, where I fell out of control, and how I needed to look in the mirror and say to myself, Okay, what do I want? What do I need? And how can I show up in a safe way based on my husband's way of being and his needs, so that we can continue to grow this in a productive and healthy way? And here we are, we're still at it. I love you guys. And I hope this is helpful, conscious coupling. You can Google it, I'm sure there's a million articles that are even more in depth and more specific than I'm capable of being at this stage. But maybe we can talk about it together. I'd love to hear what's going well in your relationships. And if you have any questions or you want me to talk about any particular topic, anything further around this or any other topics that I have, I'd love to bring to the table. Please DM me, I really am excited about what we're creating with coffee with Nicoa Thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an espresso shot or a full length Coffee with Nicoa interview created just for you. firecracker burning is a scuffle with our hands on a gun in a way