Successful Relationships Start with Understanding
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Celebrating Shared Leadership
This week, my partner Nick and I had the incredible opportunity to celebrate being “bosses.” Our truly inspiring team sent us heartfelt, personal messages to honor “National Boss’s Day,” and their words blew me away. They all asked us to take a moment to celebrate ourselves, so we did! Nick, our pup Shiloh, and I went on a hike at my favorite local hidden gem (Schroeter Park and Weatherbee Woods Preserve) and then had a quick bite to eat at the new brunch spot in town (Plymouth Brunch House).
The second-best part of the morning was sitting and reflecting with Nick —my husband, best friend, business partner, and co-parent. He asked me,
“What is something you’re grateful for since we started Reset, and what has been the best part of this last year as a leader?”
For the first question, I didn’t have to skip a beat. To be able to share the gift of building a business with my best friend and partner has been an incredible achievement and honor. Business ownership: staying connected to vision, mission, and values; maintaining our commitments to our people, processes, and community; and the extraordinary responsibility to do well for the sake of all stakeholders can be really lonely.
While I’ve been so lucky to have wise mentors and leaders throughout the process, there is nothing like sharing the load with your life partner. Since he joined Reset 4 years ago, we’ve all been so lucky. Many people who know us know that he’s the yang to my yin; he’s practical and realist, detail-oriented and strategic. I’m a dreamer who relies on open, transparent communication, loves getting “vibe checks” and processing my feelings, and runs with my intuition. While that got me through the first few years, Nick’s assets have helped accelerate Reset into what it is today.
Navigating the Challenges of Bridging the Personal & Professional
But I cannot say all of this and ignore the very real and intense challenges of being in business with your spouse. The first 18 months were very rocky as he transitioned from a corporate job that constantly recognized his contributions to basically jumping on a plane that was mid-flight and still had many pieces missing to ensure its safety. It was also early Covid; our Plymouth office was newly opened under Covid restrictions, we had a 9-month-old and a 3-year-old, no childcare, and I had just gotten hit by a car. Hah! What a ride.
Nick and I have both grown a ton in the last few years. When he asked me how I felt since Reset started, it was how proud I am of both of us for being able to do this together and still like each other. You can imagine how many people have responded in shock and disbelief—“I could NEVER work with my husband!” — when they find out we’re truly a family business. Now, as much as I could make this entire newsletter an ode to how special this all is, I want to share my biggest takeaway as to how to have a successful relationship.
What even counts as “success” within a relationship, anyway?
Before moving on, we need to ground down on what successful means in this context. Everyone has their own definition. It could be the number of date nights, the amount of sex, the number of chores shared, the absence of conflict, or the number of years married. I define a successful relationship (and so does my mentor, Stan Tatkin) as securely functioning. The proper definition of this is when relationships exist as:
a partnership where both individuals agree to operate as a two-person system based on principles of fairness, justice, and mutual sensitivity. In this dynamic, partners take responsibility for each other's emotional well-being, collaboratively create social contracts, protect each other in public and private, and prioritize the relationship as their primary source of support.
Quite simply for me, it’s to be in each other’s care to help make life easier, not harder.
I love that Dr. Tatkin talks about how monogamous marriage is not natural for human beings. We choose a partner so that we can have someone to go through what is inevitably a life full of challenges and joys. Our role to one another is to offer support that helps each of us live well. This may include assistance with finances, parenting, running a home, running a business, sharing responsibilities, having fun and taking adventures, assisting through health crises, emotional blocks, and identity shifts, and/or encouraging growth and greater spiritual connection.
Understanding Yourself and Your Partner for Relationship Success
While most of us initially get together based on a foundation of love and infatuation, that is not the recipe for long-term success. In our most challenging times, I’ve had to really drop into one single skill to move forward with compassion and repair: understanding. This does not mean I fall on my knees and martyr myself, taking his side as truth. No, instead it means sitting back, reflecting, and understanding why he’s upset, where it’s coming from, and what deeper wound has been picked at to cause the emotional upheaval and pain.
And here’s the thing - we’re never going to be able to understand our partner, to then drop into empathy and support, if we don’t understand ourselves. If I’m not aware of my own triggers, my own childhood core beliefs, my own insecurities and “parts” that like to activate, then I can never, ever have a chance to support my spouse in a safe, authentic way. This last part is paramount—we often drop into additional parts of ourselves or strategies during conflict: we flee, we fight, we fawn, we please, we self-abandon, we avoid, we disassociate, we perform. If we’re responding to challenge and conflict through a strategy rather than open-heartedness and truth, we perpetuate the cycles that lead to resentment and ongoing disconnection.
Asking the Tough Questions & Being Vulnerable Together
It’s hard, but we have to be brutally honest with ourselves and our partner. We have to intimately know our own stories and the stories of our partners. We have to ask things like…
How did they receive love as a child?
What was threatening to their safety and sense of belonging?
What is a core negative belief they have about themselves?
How do they overcompensate for a sense of unworthiness and unlovability?
What drives them to feel loved?
My favorite way to develop an intimate understanding of ourselves and our partners is through the Shame Triangle. This is a method we adapted from Internal Family Systems work many years ago. You can check out this video of me explaining it—old haircut and all—from 7 years ago. It still lands and is a helpful, accurate exercise to develop the essential ingredient to successful relationships: understanding. Start with yourself, then imagine your partner and drop them into the model. Please share it with them. Talk about it. Get to understanding.
And remember, it’s never perfect. That’s not the objective. Relationships are meant to be full of conflict and repair so that we can better ourselves, better each other, learn, and grow into more aware, stable, imperfect humans—or perhaps drop back into safe, secure beings through the steady stream of unconditional love and support.
Support for Your Mental Health
At Reset Brain and Body, we support clients through foundational and holistic wellness, nervous system regulation, and more. If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Our team is here to walk with you—through the overwhelm and into presence.
Ready to begin your healing journey?
Explore our couples therapy offerings or fill out a new client inquiry form.
Conscious Transparency: This newsletter was edited by AI for grammar, spelling, and sentence structure, but every idea, tone of voice, perspective, and word choice was my own. This newsletter is imperfect because a human wrote it. Thank you for your graciousness.
This week’s Tools, Gratitude, Innovation, Feels
Tools: If couples work is something you’re interested in, we’re currently in beta-testing mode for our new Couples Day Retreat. It’s a 3-day series, and we’re super excited about it. If you feel this may be calling to you, fill out a form to join our waitlist.
Gratitude: Not only did I feel intense, full-body gratitude this week after hearing our team's kind words, but we also got to celebrate the terrific milestone of being named a Great Place to Work. Honestly, it blows my mind that we’re so close to a 50-human organization. I feel so honored to continue creating ripples of compassion in our communities.
Innovation: A friend recently asked me, after I was sharing an argument Nick and I had just had, “Do you notice how far he’s come?” It was really valuable feedback from someone who has known our journey, reflecting on the growth of my partner—from corporate, Subway-eating, car guy to a meditating Montessori dad, manager to a team of therapists, and person raising sensitive boys… it’s pretty cool. Question for you: Do you stop and consider your loved ones' growth? Do you honor it? Recognize them? Say “thank you” for their persistence in self-improvement and healing?
Feels: Now, I know a lot of individuals are not in relationships that are anywhere close to feeling supportive. The wrong foundation was set many years ago, and the rut has continued. One thing that can be excruciating is when one partner is committed to growth and healing while the other is not. This is a painful point in any relationship. If this is you, I hope you ask for help. I hope you’re vulnerable and brave enough to realize you don’t have to go through this alone, and some people will listen to you, hold space, and help you create safety so you can decide what to do. I’d caution against anyone telling you what to do - only you know that answer. So make the space (with help!) to locate your inner compass and be guided forward.